Fortune Cookies

Once, I organized the banquet for a small conference and decided to assemble science-themed fortune cookies, including a customized cookie for the keynote speaker, which was, "Your next seminar will receive a standing ovation!"  I figured that fortune cookie statements need to end with exclamation points! I used forceps to extract the original, layman fortunes, and replace them with my own versions. Commercial fortune cookie manufacturers do not bake their product with fortune extraction in mind. Of course, you can order customized fortune cookies on the web, but this requires planning.

Here is a list of fortune cookies from that night, some updated. Given the popularity of this blog (nearly one reader so far), the suggestion that you add your own fortune cookie suggestions in the comment box might seem pathological. But I make the suggestion anyway!

• An autographed copy of your first reprint will sell for $1000 on Ebay!
• The Smithsonian will ask to display the artwork from your recent paper!
• An award winning architect will propose a controversial design for your new laboratory!
• The new Starbucks “Laboratory Blend” will be based on the coffee in your lab!
• You will be invited to discuss your research on the Tonight Show!
• A novelization of your thesis will top the New York Times best seller list!
• Your career will be the inspiration for the next X-Men movie: X3- Mad Scientist!
• You will receive a $1,000,000 no-strings-attached grant from Bill Gates!
• You will be invited to participate in the reality TV series Survivor: Laboratory Technicians!
• Your work will be the inspiration for the sequel to the Lord of the Rings: The Two Enzymes.
• You will appear as a guest character on the Simpsons!
• There will be a bidding war over the publication rights to your next paper!
• You will receive a reprint request from Stephen Hawking!
• Steven Spielberg will make a movie based on your research!
• Your thesis will be made into a Broadway musical!
• Your web site will receive one million hits!
• Your next manuscript will be accepted without revision!
• You will receive an invitation to design experiments for the International Space Station!
• Your next paper will become a Citation Classic!
• The reviewers will increase the budget in your next grant application!
• Your PhD thesis will be added to the Oprah Book Club!
• You will give the keynote address at a prestigious international conference!
• You will be invited to join the editorial board of a major journal!
• The Nobel Prize will be yours!
• Your genome will be the next to be sequenced!
• A new situation comedy will be based on the antics in your laboratory!
• You will be followed by an actor studying for a movie role based on your character!
• The President will quote from one of your papers in a speech!
• You will gain supernatural powers while irradiating one of your cultures!
• You will be invited to write a major review article!
• A popular new comic strip will be based on your laboratory!
• You will be invited to join an influential scientific Think Tank!
• John Grisham will write a dramatic bestseller based on your thesis defence!
• National Geographic will publish a colour pictorial based on your work!
• Bruce Springsteen will write a Number 1 hit based on your recent paper!
• You will be named one of the 10 Most Influential Scientists by Time magazine!