Favorite opening sentence:

One fine morning, Gregor Samsa awoke to discover
that he had been transformed into a gigantic insect.
 (Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis)

Favorite topic of animated conversation:

The conditional intensity of a spatial random process

Favorite excuse:

Mathematics is the transformation of coffee into theorems. -- Alfred Renyi

Favorite theorems:

Kolmogorov's 0-1 law, Stokes' theorem, Radon-Nikodym theorem, Mobius inversion formula

Favorite intelligent life form:

Sheeba

Favorite Shakespearean mathematical quote:

I could be bound in a nutshell
and count myself a King of infinite space.
 --Hamlet

Favorite film:

The Cars That Ate Paris

Favorite cuddly toy:

"Gladly, my cross-eyed bear"

Favorite joke:

Joke Sterringa

Favorite tear-jerking movie scene:

Kaspar discovers the heat of a candle flame, in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Favorite ripost:

Socialite: "I think you're terribly outspoken."
Dorothy Parker: "Outspoken by whom?"

Favorite weapon:

Occam's Razor.

Favorite Radio Station:

RTFM.

Favorite enigmatic T'ai Chi instructions:

"For shoulder-stroke, first seek the triangle;
step into the crotch with eyes glaring down.
The waist and body turn together,
sending the opponent straight to Hell."

Li I-Yu (1832-1892)
Song of the Thirteen Postures

Favorite insight into nerd psychology:

Favorite bridge:

The Pons Asinorum.

Favorite Health Warning:

SMOKING IS LESS DANGEROUS THAN CROSSING THE ROAD
(as tested at the M1-North Circular Interchange)

Favorite caricature of academic ceremonies:

In een lange rij kwamen ze [de hoogleraren] binnen, hun ruggen gebogen
onder de verschrikkelijke last van alle illusies
omtrent de in hun hoofden opgetaste geleerdheid.
 --- W.F. Hermans, Onder Professoren

("The professors entered in long procession, their backs bowed
under the terrible weight of all illusions
about the learning crammed into their heads.")

Favorite jibe against statisticians:

Click here

Favorite parental dictum:

In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics! -- Homer Simpson

Favorite www picture galleries:

24 hours beneath a rainbow sea broadcast from the Maldives
CSIRO Division of Water Resources Photo Library
Alan Dorow's Animal Crackers

Favorite underwater pictures

here they are

Favorite Dutch surnames:

Naaktgeboren ("born naked")
Nooitgedacht ("never thought about it")
Vanhetzelfde ("same as above")
Dingelam (untranslatable)

Favorite critique of incomprehensible management jargon:

"an ancient repressive artifice, known to all churches,
the typical vice of our political class,
the foundation of all colonial empires."

Primo Levi, Other People's Trades (1989)

Favorite source of courage:

Vishnu reveals his true identity to Arjuna from the Bhagavad-Gita

Favorite examples of courage:

"Let's go."
Yuri Gagarin (at takeoff, 1961)
"I had no need of that hypothesis, Sire."
Laplace
(when asked by Napoleon to explain why his book Celestial Mechanics
contained no mention of God.)

Favorite karaoke request:

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and V.I. Lenin to sing It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Favorite example of forgiveness:

"Apology accepted, Captain Needa"
--- Darth Vader
(while telepathically strangling his third unfortunate henchman,
in The Empire Strikes Back)

Favorite cartoon character:

Krazy Kat by George Herriman.

Favorite mathematical films:

  1. The Fear of All Sums
  2. C-* Wars
  3. Silence of the Lambdas
  4. Conspiracy Theorem
  5. Almost Surely Famous
  6. Random Hearts+
  7. Statistic: The Movie+
  8. Lord of the Rings: The Tower Lemma
  9. The Talented Mr Ramanujan
  10. All About e
  11. To Kill a Manifold
  12. The Matrix Transposed
  13. Preserved in Translation
  14. Residuals of the Day
  15. Some Like It Homeotopic
  16. The Seven Summaries
  17. Guess Who's Converging To Zero
  18. Snell's Window
  19. Finding Zero
  20. Butterfly and Other Catastrophes
  21. Strange Residuals
  22. 8 1/2 +
  23. The Perfect Model+
  24. Tangents+
+ = real titles

Favorite insight into modern society:

"One of the chief differences between ourselves and the ancients
lies not (unfortunately) in human nature, but rather
in the proliferation of our skills, and our institutions,
and therefore in the number of niches in which
the incompetent can instal themselves as persons of consequence."

Charles Fair, From the Jaws of Victory, p. 22

Favorite friendly fish:

Western footballer sweep Neatypus obliquus

Favorite typographical error:

General Franco's health deteriorated further last night,
and a team of medical socialists is in attendance.
- The Guardian

Favorite nominee for All-Time Greatest Mathematician:

Andrei Nikolayevich Kolmogorov.

Favorite jibe against non-statisticians:

In God we trust;
all others must bring data. -- W. Edwards Deming

Favorite human-to-machine translation:

"Home is where the heart is":
setenv HOME `find . -name heart -exec dirname {} \;`

Favorite admonition:

I would have a man knockt on the head
that should write anything in Mathematiques
that had been written of before.
--- Edward Davenant

Favorite song:

The Rolf Harris version of Stairway to Heaven

Favorite book:

The Chinese classic Tao Te Ching. Here are my four favorite quotes: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Favorite footy team:

Fitzroy, still.

Favorite example of sticking one's neck out:

Ronald Reagan once called John Glenn a "celluloid hero".

Favorite advice:

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians [astrologers],
and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists
that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil
to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.
--- Saint Augustine 354-430 AD
De Genesi ad Litteram book II, xviii, 37

Favorite sound:

Takeoff in a 747.

Favorite parting words:

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations,
for nature cannot be fooled."

-- Richard Feynman, Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident