Old and New Jokes

Q: Why wasnt the Virgin Mary a blonde?

A: She wouldnt have been old enough to bear children!

A button for a coat of paint.

Sheets for an oyster bed.

False teeth for a rivers mouth.

Music for a rubber band.

Shoes for a walking stick.

A saddle for a clothes horse!

What is the toughest animal in the world? The sheep that steel wool comes from…

Did you hear about the new mens magazine that caters exclusively to married men?

Its like Playboy or Penthouse magazine, except the centerfold is the same month after month after month…

The Capitalism, the Socialism, and the Communism meet one day and decide to have a small party among themselves.

Since they had nothing to drink and eat, the Socialism said he was going out to buy something. So he leaves.

An hour passes, then two hours, three, its getting very late, and the two friends are about to go home, but then the Socialism finally returns.

He makes his excuses and says he bought vodka but then he had to wait in a huge line for sausage.

Not quite believing, the Capitalism wonders: Whats the line?

And whats the sausage? asks the Communism.

In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with their own Japanese Haiku poetry, each only 17 syllables, five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third …

A file that big?

It might be very useful.

But now it is gone.

The Web site you seek

Can not be located but

Countless more exist.

Chaos reigns within.

Reflect, repent, and reboot.

Order shall return.

Aborted effort:

Close all that you have worked on.

You ask far too much.

Windows NT crashed.

I am the Blue Screen of Death.

No one hears your screams.

Yesterday it worked.

Today it is not working.

Windows is like that.

First snow, then silence.

This thousand dollar screen dies

So beautifully.

With searching comes loss

And the presence of absence:

My Novel not found.

The Tao that is seen

Is not the true Tao until

You bring fresh toner.

Stay the patient course.

Of little worth is your ire.

The network is down.

A crash reduces

Your expensive computer

To a simple stone.

Three things are certain:

Death, taxes, and lost data.

Guess which has occurred.

You step in the stream,

But the water has moved on.

This page is not here.

Out of memory.

We wish to hold the whole sky,

But we never will.

Having been erased,

The document youre seeking

Must now be retyped.

Serious error.

All shortcuts have disappeared.

Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

Sign seen in London department store: Bargain Basement Upstairs

Sign seen in the vicinity of Victoria Station: Closed for official opening.

Sign in a Paris hotel elevator: Please leave your values at the front desk.

Sign in a hotel in Athens: Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 A.M. daily.

Sign in a Yugoslavian hotel: The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.

Q: What is the difference between a cello and a coffin?
A: The coffin has the corpse on the inside.

A farmer was milking his cow. He was just starting to get a good rhythm going when a bug flew into the barn and started circling his head. Suddenly, the bug flew into the cows ear. The farmer didnt think much about it, until the bug squirted out into his bucket. It went in one ear and out the udder.

Here is the report on our SCIENTIFIC CORRECTNESS SURVEY. The question was:



Is faster-than-light travel possible?



This survey drew an onslaught of opinions.



The vote was a landslide (72%) for the YES side. Thus, another controversy is put to rest. Henceforth, it will be scientifically correct to believe that faster-than-light travel is possible.



Opinions ranged from positive to negative, and from simple (Yes) to hideously complex. While the results are interesting, the variety of methods used to obtain them is dazzling.

* * *

Some readers used fuzzy logic:

I have never really believed that light actually goes at the speed of light. Have we any proof? I worked out that it should go at root two times the speed of light (c) making the constant itself irrelevant.

–Graeme Winter

* * *

Other readers used higher-level fuzzy logic:

This is an interesting question, coincidentally I was driving through a Minnesota blizzard last week when my wife told me to slow down because I was over driving my headlights. I was so excited I almost spilled my coffee because I thought that she meant I was traveling faster than the speed of light, but then I realized that she meant that because of the poor conditions, the stopping distance for my car was greater than my visibility.

–Don Berryman

* * *

One reader used tangential logic:

Since light has yet to dawn on school boards here in Texas, we are unable to answer this question.

–Julia Frugoli

* * *

Some took a theoretical bent:



Yes, but no matter what the destination, you always arrive at night.

–Dick Baker



My fraternity brother Charles Jones (MIT 63) created a faster- than-light vehicle in 1960. A beam of light is reflected in a mirror. Approaching the mirror, the lights velocity is (+)c. After reflection it is -c. Ergo at the instant of reflection, its velocity is 0. When the vehicle passes the mirror, it goes faster than light.

–A. D. Snider

* * *

Others relied on advanced theories:



Faster than light travel IS possible but only if you are facing backwards.

–Charles Belair



It depends on how fast the light is going.

–Michael Castleman

* * *

Some readers cited empirical evidence:



Of course. It is demonstrated every week in Star Trek: The Next Generation. They also demonstrate crystal power, telepathy, reversal of the polarity of neutron fluxes in starboard power couplings, and other facets of modern science.

–Stephen Trier



No. No no no no no no. Most people think Star Trek has solved the problem of faster-than-light travel. I am much more fascinated by Star Treks solution to the sound-in-a-vacuum problem.

–Karen Lingel



Yes! E-mail uses delivery through electrical circuits, therefore traveling at the speed of light (one of the reasons for its popularity over the historically traditional US Postal Service). America OnLine uses these same electrical circuits. It is well known that almost anything travels faster than AOL these days.

–G. Borochoff

* * *

Not everyone relied on intellectual arguments. Two readers, Charlie Cerf and Peter Thorp, sent in variants of the same classical argument:

There was a young lady called Bright

who could travel much faster than light.

She departed one day

in a relative way

and returned on the previous night

* * *

Practical experience, too, was useful in solving the question:



Of course faster-than-light travel is possible. However, the probability that your luggage will wind up at the wrong destination increases as the cube of the velocity.

–Bob OHara



Yes. Faster than light travel is possible and can be readily demonstrated by making the mistake of having two dates show up at your place at the same time. Ive done this and witnessed first hand the flight, which happens so fast that you cant see it.

–P. Hughes



Yes, but tickets must be purchased at least three weeks in advance and a Saturday night stay is required.

–Kristina Pawlikowski



After my cat decided it was play time at AM, he was forcefully accelerated from the bed. Quickly, his velocity reached the of light resulting in a mid-air white hot flash of spontaneous combustion (matter to energy.) Conversely, all internal energies (neuroelectrical, biochemical, etc.) were converted to matter. A strange ash covered the room, very similar to scoopable litter. The other possibility is that he landed on my camera equipment and has been hiding ever since.

–Don Copeland

* * *

Finally, one response defied categorization: Of course, as a physics teacher I tell my students that faster- than-light travel is impossible, but thats just to crush their spirits.

–LaNelle Ohlhausen