1/ A major story from Frank Rich is an event, and this is a frank look at Hillary Clinton's new book [Hard Choices] that she has been hard at work promoting, and how the image in her book jibes with her life......needless to say Mr. Rich sees some contradictions.
A most interesting look at our future President.....perhaps......
Good Hillary, Bad Hillary
What’s worse than being depicted as a bloodthirsty power-monger with a filthy mouth? Depicting yourself so blandly that no one cares.
- By Frank Rich
- Published Aug 12, 2014
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(Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images. Photo-illustration by Murphy Lippincott.)
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Thirty years ago, Michael Kinsley, then with The New Republic, sought to prove his theory that few of Washington’s elites actually read the highfalutin best sellers that they dutifully buy and profess to admire. At a local bookstore, he slipped a note with his phone number deep into the pages of hot new books by the likes of the foreign-policy hand Strobe Talbott and the political pundit Ben Wattenberg, promising a $5 reward to anyone who read that far. Kinsley reported that no one called.
In the digital age, we have the technology to address this same question on a national scale. This summer, a University of Wisconsin mathematician, Jordan Ellenberg, created a small stir byinventing what he called the “Hawking Index” in honor of Stephen Hawking’s much-praised, if not necessarily much-read, A Brief History of Time. Using Amazon’s posted lists of the top five “popular highlights” in books notated by Kindle readers—and the page numbers those highlights fall on—Ellenberg crafted a quasi-scientific formula to compute how thoroughly best sellers were being consumed. At the high end by far was Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch,which scored an anomalous 98.5 percent on the Hawking Index. Among nonfiction books, Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys was a leader, at 21.7 percent. At the bottom, breaking Hawking’s previous low (6.6 percent), was the most-written-about best seller of the year, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, at 2.4 percent. It didn’t take long for a wiseass at the WashingtonPost to note that another best seller fell still lower than Piketty on the Hawking scale, at 2.04 percent: Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices.
2/ Timothy Egan with a great column in the Times on the fires in the Pacific Northwest, and the cries for the gub'mint to help from the same conservatives who want to cut budgets while our infrastructure is crumbling......the hypocrisy is disgusting......
In the heat, in the still gloaming, we set up camp near a snowbank across from a glacier and a symphony of waterfalls. North Cascades National Park, a few hours’ drive from Seattle, can always be counted on as a compress to the rest of the country’s fever.
Then, out of the park a few days later, down the valley to the arid east, it seems as if half of Washington State is on fire. Smoke, devastation, ashen orchards of charred fruit, standing dead pines. More than 250,000 acres have burned in the largest fire in the state’s history, the Carlton Complex. About 300 homes have been destroyed. A small army of firefighters, at a cost of $50 million so far, is trying to hold the beast in the perimeter, between days when the mercury tops 100 degrees.
With this kind of loss comes blame. It’s President Obama’s fault. Why? Because everything is his fault in the inland West, where ignorance rides the airwaves of talk radio. Amid the conservative cant, a great irony: People who hate government most are the loudest voices demanding government action to save their homes.
Those flares will die down. What can’t be so easily dismissed is what the fires say about an emerging American ethos of delaying long-term fixes for our major problems. Smart foresters had been warning for years that climate change, drought and stress would lead to bigger, longer, hotter wildfires. They offered remedies, some costly, some symbolic. We did nothing. We chose to wait until the fires were burning down our homes, and then demanded instant relief.
We have a Congress that won’t legislate, an infrastructure that’s collapsing, a climate bomb set to go off. We won’t solve the immigration crisis even as desperate children throw themselves in the Rio Grande. Income inequality threatens to make a great democracy into an oligarchy.
3/ Remember the Harry Potter movies? This "Honest Trailer" should amuse you then.....3 minutes.......
4/ Nick Hanauer is a plutocrat....an oligarch, and he has his eyes open and sees pitchforks coming. We had his written article on this subject in DDD a few months back, but this is a TED talk he gave this month. He is a decent speaker, but it's his clarity and vision that keeps you watching.......
This is well worth 14 minutes of your time.....
