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So You Think Physics is Funny?
mzs writes "I just found this article in PhysicsWorld by Robert P. Crease detailing some of the 'better' physics jokes that readers sent him in response to an earlier article. Read about why the elements of magnetic flux are hard to understand or about the sexual adventures of Alice and Bob in a bar. Let's use the comments for this article to list more jokes from our technical professions which are funny but not necessarily to those outside of the field. I will close with this gem from the article: 'What's new?' 'E over h.'"
Just not 'ha, ha' funny.
Q: What's purple and commutes?
A: An Abelian grape.
Wanted Dead or Alive.
Every Super Villan uses Linux.
Protons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic!
Q: What did the webserver say to Slashdot?
A: HRRRRRNNNnnnnnnghhhh......
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
The best physics humour ever
Points of View: December 2003
Robert P Crease selects the funniest jokes about physics and physicists from his readers' poll
Three months ago I asked readers of Physics World to contribute samples of new physics jokes, fresh forms of physics wit, or cases of "found humour" in physics (see "So you think physics is funny?"). I received about 200 replies, including jokes in several languages, stories, Photoshop creations, video clips and links to science cartoon databases.
I was also contacted by a representative of BBC Radio Five Live, who claimed to be interested in having me talk about physics humour late one night. My subsequent negative experience - I hope nobody was awake to hear it - illustrates an important lesson about science humour.
Outsiders don't get it
When I was first hooked up, the show's host Dotun Adebayo was finishing a segment on dirty bombs, treating the expert being interviewed with deference and respect. When that concluded, he said something like: "And now for something completely different!" That should have alerted me that I was bring set up.
Adebayo retold some jokes from my column in Physics World - accompanied by a conspicuously too-loud laugh track - then asked me to explain the jokes. Stupidly, I complied. Too late, it dawned on me that while some aspects of science, such as safety and health, are sacred to outsiders, other parts are simply targets for ridicule. Professional humour is one. The point of the programme was to laugh, not at jokes, but at physicists for their supposedly mechanical and cerebral wit.
The lesson was that I should have resisted. Being jousted, I should have jousted back - perhaps with the aid of a simple jest. "I can't explain these jokes to you, Dotun, they're only for smart people!" I should have said. "But try this one: did you hear about the restaurant NASA is starting on the Moon? Great food, no atmosphere! Still with me, Dotun? Shall I slow down?" (Thanks to Larry Bays from the Los Alamos National Laboratory for that joke.)
My Five Live experience reminded me of two other cases of comedians appropriating professional humour. One is a recent New Yorker article in which Woody Allen couches everyday anxiety-provoking experiences (being late for work, trying to seduce someone) in language borrowed from physics. A typical sentence runs: "I could feel my coupling constant invade her weak field as I pressed my lips to her wet neutrinos." Allen lumbers across a whole page in this meant-to-be-cute vein. Don't abandon that film career, Woody.
The other comedian to have tackled professional humour is Steve Martin, who tells his audience that he has worked up a joke about wrenches because a convention of plumbers is in town that night. The punchline, when it eventually comes, is: "It says sprocket, not socket!" When the supposedly expected guffaws fail to materialize, Martin feigns puzzlement. "Were those plumbers supposed to be here this show?" he asks. Now that brings laughs.
These episodes illustrate a mixture of ways in which outsiders can appropriate the technical vocabulary of a profession for humorous purposes. Allen uses the poetic suggestiveness of technical terms (coupling, weak field and so on) for good-natured fun; his sentences do not make sense if you are an insider and go only by the words. Martin makes fun out of our not being insiders and not understanding the words. Radio Five Live made fun of the insiders themselves: the fact that they do understand the words.
Jests
Humour, anthropologists tell us, is a flexible tool for managing the social environment. It can be used to draw people in by sharing, to keep people away by intimidating, to build charisma, to impress, to entertain, to relieve tension, to test and challenge oneself and others. But it is an especially useful tool in science, and particularly physics, precisely because it engages, fosters and celebrates the same values that the field itself depends on - namely cleverness, play and
Perhaps it's sad, but this is seriously the only joke I've ever made up in my life.
