Parody science
As a scientific joke or joke called you a joke or a joke, of direct relevance to science and parodied their forms. The term is not clearly delimited, the punch line is often only members of the scientific field immediately accessible. From an inside joke of such groups but generally it differs in that it refers to general stereotypes and forms the scientific community and often the form of one or more scientific publications assumes or is anecdotes about and outstanding personalities of the subject and their work.
Subject is often the gap between scientific practice and everyday understanding that makes it possible to cover it up with the choice of scientific form the folly or lack of plausibility of the content. They refer to on the possibility of fraud and forgery in science. Scientific jokes and humorous publications are occupied at least since the 17th century.
- 3.1 Literature
- 3.2 Mathematics
- 3.3 Physics
- 3.4 Chemistry
- 3.5 Biology
- 3.6 pedagogy
- 3.7 technology
- 3.8 computer science
- 3.9 theology
- 3:10 psychology
General
For ( sometimes also against the intention of the authors ) they accept as a joke Publications of the Ig Nobel Prize is awarded annually.
Phenomenology
Fictional people
Many scientific disciplines know fictional personalities. Often it involves fictional members of the scientific enterprise, where individual inventions or discoveries are attributed.
For example, should be in mathematics a Alessandro Binomi the discoverer of the binomial. In the fictional mathematician Julius own ( alternatively Manfred Eigen, an existing chemist), the invention of the intrinsic value decline; FDC Willard, who published internationally in 1975 and 1980 as a writer in prestigious journals in physics, was a Siamese. Also the choice of the collective pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki, under which a circle of leading mathematicians of the 1930s published a textbook series, goes back to a joke. Further examples of such Kollektivpseudonyme in mathematics are Boto of Querenburg, Blanche Descartes and Arthur Besse. A professor by the name of Ernst August Doelle should have held a Chair of Psychology and Education at the University of Konstanz, have been home to a constitutional lawyer named Friedrich Gottlob nail art at the University of Potsdam. PDQ Bach is the last son of Johann Sebastian Bach and his father have been a composer, under this name has his creator written numerous works.
Fictitious Encyclopedia Article
Scientific lexicons of various departments include entries that are fictitious or discussing a common topic from a scientific perspective. Among the best known of entry to Steinlaus that comes from a sketch by Loriot, in Pschyrembel, a medical reference book. In Pschyrembel dictionary naturopathy and alternative healing method thereof publishing the Kurschatten is explained as a medical phenomenon. Brill's New Pauly, an encyclopedia to antiquity, the first volume contains an entry about Apopudobalia, an imaginary ancient preform of football. The ninth edition of the Rompp chemistry lexicon is a joke version of the KKK rule again.
In part, this Nihilartikel also refer to fictional personalities of science, such as PDQ Bach is also listed in the music past and present in the people part of the encyclopedia.
Other scientific work joke
Even outside the encyclopaedias dive in the scientific literature sometimes only apparently serious scientific work on, for example, in scientific journals or as standalone publications. This enabled the young physicist and later Nobel prize winner Hans Bethe in 1931 to accommodate with his colleagues Beck and Riezler, a nonsense work in the prestigious journal Nature sciences with which they parodied the number games of the then famous British astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington. 1948 played George Gamow his friend Bethe reversed a prank, as he prepares for a ( serious ) work, which ran he and his student Ralph Alpher, Bethe, without his knowledge called as another author to complete the echoes of the beginning of the Greek alphabet. It became known as " alpha-beta - gamma " work. Bethe to the appraiser panel of the magazine, but did not object to the joke.
Inspired by Christian Morgenstern's poem The nasobem invented the zoologist Gerolf Steiner the mammalian order Rhinogradentia and published in 1957 in compliance with all formal aspects of the textbook construction and life of the Rhinogradentia. The animals referred to German " nose border bodies" be taken up again and again in publications and have evolved into a running gag.