Nick Hanauer is a rich guy, an unrepentant capitalist — and he has something to say to his fellow plutocrats: Wake up! Growing inequality is about to push our societies into conditions resembling pre-revolutionary France. Hear his argument about why a dramatic increase in minimum wage could grow the middle class, deliver economic prosperity ... and prevent a revolution.
5/ An excellent John Oliver piece on the police and their toys - a very, very good 14 minutes and it's got quite a few jokes, but it's more serious than some of his earlier riffs......he is visibly pissed at times......
Well worth watching!
A visibly pissed John Oliver spent time last night focusing on the grand clusterfuck of the response to the death of Michael Brown: the racial tension, the incompetency of the leadership, the overt militarization of the police, everything.
“As a general rule, no one should ever be allowed to say ‘There is no history of racial tension here,’ because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth,” he scoffed, astonished that Ferguson’s mayor was totally oblivious to racial tension in the city.
And it only got worse with Missouri governor Jay Nixon‘s idea of placing a curfew on the city: “So you took a community tired of being treated like criminals, and then imprisoned them in their own houses, and in the process of doing so, took on the tone of a pissed-off vice principle trying to restore order at a school assembly…That is profoundly patronizing!”
“I know the police love their ridiculous, unnecessary military equipment,” he continued. “So here’s another patronizing test: let’s take it all away from them, and if they can make it a whole month without killing an unarmed black man, only then can they get their fucking toys back.”
6/ The militarization of our police is one of the major stories coming out of Ferguson, but it's been building for years. This is an excellent article on how and why your local cops are turning into soldiers.......and these tactics are mainly being used in the drug war, and disproportionately on minorities.
But there are some other points worth mentioning......
1/ If the police nationwide are being given military equipment, where is the money for these expensive toys coming from? It's an illustration of how the military-industrial complex is an unstoppable juggernaut, beyond accountability.......
2/ Here's a radical but entirely possible theory - the oligarchy is arming police because they are preparing for a revolution, and if our society keeps getting more and more unequal, it's coming. If you watched the Nick Hanauer talk [#4], it ties into this theory - the oligarchs think it will be necessary to have a police state to keep the peasants in line and crush any hint of rebellion, so they are quietly getting ready. Ferguson 101.......
3/ The police overreaction to the mainly black protesters in a Southern state like Missouri is an extension of the racism of the right wing and particularily the instutionalised racism in the South, where a majority of whites still, six years later, can't accept the fact the President is black. Ferguson is a typical Dixie town, where all of the power structure is white, most of the businesses are white-owned and the majority black population is not represented.
Jason Westcott was afraid.
One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his home. They were intent on stealing Wescott's handgun and a couple of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was planning on "burning" Westcott, who promptly called the Tampa Bay police and reported the plot.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the investigating officers responding to Westcott's call had a simple message for him: "If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill."
Around 7:30 p.m. on May 27, the intruders arrived. Westcott followed the officers' advice, grabbed his gun to defend his home, and died pointing it at the intruders. They used a semiautomatic shotgun and handgun to shoot down the 29-year-old motorcycle mechanic. He was hit three times, once in the arm and twice in his side, and pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
The intruders, however, weren't small-time crooks looking to make a small score. Rather they were members of the Tampa Bay Police Department's SWAT team, which was executing a search warrant on suspicion that Westcott and his partner were marijuana dealers. They had been tipped off by a confidential informant, whom they drove to Westcott's home four times between February and May to purchase small amounts of marijuana, at $20-$60 a pop. The informer notified police that he saw two handguns in the home, which was why the Tampa Bay police deployed a SWAT team to execute the search warrant.
In the end, the same police department that told Westcott to protect his home with defensive force killed him when he did. After searching his small rental, the cops indeed found weed, two dollars' worth, and one legal handgun -- the one he was clutching when the bullets ripped into him.
Welcome to a new era of American policing, where cops increasingly see themselves as soldiers occupying enemy territory, often with the help of Uncle Sam's armory, and where even nonviolent crimes are met with overwhelming force and brutality.
