28

Jan

Rakison Considers New Night Job

Pondering what to do with his “off hours”, David Rakison told our PLB Editors that he wanted to move away from the mental grind and do something more active.

“You know, you spend so much of your day in academia just sitting down,” said Rakison, “You sit in meetings.  You sit writing papers.  You sit in the lab.  When I’m not at work, I just wanted to do something more active.”

One night after his wife returned home from a movie with some friends she suggested a novel & more active hobby.

“It was an absolutely brilliant idea,” Rakison said, “I just had to find the right trainer.”

While being somewhat reluctant to tell the PLB precisely what this new part time hobby is, Rakison has admitted to seeking the advice of a movie celebrity who was in Pittsburgh filming a movie (pictured with Rakison) and had recently trained for the same “hobby”.

“Now I can’t tell you who this person is,” reports Rakison, “but I can say that I feel very confident in taking the next step in my new hobby and think it might be more financially more lucrative than academia.”

As soon as the PLB learns more about this new career choice, we will inform our faithful readers.

109 days ago Short URL Comments

David Rakison/Psycho? Logical? Bulletin (Satire)

21

Jan

Marcel Just Stumped By Kotovsky’s Brain

Marcel Just’s latest efforts to decode the semantic organization of the human brain hit an apparent snag last week.

Dr. Just (shown left above) was in search of a test subject to try out some new tweaks on his fMRI decoder algorithm.  This program promised a more efficient readout of neural activity from fMRI signals that could predict what a subject was thinking while in the scanner.

Ken Kotovsky (shown at right above) just happened to be walking back from Schatz when he ran into Dr. Just.

“I was just walking by, you know, and Marcel asked if I had anything to do this afternoon,” said Dr. Kotovsky, “I thought… why the hell not?”

Unfortunately, after only a few minutes in the scanner, it became apparent that something was not working properly.

“You know, it was the strangest thing,” said Dr. Just, “No matter what stimulus we gave him to think about in the scanner, we got the strangest output from the decoder.”

At this point Dr. Just holds up a list of visual stimuli presented to the test subject (Dr. Kotovsky) and the predicted image generated by the computer (shown below).  ”No matter what we showed him, the computer kept coming back with images of essentially the same thing!”

No word yet as to whether the error resided in the algorithm modifications or the test subject.

116 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Ken Kotovsky/Marcel Just/Psycho? Logical? Bulletin (Satire)

14

Jan

Faculty Meeting Dedicated to Novel Funding Opportunity Found in Department Head’s Inbox

 

Last week’s faculty meeting was dominated by the looming fiscal crises that the department faces due to “shifts in funding priorities” by NIH & DARPA. Department Head, Dr. Michael Scheier, proposed a novel funding opportunity that he was made aware of 15 minutes before the meeting.

“I was going through my Inbox this morning,” said Scheier, “and I came across something that I think looks really promising. I got an email from a guy, he says he’s a prince in Nigeria. Now I don’t know what that means, because I didn’t think that Nigeria had a monarchy, but listen to what he has to say.”

Scheier then proceeded to read a rather long email, riddled with grammatical errors, from an individual claiming to be a “prince in exile” who had $1.56 billion in holdings that were locked out after the coup that overthrew his family. According to the author, Honorable and Nobel Prince William Shatner III, the only way to get out of the country with his money is to transfer the funds into an American bank account first. If the department was willing to just send Prince Shatner the account and routing numbers for the department, then the author stated he would be willing to give the department a 10% cut.

“If you do the math, that’s $156 million dollars!” exclaimed Scheier, “Now I don’t know you you’d all feel about this, okay, but I think it’s really something we should consider. Especially given our recent shortfall on graduate student stipends”

Overall, the faculty opinion appeared mixed on the idea.

“You know I think this is fascinating,” said Dr. Brian McWhinney, “Really interesting offer. But I’d like to say, that my experience working on the Niger-Congo languages, I’d want to clarify what he meant by ‘dire circumstances’. That could mean a lot of different things if translated incorrectly.”

“What’d I’d want to know is whether that’s in US dollars or Nigerian naira,” said Dr. Ken Kotovsky, “I mean that conversion rate is a real pain in the ass.”

Others were not quite a supportive.

“Are you f$%#ing kidding me!” said Dr. David Klahr. “I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation? Our funds are locked in through the university. We’d have to get their approval and you know how long that’d take. He’d have found someone else before we even know what our account number is. Seems like a waste of time to me.”

Throughout the conversation, Dr. David Rakison kept interjecting “Zzzzzzzzzz” from his perch in the corner of the room.

Despite having six other agenda items, the entire faculty meeting was dominated by debate on the details and merits of the offer. No consensus was reached, however, beyond an agreement to “get more details” before the next faculty meeting.

 

 

123 days ago Short URL 3 Comments

Brian MacWhinney/David Klahr/David Rakison/Ken Kotovsky/Mike Scheier/Psycho? Logical? Bulletin (Satire)