A number of scientific joke work is mundane or commonplace in a scientific context, or apply scientific methods on a topic that is not object of study of the scientific field. Examples include the mathematical paper A Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Big Game Hunting, 1938 published in the American Mathematical Monthly by Ralph Boas and colleagues under the pseudonym H. Pétard treated the applications of mathematics in big game hunting, or the monograph Pasta theobromae in Max Wichtls Teedrogen, and herbal products in the chocolate like a drug is described, which is said to have soothing effect on the healing of children tearing after minor injury.
The Nacirema ( read backwards, ' American ', English for ' Americans ') were examined in 1956 by the anthropologist Horace Miner. In an article in the journal American Anthropologist, he described their body rituals, for example, as men their daily facial skin with sharp blades maltreat ( shaving) or women regularly bake her head (hair stylist ).
The computer scientist Donald Knuth Ervin wrote in 1977, a satirical article about the complexity of songs, in which he applied the methods of complexity theory to well-known pop and children's songs.
The economics are occasionally faced with the accusation, to assess all situations only economically. Gary Becker has applied the basics of price theory on crime and family circumstances (see Rotten -Kid theorem). Then wrote Alan Blinder, economics professor at Princeton University, as a satire, an article about brushing your teeth from an economic point of view, which was published in 1974 in the prestigious Journal of Political Economy. Blinder presents a ( artificially inflated ) mathematical model that deals with the optimization of the time spent on daily tooth brushing, starting from the assumption that the income of a person is a dependent of working and dental hygiene function. From the model " many empirically testable hypotheses are derived. " Can be according to the author
Stephanie H. Chanteau and James M. Tour ( Rice University, Houston, Texas) published in 2003 in the prestigious Journal of Organic Chemistry routes for the synthesis of anthropomorphic molecules.
At the height of postmodern theory Alan Sokal published in 1996 in the journal Social Text a paper entitled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. His aim was to show whether a leading science magazine published a fictitious context, as long as it sounds impressive and conforms to the ideological line of the journal is. The following so-called Sokal affair led to heated discussions about the accuracy of deconstructive questioning of positivist science.
The daily newspaper reported on its satirical page The truth, a certain Prof. Dr. Hartmut Andryckzuck of the Humboldt University have found that German cows could not swim because they have a malformed by breeding sphincter and so full would be running water. In this joke the Sat.1 Genial game show dropped in next to it.
Examples
Literature
About the literary parody and the parody of literary criticism addition, jokes also deal with the study of literature, their jargon, their rituals and their reception.
The monograph The Truth About Hansel and Gretel by Hans Traxler treated purportedly "The documentation of the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm " and treated ostensibly historical models of the tale. The book was first taken seriously and attracted international interest. On the dust jacket was in the second edition with the addition of " a credible parody " referred to the non-scientific character of the work.
Mathematics
Let ( " epsilon less than zero " ) is considered the shortest mathematicians joke. Epsilon is regularly used in mathematics as a variable for an arbitrarily small number greater than zero and many mathematical proofs contain, for example, the phrase " Let epsilon greater than zero. "
Often mathematicians are humorous compared with scientists from other areas. So Kurt Reidemeister remembers after his visit to the Euler celebration of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin on 21 March 1957:
" The second speaker was the head of the delegation of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Professor Alexandroff from Moscow - who incidentally spent several years as a young lecturer at Göttingen and imaginary in a personal conversation that carefree days with heat. To characterize Euler, Alexandroff was linked to the interaction of skill and understanding and explained this to a pun of physicians about physician. The surgeons, it is said there, understand little, but can do much; the inner physicians understand much, but little can and psychiatrists understand everything, but can not. The purpose of this tripartite division, he then went before the now quite amused solemn assembly, Euler was a surgeon. Euler was a rounder, more precisely, a brilliant computer both on the material of the numbers as well as the material of the formulas. "
Sometimes mathematicians Jokes want help to better illustrate a difficult for the novice mathematical facts or a logical principle by a kind of parable:
" A physicist and a mathematician to boil water. There is a fire pit available, as well as a pot of water, which is ranked A. The physicist and the mathematician solve both the problem by taking the pot from place A and place on the fire. Well water should be boiled again, but this time is the pot of cold water on place B. The physicist solves the problem again so that it sets the pot on the fire. The mathematician on the other hand takes the pot of course B and puts it on course A and says: "This issue, we have already solved earlier," ".