7/ With the events in Ferguson fresh in our heads, watch this Bill Maher clip from last month again and see how right he was.....he looks at the militarization of the police and how dangerous it is.....he was ahead of the curve, as always......an excellent five minutes, and amusing.....
t’s a topic on which this writer has spilled plenty of ink, but one that goes largely ignored by mainstream media: The troubling militarization of local American police forces.
During his closing monologue of Friday’s Real Time, HBO’s Bill Maher aimed squarely at what has become a largely-unspoken civil liberties threat at home.
“Now that violent crime is at a 40-year low, someone has to explain why your local police department has gone from this to this,” he demonstrated:
Maher ran through the gamut of American small towns (e.g. — Doraville, Ga., Nixon, Mo., Justice, Ill.) that somehow employ military-style tanks in their police departments. These tanks, often gifted by the Pentagon to police departments, come “fresh from our glorious victories in Iraq and Afghanistan,” and are used for unnecessarily over-militarized police exercises.
“Cops all know what it’s like when you get a new toy, you want to use it.” he continued. “I bought a glue gun once, and by the end of the weekend my dog’s face was stuck to the toilet rim. But in West Springfield, Mass., the police department’s new toy is two grenade launchers. Why? In case Boko Haram takes Connecticut?” he joked.
Other interesting moments:
8/ Not many of you reading this have any idea the systems that the working poor face every day to grind them down and make money for the corporations that exploit them, and I'll bet you don't know anything about this problem with the justice system. If you get a ticket, you pay it. But if you don't, you are caught up in a nightmare like many of the poor and minorities are. If you can't pay, they add penalties, fines and interest to your debt and you will end up in jail - and still owe them money!
Two crucial battles broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, this week. The first began with the public airing of sorrow and rage after the death of the eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot by a police officer, on Canfield Court, in the St. Louis suburb, at 2:15 P.M. last Saturday. Then came the local law enforcement’s rejoinder to the early round of protests. Officers rolled in with a fleet of armored vehicles, sniper rifles, and tear-gas cannisters, reinserting the phrase “the militarization of policing” into the collective conscience. The tactical missteps by the town’s police leadership have been a thing to behold. (They’re also to be expected; anyone doubting as much should pick up Radley Balko’s “The Rise of the Warrior Cop.”)
One moment, we see a young man with a welt from a rubber bullet between his eyes; the next, three officers with big guns are charging at another black man who has his hands up. On Thursday, Jelani Cobb filed a powerful account from the sidewalks and homes of Ferguson. Cobb asks about “the intertwined economic and law-enforcement issues underlying the protests,” including, for instance, the court fees that many people in Ferguson face, which often begin with minor infractions and eventually become “their own, escalating, violations.” “We have people who have warrants because of traffic tickets and are effectively imprisoned in their homes,” Malik Ahmed, the C.E.O. of an organization called Better Family Life, told Cobb. “They can’t go outside because they’ll be arrested. In some cases, people actually have jobs but decide that the threat of arrest makes it not worth trying to commute outside their neighborhood.”
The crisis of criminal-justice debt is just one of the many tributaries feeding the river of deep rage in Ferguson. But it’s an important one—both because it’s so ubiquitous and because it’s easily overlooked in the spectacular shadow of tanks and turrets.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/
10/ I love this clip, and it's mainly for guys but also for anyone who flies regularly - so here it is again......
9/ Iggy Azalea is a rock star you have never heard of, but she is superpopular and very clever in her marketing. This music video is a tribute to Quentin Tarentino and shows many references to his movies......in particular "Kill Bill"......
The song is called "Black Widow", and it's not bad at all.......
Iggy Azalea is about to become a big topic of conversation yet again. She just dropped her new video for "Black Widow" featuring Rita Ora and, like the Clueless-referencing "Fancy" before it, the video is jam packed with references. This time to the god of gore, Quentin Tarantino.
Take a memo - don't ever fly into Birmingham, England in the winter. This is a video of crosswind landings and takeoffs by commercial jets that will make you thankful you weren't on those planes! Quite a few aborted landings too, and you can see why......it's eleven minutes and strangely hypnotic, because these are commercial flights with real passengers........
