A League of Our Own

E-mail thread from the Nerd Herd this afternoon, as we were all clearly working very hard.

RN:  I’m starting a new fantasy physics league.  First we draft our teams and the season runs from 1 January to 30 December 2011.  10 Physicists per team.  Draft Order is me, RJak, Ninjaneer, daisyfae and M**2.  And don’t forget to name your team. Mine is “The Downtown Differentials”.

SCORING:

Second author paper – 1 point
First author paper – 2 points
Magazine article – 3 points
Mention on CNN – 4 points
Appearance on Leno – 5 points
Appearance on Star Trek – 6 points
TV show – 8 points
Presentation using See-and-say – 20 points
Presentation with naked wife on screen saver* – 30 points

Ok here we go – I’ll take Stevie Hawking!

daisyfae:  You need to add a category for “Getting Front Page Coverage in Popular Press”
     – Time, Newsweek:  15 points
     – Wall Street Journal: 10 points
     – New York Times / Washington Post: 8 points
     – Chicago Trib, LA Times, major newspaper:  5 points
     – Weekly Reader: 3 points
     – Trailer Park Digest: 1 point

RJak:  I choose Rick Smalley.  I know he’s dead and all, but does that really matter?  It doesn’t take a genius to get a stripper knocked-up. 

Speaking of which:  “Very minor scandal that I wanted to report on because of the humor value but my editors wouldn’t let me for reasons that are totally valid: Hawking was spotted  going into a strip club in London, and apparently spent several hours with one of the strippers, and supposedly  .  A colleague and I had tracked down the stripper (if I recall correctly, her stage name was “Tiger”) and scheduled an interview. I wanted to find out what a Tiger and Hawking would discuss for so long — g-string theory, perhaps — but my editors pulled the plug. Probably a good thing.” [reference]

daisyfae:  “The Boson Bombers” choose…

That guy who gave the presentation at the Colloquium Series who got so jacked up answering a question that his screen saver came on and the naked boobie picture of his wife on vacation came up in his slide show.  And yeah, I know it’ll be a bitch to get all that printed on his jersey, but I’ll dig up his name. 

By the way… I’m also claiming “The Particle Chargers” for a possible team name.  Haven’t decided which one I’m going to use. 

Ninjaneer:  Anything published in an Astronomy Journal is a league violation and disqualifies the team.

M**2:  My team name is “E-town Entanglements”

RN:  The league office found no good way to do that, we’ll just going to have to test for banned research from this point forward as we don’t want to change all the old records.  We have at least come up with a policy on performance enhancing substances such as Red Bull and donuts.

Ninjaneer:  We should probably institute “Drude Testing”…

 

image sourced here.  Artie, The Strongest Man in the World (from “The Adventures of Pete and Pete”)

* RN and i attended an invited lecture at a large auditorium in our facility.  The speaker was a going full-throttle, answering a question with so much enthusiasm that the screen saver on his laptop computer kicked in, presenting his vacation slide show on a giant screen for all to see.  He was so busy bouncing around the auditorium that he hadn’t noticed – even when the shot of his topless wife walking along a tropical beach flashed across the screen.  When he did notice, he quickly realized that his wife’s funbags had probably been viewed by the hundred or so folks in attendance… and he was suddenly overcome with a bit of travel fatigue, and ended his Q&A session rather abruptly….

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