Q: How many quanta does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
Physics can be very humorous, but only to those who actually understand the area that the joke is coming from.
Just like in various other occult groups (such as RPGers), some things they find very hilarious indeed can make little to no sense to a normal individual.
(PS, I am in no way trying to insult physicists, gamers or any other group. I am all of the above myself.)
So there was an argument over what type of engineer God was, to have created man. Some suggested Electrical Engineer, given the complex neural network, others suggested Mechanical Engineer, given the amazing mechanics of the body. It was finally realized that he was a Civil Engineer, as only a Civ. E. would put an waste management facility in a recreational area.
:)
Another...
Q: What's the difference between civil engineers and mechanical engineers?
A: Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build...targets
-JT
Google cache to the rescue!
Q:Why did the universe get destroyed?
A:Some strings weren't null terminated.
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
[red sign posted on my professors door]
If this sign looks blue...SLOW DOWN
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Q: What do you call a Polak in a F15?
A: A simple pole in a complex plane.
<ba dum ching>
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
If this sticker is blue, you're going too fast.
The Army reading list
Defies the notion that nobody reads the articles before posting, doesn't it?
Unfortunately I can't remember enough to do it justice... Anyone?
Yes, the examiner reading his answers got Bohr'ed to death.
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
A man is standing on a hilltop when a man riding in a hot air balloon starts to drift by. The man in the balloon asks "Do you know where I am?" The man on the ground replies "In a hot air balloon." The man in the balloon says "You must work in Information Technology. What you told me is 100% correct, but does not help me at all" To which the man on the ground replies "You must be in Business Administration, because you are in the same mess you were in before, but now it is my fault!"
A solar physicist walks into a bar, gets the bartender's attention, and says "I'd like a Mexican beer, please."
The bartender immediately begins shouting "OK, everybody out! Right now! Everyone out of the bar!" And he heards all the patrons out into the street, slamming the door behind them.
The solar physicist shakes his head ruefully. "Darn," he says, "I should have seen that Corona mass ejection coming!"
(By the way, it goes without saying that the bar is in SoHo.)
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I always assumed that Bob and Alice were in a strictly distance relationship so I don't see how they would ever meet in a bar. I think the closest they would ever get to physically making love would be a double-encrypted phone sex conversation.
So yeah, my Alice and Bob joke is this:
What did Alice and Bob believe is the most important thing to remember when having sex? To always practice mathematically secure sex!
The chair of the physics department goes to the provost for the annual budget review.
"I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is we have alot of exciting things going on in the department - some potential Noble-prize winning stuff. The bad news is we need a new particle accelerator which will cost $10M."
The Provost is shocked. "That is alot of money. It is incredible to me how different departments need different things. Why can't you be more like the math department? They only want Paper, Pencils and wastebaskets. And the philosophy department doesn't even want the wastebaskets..."
Seuss - I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends
Tie String to pen
lower pen from top of building
measure string.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Three (assume they're male) physics/engineering students are having a conversation.
The first one says, "The strangest thing happened to me the other day! I was walking across campus, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up to me on her bicycle. She threw down the bike, tore off her clothes and threw them to the ground, and then cried to me, 'Take whatever you want!'."
His friends look at each other knowingly. One replies, "So, you took the bike, right?"
"Of course! The clothes never would have fit me."
What's Avocado's Number?
A Guacamole. Bwaaaahahahahaaaaa. Heeheehee.
*sniffle*
Old programmers don't die, they're just cast into the void.
Heisenberg is out for a drive when he's stopped by a traffic cop. The cop says "Do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg says "No, but I know where I am."
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Q. What goes "Pieces of seven, pieces of seven"?
A. A parity error
WORK = F D
F = M A
WORK = M A D
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
...and they mostly look at me funny.
Q: What do you get when you cross a mosquito with a mountain climber?
A: You can't cross a vector with a scaler.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
I believe the instrument was a barometer. Here is the account I got off of http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/barometer.asp
The joke works with a barometer because of the "correct answer" as seen in the story. And incidentally, it probably was not Niels Bohr of course.
/g)."
