The New Joke Thread

[Tom_F]

For the Christmas movie fans among us:

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

...I used to have 3 friends who worked for Raytheon: a design engineer, a production engineer, and an old field service technician. They made a good team. The design engineer would send his design to the production engineer who would make him change the hard to build bits. They would then send it on to the field engineer who would say "your f*cking joking right?"...

I've an acquaintance who's a retired Boeing engineer. Told a story about when they decided to digitize most/?all the 747 blueprints. He described being many weeks into the process when he got stuck lining some of the stuff he was responsible for.

He went to the shop who made components that he was digitizing. The shop guy couldn't understand what the engineer's problem was....proceeded to produce the floor drawings where the number "747" was about the only thing the floor prints had in common with the master prints that my acquaintance had spent a hell of a lot of time working on...had to redo a bunch of work.

[ChrisJHC]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

More industries should follow that lead...like marine diesel engines...design engineers should have to work on the end product!

Or parachute riggers who have to randomly jump with one of the chutes they’ve just packed.

[MicHughV]

as someone that has worked with countless engineers of every discipline, I shudder to think that these people walk amongst us....if there is a more complicated way of doing something...an engineer will find it...if a child can write 2+2=4 on a single line, an engineer can take four pages to do the same thing....and his/her answer will be 3.9999999

[JoeRobertJr]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

as someone that has worked with countless engineers of every discipline, I shudder to think that these people walk amongst us....if there is a more complicated way of doing something...an engineer will find it...if a child can write 2+2=4 on a single line, an engineer can take four pages to do the same thing....and his/her answer will be 3.9999999

If you write that as 3.999..., then the engineer is correct.

[GordMay]

[Eigenvector]

a few

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

as someone that has worked with countless engineers of every discipline, I shudder to think that these people walk amongst us....if there is a more complicated way of doing something...an engineer will find it...if a child can write 2+2=4 on a single line, an engineer can take four pages to do the same thing....and his/her answer will be 3.9999999

Of course that is incorrect - thirty-nine million, nine-hundred ninety-nine nine-hundred ninety-nine is correctly written:

39.999.999

Of course if the engineer was writing three point nine, nine, nine, nine, nine,
nine, nine
Then it should be written;

3,9999999

Assuming he is in Europe or many other places outside the US

[Eigenvector]

Life’s tough. It’s even tougher without fractions. – James Bondo 1998

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

as someone that has worked with countless engineers of every discipline, I shudder to think that these people walk amongst us....if there is a more complicated way of doing something...an engineer will find it...if a child can write 2+2=4 on a single line, an engineer can take four pages to do the same thing....and his/her answer will be 3.9999999

So there are children's counting numbers and there are number line numbers. On a number line there are infinitely more numbers between 3 and 5 than just 4, where the probability of ever reaching 4 is zero, and engineers work in that space. While this is reality, I suggest that this isn't intuitive, such that most walking about think in terms of counting numbers. The question is, who are the zombies.

Trying to extract a joke out of this....

2,500 years ago two Pythagoreans walk in to a bar. Bartender has but a single pint of beer remaining. The Pythagoreans say "easy enough, we'll just divide the beer in half." The bartender, named Hippasus, explains that no matter how you look at it, you can't ever divide anything perfectly in half. A manned named Xeno, himself already in the bar, overhears this, but learned nothing.

The Pythagoreans, ultra-egalitarian, were infuriated that Hippasus should prove the impossibility of dividing anything perfectly in half, that their egalitarian utopia was fundamentally unattainable per the laws of nature. Factions formed within the previously egalitarian Pythagorean clan. One ~half wanted to move forward, accepting Hippasus' reality. The other ~half wanted to "make Pythagorea Great Again" by simply ignoring the nature of reality proven by Hippasus. The first ~half went on to develop more sophisticated mathematics. The second ~half...the "Great Again" ~half...stuck to 2 + 2 = 4 black-and-white thinking business, later co-opting a theology that promoted black and white thinking, even when its textbook described complex number theory.

Fast forward through Shakespeare's depiction of two dots in space with a curious nature about them, through Schrödinger & friends depiction of two dots in space with a curious nature about them, though Lucas' depiction (with Shakespeare's copyright long dead) of two warring dots in space connected by a ubiquitous force about them, always in flux...

