Hmm… so this PhD Comics episode* (image left… click will take you to their site) is a really good idea, but I’m underwhelmed by the actual execution.
This might be because it is hard to do, and not because the person (people?) at PhD comics, whoever they are, aren’t smart and funny people, since there’s a lot of evidence that they are.
So I find myself thinking that this is an opportunity for some fun reader participation! Surely there are more science-tweets to be thought up? Perhaps even some funnier ones?
So… if you think of an example or two (see the prototype first), share it with us in the comments. It does not have to be brilliant! Just throw it out there! Remember, it is …er… tweeting**, so 140 characters or fewer. I’m hoping that some of the consistently creative regulars who like to contribute are still reading (er… Elliot? Stevem? Yvette?), especially since I’m blanking on a good one to even kick things off!
[Update: Thought of an easy one on the way home:
Archimedes: Going to take a bath now.
08:37PM June 18th from syracuse.com
]
(You can do ones with broad appeal, or more “insider” ones from a specialized field, or with specialized jargon, if you like.)
-cvj
*Thanks Sara T.!
**Don’t forget that if you’re a Twitter or Facebook user, you can follow Asymptotia posts on Twitter and by following through Facebook NetworkedBlogs, and you can also connect Asymptotia to your facebook work by logging on through facebook connect. More here.
Wow, these are all AMAZING, folks! I too was underwhelmed by the quotes but the concept is hysterical. I’ve been trying to come up with some woman astronaut (Sally Ride, whomever, she is a physicist in part though) tweets, but no success thus far! I hope someone from PHD links to Aysmptotia!
Wow! I was thinking of going for EXACTLY the same idea. Was going to do something like: “Heard Rosalind is out of the office tomorrow. Might pay a visit.”
-cvj
Watson: Visiting Maurice at Kings tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll do something twisted.
Fourier: I’ve been transformed
Halley”@Newton: Realizing Principia will become a landmark in scientific methodology, and the foundation of mathematical science. Will be hailed for centuries as one of ye greatest achievements of human thought. Send a PDF when you Tex it up.
Einstein: $’=$/(1-v^{2}/c^{2})^{1/2). Have discovered time is actually money.
Einstein: c=mE^{2}, c=Em^{2}, m=Ec^{2}, m=cE^{2}, E=mc^{2}, E=cm^{2}. Really closing in on it now guys.
S. Chandrasekhar: Got letter from journal editors. Political correctness has gone mad–paper won’t get published unless “white dwarf star” is changed to “vertically challenged caucasian star”.
E. Fermi. Doing reactor experiments. But the excess heat being produced by my piles is making me somewhat uncomfortable.
Old Darwin: Publisher fees for latest edition of Origins more than expected. Will have to do Santa work again this Christmas. God, I hate those bloody kids.
O. Morgenstern”@J. Von Neumann: Johnny, busy reading the final draft and “The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior” is a great title. Still think having “Foreword by J K Rowling” on the cover will help shift a lot more copies. Just ask her.
GFR Ellis”@SWHawking: Stephen, got my copy of Large Scale Structure of ST from the publishers. Really impressed you made it all the way to page 21. I was really toiling at page 12 and could’nt get past 13.
Modern HEP theorist: Supercomputer calculations suggest it is a supersymmetric superposition of supercolliding superstates, describing a superheated superconducting superfluid briefly produced in supersonic shock waves in supergiant stars that go supernova.
CV Johnson: Relaxing at local bar with drinks, nibbles and a little string research. Around the 16th martini, Standard Model parameters were starting to come out–they were–but I lost the notebook during the fight with the bouncers.
Abel: *SO* sick of commuting, but have only radical solutions to this problem.
Mendeleev: Excellent lecture on chemical elements this pm, but can’t shake the feeling something was missing…
🙂 !!
Planck: Looking for a little action?
Hubble: Your universe is actually larger than it appeared yesterday
Doppler: Justapproachingyourstoprightnow d i d y o u s e e m e g o b y ?
Schwarzschild: Found a hole in my backyard. It’s pretty black!
Gellman: Just started reading Finnegan’s wake. Quark sounds so kewl…
Planck: I just invented a constant to solve the UV catastrophe. How should I name it?
Poincare: I have a strange sense of deja-vu. Things are recurring again and again and again…
Hugh Everett: Not sure you will get this. Your universe may have branched off at some point and we may have no causal connection. But if not…HI.
Brilliant suggestions all!
