Earlier this morning, I hurriedly sent an email to my boss that was supposed to read
I have a question that perhaps you can answer, seeing as you are a big shot in the department…
after which I noticed the following bit of lexicographical trivia: the letters “i” and “o” are adjacent to one another on the standard keyboard, and so it’s quite possible to accidently exchange them if you type in a hurry.
One of my favorite things about South Dakota is late spring at dusk. The days are always muggish and hot (of which I am not a fan), while the nights are under constant threat of powerful thunderstorms (of which I am a fan), but right at dusk, for just a few minutes right around 8:30 pm as the sun disappears behind the Black Hills, the sky blazes with celestial pyrotechnics.
To give you just a flavor of the spectacle of this meterological witching hour, here are four pictures of four consecutive, but remarkably different, late spring skyscapes at dusk.
Check out more pictures over at Flickr.
Professor Carda, one of my colleagues in the Math Department, retired this year after 41 years of service to the school. This is the kind of honorarium he can expect from a science, math, and engineering campus.
Each semester, I offer students a last chance for extra credit by writing their favorite joke or riddle on their crib sheet, with extra credit assigned based purely on how funny I think it is. Though it’s a little bit late after the semester, here are some of the better ones I collected this time around.
Q:What do you get when you divide the circumference of a jack-o-lantern by its diameter?
A: Pumkin pi.
Q: What do 2 poor monomials do at a restaurant?
A: Binomial.
Q: How do you find the unique solution to a differential equation?
A: Unique up on it.
Q: Why do pirates like calculus in polar coordinates?
A: They can integrate with respect to “Arrr.”
Q: What are the trigonometric functions for farmers?
A: Swine and coswine.
Alternate A: Swine and cow-sine.
Q: A farmer has twenty sick sheep and one dies, how many are left?
A: Nineteen.
(Why is this funny? Ask this question aloud to someone and guess their response.)
Q: What do you call a reaaly big tumor?
A: A threemor.
Q: Why is 2110593 the most erotic number?
A: When 2 are 1 and don’t pay at10tention, they’ll know within 5 weeks whether after 9 months they’ll be 3.
Q: What do you do when a civil engineer throws a grenade at you?
A: Pull the pin and throw it back.
Q: What do call a midget 69?
A: A 34.5.
Mrs. Jones, the math teacher, asks little Jimmy, “If there were 5 birds sitting on a phone line and you shot and killed one, how many would be left?” Jimmy answers “None.” Mrs. Jones says, “No. If there were 5 birds and you shot one, then 5 take away 1 leaves 4 birds left.” Jimmy replies, “No. If I shot and killed one of the birds, the others would fly away, ’cause they’d see how good a shot I was.” Mrs. Jones smiles and says “Good point. I like the way you think.” Jimmy looks up and says “Now I have a question for you. Three woman are eating ice cream, and one is licking it, one is sucking it, and one is biting it. Which one is married?” Mrs. Jones thinks for a bit and says, “Ummmmm…. the one biting it?” Jimmy smiles and says, “No, the one with the wedding band on. But I like the way you think.”
Q: What do you call a pig who knows kung fu?
A: Pork chop.
Q: What do you call a cow with no legs?
A: Ground beef.
Q: What do you get when you cross a turtle and a porcupine?
A: A slow poke.
Q: What do you call a pig who crosses the finish line first?
A: A weiner!
Q: Why do seagulls fly over the sea?
A: Beacuse if they flew over bays, they’d be bagels.
Q: What do you call one blonde blowing in the ear of another?
A: Data transfer.
Q: What’s the number one cause of death among pirates?
A: Jock itch.
Q: How many emo kids does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 5. One to change the light bulb, a four more to write a song about how much they miss the old one.
Q: How many good lawyers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Well, the first problem is finding a good lawyer…
Q: What’s the difference between a Mercedes and a cactus?
A: The catcus has the pricks on the outside.
Q: If the larges breasted girl works at Hooters, where does the one-legged girl work?
A: IHOP.
Didja hear about the new pain color from Home Depot?It’s called Blonde: it’s not very bright, but it spreads easily.
Confuscious once said, “Light a man a fire, and you will warm him for a night; light a man on fire, and you will warm him for the rest of his life.”
Confuscious once said, “Before you criticize another man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, you’re a mile away and you’ve got their shoes.”
One engineer asks the other, “Dude, where did you get that sweet bike?” The other replies, “I was out walking and this beautiful woman was riding along and stopped in front of me. She took off all her slothes and said ‘Take whatever you want.’” The first engineer thinks about this for a moment before speaking. “Good choice taking the bike. The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”
A pirate walks into a bar wearing his captains wheel attached to the front of his pants. The bartender looks at him as asks “Do you know you have a captain’s wheel hanging off your belt.” The pirate nods: “Aye. It’s drivin’ me nuts.”
Didja hear about the two antennas who got married?
The wedding sucked, but the reception was incredible.
Last week was a strange one for the printed page, as just about everything I read seemed to have a double meaning. Here are some of the worst offenders.
This headline came out of the Rapid City Journal’s “Odd News” section.
Well, you can’t argue with that logic…
This came out of an article on Rapid City’s Reptile Gardens attraction in June’s issue of Mud Pie, a free parenting magazine. In addition to Methusela, the Garden’s Galapagos tortoise who turns 125 years old this summer, check out these other attractions!
Now that’s some family fun.
Once upon a time, guys competed to have the most powerful car engine, or the biggest paycheck, or the loudest sound system, but the real object they were attempting to measure was at least (somewhat) subtly kept out of the picture. What with all these new thumbdrives, that’s clearly no longer the case:
More than you can with a 3-inch floppy, certainly.
This political cartoon by Bob Englehart appeared in the Rapid City Journal after Bush’s speech on banning gay marriage.
It’s not uncommon to see cartoonists portray Bush as a child in a grown-up’s clothes, implying he has a child’s (at best) innocent naivete or (at worst) blanket stupidity. But check out that little red helmet! This is the first cartoon I’ve seen that actually goes so far as to imply that Bush is actually retarded.
Though come to think of it, that would help explain “stra-tee-gery” and “nuke-yular.”
