I’ve been feeling pretty nostalgic about video games of late. Maybe it’s because of Google’s clever Pac-man homage last May (which you can still play!)
or maybe it’s because I was revealed the “great and terrible secret” of Mario’s world,
but in any event, I’ve been thinking about video games. This is somewhat odd, since I hardly play them anymore. Nowadays, I only play Tetris on my phone, Mario Kart on my Wii, or occasionally some Plug-and-Play classic arcade emulator, but that’s pretty much it.
Of course, I did pretty much grew up on video games. I played them in the arcade, on the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Collecovision, and the original NES… and then one day I just quit playing. In the arcades, every game eventually turned into Street Fighter 2 and cost 50 cents to play; at home, each new game console provided bigger and splashier versions of the exact same games, over and over again. For someone who grew up on games that favored simple themes and novel play mechanics over photo-realistic violence and complicated controller functions, most games today are just not that much fun.
Apparently other souls are feeling nostalgic about it too, but rather than whine about it on the web like me, they’re venting in a more… constructive manner. It seems like everybody is making stop-motion versions of classic video games, be they with Legos,
tea lights,
plastic beads,
Post-it notes,
construction paper,
or whatever else happened to be lying around the house.
Similarly, while cleaning out my computer (I’ve upgraded to a newer, sleeker Tablet PC), I found a bunch of Motivational Posters based on classic video games from a bygone era.
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. Here are some of the better ones.
Mathy contributions
Q: What did the acorn say when it grew up?
A: Gee-I’m-a-tree.
Q: Why couldn’t the identity get a loan?
A: It needed a cosigner.
Q: How trigonometric functions do farmers use?
A: Swine and cow-sine.
Q: What do you get when you cross a rooster and a duck?
A: A bird that gets up at the quack of dawn.
Q: What do you get when you cross a rooster and a duck?
A: A vector orthogonal to the cow and the chicken, determined by the right-hand rule.
Q: What’s a polar bear?
A: A rectangular bear after a change of coordinates.
Q: What kind of toilet paper do mathematicians prefer?
A: Multi-ply.
Q: What does a mathematician do when constipated?
A: He works it out with a pencil.
Q: What does Einstein do on the toilet?
A: Brownian motion.
Q: What is the most erotic number?
A: 2110593.
Q: Why?
A: When 2 are 1 and they don’t pay at-10-tion, they’ll know within 5 weeks whether or not, after 9 months, they’ll be 3.
Did you hear about the largest prime number yet discovered?
According to CNN, it’s four times bigger than the previous record.
I will derive!
One day, Jesus said to his disciples: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like .” A man who had just joined the disciples looked very confused and asked Peter: “What on Earth does he mean by that?” Peter smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s just another one of his parabolas.”
A woman in a bar tries to pick up a mathematician. “How old do you think I am?” she asks coyly. “Well,” he says, “18, by the fire in your eyes. 19, by the color of your cheeks. 20, by the radiance of your face. Now, if we add those up…”
George W. Bush to mathematicians: “It’s come to my attention that y’all are teaching algebra classes in which students learn to sove equations with the help of radicals. I can’t say I approve of that…”
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician went to the races one Saturday and laid their money down. Commiserating in the bar after the race, the engineer says, “I don’t understand why I lost all my money. I measured all the horses and calculated their strength and mechanical advantage and figured out how fast they could run…” The physicist interrupted him: “But you didn’t take individual variations into account. I did a statistical analysis of their previous performances and bet on the horses with the highest probability of winning…” “So if you’re so hot why are you broke?” asked the engineer. But before the argument can grow, the mathematician takes out his pipe and they get a glimpse of his well-fattened wallet. Obviously here was a man who knows something about horses. They both demanded to know his secret. “Well,” he says, between puffs on the pipe, “”first I assumed all the horses were identical and spherical…”
As an experiment, an engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are placed in separate rooms and left with a can of food but no can-opener. A day later, the rooms are opened one by one. In the first room, the engineer is snoring, with a battered, opened and emptied can. When asked, he explains that when he got hungry, he beat the can to its failure point. In the second room, the physicist is seen mouthing equations, with a can popped open beside him. When asked, he explains that when he got hungry, he examined the stress points of the can, applied pressure, and ‘pop’! In the third room, the mathematician is found sweating, and mumbling to himself, “Assume the can is open, assume the can is open…”
A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer were undergoing a thought-process experiment. As part of the experiment, they were seated at a table, given 3 metal spheres, and left alone for a while. After an hour or so, the experimenter returned to each of the three professionals. He checks in on the mathematician first, and finds the balls neatly arranged in a triangle at the center of the table. He checks in on the physicist next, and finds the balls stacked precariously, one on top of the other, in the center of the table. He then checks in on the engineer, and finds one of the balls is broken, one is missing, and the third being carried out in the engineer’s lunchbox.