I can’t get over how many really excellent ones there are so far!
Keep ’em coming!
-cvj
Alan Guth: Lets do lunch. It’s free
OK, I won’t be outdone;)
Galileo: Scary blokes in black hoods are wanting to ask lots of questions. Will try and get back to you later.
Newton: For much want of hearers now often tweet to the walls.
Newton: Me thinks ye Law of Inverse Quadruples now greatly
disappoints. Perhaps ye Law of Inverse Cubes will fare better…?
Newton: Just procured me a glass prism to try therewith ye celebrated phenomena of colours.
Newton: Busy inventing ye “fluxions of ye quantity”. Future generations of ye school and college students will greatly love this.
Newton: Doing new alchemy experiments. Wig caught fire.
Einstein: It’s going to be called “The Theory of Being Relatively Special”. What do you guys think?
Einstein: Just realized das contracted Riemann-Christoffel curvature tensor can be equated to das energy-momentum tensor of mass and energy. Sheer jaw-dropping WTFness or what?
P. Dirac:
W. Pauli: Just ordered a muon.
E. Schrodinger: The weekend has left me pretty shagged out but I’ve finally gotton the equation down cold.
Laplace: Tout le monde–c’est operataire differentiale lineare!
C. Darwin: Storm around Cape Horn. Terrible bout of seasickness has ruined my entire pinned subgenus collection of Amazon canopy tree-bark-chewing beatles.(The brightly coloured ones.)
C. Darwin: Getting bummed this Russell Wallace dude is trying to muscle in.
J. Kepler: The Thirty Years War has begun: ploughshares beaten into swords, religious fanatics, burnings, soldiery, pestilance, famine and the ever-present stench of death. Beats postdocing though.
Famous String Theorist: Going back to have another go now at them perturbative world-sheet vertex operators.
Famous cosmologist: Some key details still to be fully worked out but we are calling it the Small Bang Theory.
Lord Kelvin: Have learned of Maxwell’s success in uniting the phenomenas of electricity and magnetism into a unified mathematical setting. But I’ve got a much cooler beard.
L. Pasteur: Been bitten by a rabied dog. Will have to pull an all nighter and come up with something.
James Watson: Desperately seeking some clue now as to the geometry of DNA. Crick coming round for dinner. Making pasta whirls.
CVJ: Have written the definitive formula proving string theory, but the squirrels ate my homework. Next storm they’re on a kite string with a key.
I like how I’ve never written one of these before and now I’m doing them for scientists. See Clifford, the things I do for you!
Galileo: OMG there are stars following Jupiter!!!1!
Mendel: I’m thinking pea soup tonight. They’re on my mind for some reason…
Armstrong: @Earth Last message should have had an “a” before “man.” Sry guys!
M_Curie: @P_Curie get to the lab right now, I’m glowing with excitement! Or from the radium?
Feynman: @females I’m going home now, anyone need a ride?
(The latter is inspired by one of my profs who swore he went to a conference where Feynman kept asking this in a loud tone hoping one of the women would agree, but it backfired as some oblivious guys took him up on the offer instead.)
Shrodinger (sp?) “I was about to tweet but was cut off”
Galileo: Boules tournament cancelled, thinking of dropping by the Tower instead.
Oh my. That one is brilliant, Tyler!
Fermat: I found a proof for that a^n+b^n=c^n problem I was thinking about but it’s longer than 140 characters. I’ll do a blog post later this week.
Schroedinger: Still can’t find the cat! He’s probably fine, but I’d like to be sure…
07:30 March 25th 1935 via Copenhagen
I had the same reaction to the comic when I saw it. Glad to see this! Fermat made made me laugh – definitely the best so far.
And of course:
Fermat: Off to the store to buy new notebooks. Hope I don’t forget this time.
09:03AM May 15th 1637 from diophantus.com
-cvj
Thought of one on the way home (put it in post update too):
Archimedes: Going to take a bath now.
08:37PM June 18th from syracuse.com
-cvj
Thoughts tweets are pretty clever.
Pauling “Let’s see on the phone ABCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC”
Pauli “Please sign up for my tweets. I don’t want anyone excluded”
Witten “More later. I’m pretty tied up at the moment”
Hawking “Wait a minute, I’ve been tweeting for 20 years. Now it’s popular?”
Shannon “If you think about it a tweet can have (# of char)^140 possible messages. That’s a lot”
Not sure these are that great but the ones in the PHD comics weren’t that great either.
e.