Sometimes humorous allusions in the registers of textbooks are hidden. An example of this is found in the book Lectures on topology of Bela Kerekjarto (1923 ): The register is referenced Erich Bessel -Hagen, to the page indicated he is not mentioned, but the image of a sphere is two-handled, a allusion to the above popularly jug ears distinctive features of its physiognomy. Another example of such an index - wit are the Lectures on Number Theory by Helmut Hasse: On the tab indexed under God place to find Leopold Kronecker's famous quote " The integers has made the good God, all else is the work of man ."
The Gozintograph is a function graph describing what parts make up different products. The name of this graph is a humorous parody: The mathematician Andrew Vazsonyi was as the author of the fictional Italian mathematician Zepartzat Gozinto (phonetic for "the part did goes into " German as: " The part that goes in " ) to. This name is now generally accepted.
Physics
The Pauli effect describes the remarkable negative influence of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli on laboratory results.
The name of the penguin diagram arises from a scientific joke. It got its in the usual representation is not necessarily appropriate, name due to a lost bet of John Ellis, who should put the word penguin in its next scientific publication.
Even in the recent past prove physicist their sense of scientific humor. So at the Spring Meeting of the German Physical Society 1998, a lecture on the fictitious crystal dilithium was submitted, approved and maintained.
Chemistry
Dihydrogen monoxide is represented as a highly hazardous substance due to the strange name. There have even been called for bans and scientifically justified. This is water.
Biology
The articles on cuboid tree and square bamboo from the Natural Science Rundschau from 1978 and 1979 were felt by many readers as true messages because of the kind in the German scientific literature is simply too rare - and because it sounded so real.
On the physicist Bobby Henderson, the theory of the creation of the world and its life forms through the Flying Spaghetti Monster is back - as a fourth alternative to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, for Lamarckism and creationism. Henderson developed his theory as a satirical response to the discussion about the teaching of Intelligent Design in U.S. schools.
Education
Hilbert Meyer and Andreas Gruschka invented the so-called " Lola -tion strategies," " permissive opaque patterns of action for instrumentation pupil-oriented daily performances of teaching " as a non -serious contribution to the discourse on governance in educational practice field school.
Technology
In the technique not viable or alter any part of various kinds emerge. Such an example is the piston retraction spring, a supposedly built in cylinders spring to put down a piston to its original position. The Dark pear as a counterpart to the light bulb when you turn darkness spread, allowing the darker areas. Their initial characterization was made around 1910 by the poet Christian Morgenstern in a poem in which a Tagnachtlampe is invented. The comic book character Gyro Gearloose used this lamp.
In Germany, the Siemens air hooks known ( sometimes referred to as Siemens - air anchors), which one applies to locations where conventional hook for lack of solid matter could find no support. In Austria, the name Siemens air hooks ( sl " Siemens Lufthagl " ) is common in Switzerland Hilti - air anchor.
On the chips of integrated circuits are sometimes still corners freely. Designers fill this sometimes with technically non-functional, but graphically witty structures ( engl. Silicon Art analogous to ASCII art ) that can make only a microscope visible. So got a chip with a surface acoustic wave filter, which looks like a railway rail track, a small locomotive on this " track " is set.
Computer science
Write- only memory is an analogy to Read-Only Memory (ROM): Like a ROM can not be described, a WOM can not be read. A development engineer at Signetics created for such a senseless circuit even a sheet to reveal the lack of quality assurance activities of the company. The data sheet was actually released for publication because it has probably no one read or checked - so to speak, the paper model of a successful WOM. As a result, the datasheet Signetics was published in an April issue of ELECTRONICS Magazine.
Write-only programming called program code which, although it could be written easily, but can be read or understood very difficult again. A popular and suitable for this purpose programming language is Perl, the Obfuscated Perl Contest particularly difficult -to-follow Perl programs are excellent.