Some landing and take-off highlights in awkward wind conditions at BHX this winter (a record winter for stormy conditions in the UK). Note the frequent flexing of the planes' wings in response to the turbulence.
Of the five "missed approaches" shown, three diverted to other airports, two were "go arounds" and landed successfully on second attempt.
Of the five "missed approaches" shown, three diverted to other airports, two were "go arounds" and landed successfully on second attempt.
11/ President Obama has power, and with the dysfunction in Congress he should be using his power wisely. This story has three ways he could make lives better for all of us, and in the process drive the right wing Republicans wild.....but he won't, because as the author says this would take some cojones.......
Ted Cruz, Barack Obama, Rand Paul (Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson/Yuri Gripas/AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta/Photo montage by Salon)
President Obama is in the doldrums. He has run out of ideas, and out of gas. His strongest supporters are in the grip of a morbid fatalism. There is nothing the president can do any longer, they sigh, because of the intransigent Republicans in the House of Representatives. The great days of the Obama presidency are behind us, everyone seems to believe, and the most this once-promising president can do now are hold convenings and issue small-bore executive orders while awaiting a round of midterm elections that are likely to go against him. Oh, woe is he.
It’s time to snap out of it. Obama is still the most powerful man in the world. The nation still needs presidential action. And the Democrats need action too, if they’re going to avoid disaster this fall.
Last week, I asked around for suggestions, things the Obama administration could do, all on its own, that the Republicans in Congress would be powerless to stop. I heard countless good ideas: Obama could make it absolutely clear to his FCC chairman that net neutrality is the policy of his administration; he could reclassify marijuana so that it is no longer a Class 1 narcotic; he could reform the federal contracting system to discourage outsourcing and promote good labor practices; he could encourage whistleblowers rather than punishing them.
There is also still an opportunity for momentous, headline-making, consensus-shattering deeds. Each of the following three ideas would move the country in the direction Obama has always maintained he wanted to move us—toward accountability, away from inequality, toward a healthy middle class. And each of them is sufficiently big that it might make a difference this fall.
Yes, doing these things would require audacity, but that’s why we elected this guy in the first place. These days it’s either show some boldness—some confrontational cleverness—or resign yourself to killing time for the next two years and hoping President Hillary (or President Huckabee) gets better breaks.
1. President Obama should instruct his Attorney General to start enforcing the nation’s antitrust laws the way Democrats used to do.
12/ This is for anyone interested in science, and it's very well done. On a sliding scale, both up and down, you can can get an appreciation of the relative size of the universe [up], and also the tiny particles that comprise everything [down]......
Quite fascinating!
Recently, NASA scientists combined data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes to discover the most distant galaxy known to date. The galaxy, named Abell2744 Y1, was formed around 13.2 billion years ago when the universe was extremely young. As the universe is expanding, Abell2744 Y1 is currently closer to 40 billion light years away from us, an astounding distance.
Image: Galaxy cluster Abell2744 obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope (Credit: NASA)
But what does that really mean?
Most of us have trouble visualizing the height of buildings, or the distance it takes to get home from work, let alone things on an intergalactic scale. The above interactive graphic made by 14-year-old Cary Huang may be the best tool to help us understand our place in our vast universe. The interactive piece allows the viewer to zoom through scale and space, from quarks to galactic clusters. The real genius of the interface is the ability to scroll back to a familiar object like a car — the time spent scrolling helps to convey a sense of size and distance.
13/ A lovely National Geographic mini-doc of animals, ocean dwellers and birds living their lives, feeding and fighting......four excellent minutes.....
Todays nice video......
14/ Todays George Carlin award [nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care] goes to the USDA which is poised to approve a nasty set of GMO seeds, which will encourage Big Ag farmers to use more quantities of toxic pesticides. This is their solution to the "superweeds".....
Despite its own admission that it will cause an up to seven-fold increase in chemical pesticide use, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is poised to approve a new type of genetically engineered seed built to resist one of the most toxic weedkillers on the market.
