About week ago, a friend of mine who teaches at UNI posted this on Facebook:
Math Joke Emergency! In less than three hours I will be lecturing on finding equations of conic sections by rotating and translating a conic in standard form. I am confident that there is a long form joke beginning with “turn around” and ending with a variant of “total ellipse of the heart,” but I can’t make it work.
I pondered for a moment on this before commenting back.
Turnaround Bright, the famous turn-of-the-century improvisational musician, once performed at a concert for the International Composer’s Guild. Over the course of the night, Turnaround Bright created beautiful, extemporaneous pieces on a number of instruments.
He was first seated at a grand piano, where Turnaround composed a symphony on the spot.
He was then seated at a grand pedal harp, and created a lilting musical soliloquy.
He was next given a small harpsichord, and proceeded to pluck out a charming lullaby.
The final instrument was small oval-shaped lyre, which he looked at for a moment. Mr. Bright promptly put it under his seat, stood up, and ended the concert.
“Monsieur,” asked the audience, “did we offend you? Why are you stopping?”
Turnaround Bright sighed. “Nothing I can play on a total ellipse of a harp.”
What I’m saying is, not all heroes wear capes.