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are all given identical rubber balls and told to find the volume. They are given anything they want to measure it, and have all the time they need. The mathematician pulls out a measuring tape and records the circumference. He then divides by two times pi to get the radius, cubes that, multiplies by pi again, and then multiplies by four-thirds and thereby calculates the volume. The physicist gets a large bucket of water, places 3 gallons of water in the bucket, drops in the ball, and measures the displacement to six significant figures. The engineer writes down the serial number of the ball, and looks it up.
A mathematician and an engineer are sitting next to each other on a long flight. The mathematician leans over to the engineer and asks if he would like to play a fun game. The engineer just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The mathematician persists and explains that the game is real easy and lots of fun. He explains, “I ask you a question, and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll pay you $5.” Again, the engineer politely declines and tries to get to sleep. The mathematician, now somewhat agitated, says, “Okay, if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll pay you $50!” This catches the engineer’s attention, and he sees no end to this torment unless he plays, so he agrees to the game. The mathematician asks the first question. “What’s the distance from the earth to the moon?” The engineer doesn’t say a word, but reaches into his wallet, pulls out a five-dollar bill and hands it to the mathematician Now, it’s the engineer’s turn. He asks the mathematician “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down on four?” The mathematician looks up at him with a puzzled look. He takes out his laptop computer and searches all of his references. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the net and the Library of Congress. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to his co-workers all to no avail. After about an hour, he wakes the engineer and hands him $50. The engineer politely takes the $50 and turns away to try to get back to sleep. The mathematician then hits the engineer, saying, “What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down on four?” The engineer calmly pulls out his wallet, hands the mathematician five bucks, and goes back to sleep.
Arguing with an engineer is a lot like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a few hours, you realize he likes it.
A pessimist will tell you the glass is half-empty. An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full. An engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.
Q: What’s the difference between a woman and a number.
A: A number can have a period and still be rational.
Q: What is 6.9?
A: Good sex interrupted by a period.
“What happened to your girlfriend, that really cute math student?”
“She no longer is my girlfriend. I caught her cheating on me.”
“I don’t believe that she cheated on you!”
“Well, a couple of nights ago I called her on the phone, and she told me that she was in bed wrestling with three unknowns…”
Weapons of math instruction:
At New York’s Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.
“Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,”, Ashcroft said. “They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like “x” and “y” and refer to themselves as “unknowns”, but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.
“As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle,” Ashcroft declared.
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.
“I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence,” the President said, adding: “Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line.”
President Bush warned, “These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex.”
Attorney General Ashcroft said, “As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks.”
Upgrading to Wife 1.0:
Last year a friend of mine upgraded GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it’s a memory hog, leaving very little system resource for other applications. He is only now noticing that Wife 1.0 also is spawning Child-Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomenon was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application. Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always lauched at system initialisation where it can monitor all other system activity.
He’s finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before). At installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.
Some features he’d like to see in the upcoming wife 2.0.:
A “Don’t remind me again” button
A minimize button
An install shield feature that allows Wife 2.0 to be installed with the option to uninstall at anytime without the loss of cache and other system resources.
