SharkB8 jarred this one loose.
Why do violists stand next to doors?
They don’t know an entrance when they see one.
Also: What’s the most popular version of the William Walton viola concerto?
Music Minus One.
A Pascal is one Newton/square metre
Ah, high school physics, how I loathe thee…
Two of my own creations*
A neutrino walks into a bar and keeps going
An atom goes up to an ion-permeable membrane and is trying, unsuccessfully, to get past. “Hey, what’s the deal?” the atom asks the membrane. “Sorry, mate,” it responds, “but I’m gonna have to charge you before you can get through”
*though it wouldn’t surprise me if i was not the first to come up with these
That scoops my ‘neutron walks into a bar’ joke PL=“for you, no charge!”
But, I dislodge another.
What do you get when you mate a mountain climber with a disease laden mosquito?
Nothing, you can’t cross a scalar and a vector.
Schenkerian analysis is obsessed with reducing all music to basic underlying structure, the most basic of which is the ‘3-2-1’ descent.
It’s not entirely fair to put it in these terms, and the graphical tools offered from his system for displaying large-scale structures are invaluable. However, a compulsory (and often substandard) course on Schenker is something all too familiar to many music graduates.
See http://www.schenkerguide.com/ for a better explanation!
An optimist sees the glass as half full.
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
A realist says “somebody’s going to have to wash that glass.”
Heh. Told that one once before. I had to explain it too.
Well, the 5th is in C-minor, so I suppose that should be E-flat, D, C. Is that what you’re going for?
Explain?
“Square of the hypotenuse=square of the other two sides” aka a^2+b^2=c^2.
Heh! My favorite one!
I’ve got a bunch of engineering jokes that I received in an email a few years ago, I just remembered it now (plus it’s late enough in the thread that I won’t be stepping on any toes:
Understanding Engineers - Take One
Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, “Where did you get such a great bike?”
The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.” The second engineer nodded approvingly, “Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”
Understanding Engineers - Take Two
repeat: glass is too big
Understanding Engineers - Take Three
A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, “What’s with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!”
The doctor chimed in, "I don’t know, but I’ve never seen such ineptitude! "
The pastor said, “Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let’s have a word with him.”
> > [dramatic pause]
“Hi George, say, what’s with that group ahead of us? They’re rather slow, aren’t they?”
The greens keeper replied, “Oh, yes, that’s a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime.”
The group was silent for a moment.
The pastor said, “That’s so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight.”
The doctor said, “Good idea. And I’m going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there’s anything he can do for them.”
The engineer said, “Why can’t these guys play at night?”
> > Understanding Engineers - Take Four
There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multimillion dollar
machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who
had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day,
he marked a small “x” in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, “This is where your problem is”. The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark $1
Knowing where to put it $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.
> >Understanding Engineers - Take Five (My favorite)
What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers?
Mechanical Engineers build weapons.
Civil Engineers build targets.
Understanding Engineers - Take Six
“Normal people … believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.”
------- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle
> > Understanding Engineers - Take Seven
An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress. The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship. The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and mystery he found there.
The engineer said, “I like both.”
“Both?”
Engineer: “Yeah. If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the lab and get some work done.”
> > Understanding Engineers - Take Eight (second favorite)
An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess”. He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.
The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week.”
The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.
The frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want.”
Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.
Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?”
The engineer said, “Look I’m an engineer. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that’s cool.”
A mathematician’s pickup line:
Wanna maximize the function of my natural log?
Yes, well done 
“…sum of the squares of the other two sides.”
This being a geeky thread and all.
I love these Heisenberg jokes.
History geek joke:
The Chairman (of East Germany’s Communist Party) wakes up, yawns, stretches, and looks out the window to see a bright shining sun.
The Chairman says, “Good morning, sun!”
The sun cheerily replies, “Good morning, Chairman!”
Right before lunch, the Chairman looks out of the window and sees the sun high in the sky.
The Chairman says, “Good afternoon, sun!”
The sun yells back, “Good afternoon, Chairman!”
A couple of hours later, the Chairman takes another peek out of the window and sees the sun still shining brightly.
[spoiler]The Chairman says, “Good evening, sun!”
The sun says, “Fuck you, I’m in the West now!”[/spoiler]
I’ve posted this before, but it’s one of my favorites so I’m going to post it again.
chown -R us ./base
Three engineers are discussing theology (yeah, like that ever happens!). The mechanical engineer says, “God must be a mechanical engineer, because His greatest achievement is the human body, which is the universe’s most complex and intricate machine.” The electrical engineer says, "Yes, but what distinguishes man is the human brain and nervous system, which is essentially an electrical system, so God must be an electrical engineer. The civil engineer says, “You’re both wrong. God must be a civil engineer, because who else but a civil engineer would run a wastewater treatment line directly through a recreational area?”
What is ∫ (1/cabin) dcabin ?
log(cabin)
What do you get when you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?
Pumpkin pi
zsh seems to handle that well enough, but Cygwin actually crashed my Windows box when I tried it. Of course, it give me this error message.