Clever Jokes: (Could some of you explain some of them to me)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

1.) It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs… because they always take things literally.

Got it.

2.) Who is this Rorschach guy? … and why does he paint so many pictures of my parents fighting?

Got it.

3.) A Roman walks into a bar and asks for a Martinus…. “You mean a martini?” the bartender asks. The Roman replies, “If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it!”

I don’t l know what Martinus is/are, but I get the word play

4.) René Descartes walks into a bar. Bartender asks if he wants anything. … René says, “I think not,” then disappears.

I’m sure Wikipedia would help, but I don’t know on my own

5.) Sixteen sodium atoms walk into a bar… followed by Batman.

I am Batman… Alfred gets the joke, but the bastard won’t explain it to me

6.) Yo momma’s so classless… she could be a Marxist utopia.

Got it.

7.) Did you hear about the man who got cooled to absolute zero?… He’s 0K now.

Got it.

8.) An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first orders a beer, the second orders half a beer, the third orders a quarter of a beer, and so on. … After the seventh order, the bartender pours two beers and says, “You fellas ought to know your limits.”

Um… I need some help here.

9.) Pavlov is sitting at a bar, when all of the sudden the phone rings… Pavlov gasps, “Oh crap, I forgot to feed the dogs.”

Wiki Pavlov?

10.) Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath…. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

I might get it if I knew what halitosis is.

11.) Three logicians walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “Do all of you want a drink?”… The first logician says, “I don’t know.” The second logician says, “I don’t know.” The third logician says, “Yes!”

Got it.

12.) How can you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber? … Ask them to pronounce “unionized.”

How would a chemist say it, and what does it mean?

13.) What’s the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist?… An etymologist knows the difference.

No clue.

14.) The other day my friend was telling me that I didn’t understand what irony meant. … Which is ironic, because we were standing at a bus stop.

Is the joke that it’s NOT ironic??

15.) There are two types of people in this world:… Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

I think I get the premise, but I’m not sure what EXACTLY “extrapolate incomplete data” means.

16.) An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. … But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.” A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

“Yeah” & “Right” = Positive, “Yeah, right” = Negative?

17.) A photon checks into a hotel and the bellhop asks him if he has any luggage…. The photon replies, “No, I’m traveling light.”

Got it.

18.) Your momma is so mean… she has no standard deviation.

Got it.

19.) I’m thinking about selling my theremin… I haven’t touched it in years.

Little help??

20.) What does the “B” in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?… Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

I HAVE NO CLUE!??

21.) What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question? … …

Got it.
So, most of you are generally smarter than I am… did any of these jokes stump you?

2

1.) It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs… because they always take things literally.

Got it.

2.) Who is this Rorschach guy? … and why does he paint so many pictures of my parents fighting?

Got it.

3.) A Roman walks into a bar and asks for a Martinus…. “You mean a martini?” the bartender asks. The Roman replies, “If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it!”

I don’t l know what Martinus is/are, but I get the word play

4.) René Descartes walks into a bar. Bartender asks if he wants anything. … René says, “I think not,” then disappears.

I’m sure Wikipedia would help, but I don’t know on my own

5.) Sixteen sodium atoms walk into a bar… followed by Batman.

I am Batman… Alfred gets the joke, but the bastard won’t explain it to me

6.) Yo momma’s so classless… she could be a Marxist utopia.

Got it.

7.) Did you hear about the man who got cooled to absolute zero?… He’s 0K now.

Got it.

8.) An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first orders a beer, the second orders half a beer, the third orders a quarter of a beer, and so on. … After the seventh order, the bartender pours two beers and says, “You fellas ought to know your limits.”

Um… I need some help here.

9.) Pavlov is sitting at a bar, when all of the sudden the phone rings… Pavlov gasps, “Oh crap, I forgot to feed the dogs.”

Wiki Pavlov?

10.) Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath…. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

I might get it if I knew what halitosis is.

11.) Three logicians walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “Do all of you want a drink?”… The first logician says, “I don’t know.” The second logician says, “I don’t know.” The third logician says, “Yes!”

Got it.

12.) How can you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber? … Ask them to pronounce “unionized.”

How would a chemist say it, and what does it mean?

13.) What’s the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist?… An etymologist knows the difference.

No clue.

14.) The other day my friend was telling me that I didn’t understand what irony meant. … Which is ironic, because we were standing at a bus stop.

Is the joke that it’s NOT ironic??