I myself decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 2.0. Even here, however, I found many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 2.0 on top of Girlfriend 1.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 1.0 first. Other users say this is a long standing bug which I should have been aware of. Apparently the versions of Girlfriend have conficts over shared use of the I/O port. You’d think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, the uninstall program for Girlfriend 1.0 doesn’t work very well, leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system.
Another thing that sucks — all versions of Girlfriend continually popup little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0.
BUG WARNING!
Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.
To avoid the above bug, try installing Mistress 1.1 on a different system and never run any file transfer applications such as Laplink 6.0. Another solution would be to run Mistress 1.0 via a UseNet provider under an anonymous name.
There are in fact two versions of this bug, and it seems to be a matter of luck which one you get afflicted with. The version described is the milder of the two. With the worse version, before uninstalling itself Wife 1.0 uses the Divorce protocol to install Lawyer 1.0 (and sometimes also Lawyer 1.1, Lawyer 1.2 and Lawyer 1.3 as well).
Lawyer (any version) will run for an indeterminate but lengthy period constantly consuming all resources. When it eventually ends it automatically installs Alimony 26.5, which removes MSMoney and any other financial application as soon as you install it. The core of Lawyer 1.0 remains as a TSR during this time, crashing the system as soon as any attempt is made to stop Alimony 26.5 or to interfere with its operation. This sometimes leads to fatal breakdown of the entire system.
As always, some pics:
Ever wonder where cursors come from?
Division by zero was a common theme, too.
In class I’ve tried to instill an appreciation for correct function notation, especially when in comes to the trigonometric functions. In particular, from time to time in class I’ve been known to say things like “Every time you write sin2 x instead of sin(x)2, God kicks a puppy.” Apparently, however, I didn’t specificy which god:
Other good ones
Did you hear about the agnostic dyslexic insomniac?
He stayed up all night wondering if there really was a dog.
Q: What do Americans do when they has an eight-thousand foot deep hole in the ground?
A: They drop a DUSEL in it.
In America, you pretend to work and your boss pays you. In Soviet Russia, you work and your boss pretends to pay you.
Light a man a fire, and you warm him for a night. Light a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One of them says, “Does this taste funny to you?”
Two cannibals are eating. One says “Your wife makes a really delicious dinner.” The other says “I know. I’m going to miss her.”
A fireman is at the station house working outside on the fire truck when he notices a little boy next door. The little boy is in a little red wagon with little ladders hung off the side. He is wearing a fireman’s hat and has the wagon tied to a dog. The fireman says “Hey little boy. What are you doing?” The little boy says “I’m pretending to be a fireman and this is my fire truck!” The fireman walks over to take a closer look. “Little boy that sure is a nice fire truck!” the fireman says. “Thanks mister”, says the little boy. The fireman looks a little closer and notices the little boy has tied the dog to the wagon by its testicles. “Little boy”, says the fireman, “I don’t want to tell you how to run your fire truck, but if you were to tie that rope around the dog’s neck I think you could go faster.” The little boy says, “You’re probably right mister, but then I wouldn’t have a siren!”
A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer,”This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.” The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?” The boy takes the quarters and leaves. “What did I tell you?” said the barber. “Every single time… That kid never learns!” Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store. “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?” The boy licked his cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar the game’s over!”
A little boy’s first day in school and a teacher was going to play a “guessing” game. She passed out items to each of the students and proceeded to ask each student what item they received. When it was the new boy, Jimmy’s turn, the teacher gave him a candy kiss. She asked “Do you know what it is?” Jimmy replied “No.” The teacher said, ” Go ahead and open it up and taste it.” Little Jimmy did so. The teacher then asked, “Now do you know what it is?” Little Jimmy said “Sill no.” The teacher said, “I’ll give you a hint… it is something your daddy wants from your mommy every morning before he goes to work.” A little girl in the back of the class jumps up and screams “Jimmy, spit it out! It’s a piece of ass!!”
