From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sat Aug 10 2002 - 02:23:52 MDT
Funny!
http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/sayings.html#journals
Students and Professionals say the strangest things......
Excerpts from the Professionals:
"No data were taken at station D during the period 0830 to 1630 GST due
to the presence of a red racer snake (Coluber constrictor) draped across
the high-tension wires (33,000 V) serving the station. However, even
though this snake, or rather a three-foot section of its remains, was
caught in the act of causing an arc between the transmission lines, we
do not consider it responsible for the loss of data. Rather we blame the
incompetence of a red-tailed hawk (Buteo borealis) who had apparently
built a defective nest that fell off the top of the nearby transmission
tower, casting her nestlings to the ground, along with their entire food
reserve consisting of a pack rat, a kangaroo rat, and several snakes,
with the exception of the above-mentioned snake who had a somewhat
higher destiny. No comparable loss of data occurred at the other antenna
sites." [N. Bartel et al. 1987, ApJ 323. 507]
"Nevertheless. we acknowledge that a few per cent of the 200 Earths that
Kepler is expected to find may be erroneous, and we urge travellers to
confirm their hotel reservations directly before setting out to visit
one of them." [J. Caldwell and W. Borucki, Bull. AAS 31, 1077, 1999]
Title: Testing the Hypothesis of Modified Dynamics with Low Surface
Brightness Galaxies and Other Evidence Authors: Stacy McGaugh and Erwin
de Blok Comments: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
35 pages AAStex + 9 figures. This result surprised the bejeepers out of
us, too [from LANL preprint notice astro-ph/9801102, contributed by
Christina Williams Heikkila]
"Like all astronomers, we assume that our values are the correct ones,
but in fact we do not have independent evidence to show that at this
time." [A. Youngblood and D. Hunter, Astrophysical Journal 519, 55,
1999]
"Interpretation is cheap in astronomy because any ad hoc assumption
consistent with our extensive ignorance and limited data may be used."
[Condon, Helou, and Jarrett, AJ 123, 1881, 2002]
"The authors regret that their AAS abstract concerning this project...
was composed at a premature stage and fails to state the present
striking conclusions. It should be disregarded."
[Djorgovski and King ApJL 277, L49 (1984)]
"Conclusion: is left to the reader (see Table 2). Acknowledgements:
I wrote this paper for money." [A.A. Chastel, A critical analysis of the
explanation of red-shifts by a new field, A&A 53, 67 (1976)]
"...preliminary estimates indicate that the alcoholic content ... if
purged of all impurities and condensed, would yield approximately 10^28
fifths at 200 proof." [B. Zuckerman and B.E. Turner, ApJ, March 1975]
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes
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