I must say, among all these jokes, this was the one I didn’t understand. Although if, as you say, it isn’t a joke, what am I missing? April fools on me? Anyways, my contribution, more a groaner than an intellectual joke…
A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?”
I pondered that one too and the best I could make out of it was: ‘Be where the llama spits’. For the person standing there reading the sign, apparently they were already in the right place.
FYI, according to the roadies who worked on “Einstein on the Beach” the repetitive knock knock joke IS Phillip Glass’s favorite joke and he “practically falls off the bar stool every time he tells it.” (excerpt, as told it doesn’t have a punchline… you just keep repeating it till someone gets it an laughs.)
Here’s my fave physics limerick.
There once was a racer named Fiske
who took a considerable risk
When his dragster caught traction
the Fitzgerald Contraction*
reduced his wazoo to a disk!
And this one is more a snappy retort – esp if you know anyone who likes to seem smart by going about quoting Hamlet.
“too be or not to be… that is the Question…”
A: No, that’s the answer. The question is: “what’s the square root of 4b squared?”
*tendency of objects to become foreshortened as speeds approach lightspeed
I suppose if you’re Phillip Glass, the punch line would be redundant!
When I tell it, people usually go through a series of emotions. First, mild anticipation. Then, frustration, curiosity, boredom, and when they finally are so fed up they’re about to walk away, I give 'em the punchline. I think Phillip might appreciate that.
Heard one similar to this. It is a big research department and every morning the head economist looks at a card. When he dies, they look at the card. It says:
This isn’t really a joke, but it’s undeniably intellectual and I thought it was extremely funny. YMMV.
Bertrand Russell, the philosopher and mathematician, wrote some funny stuff about Hegel in one of his “Unpopular Essays”. I don’t have it immediately at hand, but his presentation is funnier than my summary. If such things interest you, I urge you to look for this collection.
The Absolute Idea is pure thought thinking about itself. The Hegelian dialectic is the cycle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis which eventually arrives at the embodiment of the Absolute Idea in the real world. Hegel thought the Absolute Idea was embodied in the German State of his time (which was paying his salary). Why the dialectic is necessary is unclear. One might suppose that the Absolute Idea made mistakes when it tried to embody itself in events. This is not, of course, what Hegel would have said.
A good friend was a physics major, and told me this joke the other night. I could not think of anyone to tell it to, but then I thought of you guys. I can’t veiw the last page of this thread right now, but I have to post this joke. Please forgive me if it has already been done here.
Heisenberg gets pulled over by a policeman. The Cop say’s “Do you know how fast you were going?”
Heisenberg says, “No, but I know where I am.”