The young Indian boy had spent most of his life in a quandary. He felt different yet couldn’t figure why he was just so depressed. He went to the Chief for answers. He asked the chief how his brother Red Deer Running had gotten his name. The chief answered in his typically poetic way. “When Red Deer Running was born, at the moment of his birth, the first thing his mother saw was a beautiful deer running off into the forest… and so Running Deer was named. It is the custom of our tribe to name the offspring according to the spirits in nature visiting upon the birth.” Then, the boy said to the Chief “How did my sister Thundering Bird get her name?” The chief described again, how at the moment of her birth Thundering Bird’s mother had heard a roar of thunder and looking up, saw a bird flying in the sky…” The boy asked again, how his cousin “White Crouching Bear” had been given such a name. And the chief, looking down once more at the boy, explaining the traditions of their tribe. White Bear’s mother had seen a rare white bear crouched over a stream at the moment her baby’s birth. Then he asked the boy “Why do you ask, Two Dogs Fucking?”
And the winner is…
Q: If all the Tea-Partiers were at a convention, and the convention center caught on fire, and the fire department only had time to save one person, who would be saved?
A: America.
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. Although it’s a little late this year (these are from Fall 2009!), here are some of the better ones.
Mathy contributions
Q: What did the zero say to the eight?
A: Nice belt!
Q: Why was ten afraid of seven?
A: 7 8 9!
Q: Why was 3 afraid of ?
A: He was being irrational.
Q: What did the circle say to the tangent line?
A: Stop touching me!
Q: Why do you rarely find mathematicians at the beach?
A: Because they can get a tan from sine and cosine. They don’t need the sun.
Q: Why are math books always sad?
A: They have so many problems.
Q: What do you get when you add three apples to two apples?
A: A liberal arts college math problem.
Q: Why was the student’s failed exam wet?
A: It was below C level.
Q: If the natural log is , what’s the unnatural log?
A: Duraflame.
Q: Did you here the joke about the empty set?
A: Don’t worry. It doesn’t have a point.
Q: What’s the worst part about math jokes?
A: If you get them, you probably don’t have friends.
“I heard the government wants to put a tax on the mathematically ignorant.”
“Funny… I thought that’s what the lottery was.”
Suppose we know that if you don’t study, then you’ll fail. It then follows that
That is, you’re gonna fail either way. Might as well play video games.
Happy face arithmetic:
Math puns:
What kind of undergarments does a mermaid wear? An algebra!
What did the acorn say when it grew up? Geometry!
What do you call a teapot boiling on Mt. Everest? Hypotenuse!
What do you get when you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter? Pi!
What is 2 x 2?
A junior mathematician: 4.
A tenured mathematician: I don’t know what the answer is, but I can prove it exists.
Physicist (after consulting technical references): Between 3.98 and 4.02.
An engineer (after consulting a slide rule): 3.99.
A logician: I think you need to define 2 x 2 more precisely.
A philosopher: What you do mean by 2 x 2?
A sociologist: I don’t know, but it was nice talking about it.
A behavioral ecologist: A polygamous mating system.
A college student: 4. (The when asked by astonished colleagues how he knew, replies “I memorized it.”)
I thought it was a great idea to name my child after … until the first time he misbehaved, and I had to call him by his full name.
Students nowadays are clueless about mathematics. Why, just the other day a student came into office hours asking if General Calculus was an ancient Roman war hero.
Mathematical pick-up lines:
If you were cos2x, then I’s be sin2x so that you and I could be 1.
I wish I was your second derivative so I could fill up your concavity.
It’s not the magnitude of the vector, it’s how you apply the force.
(Hacker’s pick-up line) Solve 2 u x = 106 x2 y for u.
The only arithmetic a man needs in life: add the girl, subtract the clothes, divide the legs, and pray to God you don’t multiply.
