…and this is a 
Monday, 12 May, 2:30pm. This is your chance.
The Residence Hall Association on my campus is having a fundraiser to send some members to a national conference, so they'll be selling pies … to throw at faculty. I'll be standing there for that half-hour, so students and anyone else who wants revenge can join in.
I expect a long, long line now. I'll be very disappointed if I don't have a horde prepared to be mean to me. And do note that this will be especially messy: the beard, you know. You won't be getting your money's worth with those clean-shaven professors.
Gemini: Avoid reading anything about Cyril Burt. There's a strong possibility you might vanish.
No, don't google that name.
I'm warning you.
Dang, too late, you've just become a statistical anomaly.
Comments
Posted by: Michael | April 24, 2008 6:12 PM
Hmmm... Methinks a half an hour of pies in the eye is gonna hurt a bit more than that statistical anomalization you just endured.
Good luck!
Posted by: Che | April 24, 2008 6:16 PM
Somebody better bring a camera!
Posted by: Paul Anderson | April 24, 2008 6:25 PM
www.lifescienceprize.org/
Dare to take the challenge???
Posted by: Sili | April 24, 2008 6:25 PM
Please, please have somebody at hand to check the pies for razor blades, anvils and cyanide.
Posted by: Prillotashekta | April 24, 2008 6:26 PM
I couldn't help it. I'm now a statistical anomaly.
Posted by: Bill Anderson | April 24, 2008 6:26 PM
PZ, you're shrewd - being in the line of fire for a worthy cause, and also now being the producer of horoscope readings. Who could throw a pie at you if you have such a strong connection to the unknown realm? That would be bold.
Posted by: Curt Cameron | April 24, 2008 6:27 PM
I'm a Gemini, and since I don't subcribe to astrology, I had to google Cyril Burt. From the wikipedia article, it sounds like his ideas have been pretty discredited. On the other hand, one of the prominent pages presented by Google was an article at the Discovery Institute site slamming him as a fraud, which makes me think he must have been a brilliant scientist.
I don't get the references about vanishing and being a statistical anomaly - can someone explain?
Posted by: Boston Rob | April 24, 2008 6:32 PM
I didn't google the name, but I did look it up on Wikipedia. Am I safe?
Posted by: Eximious Jones | April 24, 2008 6:34 PM
Boston Rob: I dunno. Did you google "Wikipedia"?
Posted by: TheHominid | April 24, 2008 6:35 PM
http://skippyslist.com/2007/07/09/cephalopod-surprise/
Squid Pie, anyone?
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | April 24, 2008 6:35 PM
And he's giving over two weeks notice. I expect the entire crew of Expelled! to be there.
Posted by: Karen | April 24, 2008 6:47 PM
Maybe the students could make an extra few bucks by selling tickets for the privilege of hosing down the bearded professors at the end of their half-hour.
Posted by: sibosop | April 24, 2008 6:56 PM
PZ's just trying to one up Thomas Friedman.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sv6nvMUq10U
Posted by: chezjake | April 24, 2008 6:57 PM
I expect Skatje to be first in line.
Posted by: cath | April 24, 2008 7:02 PM
Funniest. horoscope. evah!
@Curt Cameron, Cyril Burt really was a fraud. Many of his twin studies were completely bogus - made up out of thin air.
Posted by: PAUL ANDERSON | April 24, 2008 7:05 PM
www.lifescienceprize.org
Posted by: melatonin | April 24, 2008 7:11 PM
I'm an psychology grad from Liverpool Uni, of which Burt was faculty. I remember finding a portrait of him stashed in the corner of a dusty unused room in the department. I guess he was seen as an embarrassment.
His biographer, Hearnshaw, did OK though - he has a seminar room named after him. And Sherrington is the dogs bollocks having a whole building in his name.
Posted by: Starbix | April 24, 2008 7:14 PM
Dammit! I'm a statistical anomaly again! That's the fourth time this week!
Starbix
"Don't Panic." -Douglas Adams
Posted by: Ollie | April 24, 2008 7:17 PM
That's HORRIBLE! So much wasted delicious pie!!
Posted by: Elwood Herring | April 24, 2008 7:21 PM
Call me pedantic if you like, but isn't simply reading that horoscope enough to make one vanish? After all, it is about Cyril Bur...
(Actually, I am totally immune from the bodily dispersal effect of literary Boojums. So there.)
Posted by: Zeno | April 24, 2008 7:37 PM
Oooh! A nice Cyril Burt reference for the Gemini horoscope. Clever!