Also of fundamental importance is the GIGO principle ( garbage in, garbage out ): If his program with garbage (garbage ) feeding receives, as a result of just such also.
The often very cryptic and not so mnemonic literally Command code in assembler programs have seduced programmers to invent numerous fantasy commands such as HCF - Halt and Catch Fire.
In cryptology we speak in reference to the ROT13 method also from " ROT26 " algorithm. ROT26 is an alphabetical rotation by 26 points, so over the complete alphabet - but then the cryptogram with the plaintext is again identical, there is no encryption before.
When network problems that are based on or not fully inserted cables, one also speaks of Packet -over -air problems.
An intentional and rather more permanent interruption of network traffic is advantageously effected by SNIP ( Sysadmin Network Interrupt Protocol). A similarity of the wording with the sound of a closing scissors is no accident.
Especially in the English language called " ID10T " errors are known, diagnose what customer service staff regularly in need of help users with computer problems. Ask them what " ID10T " is, they are told they are to this number and letter combination on a piece of paper in order to understand them - the one is in the English language, in contrast to German, usually written as a single line. So it quickly becomes clear that it is not "ID -ten- T " error, but an " IDIOT " error by a ( of whatever kind ), which means that the problem lies in the inability of the user. Expressions such as " ID10T " also are part of the Leetspeak culture.
Another example is the statement " There are exactly 10 kinds of people - those who understand the binary system, and those who do not do it ." The binary number " 10 " corresponds to the decimal number of the second
Another way to tell that the problem is not likely on the computer is to classify the problem as PEBKAC or OSI Layer 8 problem ( the level 7 is the highest layer, the application, we can only have the user come ). Usually, in the jargon, the English expression used "Layer -8 problem." As a "Layer -9" is jokingly the ( non-existent ) denotes religious layer of the OSI layer. Wiring problems are referred by analogy, jokingly referred to as Layer -0- problem.
Because the number 31 in octal with the number 25 matches in the decimal, short Oct 31 = Dec 25, it is inferred that Halloween and Christmas may be confused.
Sometimes the truth is by the formula 2B | defined ¬ 2B ( 2B or not 2B ) |. It is a Shakespeare quote (to be or not to be).
The usual names for logic gates such as AND or OR have soon led to the development of other types of gates, including ALWAYS, the NIE, the NIE AND NIMMERVOLL, the WHY and the BUT.
Theology
A classic example of a parody of academic life ( in the field of theology in the 16th century ), the Letters of Obscure Men, as this was the ( humanist ) Author of a low level of visibility. An equally classic satire of the 18th century, aimed this time at the level of the students of theology, is the Jobsiade.
Psychology
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobie (Greek φόβος: fear, ἱπποπόταμος: hippo, Latin: monstrum: Monster, sesquipedalis: one and a half feet long, a mile long ) means the fear of long words vielsilbigen, the term can be regarded as homologous. The term thus parodies the terminology education. Analog to the Eibohphobie (English Aibohphobia ) stand for the fear of palindromes and is itself one.
Reception
Already in the 17th century scientific jokes were included in the didactic repertoire in particular by Jesuits. You are today still in magazines used.
An important international journal Annals of Improbable Research, the.
The computer magazine c't regularly publishes in its issue to the beginning of April ( the end of March but already appears) more or less scientifically embellished fooling around. Examples were 1985, a radially -recording disk drive or 1999 an Internet accelerator in a Resource Reservation Protocol. Some of the April Fools were later partly reality. Such a vision Head Projector 1987 presented, which was later implemented as a head-mounted display. Is mistakenly attributed to the c't the instructions, the coprocessor must be activated at a 486SX processor is present but not functioning or activated math coprocessor by drilling at a certain place of the case yet. She appeared in DOS International 4/93 on page 134 ff A template was announced in articles in all exactness.
The electronics magazine Elektor maintains in its semiconductor Staple always accommodate a few joke circuitry, such as a short circuit as a fuse or the Destroyer NEVER logic gate.
In cryptography essays are from the border area of this science in the "Journal of Craptology " published (Editor Nigel Smart).