A physicist, a mathematician and a computer scientist were discussing the relative merits of having a wife or a girlfriend. “For sure a girlfriend is better,” says the physicist. “You still have the freedom to experiment.” “No, no, it’s better to have a wife,” says the mathematician, “because the sense of security you get.” “No, no, you’re both wrong,” replies the computer scientist. “It’s best to have both so that when the wife thinks you’re with the mistress and the mistress thinks you’re with your wife, you can be with your computer without anyone disturbing you.”
A professor of mathematics sent a fax to his wife: “Dear Wife, You must realize that you are 54 years old, and I have certain needs which you are no longer able to satisfy. I am otherwise happy with you as a wife, and I sincerely hope you will not be hurt or offended to learn that by the time you receive this letter, I will be at the Grand Hotel with my 18-year-old teaching assistant. I’ll be home before midnight. Your Husband.” When he arrived at the hotel, there was a faxed letter waiting for him that read as follows: “Dear Husband, You, too, are 54 years old, and by the time you receive this letter, I will be at the Breakwater Hotel with the 18-year-old pool boy. Since you are a mathematician, you will appreciate that 18 goes into 54 more times than 54 goes into 18. Therefore, don’t wait up. Your Wife.”
No wonder the mathematician’s marriage is falling apart: he’s into scientific computing… and she’s incalculable!
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
A computer scientist is a device for turning coffee into code.
An engineer is a device for turning coffee into urine.
An engineer thinks his equations are an approximation of reality.
A physicist thinks that reality is an approximation of his equations.
A mathematician doesn’t care.
Billy needed to integrate the function 1/(1+x). Stumped, he glanced around the class, and saw that Amy, who always got things right, had written “log(1+x)”, so he copied the answer from her. Of course, Billy was a sharp tack himself, so in order to prevent himself from being caught copying, he rewrote the answer as “timber(1+x)”.
One day a farmer called up an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician and asked them to fence of the largest possible area with the least amount of fence. The engineer made the fence in a circle and proclaimed that he had the most efficient design. The physicist pointed out that fencing off half of the Earth was certainly a more efficient way to do it. The mathematician just laughed at them. He built a tiny fence around himself and said “I declare myself to be on the outside.”
“An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are staying at a hotel. That night, the engineer awakes to smell smoke. He goes out into the hallway and sees a fire, so he fills the trash can from his room with water and douses the fire (and most of the hallway too) before going back to sleep. Later, the physicists awakes to smell smoke. He goes out into the hallway and sees a fire. After a few mental calculations involving the flame velocity, water pressure, ballistic trajectory, and so forth, he fills the trash can from his room with a minimal amount of water and effectively douses the fire before going back to sleep. Later, the mathematician awakes to smell smoke. He foes out into the hallway and sees a fire. He also sees the trash can in his room and the sink in his bathroom and concludes “A solution exists” before going back to sleep.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine they laid down for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” Watson replied, “I see millions and millions of stars.” “And,” Holmes asked, “what does that tell you?” Said Watson, “Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are but small and insignificant and finally, meteorologically, I suspect that that we will have a beautiful day for hiking tomorrow. What does it tell you, Holmes?” Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke. “It tells me, dear Watson, that some bastard has stolen our tent.”
A mathematician is flying a 6-hour nonstop flight from California to Florida. Shortly after take-off, the pilot announces that one of the engines had to be turned off due to mechanical failure. “But don’t worry,” he adds, “we’re safe, and we’ve got three engines running perfectly. The only noticeable effect will be that our flight time will be 7 hours instead of 6.” A half-hour later, the pilot announces that a second engine had to be turned off due to mechanical failure. “But don’t worry,” he adds, “we’re safe, and we’ve still got two engines running perfectly. The only noticeable effect will be that our total flight time will be 9 hours instead of 6.” Another half-hour later, the pilot announces that a third engine had to be turned off due to mechanical failure. “But don’t worry,” he adds, “even with one engine we’re still perfectly safe. However, we’re now looking at a total flight time will of 13 hours instead of 6.” “Great,” grumbles the mathematician. “At this rate, when the next engine goes it’s going to take 19 hours to get there.”