Of course, the notion that Burt was a fraud is based in part on the failure to turn up many of those twin subjects he reported studying. If those missing twins ever turn up, Burt could be vindicated! (Then maybe we could discover why his data was so suspiciously regular, too!)
Posted by: wazza | April 24, 2008 7:46 PM
I guess you'll have to expel all the creationists from campus...
if you don't want to get bruises
Posted by: Steve Ulven | April 24, 2008 8:42 PM
I just got a new car (not so new, but a 2006 Monte Carlo SS) and am looking for an excuse for a road trip. I'd consider the 3 hour drive for that.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | April 24, 2008 9:01 PM
It's not the beard, it's the moustache: I was a high school teacher in a previous life, and once participated in one of these abuse-your-teachers-for-a-good-cause pie-throwing deals. The "pies" were really just disposable pie tins filled with whipped cream... which I thought was fine when I was licking my lips, but not so cool when my 'stache still smelled of sour milk a week later, despite a great deal of vigorous face washing!
If you have a choice, get 'em to use shaving cream instead.
Posted by: J | April 24, 2008 9:09 PM
Want pie now!
Posted by: wazza | April 24, 2008 9:51 PM
Gerald, what was your nym before you were blocked?
Also, this counts as morphing, which is a blocking offense
Posted by: wazza | April 24, 2008 9:52 PM
Is there any way you can delete these two comments without blocking me? I just feel kind of stupid talking at nothing...
Posted by: Statistical Anomaly | April 24, 2008 9:55 PM
And you expected us to NOT go and look him up after saying that???
Posted by: wazza | April 24, 2008 9:57 PM
Do you think it might be a bot?
Posted by: wazza | April 24, 2008 10:01 PM
statistical anomaly: It's like when people mention the goatse
Posted by: Mike from Ottawa | April 24, 2008 11:42 PM
If those students really want to raise money they need to set up a donation site so that Pharyngulites and anti-Pharyngulites can donate by CC or PayPal and have a student proxy throw their pie for them. Make it sweet for the donor by taking a pic of their pie being thrown and the aftermath and e-mail them to the donor for printing and framing.
Of course, PZ, you might end up being under the (pie) gun all day if they took up that idea.
Posted by: philosophia | April 25, 2008 12:07 AM
I just started commenting here and I get turned into a statistical anomaly. Honestly :P
Posted by: Inky | April 25, 2008 1:45 AM
Watch out for brick pies.
Seriously, though--where were all these cool professor pie playtimes when I was in college??
Posted by: Statistical Anomaly | April 25, 2008 6:41 AM
And you expected us to NOT go and look him up after saying that???
Posted by: Ranson | April 25, 2008 8:20 AM
I did not become an anomaly, simply because I have enough experience with this crowd to know that someone would put an explanation in the comments. This tactic has, on various fora, saved me many the "shock photo", "joke website", or "statistical anomaly".
For those who must endure, so that I don't have to, I salute you!
Posted by: Pocket Nerd | April 25, 2008 9:25 AM
I smell a cash cow here. Given how often PZ has been the target of the daily Two Minutes Hate from the cdesign proponentsists behind Expelled, we should send gold-leaf invitations to the entire cast and crew. PZ, you could make thousands for the Residence Hall Association.
We could even put up a sign:
Throw a Pie: $5
Scream Obscenities: $2
Lie About PZ: $3 or two for $5
Whine In Your Blog: $1
Make Yourself Look Like an Ignorant, Anti-Science Bozo: FREE
(All Nazi references require an additional $10 service charge.)
Posted by: Laser Potato | April 25, 2008 10:02 AM
GEMINI! Your Your birthday party will be ruined once again by your explosive flatulence
Your love life will run into trouble when your fiance hurls a javelin through your chest
Posted by: randy | April 25, 2008 12:03 PM
Remember to trace a "Cross" in the whipped cream before you throw it. That is the only way to rid the world of PZ demons. :)
Posted by: BaldApe | April 25, 2008 6:40 PM
"Dang, too late, you've just become a statistical anomaly."
And of course 98% of people don't want to be a statistic.
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | April 27, 2008 9:12 PM
The most sympathetic (and also most detailed) thing I ever read on Cyril Burt said that his entire pre-WWII database was destroyed in the Blitz, after which he imaginatively reconstructed it (along with coauthors and research assistants) by interpolation and extrapolation from the bits he'd already published or recorded elsewhere (I'm working from memory here, using the Burt method). How is that fraud? He was really just doing a Sokal, and inventing postmodernism at the same time.