15.) There are two types of people in this world:… Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

I think I get the premise, but I’m not sure what EXACTLY “extrapolate incomplete data” means.

16.) An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. … But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.” A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

“Yeah” & “Right” = Positive, “Yeah, right” = Negative?

17.) A photon checks into a hotel and the bellhop asks him if he has any luggage…. The photon replies, “No, I’m traveling light.”

Got it.

18.) Your momma is so mean… she has no standard deviation.

Got it.

19.) I’m thinking about selling my theremin… I haven’t touched it in years.

Little help??

20.) What does the “B” in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?… Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

I HAVE NO CLUE!??

21.) What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question? … …

Got it.
So, most of you are generally smarter than I am… did any of these jokes stump you?

Sorry to use Spoiler Tags on ALL of the ones I didn’t understand… I just want to advocate using them, so I put them in, even if they weren’t needed. Just promoting the use of them in this thread.

3

Only a few of these need truly esoteric knowledge to get. Most would be answered by a quick check of a dictionary and/or the most obvious wiki entry.

The only one that throws me is the Batman one…

4

Try using this tool.

5
  1. Rene Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”.
  2. Halitosis is bad breath, but that isn’t the joke.
  3. A chemist might pronounce it un-ionized, while a plumber may belong to a union.
6

That ruins the fun, and it doesn’t always explain the jokes in a way I understand them. Perhaps I will if no one wants to rub it in my face that they got a joke that I didn’t. :slight_smile: I could have read the comments on the site too… but I thought this would be more genuine.

To admit what I don’t understand to everyone here.

If anyone has other jokes to submit, feel free.

7

But since you insist:
3: In Latin, -us is singular, -i is plural. The guy wants one drink, not two or more.
4: Decartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.”
6: NO clue.
8: The limit of the series 1+1/2+1/4… is 2. (Actually, an infinitesimal amount less than 2.) One chemist drinks the first, the rest of them drink the second in ever-smaller halvings.
9: Pavlov trained dogs to drool at the sound of a bell - basic behavioral conditioning.
10: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Call Julie Andrews if you need more help.
11: Yoon-yun-ized. Un-i-o-nized, as in having no ions.
12: An entomologist knows bugs. An etymologist knows words.
14: Self-cancelling irony, like rain on your wedding day.
15: …and those who can’t, like you. :slight_smile:
16: “Yeah, right” is a double positive with a negative meaning.
19: A theremin is played by proximity of the hands to the sensor wands, which are never touched.
20: Mandelbrot discovered fractals, in which every component fraction contains a replica of the whole thing.

8

spoilers!!

Perhaps I went into this with different expectations of what Dopers are willing to put up with.

9

NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA … BATMAN! x

10

O shit. Mrs. B. got the Batman joke before I could finish telling it. Well, there’s her B’s-so-dumb story for the year.

11

Holy LORD… that’s a GREAT joke!!

12

5.) Sixteen sodium atoms walk into a bar… followed by Batman.

The abbreviation for sodium is “Na” so 16 of them is “Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na” - which of course must be followed by BATMAN! (if you’re old enough to remember Adam West)

9.) Pavlov is sitting at a bar, when all of the sudden the phone rings… Pavlov gasps, “Oh crap, I forgot to feed the dogs.”

Pavlov trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell - but it sounds like he also trained himself to think of feeding the dogs, when he hears a bell.

13.) What’s the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist?… An etymologist knows the difference.

An etymologist studies the origns of words, an entomologist studies insects, so of the two, the etymologist is the one who knows the difference between etymologist and entomologist

19.) I’m thinking about selling my theremin… I haven’t touched it in years.

A theremin is a musical instrument that works without being touched (it senses the position of your hands above the instrument by how the position of your hands changes the electrical field near the theremin).

13

I love these jokes now that I understand them!! Thanks

14

10.) Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath…. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

The last sentence is just a play on words. It sounds like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” - the nonsense word made popular in Mary Poppins.

15

  1. There’s no meaning for “martinus” as far as I know. The joke is just that “martini” could be the plural for the Latin word “martinus” if it existed.

  2. Sodium is Na. “Na Na Na Na… etc. Batman!”

  3. 1+1/2+1/4 forever = 2. The “limit” of the sequence in maths is what the numbers are heading towards, and in this case, “converge” at.

  4. Pavlov gave his dogs food when he rang a bell. The interesting result was that when he rang the bell without food, the dogs salivated anyway.

  5. Etymologists study the origins of words. Entomologists study insects. The etymologist presumably knows more about the words involved.