A mathematics major is walking across campus when his classmate rides up to him on a new bicycle. “Where did you get the bike from?” he asks. “It’s a Thank you present from that freshman girl I’ve been tutoring,” the math major explains. “Yesterday she called me and told that she had passed her math final and wanted to drop by to thank me in person. She arrived at my place on her bicycle. When I had let her in, she took all her clothes off, smiled, and said to take anything I wanted!” His friend stares at him for a moment, and then replies, “Good choice. I doubt the clothes would’ve have fit.”
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Math problems? Call .
The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your telephone 90 degrees and try again.
Typical student response to seeing the limit definition of the derivative for the first time:
I also got a lot of charts this time round:
Other good ones
Q: Where did the one-legged man work?
A: IHOP.
A cop was on his horse waiting to cross the street when a little girl rode up beside him on her shiny new bike. “Nice bike you got there,” said the cop, “did you get it for Christmas?” “Yes sir,” said the little girl. The cop looked the bike over, and then handed the girl a $5 ticket for a safety violation. “Next time,” he said, “tell Santa to put a reflector light on the back of it.” The girl looked at the ticket, and then at the cop. “Nice horse you got there,” said the girl, “did you get it for Christmas?” “Sure,” said the cop, humoring her. The girl looked the horse over. “Next time,” she said, “tell Santa that the dick goes underneath the horse, not on top.”
“Bob, how’d you get that black eye?” “Well, my wife came home yesterday after shopping for cars. She told me she wanted something that can go from 0 to 160 in 2 seconds. So I got her a bathroom scale
“Honey, I bought a new toilet brush!” “I know, dear, I know. I still prefer toilet paper, though.”
Three Chinese brothers, Bu, Chu, and Fu, came to live in the United States. They decided to change their names to acclimate to the nation. Bu changed his name to Buck, and Chu changed his name to Chuck, and Fu was deported back to China.
And the winner is…
You know you’ve been a physics major too long when someone asks you “What’s new?” and you reply, “That’s divided by .”
Sigh. One of my favorite web comics, Brown Sharpie, is at an end. After three-plus years, toonist Courtney has decided to cap those noxious fumes and focus on newer and more exciting things (like grad research! and beer! and kittens!). We’ll miss you over here at komplexify!
See you in the funny papers, Courtney.
However, in a comical application of Newton’s Third Law, as Brown Sharpie is leaving I’ve been introduced to a new web comic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It’s a bit less “classy” than BS, but no less funny.
It’s getting so that I can’t watch the TV or read a newspaper without reading about some state repealing or outlawing gay marriage. I simply cannot understand the inhuman, uncaring mentality behind it… which is why I’m glad to have great satire to provide insight.
For example, I cannot understand how anybody with a modicum of exposure to, say, civics or American history can argue that the systematic restriction of the rights of its citizens based on the vocal complaints of evangelical Christianity can in any way be justified as being what our founding forefathers had hoped. Thankfully, The Onion stepped up last week to help me understand.
Area man passionate defender of what he imagines Constitution to be
ESCONDIDO, CA. Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head.
“Our very way of life is under siege,” said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination. “It’s time for true Americans to stand up and protect the values that make us who we are.”
According to Mortensen—an otherwise mild-mannered husband, father, and small-business owner—the most serious threat to his fanciful version of the 222-year-old Constitution is the attempt by far-left “traitors” to strip it of its religious foundation.
“Right there in the preamble, the authors make their priorities clear: ‘one nation under God,’” said Mortensen, attributing to the Constitution a line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which itself did not include any reference to a deity until 1954. “Well, there’s a reason they put that right at the top.”
“Men like Madison and Jefferson were moved by the ideals of Christianity, and wanted the United States to reflect those values as a Christian nation,” continued Mortensen, referring to the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, considered by many historians to be an atheist, and Thomas Jefferson, an Enlightenment-era thinker who rejected the divinity of Christ and was in France at the time the document was written. “The words on the page speak for themselves.”
According to sources who have read the nation’s charter, the U.S. Constitution and its 27 amendments do not contain the word “God” or “Christ.”