Now, total approval hinges on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If that federal body approves the new genetically modified organism (GMO), farmers will be free to plant corn and soy seeds genetically manipulated to live through sprayings of Dow’s Enlist Duo herbicide, a chemical cocktail containing both glyphosate and the antiquated, toxic chemical 2,4-D. Ironically, in the ’90s, chemical companies said the development of GMOs would eliminate the need to use older, more dangerous chemicals like 2,4-D. But as GMO use ramped up over the last few decades, chemical use increased, and many weeds are no longer responding to glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, and the current chemical of choice for GMO farmers. This has created a “superweed” crisis, creating millions of acres of U.S. fields infested with hard-to-kill weeds.
With this week’s USDA final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) suggesting approval of the new GMO, many public food and safety experts say the American public faces unprecedented risks. After all, current chemical use is so high that foods now actually contain “extreme” levels of glyphosate. Because it’s systemic, it actually winds up inside of food. Adding 2,4-D to the mix is even more concerning, given its ties to cancer.
15/ Netflix has just released a new documentary on the state of the world's oceans called "Mission Blue", featuring the marine biologist Sylvia Earle who has devoted her life to protecting the oceans. Needless to say we are close to laying waste to this delicate ecosystem, so this should be a wake-up call to governments everywhere.....
Watch the trailer - it looks really good........
Sylvia Earle sits on a tiny one-person submersible called the Deep Worker. (Credit: Kip Evans)
There are two reasons why you need to watch “Mission Blue,” the new documentary from directors Fisher Stevens and Robert Nixon that premiered Friday on Netflix. For one, it’s a fascinating exploration of the damage we’re causing in the world’s oceans. And even more enticingly, it’s the story of a singular, legendary woman who’s made protecting the seas her life’s mission.
Having begun her career in marine biology in a vastly different time — when the oceans were still largely pristine, and when female scientists were a rarity — Sylvia Earle has become leader in ocean research and awareness, set undersea records, raked in hundreds of awards and honors, established foundations and served as the first female chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Nicknamed “Her Deepness,” she’s also been deemed a “Hero of the Planet” by Time magazine and ”Living Legend” by the Library of Congress.
I could go on. But in seeing Earle speak, and then talking with her myself, the most fascinating thing I kept coming back to was how much she’s seen. After 60 years, and having logged nearly 7,000 hours underwater, she’s in a unique position to report back to those of us on land about what we’re missing. “Why am I driven?” she asks. “Because I can’t put aside the things that I’ve witnessed.”
Soft-spoken but forceful in her convictions, Earle had a lot to say about the good — and the very, very bad — of the current state of our oceans. Check out the trailer for the documentary below, then read on for our conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Todays video - "The Sicilian", one of the many amazing scenes from my second favourite move "True Romance" - this clip features Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper in the classic interrogation of Hopper........note James Gandolfini in the background.......
Note - salty language and violence.......
Todays church joke
About halfway through the church service, Rosebud took a pen and paper out of her purse, and wrote a note and handed it to Rick.
The note said:" I just let out a silent fart, what do you think I should do?"
Rick scribbled back: "Put a new battery in your hearing aid
Todays intellectual jokes...
Don't look at the explanation till you try to get the joke......
1. It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.
Pun is wordplay with two meanings, one literal the other humorous. kleptomaniacs is someone who ‘take things’ (steal).
2. What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
What do you get when you cross an XXXX with a YYYY” is a common opening to a joke, leading the listener to prepare for the expected joke template and punchline. A rhetorical question is a question asked or stated to make a point, and not an actual inquiry with an expectation of an answer. The joke is that that sentence is a rhetorical question. So the answer is you don’t really get a joke, you just get a meaningless rhetorical question. Which is sort of funny, which actually does make it a joke. [Thanks verywary & rocketvat]
3. 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!”