The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen:
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case.
The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer that showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T =2 pi sqr root (l
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."
The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for physics.
I am still a declared physics and math major, even though I'm now CS. Anyhow, here's my favorite math joke:
There was a man in a nuthouse who constantly scared off all the newcomers with a menacing smile and the dreadful-sounding phrase, "I differentiate you! I differentiate you!"--invariably the newcomer would cower in the corner and stay far away from the man.
However, one day another man came in and confronted the first man. Of course, the first began yelling at the newcomer, "I differentiate you! I differentiate you!" But it had no effect on the newcomer. The man yelled "I differentiate you!" several times to no avail. Finally, he broke down in tears. "Why, why?!?" he asked.
The second man stated simply, "I'm e^x."
Someone once said that the point of higher education was so that you could understand more jokes.
Mr. Kepler: Hey there Earth! I heard you got a new job as a janitor. How's it goin'?
Earth: *sigh* Mmmmm...ok, but my boss always makes me sweep out the same area!
Heisenberg looks around the bar and says, "Because there are three of us and because this is a bar, it must be a joke. But the question remains, is it funny or not?"
And Godel thinks for a moment and says, "Well, because we're inside the joke, we can't tell whether it's funny. We'd have to be outside looking at it."
And Chomsky looks at both of them and says, "Of course it's funny. You're just telling it wrong."
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
So how many friends do you still have left?
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
This one requires a little bit of visualization, so get out a pen and paper if necessary. Some friends and I once wrote the following on a chalkboard:
integral e^x = f(un)
The teacher, upon seeing this, showed his appreciation by adding a subscript ny to the right side of the equation.
Now for another one of my personal favorites, told in the manner of an algebraic proof.
1. Girls require time and money. Or, to say it another way, girls are the product of an investment of time and money:
girls = time * money
2. Time is money:
time = money
3. Therefore, by substitution:
girls = (money)^2
4. According to the new testament, money is the root of all evil:
money = (all evil)^(1/2)
5.Performing another subsitution:
girls = all evil
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The wedding wasn't too great, but the reception was awesome.
ba-dum ching
Q. There were two cats on a roof. Which one slid off first?
A. The one with the lower mew.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
Mind you, this only works in states where (license_plate_capacity >= (char characters[8]);.
(Yes, I know, that's really bad code.)
This sig no verb.
I heard this funny story which was said to be a true incident. I like the subtle frame-of-reference joke.
Norbert Weiner was driving along a country road, when he got involved in a one-car accident, he drove off the road head-on into a telephone pole. When the police arrived, they asked him what happened. He said,
"I was driving along, the telephone poles were passing me in a regular order, when suddenly they swerved!"
How many consulting engineers does it take to change a light bulb? One, that'll be $50 please.
How many nuclear physicists does it take to change a light bulb? One, he raises it into place and the world revolves around him.
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Can't be done. It's a hardware problem.
How many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb? Approximately 1.000000000000000000000.
How many Pentium owners does it take to change a light bulb? 0.99987, but that's close enough for most applications.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? It burned out? You must be using a non-standard socket.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they merely change the standard to darkness and then they upgrade the customers.
How many Apple employees does it take to screw in a light bulb? Seven, one to screw it in and six to design the T-shirts.
How many AOL users does it take to change a light bulb? Two, one to screw in the light bulb, and one to watch him to make sure he doesn't say 'nipple'.
How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One always leaves in the middle of the project.
How many beta testers does it take to change a light bulb? None. They just find the problems, they don't fix them.
How many science fiction writers does it take to change a light bulb? Two, but it's actually the same person doing it. He went back in time and met himself in the doorway and then the first one sat on the other one's shoulder so that they were able to reach it. Then a major time paradox occurred and the entire room, light bulb, changer and all was blown out of existence.
Absurd! The accountant will say the wife-- she's tax deducible.
Not really. Considering it in the superposition of states context from which the analogy derived, the particle (cat) does have a wavefunction, which must integrate to 1 over all space. That wavefunction/state can be a superposition of two well-defined states/functions, which in the cat context means it's dead and alive.