Mortensen said his admiration for the loose assemblage of vague half-notions he calls the Constitution has only grown over time. He believes that each detail he has pulled from thin air—from prohibitions on sodomy and flag-burning, to mandatory crackdowns on immigrants, to the right of citizens not to have their hard-earned income confiscated in the form of taxes—has contributed to making it the best framework for governance “since the Ten Commandments.”
“And let’s not forget that when the Constitution was ratified it brought freedom to every single American,” Mortensen said.
Mortensen’s passion for safeguarding the elaborate fantasy world in which his conception of the Constitution resides is greatly respected by his likeminded friends and relatives, many of whom have been known to repeat his unfounded assertions verbatim when angered. Still, some friends and family members remain critical.
“Dad’s great, but listening to all that talk radio has put some weird ideas into his head,” said daughter Samantha, a freshman at Reed College in Portland, OR. “He believes the Constitution allows the government to torture people and ban gay marriage, yet he doesn’t even know that it guarantees universal health care.”
Mortensen told reporters that he’ll fight until the bitter end for what he roughly supposes the Constitution to be. He acknowledged, however, that it might already be too late to win the battle.
“The freedoms our Founding Fathers spilled their blood for are vanishing before our eyes,” Mortensen said. “In under a year, a fascist, socialist regime has turned a proud democracy into a totalitarian state that will soon control every facet of American life.”
“Don’t just take my word for it,” Mortensen added. “Try reading a newspaper or watching the news sometime.”
And while we’re on the topic, I cannot understand how proponents of a religion based on the premise “Love they neighbor as thyself” can conceivably argue that they are expressing love for their gay neighbors by systematically seeking to erode their basic rights as human beings. Thankfully, I can turn to an October editorial at the Onion again.
If God had wanted me to be accepting of gays,
He would have given me the warmth and compassion to do so
Jane Kendricks. I don’t question God. The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall put none above Him. Which is why I know that if it were part of God’s plan for me to stop viciously condemning others based solely on their sexual preference, He would have seen fit—in His infinite wisdom and all—to have given me the tiniest bit of human empathy necessary to do so.
It’s a simple matter of logic, really. God made me who I am, and who I am is a cold, anti-gay zealot. Thus, I abhor gay people because God made me that way. Why is that so hard to understand?
Here, let’s start with the basic facts: I hate and fear gay people. The way they feel is different from how I feel, and that causes me a lot of confusion and anger. Everyone knows God is all-powerful. He could easily have given me the capacity to investigate what’s behind those feelings rather than tell strangers in the park they’re going to hell for holding hands. But God clearly has another path for me. And who am I to question His divine will?
Compassion, tolerance, understanding, basic decency, the ability to put myself in another person’s position: God could have endowed me with any of those traits and yet—here is the crucial part—He didn’t. Why? Because the Creator of the Universe wants me to demonize homosexuals in an effort to strip them of their fundamental human rights.
I’m sorry, but you can’t possibly ask me to explain everything God does. He works in mysterious ways, remember?
Try to understand. If I were capable of thinking and acting any other way, then I’m sure I would, but God seems to be quite adamant about this one. He’s just not budging at all. So unless our almighty Lord and Savior decides to change His mind about my ability to empathize on even the most basic level—which I find highly unlikely—then everyone is just going to have to accept the fact that I’m going to keep on hating homosexuals. And I know that He will fill me with the strength to remain mindless and hurtful in the face of adversity.
Which isn’t to say that my faith hasn’t been tested. Believe me, there have been times when I’ve drifted from the bitter and terrified life God has chosen for me. When my younger brother told me he was gay, it shook my faith to its very core. But here I am, 27 years later, still refusing to take his calls. Just the way God intended.
It’s actually pretty astonishing how many complaints to the school board you can make regarding the new band teacher you’ve never met when you are filled with the Light of Christ and devoid of any real kindness or mercy toward His other children.