So in 2020 two men are sitting in a bar. The first one says "can you believe these new-age people with their 2 + 2 doesn't equal 4 business?" The second one says "So true! I cant believe that these people walk amongst us!" Meanwhile a curmudgeon in the corner of the bar mumbles to himself 'dogs, also, bark at what they do not understand.' All of a sudden a termite walks in and asks "where's the bar tender?"

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Eigenvector

Life’s tough. It’s even tougher without fractions. – James Bondo 1998

Life's tough.
It's even tougher, for the stupid.


With apologies to George V. Higgins
In his novel/screenplay for “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”:
A character named Jackie Brown, who specialized in acquiring guns for fellow criminals, employed the line. Brown thought it would be foolish to drive into the woods, to meet with two strangers armed with machineguns. to perform a transaction. Instead, he told a messenger that the two men should come to him.
"... This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid. Now you go and get them, and I’ll be waiting here. When you come back I’ll tell you what to do next. Move..."

[Narfi]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Life's tough.
It's even tougher, for the stupid.
[/I]

I dont know....
I think life is tough
It is tougher for the very stupid
It is toughest for the very intelligent
But I think the somewhat stupid have it the easiest and are the happiest

~Someone who considers himself somewhat intelligent yearning to be somewhat stupid, but is perhaps very stupid yearning to be somewhat stupid?

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

as someone that has worked with countless engineers of every discipline, I shudder to think that these people walk amongst us....if there is a more complicated way of doing something...an engineer will find it...if a child can write 2+2=4 on a single line, an engineer can take four pages to do the same thing....and his/her answer will be 3.9999999

True. Often when I see an overly complex solution to a simple problem, I think...designed by a bored engineer on a Friday afternoon!

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Narfi

I dont know....
I think life is tough
It is tougher for the very stupid
It is toughest for the very intelligent
But I think the somewhat stupid have it the easiest and are the happiest

~Someone who considers himself somewhat intelligent yearning to be somewhat stupid, but is perhaps very stupid yearning to be somewhat stupid?

Ignorance is bliss!

[socaldmax]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

as someone that has worked with countless engineers of every discipline, I shudder to think that these people walk amongst us....if there is a more complicated way of doing something...an engineer will find it...if a child can write 2+2=4 on a single line, an engineer can take four pages to do the same thing....and his/her answer will be 3.9999999

I once met a guy who introduced himself as a civil engineer. I started laughing hilariously, then I noticed he wasn't laughing. I told him I thought he was joking, and in a very serious voice, he said, "Why would I joke about my career?"

I answered, "Because you're the first person I've met who actually admitted to being a civil engineer!"

"What's wrong with that?"

"Here, I'll show you." I drew a 3 lane fwy in the sand. Then I added a 270* turn entrance, then after that, a 270* exit. I asked him, "Does this fwy configuration look familiar?"

"Yes, that's how we typically build fwy off and on ramps."

"OK, so the incoming traffic has to slow to about 30 mph to negotiate the 270* turn, then they must accelerate to merge into the fwy flowing at about 75 mph. Meanwhile, the fwy traffic exiting less than 1/4 mi later has to slow to merge into the exit lane, meanwhile swapping lanes and merging past the accelerating incoming traffic. This is where the vast majority of accidents occur, where everyone is changing speeds and lanes at once."

"So? That's how we design them."

"Right, but if you asked a 5 yr old kid to design it, he would draw a nice 1/4 mi exit, then an overpass with a 1/4 mi entrance and the exiting traffic would be gone before the entering traffic even got on the on-ramp, they'd never see each other much less have to merge past each other while changing speeds. In essence, a 5 yr old kid is smarter than all of the civil engineers. Don't even get me started on all of the local hwys that start out as 3 lane, then narrow down to 2 lanes so it takes 2 hrs to travel 40 mi during rush hr. How many brain cells does it take to just make it 3 or 4 lanes from end to end? It's even cheaper to build a 3 lane hwy now than to narrow it down to 2 lanes then go back 10 yrs later and add the 3rd lane. If you ever wonder why people either laugh at you, or are angry with you, there's your answer! A 5 yr old could do a better job!"