To be more accurate, LifeState(Cat)=A*"alive"+(1-A)*"dead", where A is a real number between 0 and 1, and "alive" and "dead" are two valid, real-valued states/values, each of which derives from an operator "LifeState" and two respective "wavefunctions" that square-integrate to 1 over all space and together make up the composite wavefunction "Cat." So the cat's half-alive, half-dead.
Wow, that was fun.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
There's more than two formulas in physics :-)
The energy of a photon is E = h f (or E = h nu)
The relation between wavelength and frequency is c = lambda f.
Where do you extract Mercury from?
Hg Wells
(/me runs away)
My Stack Overflow user
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were asked to review this mathematical problem. In a high school gym, all the girls in the class were lined up against one wall, and all the boys against the opposite wall. Then, every ten seconds, they walked toward each other until they were half the previous distance apart. The mathematician, physicist, and engineer were asked, " When will the girls and boys meet?" The mathematician said, " Never." The physicist said, " In an infinite amount of time." The engineer said, " Well... in about two minutes, they'll be close enough for all practical purposes."
A biologist, a physisist, and a mathematician are standing outside of a building. Two people walk in. After a few minutes, three people walk out.
.75 liters of water, and douses the flames. Having put out the fire, he goes back to sleep.
"Aha!" the biologist says, "they must be breeding!"
"No, no," the physisist replies "this is could be bad. In order to preserve the laws of thermodynamics, someone else must go into the building."
The mathematician replys "But if someone else goes into the building, it will be empty."
--------------
An engineer, a physisist, and a mathematician, and a statisticain are all staying at a hotel. In the middle of the night the engineer wakes up to find that his trashcan is on fire. He runs to the sink, fills his ice bucket with water and douses the flames. Then, just to be sure, he runs back to the sink, refills the bucket and dumps more water into the trashcan. With the fire out, he goes back to sleep.
A little while later, the trashcan in the physists room spontaneously breaks into flame, waking the physisist. He whips out his slide rule, does some calculations, then runs to the sink, fills his bucket with exactly
A few minutes later, the mathematician wakes up to see that his trashcan is on fire. He whips out a piece of paper, scrawls out some equations, then goes back to sleep, comfortable that a solution exists.
Meanwhile, the statisticain is running from room to room lighting trashcans on fire -- he needed more samples.
--------------
neh, i tried...
Rhapsody in Numbers
An electron, a proton, and a neutron walked into a bar which had a sign, "All drinks $1.00." The electron said, "Hey guys we only have $2.00 among the three of us". The proton said, don't worry there is no CHARGE for the neutron. The electron said, "Are you sure?" The proton answered, "I'm positive."
Hopefully I get these right. I have them saved in my away messages at home, let's see if I can remember them.
( *#&@!(#^$*#$_(*@!&#*&@!$#"
Two bytes are in a bar. One says to the other, "I'm not feeling that well. I think I have a parity error". The other byte responds, "I thought you looked a bit off!"
rimshot
Two strings walk into a bar. The first says "Barkeep, I'll have a whiskey sour." The second string says "Hey, that sounds good. I think I'll have one too.(&!@(**(#$^(*(*&@(*!$&(*@#&(*(!@#)(*(*@!$(&!@
The first string says to the bartender "Excuse my friend, he isn't null terminated."
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Each has their apartment on fire:
The engineer walks in, seeing the fire he runs and grabs the biggest container he can find, fills it full of water, dumps it on the fire. The fire is out but the room is flooded, the stereo and tv are ruined, the couch is trashed, everything is soaked.
The physicist walks in to his own abode sees the fire, thinks a bit, does some calculations goes and grabs a container fills it with exactly 4.5 gallons of water, dumps it on the fire. The fire is out, there was just enough water to put out the fire and no more.
The mathematician walks, looks at the fire, grabs a pencil and paper and starts jotting down equations. Looks at the fire again, looks at the sink and a tub, jots down some more equations. Finally he puts down the paper, scratches his chin and says "Definitely possible."
A shepherd is herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a dust cloud towards him.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray-Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and says to the shepherd: "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"
The shepherd looks at the man, who is obviously a yuppie, then turns to his peaceful, grazing flock and calmly answers, "OK, why not?"
