The Book of James - Musings from Dr. Dowling

Since these seem very popular here are the quotes the students collected from PHYS 7212, "Advanced Mathematical Methods for Physicists II," which I taught in the Spring Semester of 2016. The required book was:

 Elements of Green's Functions and Propagation: Potentials, Diffusion, and Waves
by
Gabriel Barton
Oxford University Press (1989) and Reprinted (2005)
ISBN13: 9780198519980, ISBN10: 0198519982

"The only good theorist is a lazy theorist. I just need to know how to set it up and turn the crank."

"That's the purpose of this course; to convert your nightmares into dreams."

"Like ancient Egypt, we write on walls and worship cats."

"You poor pathetic little man; do you find no joy in anything?"

"Zero dimensional children are very ill behaved."

I was making fun of the engineers; they deserve it."

"Cat on a hot tin roof; you can solve that depending on the cat."

"How much time am I going to torture you with that? A while."

"This looks like bullshit! There are no calculations at all!"

"My lucky number for today is -3pi/4."

"Somewhere in your brain, the voice of Dowling will come back to haunt you."

"I draw my potato."

"Now that you know what a propagator is, you can go out to the swamp, catch it, and cook it."

"You're learning little tit-bits of wisdom from Dowling the Great."

"Be prepared to have your mind numbed."

"Wrrwhhahaaa; the mating call of a Siberian musk ox."

"I'm glad I don't have that job; there'd be a lot of dead people."

"It's too tempting not to [torture your students]"

"We're going to work on this continuously until one of us drops dead or the end of class."

"I have a note: Barton should be shot."

"Good ol' Barton; Savior of Mankind."

"q/sqrt(2*pi), my lucky number."

"It's a really simple formula; you can use it over and over and impress your friends at parties."

"You will believe."

"Armagnac is better than cognac because it's cheaper."

"Sometimes people look like another person and I just assign them a name."

"[clicking tongue] Why I'm making clicking noises, I don't know."

"Barton is basically Jesus."

"I'm in a superposition of shooting [Barton] and not shooting him."

"3D is a little more complicated because it's three dimensions."

"32pi, my lucky number for the day."

"I just can't get excited about exploding balloons."

"Onward through the frog."

"Delta functions means I can do the integrals without any nightmares."

"This is going to plague your miserable existences."

"I will prove that the sky is blue."

"I'm getting lazier and lazier."

"Looking at this equation, we can immediately conclude the sky is blue."

"You could take any random talk at the AAAS meeting, replace all the words with 'chicken' and people wouldn't notice."

"Half of Barton doesn't make sense."

"This was known to bees and vikings."

"What we're going to do now is a little bit horrific."

"His name is Mr. Cow."

"What am I doing? Good question. It all made sense once upon a time."

"Crossing one eye is a trick Krystal and gecko's share. I can do it too!"

"The reason they're jealous ... I bring in more money than God."

"I like gloating."

"You can already see this is going to be a nightmare."

"This is the first and last time in your poor pathetic little lives you'll see this derived. Your lives are poor and pathetic because you have to see this derived."

"It's not a hard calculation like group theory; it just requires you keep track of your twiddles."

"[blows a raspberry] There's my retro-rockets. [blows again]. I worked at J.P.L."

"It's basically a torturous exercise working on the train rule."

"I was actually doing this without any wine."

"Good ol' vector hanky-panky."

"Today you can either write off as a complete loss or..."

"If it's tedious for Barton, you know it's gonna be rough."

"I spent a lot of time on antenna theory; my wasted youth."

"12 pi, my lucky number today."

"I don't have the heart to start chapter 13. That would be unlucky."

"The chances I can find my typos from 20 years ago is very small. That's your job now."

"Is it so bad that my jokes aren't even funny anymore?"

"Satan has a polarizer."

"You have to have a smart viking... Satan with a light-bulb."

"My brain says 'Don't tweet this; the dean might not like it.' "

"I like starting fights."

"My life has been very strange."