There's a Man In The Funny Papers We All Know

… he lived 'way back a long time ago:

  • You may have heard that actual scientists have determined that there was some hanky panky between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis a few dozen millennia ago, evidenced by genomes lurking in our DNA today. Without resorting to expensive genetic testing, Lore Sjöberg provides a helpful quiz: How Neanderthal are you? Sample Q:
    1. When presented with a salad, is your first instinct to hide behind it with a spear and wait for a bison to wander by?

    I won't reveal how I did, but if I were you, I wouldn't let your pet sabretooth tiger wander in my yard.

  • A very new stadium, the most home wins in either league, and the New York Mets can't enthuse their fans:
    After 22 home games, attendance at Citi Field is down 6,852 fans a game, the largest decline by number in Major League Baseball. That translates to an average of 31,892 fans at games this season compared with 38,744 last season.
    As a guy from that other team observed: "If the fans don't come out to the ball park, you can't stop them."

    (The Red Sox are averaging 37,496 at home this year, despite a smaller stadium and a—so far—mediocre season.)

  • Hiring new faculty is a tough job. Steve Landsburg mentions a timesaving step:
    An anonymous math department chairman reports on his own strategy for cutting down on the workload. He believes that one of the most important determinants of a successful career is luck. So each year, he randomly rejects half the applicants without even reading their folders. That way, he eliminates the unlucky ones.
    Brilliant!

  • An (abridged) dirty UNIX joke in the New York Times. Now there's a string of words I never expected to type.