So the yuppie parks his car, whips out his IBM Thinkpad, connects it to his mobile phone, surfs the Internet and finds a NASA site. Then, using the Web site, he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system and scans the area.
Next he opens up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas and after a few minutes he prints out a 150 page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized printer. Eventually he turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep."
"That's correct," says the shepherd "you can take one of the sheep."
He watches as the young man selects one of the animals and bundles it into his car, then says: "Hold on a minute, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"
"OK, why not?" answers the young man.
"That's easy," says the shepherd "you're a consultant."
"That's spot on," says the yuppie, clearly amazed, "but how did you guess that?"
"There was no guessing required," answers the shepherd. "You turned up here, even though nobody called you. You expect to get paid to give me an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don't even know a thing
about my business. Now give me back my dog."
At my school, this bit of grafitti was found outside the physics building:
"Heisenberg probably rules"
Okay, so it is lame... made me laugh.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Actually it is not a joke, but a funny anecdote. And it was a barometer.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
My degree is in Physics from Virginia Tech, but the funniest thing I heard or saw while I was there was a sign while I was looking for the Philosophy Department to force-add a class that I needed to graduate. It read simply "Is this the Philosophy Department?" And I knew I was in the right place.
I'd like to dip my balls in that.
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
I read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."
The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.
I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he hadn't written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.
In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building." At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit.
While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.
"Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.
For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."
"Fine," I said, "and others?"
"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units." "A very direct method."
"Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."
"On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".
"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."
At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.
The name of the student was Niels Bohr." (1885-1962) Danish Physicist; Nobel Prize 1922; best known for proposing the first 'model' of the atom with protons & neutrons, and various energy state of the surrounding electrons -- the familiar icon of the small nucleus circled by three elliptical orbits ... but more significantly, an innovator in Quantum Theory.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?
ANDERSEN CONSULTING: Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experiences to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Anderson consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in oorder to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes. The meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken's mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution. Andersen Consulting helped the chicken change to become more successful.
So instead of rtfa it should be rtfep(read the fucking error page)
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
I mechanical engineer, a civil engineer and a software engineer are driving in a car. The car starts down a steep grade when the brakes fail. The driver pumps the brakes like mad, and the brakes catch just before they come to a skidding halt at the edge of a cliff.
The three engineers get out of the car, happy to be alive. Being engineers, they start to analyse the situation.
The mechanical engineer says "The problem here lies with the mechanical engineer who designed these brakes. The brakes should have been able to handle a car with this mass and speed on this road."
The civil engineer disagrees. "The problem is that the civil engineer that designed this road is at fault here. He shouldn't have build a road that is so steep that ordinary cars would be in danger."
The software engineer says "Why don't we just push it back up the hill and see if it happens again."
So the teacher assigns to Ada, Bob, Charles and Danna to go home and figure out what is 2 + 2.
Ada, the daughter of a mathematitian, asks her dad. He responds: "Well, 1 + 1 = 2. 2+ 1 = 3. 3 + 1= 4, but it can be rewritten as 2 + 2, so 2 + 2 = 4"
Bob asks his mom, who is an engineer. She takes out her HP calculator, punches in RPN the appropiate keys, and announces: "It is 4.000000000000"
Charles asks his dad, the phycisist, and he responds: "Well, it is about pi on a zeroth order calculation"
Finally, Danna ask his dad, who is an accountant: "Dad, how much is 2 + 2?" And he responds: "How much do you want it to be?"
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
"I caught my daughter playing with the electrical outlet, and she gave herself quite a shock. I had to ground her."
*Groans elicted from the crowd*
"Hey, what do you expect? I'm a conductor."
and figures he had better learn the two-step. Although a good dancer, he just can't get the hang of it. He asks for help from a native Texan.
"Just make sure to keep the beat in your head. One-two, one-two, one-two."
"Oh -- all this time I'd been saying to myself 'zero-one, zero-one, zero-one.'"
Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips.
Amazingly, that appears to be the only copy on the WWW. I'm surprised it doesn't show up in Google Groups.