  6. I think you’re right.

  7. Someone who can extrapolate from incomplete data can take a sentence such as “There are two types of people in the world: those who like oranges…” and work out that the other type of person doesn’t like oranges. The data didn’t explicitly tell us that, but such a genius can extrapolate.

  8. Yeah. Right.

  9. You don’t touch a theremin to play it. As you move your hands nearer or farther away from it, you can influence the pitch and volume of the sound.

  10. Mandelbrot made fractal images called the “Mandelbrot set” which are created using the same shape again and again, making it smaller each time.

ETA: I see after writing all that, a lot of these have been filled in already. Oh well.

16

(post shortened)

6.) Yo momma’s so classless… she could be a Marxist utopia.

Marxism rejects the concept of social classes. A Marxist utopia would be a class-less society.

17

15.) There are two types of people in this world:… Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

The joke itself is incomplete but you don’t need to hear the rest because you can figure it out yourself based on what was already said. Here is an example of extrapolating from incomplete data. If I tell you “It has just been getting hotter and hotter all this week. Monday was 70F, Wednesday was 90F and Thursday was 100F”.

What was the most likely temperature on Tuesday?

A) 80F
B) 60F
C) 95F

18

3.) A Roman walks into a bar and asks for a Martinus…. “You mean a martini?” the bartender asks. The Roman replies, “If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it!”

the “i” ending on certain latin words indicates a plural form for which the singular form has a “us” ending. Example would be a circle having a unique radius, and two circles with two different radii.

4.) René Descartes walks into a bar. Bartender asks if he wants anything. … René says, “I think not,” then disappears.

Descarte’s famous quote is “I think, therefore I am.”

5.) Sixteen sodium atoms walk into a bar… followed by Batman.

Yeah, this one’s got me stumped too.

8.) An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first orders a beer, the second orders half a beer, the third orders a quarter of a beer, and so on. … After the seventh order, the bartender pours two beers and says, “You fellas ought to know your limits.”

There’s an entire branch of mathematics that deals with the properties of infinite series of numbers. Some series of numbers have interesting properties. In the joke, a series of beers in which each subsequent one is half the volume of the previous one all add together to equal exactly two beers.

9.) Pavlov is sitting at a bar, when all of the sudden the phone rings… Pavlov gasps, “Oh crap, I forgot to feed the dogs.”

Pavlov famously experimented with classical conditioning in which dogs that repeatedly heard a bell right before being presented with food were eventually found to salivate when hearing a bell, even when no food was presented. So Pavlov heard a bell and suddenly realized that he had forgotten to feed his dogs back at the lab.

10.) Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath…. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

halitosis = bad breath.

13.) What’s the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist?… An etymologist knows the difference.

An etymologist studies the origins of words, so he’s very knowledgeable about the meaning of words. He’ll know what an entomologist is (a person who studies insects), but an entomogolist is far less likely to know what an etymologist is.

15.) There are two types of people in this world:… Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

To extrapolate from incomplete data is to look at a data set and make an educated guess about what lies just beyond its outer edge. So if I give you 2, 3, 4, and ask you for the next number in that series, you might extrapolate from that data set and say 5. In this case, the reader is expected to extrapolate from what’s written there and understand that the other type of people is those who can’t extrapolate from incomplete data.

16.) An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. … But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.” A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

Correct, “Yeah, right” is a sarcastic way of saying “no.”

19.) I’m thinking about selling my theremin… I haven’t touched it in years.

A theremin is an electrical musical instrument, the playing of which involves no physical contact whatsoever. Associated with spooky sounds in old movies.

20.) What does the “B” in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?… Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

fractal geometry often reveals patterns that repeat themselves into smaller and smaller scales. Benoit Mandelbrot was involved in this field, and is famous for the Mandelbrot set. If you look at the picture, maybe the joke will make more sense to you.

I’ve now been ninja’d by a few people. Fuckit, I’m posting anyway.

19

Oh, just forget it.

20

8.) An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first orders a beer, the second orders half a beer, the third orders a quarter of a beer, and so on. … After the seventh order, the bartender pours two beers and says, “You fellas ought to know your limits.”

The first mathematician orders one beer. +1
The second orders 1/2 beer +1/2
The third orders 1/4 beer +1/4
and so on to an infinite number of mathematicians.

If you add that sequence (known as a Limit, in math speak) the total sum will approach, but never quite reach 2.

So it is a play on words. Know your limits mean different things in math and as it relates to drinking.