There is an engineering item you can make in World of Warcraft that’s called Gnomish Jumper Cables. They can resurrect a character, so they’re sometimes used for that purpose. However, the engineer who can use them has to stay alive to do it. If the whole party/raid dies, it’s called a wipe. If it’s a wipe, there’s no one left to use the cables, so they’re pretty much useless at that moment.
I should also point out, by the way, that it’s quite possible for a paper to be published posthumously. A few people collaborate on a project, one of them dies, the other collaborators continue, and eventually publish the paper. The dead guy did some of the work, so his name stays on the author list, even if it’s years later. It’s even possible for someone else to join the project after the original author dies, and so have a connection with him
I don’t know whether Erdös himself left any such projects pending when he died, but it’s at least possible.
To get away from esoteric science humor I made my then fiancee laugh when I pointed to a plate of madelines and said “That reminds me” and kept walking.
Infinite Records in Houston used to be called Infinite Records and Tapes which I and my fellow computer science majors found hilarious.
Definitely would have married that one!
Okay, a non-science esoteric humor.
The classic time travel story Lest Darkness Fall, the protagonist is an archeologist transported back in time to 6th century Rome. He is sitting in a steam room with another character who tries to tell him a dirty joke by asking if he knew what knew the Empress Theodora used to complain about? The protagonist, who read the story in The Secret History by Procopius, proceeds to tell the joke, but they don’t actually tell the joke in the story.
This bothered me until I finally went back into the University stack and found a copy of The Secret History which had Greek version on the left side and the English translation on the right.
It turns out that the story was she used to complain that the holes in her nipples weren’t large enough for intercourse, so the author was slipping a dirty joke into a thirties magazine.
If you come across a science fiction fan who seems to know too much about Byzantine history, now you know why.
Very good! :D:D
My reply:
Lewis Carroll wrote his “Alice” books for Alice Liddell and her sisters. Their father, Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, co-authored a Greek lexicon which is still in use today.
Phonetics humor: Why do * and do drugs? Because they’re high vowels!
Phonology humor: Bleeding rules destroy the environment!
Syntax humor: `The dead appeared to leave their graves’-- looks like our syntactic rules can even raise the dead!
Historical linguistics humor: The merger of liquids in Indic was the real First No-L!
Ask me if you can’t figure these out…
Google is not helping me with the “madeline” thing.
I assume it is a reference to Proust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_(cake)#The_Proust_connection
I didn’t get it either, but I’m a professional web surfer in that a good part of working day was often tracking down information my boss wanted.
My favorite Proust allusion is when Anton Ego tastes the Ratatouille.
I occurs that people like Esoteric jokes as long as they get them. That’s why comedians will try to work some local references into their routine.
Thanks, that makes much more sense.
:D:D
Proust in his first book wrote about, wrote about…
To repeat my joke from the other thread: Do Calvinist ministers come pre-ordained?
Other potentially esoteric jokes:
Q. Who led the Pedant’s Revolt?
A. Which Tyler.
Q. What, according to Sigmund Freud, comes between fear and sex?
A. Fünf.
Q: What’s an anagram of “Banach-Tarski”?
A: Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski.
I should add that my then fiancee is my now wife.
The campaign against dihydrogen monoxide never fails to crack me up.
I remember when Penn and Teller did a TV episode where they had people collecting signatures for a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide, but making fun of pinheads doesn’t really qualify as esoteric.
Along those lines — does it count if you publish a paper with Zombie Erdös?
Why are chemistry jokes different than all the other obscure subjects here?