Explanation: If any one of the three logicians does NOT want a beer, the answer to the bartender’s question is “No.” The first logician wants a beer, but doesn’t know whether his two friends do. So he says “I don’t know.” The second logician now knows that the first logician wants a beer, because if he didn’t he would have said no. And though he does want a beer, the he still doesn’t know whether the third logician wants a beer. So he says “I don’t know.” The third logician now knows that the first two logicians want beer, because otherwise one of them would have said no. So, as he also wants a beer, he now knows that all three logician wants a beer. So he can say “Yes.” [Thanks methamatician]
4. Einstein, Newton and Pascal are playing hide and go seek. It’s Einstein’s turn to count so he covers his eyes and starts counting to ten. Pascal runs off and hides. Newton draws a one meter by one meter square on the ground in front of Einstein then stands in the middle of it.
Einstein reaches ten and uncovers his eyes. He sees Newton immediately and exclaims “Newton! I found you! You’re it!”
Newton smiles and says “You didn’t find me, you found Pascal!”
Pascal is Newton over a square meter.
5. How can you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber? Ask them to pronounce unionized.
The difference b/w un-ionized and union-ized.
6. Why do engineers confuse Halloween and Christmas? Because Oct 31 = Dec 25
We use the Decimal base (shorthand DEC) for our number system. Octal is another base system (shorthand OCT) if you convert Decimal 25, it is equivalent to OCT 31.
7. An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The bar tender: “What’ll it be, boys?” The first mathematician: “I’ll have one half of a beer.” The second mathematician: “I’ll have one quarter of a beer.” The third mathematician: “I’ll have one eight of a beer.” The forth mathematician: “I’ll have one sixteenth of a …” The bar tender interrupts: “Oh, fuck the lot of ya!” …and he pours a single full beer.
In mathematics, the infinite series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + · · · converges to a sum of 1.
8. Two kittens on a sloped roof. Which one slides off first?
The one with the lowest mew.
Mew here means friction. coefficient of friction -> μ -> mu -> mew
9. A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and says, “Five beers, please”.
5 in Roman = V
10. The programmer’s wife tells him: “Run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, get a dozen.”
The programmer comes home with 12 loaves of bread.
“Why did you buy 12 loaves of bread!?”, his wife screamed. “Because they had eggs!”
11. A programmer’s wife sends him to the store and says “get some bread, and while you’re there pick up some eggs” The programmer never returns.
The ‘while’ statement in programming languages never ‘returns’ unless something breaks it.
12. A logician’s wife is having a baby. The doctor immediately hands the newborn to the dad.
His wife asks impatiently: “So, is it a boy or a girl” ?
The logician replies: “yes”.
Any questions that use “and” or “or” are logical questions, that is, can either be “true” or “false”. Is it a boy or a girl? Yes (it’s one of them).
13. Entropy isn’t what it used to be
In any real thermodynamic process or a system the total entropy of the at the end versus the beginning is always bigger i.e. it always increases.
14. Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer, the bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve noble gases here.” He doesn’t react.
In chemistry, Helium belongs to the noble gases that doesn’t react to any substance.
15. Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar. And doesn’t.
It refers to the famous Schrödinger’s experiment where he put the cat with a radioactive substance in a box. The experiment postulates that the cat can either be living or dead but we don’t know until we open the box.
16. Two men walk into a bar, the first orders H2O, the second says “I’ll have H2O too!” The second man dies.
First guy says H2O (meaning water). Second guy says H20 (too) as in H202 (meaning hydrogen peroxide). Hydrogen peroxide ishighly reactive and will kill you.
17. A neutron walks into a bar. He orders a beer and asks the bartender how much he owes. The bartender replies, “For you? No charge.”
Atoms are composed of positively charged protons, negatively charged electrons and neutrons with no charge on them.
18. There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who know binary and those who don’t.
In Binary the value 2 is represented by 10 (a one and a zero).
19. A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician are sitting outside of a bar when two men walk into the house across the road… Ten minutes later, three men walk out.
The physicist looks confused and says “There must an error in the measurements.”
The biologist retorts “No, they must have reproduced!”
To which the mathematician says “If one person goes inside, the house will be empty.”