At the end of the day, I’m just trying to lead a good Christian life. That means going to church on Sunday, following the Ten Commandments, and fighting what I believe to be a sexual abomination through a series of petty actions and bitter comments made under my breath. Sure, I sometimes wish God would just reach into my heart and give me the ability to treat all people with, at the very least, the decency and respect they deserve as human beings. But unfortunately for that new couple who moved in three houses down, He hasn’t yet.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have God’s work to do.
And for one final bit of wisdom, I defer to Matthew Baldwin of defectiveyeti.com, who in 2006 suggested what I think is the best solution to this particular conundrum: the national adoption of The Buddy System.
The Buddy System
I don’t think the government should get involved in gay marriage. But, on the other hand, I don’t think the government should be involved in straight marriage either.
That might sound like a strange sentiment coming from a happily married guy like me. But [my wife] and I, not religious in the slightest, got married only because it was the only option available to us. If we could have gotten civilly unionized, we probably would have gone that route. Instead, we just made it as secular an affair as possible, with a retired judge as the officiant and a ceremony held in the Seattle Aquarium.
The fundamental problem with “marriage” is the word, not the institution. It means different things to different people, which largely accounts for the acrimonious debate over gay marriage that grips the nation every election year. For some “marriage” is a religious arrangement, where two people are joined together by God; to others it refers to the purely secular tradition of pledging fidelity to one another in the hopes that your friends and relatives will give you DVD players and ice cream makers. Until the two sides in the gay marriage debate agree on a common definition — something unlikely to happen anytime soon — we’re going to just go around and around in circles on this issues for decades to come.
The gov needs to get out of the marriage business altogether, ya’ask me. Separation of church and state, yo. It should relinquish claim to the word “marriage” altogether, let it revert to its original, religious meaning, and wash its hands of the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong — I still think there should be a secular equivalent. Just don’t call it “marriage.” And don’t call it “civil unions,” either — that term is sullied by those who have been trying to pawn it off as some kind of bargain basement matrimony.
I think the United States should adopt the Buddy System.
Here’s how it would work. When a citizen reaches Buddying age, he or she will receive a charming, hand-written note in the mail from the government. This is what it will say:
Hi there! Welcome to adulthood. You've had it relatively easy so far, all things considered: what with the parents, and the no job, and the not paying taxes, and the ability to eat an entire Italian sausage and black olive pizza without feeling like crap the following morning. Sure the whole puberty thing sucked, no argument there. But by and large life has been pretty sweet.
Unfortunately things get a little trickier from here on out. You might have to work a job you don't particularly like, or find yourself with all kinds of obligations you'd just as soon avoid. Maybe you'll feel your idealism leech away, and your patience for the status quo dwindle. Perhaps the people who signed your yearbook "2good + 2b = 4gotten!" will move away and 4get you, and your opportunities to meet new, fun people will become increasingly limited. And -- trust me on this one -- no TV show will ever seem as cool as the ones you enjoyed when you were 13.
Yeah, adulthood is a drag sometimes. And that's where the Buddy System comes in. At some point, you may find it useful to Buddy up with another person, someone you will watch over and who will, in turn, watch over you. Like the earlier version of this system you may have used at school or at camp, your Buddy's job will be to make sure you don't get lost. But less a literal "don't get lost in the forest during a dayhike" and more a figurative "don't get so lost working at a crummy job that you forget how much you like gardening." Or, you know, whatever.
So, at some point, feel free to take a Buddy. Or don't: whatever works for you. But it's a scary world out there, and sometimes a Buddy is just the thing you need to make it seem a bit more manageable.
Also, couples wishing to Buddy would be required to have their ceremony somewhere awesome, like a waterslide park or a Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert or the Seattle Aquarium. And an open bar would be mandated by law.
I think this is a compromise the whole nation could all get behind, don’t you?
get a loan?
.” A man who had just joined the disciples looked very confused and asked Peter: “What on Earth does he mean by that?” Peter smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s just another one of his parabolas.”
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, what’s the unnatural log?
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