The Law of Inverse Airport Quality states that the niceness of any airport is inversely proportional to the niceness of the city (or cities) that it services.

Examples:

• The Detroit Metropolitan Airport is absolutely gorgeous. Detroit is an utter wreck.
• The Albuquerque International Sunport is a pretty nice airport, and even has free wireless Internet. Unfortunately, it is located in Albuquerque, the name of which translates roughly to “Middle of Absolutely Nowhere” in an ancient Native American tongue. The stupidity of the name “Sunport” is merely incidental, and is not affected by the Law.
• Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport are both crowded, busy, and dumpy. The city itself is tons of fun and full of culture and excitement. The only nice airport in Chicago, Meigs Field, was demolished in 2003 – thus proving that deviations from the Law are only temporary.

I got this e-mail from the astronomy graduate student listserv…most amusing:

-Matthew

During this time of the holidays, I thought I would share with the grads a warm and heartening letter from one of our finest former grad student and a personal mentor – Eric. This letter was written by Eric near the holidays in response to a young student’s astronomy questions. She obviously had a homework assignment and was being very lazy.

It just tingles the heart strings. Enjoy!

Hi, my name is Laura and I have a few questions about the planets. Would you be able to answer them for me? If so, the following questions need answering.

1]How were the planets formed?

2]How were the stars formed? and

3]what is the mass and density of the nine planets in our solar system?

If you could answer them you’d be doing me a HUGE favour.

Thank you for your time,

Laura.

This sounds like a homework assignment, due ASAP. I recommend that read some text first, but I’ll give you some short answers — but I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you read your textbook on the material:

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