-- Bill
A physicist, a chemist, and an engineer are asked:
Q: "What is the best way to determine the volume of a little red ball."
A: Physicist: Measure the diameter, devide by two for radius and use the formula 4/3 * PI * radius ^ 3
A: Chemist: Take a beaker, fill it with water. Dunk the ball in it, and measure the amount of water displaced.
A: Engineer: It's easy, just pull out the "Little Red Ball" book and look it up.
The Georiga Tech graduate finishes and walks right towards the door. On his way out he says "At Tech they teach us not to piss on our hands".
"And at the Air Force Academy, we didn't have to be taught not to pee on our hands."
(Originally heard with Army, Navy, Marine, and USAF graduates)
A hurricane came unexpectedly. The ship went down and was lost. The man found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing. Only bananas and coconuts. Used to 5-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do, so for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice and longed for his old life and fixed his gaze on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.
One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. She rowed up to him.
In disbelief, he asked her: "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"
"I rowed from the other side of the island," she said. "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing," he said. "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many are there? You were lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."
"There's only me," she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up; nothing did." He was confused.
"Then how did you get the rowboat?"
"Oh, simple," replied the woman. "I made the rowboat out of materials that I found on the island. The oars were whittled from Gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
"B-B-But that's impossible," stuttered the man. "You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?"
"Oh, that was no problem," replied the woman. "On the other side of the island there is a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But enough of that," she said. "Where do you live?"
Sheepishly, he confessed that he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.
"Well, let's row over to my place, then," she said.
After a few minutes of rowing she docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked to the shore he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
While the woman tied up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead, dumbstruck. As they walked into the house, she said casually, "It's not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please; would you like a drink?"
"No, no thank you," he said, still dazed. "I can't take any more coconut juice."
"It's not coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?"
Trying to hide his amazement, the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk. After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, "I'm going to slip into something comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."
No longer questioning anything, the man went into the bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge were fastened onto it's end inside a swivel mechanism.
"This woman is amazing," he mused. "What next?"
When he returned, she greeted him wearing nothing but vines - strategically positioned - and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckoned for him to sit down next to her.
"Tell me," she began, suggestively, slithering closer to him, "we've been out here for a very long time. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing for all these months. You know..." She stared into his eyes.
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You mean??" he replied, "? I can check slashdot.com from here?"
but maybe someone will see this and get a laugh...
My physics teacher in high school told of the graffiti in the bathroom in the physics building at his alma mater. While the other bathrooms around the campus had the usual bathroom scrawlings, the physics bathrooms were clean, except for a single limeric:
The once was a lady named Bright,
Who could travel faster than light.
She went out one day,
In her usual way,
And returned the previous night!
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Heisenberg was driving down the Autobahn whereupon he was pulled over by a policeman. The policeman asked, "Do you know how fast you were going back there?" Heisenberg replied, "No, but I know where I am."
Taken from here.
x and e^x are walking down the street. They encounter d/dx, who operates on them. x disappears. e^x survives, thanking the math gods that he is immune to differential operators. While walking on, he encounters another operator coming toward him. "Who are you?" he asks. "I'm d/dy," the operator answers.
Well, I like it.
Q: Why couldn't the fisherman stop spinning? A: Angler momentum [An original!] Q: What's grey and proves the nondenumerability of the Reals? A: Cantor's Diagonal Elephant Q: What's yellow and depends on the Axiom of Choice? A: Zorn's Lemmon Q: What's yellow and is expressible as a power series? A: A bananalytic function Q: What does a mathematician do when he's constipated? A: He work's it out with a pencil. THANK YOU! I'll be here all week...
The barman covers his eyes, trying not to look. As he sneaks a glimpse through his fingers, he sees something wierd - he can't make out what they're doing. He looks again, but is still confused. He turns to the drunk propping up the bar next to him, and asks, "What's going on? He seems to be screwing her over the table AND getting a blowjob at the same time. That doesn't make any sense. Looks brilliant though, doesn't it?"
"Yeh," sighs the drunk whistfully, "It's a super position."