Complex Jokes / Recent Jokes
A grown grandson is going to visit his grandmother who had recently moved to an apartment complex, so he phones her to get directions to her unit.
"I'm in apartment 908. When you come to the front door of the complex you'll see a large panel at the door. With your elbow, push button 908. Then I'll buzz you in. Enter the lobby and go to the elevator which is on the left. Get in the elevator and with your elbow, push button 9. When you get out of the elevator, look for door number 908 on the right. With your elbow, press my doorbell."
"That all sounds very easy, Grandma," says the grandson, "but why am I pressing all these buttons with my elbow?"
"You're coming empty-handed?"
Words of Wisdom
A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.
"First and above all he was a logician. At least thirty-five years of the half-century or so of his existence had been devoted exclusively to proving that two and two always equal four, except in unusual cases, where they equal three or five, as the case may be." -- Jacques Futrelle, "The Problem of Cell 13"Most mathematicians are familiar with -- or have at least seen references in the literature to -- the equation 2 + 2 = 4. However, the less well known equation 2 + 2 = 5 also has a rich, complex history behind it. Like any other complex quantitiy, this history has a real part and an imaginary part; we shall deal exclusively with the latter here. Many cultures, in their early mathematical development, discovered the equation 2 + 2 = 5. For example, consider the Bolb tribe, descended from the Incas of South America. The Bolbs counted by tying knots in ropes. They quickly realized that when a 2-knot rope is put together with another 2-knot rope, a 5-knot rope more...
ODE TO A CLONE
By John Scalzi
(This originally appeared in America Online's "Howdy" area on March 6th.)
Oh clone, my clone, how can you bear it
To exist knowing you have only one parent?
No zygote you, when haploid cells met
You were produced with a full chromosome set.
And now I can see that you are confused
To discover your genes have arrived slightly used.
To answer your questions is the aim of this poem
You who are like me, my clone, oh my clone.
You were not produced from between sweaty sheets
In fact, you arose from cells scraped off of my cheek.
Your genes gently placed in an egg we provided
And then shocked with a current until they divided.
You sat there a while till it was time to fish
That thing that was you from that petri dish.
(And though it may seem churlish at this time to mention,
we suspect that the dish had post-partum depression).
Oh more...