From an outside perspective, there are 0 people inside. Add 2 people to the house, now the house has 2 people. Subtract 3 people (pretend a person materialized out of no where and is missing a person). Now the house has -1 people. So adding 1 person would make the house contain 0 persons, or as we understand it: be empty. [Thanks ibcooley]
20. A Photon checks into a hotel and the bellhop asks him if he has any luggage. The Photon replies “No I’m traveling light”
Photon is a light particle
21. Two atoms are walking down the street. The first one stops and says “I think I just lost an electron!” The second one replies “Are you sure?”
“I’m positive!”
An atom with one less electron is a positively charged atom.
22. A farmer has a problem with foxes eating his hens. So he asks his physicist friend to help find a solution. The physicist spends a day thinking, then replies “Well, I’ve found a solution, but it will only work for spherical chickens in a vacuum”.
Basically, the joke is that scientists can ‘theoretically solve anything’, but the practical application of their work is often hindered greatly by physical effects (such as resistance, gravity, etc.). Hence, spherical chickens (a sphere having equal distribution of forces applied on its surface) and in a vacuum (where there is no resistance). [scepticalprophet]
Physicists always find a solution for ideal condition like “If we have an object moving with x speed and blah blah, ASSUMING there is no other forces and blah, blah”. Well assumptions are like “the object is a perfect sphere” or “there is no frictions, as if we were in vacuum”. Things like that. [ThanksCopioli]
23. Q: What do you get when you put root beer in a square glass? A: Beer
In mathematics, ‘root’ and ‘square’ cancel out each other.
24. A man is on his first visit to Boston, and he wants to try some of that delicious New England seafood that he’d long heard about. So he gets into a cab, and asks the driver, “Can you take me to where I can get scrod?” The driver replies, “I’ve heard that question a thousand time, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive.”
In English, the Pluperfect Subjunctive tense of ‘screwed’ is ‘scord’. And scrod is a type of fish. The driver has heard people asking him to take some place where they can get screwed.
25. Who does Polyphemus hate more than Odysseus?
Nobody!
In “The Odyssey,” the classic sequel to Homer’s “Iliad,” Odysseus goes through a lot of stuff trying to get home…
One of these things is crashing on an island and being captured by a cyclops, who was going to eat him and his crew.
The cyclops’ name is Polyphemus.
One of these things is crashing on an island and being captured by a cyclops, who was going to eat him and his crew.
The cyclops’ name is Polyphemus.
Odysseus gets the cyclops drunk, and Polyphemus asks Odysseus what his name is. Odyssesu says his name is, “Nobody.”
Odysseus blinds the cyclops while he’s sleeping, and then convinces him that the prisoners are escaping through the cracks between the cave entrance and the huge boulder he uses as a door (the cyclops is very dumb).
So Polyphemus opens his cave and shouts out to the other cyclops, “Help! Nobody is attacking me!” or some variation on that. Naturally, the other cyclops think he’s still drunk or insane or whatever and do nothing. Odysseus and his men escape. [Thanks el Águila]
26. A mathematician finishes a large meal and says: √(-1/64)
Explanation: √(-1/64) = √(-1)/(8) = i / 8 = (i over 8)
27. Did you hear about the man who got cooled to absolute zero?
He’s 0K now.
0k = zero Kelvin is equivalent to −273.15°C also known as absolute zero. He’s not OK, he’s 0k
28. There’s a band called 1023MB. They haven’t had any gigs yet.
One gigabyte or one gig in computer storage is 1024 megabytes or 1024MB.
29. A Buddhist monk approaches a hotdog stand and says “make me one with everything”.
The joke is a play on words, as the oft-quoted Buddhist “motto” is to “be at one” or “be at peace” with everything natural in the world.
30. The vendor makes the hot dog and hands it to the Buddhist monk, who pays with a $20 bill. The vendor puts the bill in the cash box and closes it. “Excuse me, but where’s my change?” asks the Buddhist monk. The vendor replied, “Change must come from within.”
When the Buddhist asked for his change, the vendor also used play of words by quoting a famous Buddhist statement “Change must come from within.”
Todays pickup joke
A man walks into a bar and sees an attractive woman sitting by herself and asks,
"May I buy you a cocktail?"
"No thank you," she replies, "alcohol is bad for my legs."
"Sorry to hear that. Do they swell?"
"No, they spread.
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