1.4.1 Other Disciplines
• One day a mathematician decides that he is sick of math and wants to become a fireman. So the mathematician walks down to the fire department and announces that he wants to become a fireman. The fire chief says, "Well, you look like a good guy. I'd be glad to hire you, but first I have to give you a little test." The firechief takes the mathematician to the alley behind the fire department which contains a dumpster, a spicket, and a hose. The chief then says, "OK, you're walking in the alley and you see the dumpster here is on fire. What do you do?" The mathematician replies, "Well, I hook up the hose to the spicket, turn the water on, and put out the fire." The chief says, "That's great...perfect. Now I have to ask you just one more question. What do you do if you're walking down the alley and you see the dumpster is not on fire?" The mathematician puzzles over the question for awhile and the finally says, "I light the dumpster on fire." The chief yells, "What? That's horrible! Why would you light the dumpster on fire?" The mathematician replies, "Well, that way I reduce the problem to one I've already solved."
• A biologist, a chemist, and a physicist are taking a walk through the country when they come upon a cow. For some odd reason, none of them knew what it was. The biologist thinks for a second and then declares, "I know what that is. That's Bos Bovine." The chemist looks for a second and then says, "It's just a carbon-based life form, approximately 75% water, and the remaining 25% trace elements." The physicist stares blankly for a second and then says, "Well.... I guess we could approximate it as a sphere."
• A theoretical physicist, an experimental physicist, and a mathematician are all locked in separate rooms for a week with only 1 can of soup and are told that if they want to eat they must find a way to open the can. After 1 week the rooms were opened:
• The experimental physicist's room had multiple dents in the walls, with a few soup stains, showing how he had thrown his can against the wall until he figured out the exact angle needed to open the can. He then threw the can at the wall at that angle, opened the can, and ate the soup. The theoretical physicist's room was covered in equations and 1 dent in the wall, showing he calculated the exact angle needed to open the can, threw the can at the wall at that angle, opened the can, and ate the soup. The mathematician was found in his room seated on the floor with the unopened can repeating, "I define this can to be open!"
• MURPHY'S LAWS OF COMPUTING
1. When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.
2. When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it's probably obsolete.
3. The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.
4. When the going gets tough, upgrade.
5. For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction.
6. To err is human . . . to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human, it is downright natural.
7. He who laughs last probably made a back-up.
8. If at first you do not succeed, blame your computer.
9. A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.
10. The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.
11. A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want to do.
1.4.3 Students
• Top ten ways the Bible would have been different if written by college students.
10). Loaves and Fishes replaced by Pizza and Chips
9). Ten Commandments are actually only five, but because they are double-spaced and written in a large font, they look like ten.
8). Forbidden fruit would have been eaten because it wasn't dorm food.
7). Paul's Letters to the Romans become Paul's E-Mail to the Romans.
6). Reason Cain killed Abel: They were roommates.
5). The place where the end of the world occurs, not the Plains of Armageddon, rather Finals.
4). Book of Armaments would be in there somewhere.
3). Reason why Moses and followers walked in desert for 40 years: They didn't want to ask directions and look like a Freshman.
2). Tower of Babel blamed for Foreign Language requirement.
1). Instead of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh, He would have put it off until the night before it was due and then pulled an all-nighter and hoped no one noticed.
Chani Silverberg and Seth Pertain
• THESE ARE ACTUAL EXCERPTS FROM STUDENT SCIENCE EXAM PAPERS:
Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the organ of the species.
Benjamin Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats backwards.
The theory of evolution was greatly objected to because it made man think.
Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillers.
The dodo is a bird that is almost decent by now.
To remove air from a flask, fill it with water, tip the water out, and put the cork in quick before the air can get back in.
The process of turning steam back into water again is called conversation.
A magnet is something you find crawling all over a dead cat.
The Earth makes one resolution every 24 hours.
The cuckoo bird does not lay his own eggs.
To prevent conception when having intercourse, the male wears a condominium.
To collect fumes of sulfur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube.
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
Algebraical symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
Geometry teaches us to bisex angles.
A circle is a line which meets its other end without ending.
The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects.
The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
Artificial insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull.
An example of animal breeding is the farmer who mated a bull that gave a great deal of milk with a bull with good meat.
We believe that the reptiles came from the amphibians by spontaneous generation and study of rocks.
English sparrows and starlings eat the farmers grain and soil his corpse.
By self-pollination, the farmer may get a flock of long-haired sheep.
If conditions are not favorable, bacteria go into a period of adolescence.
Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire.
Vegetative propagation is the process by which one individual manufactures another individual by accident.
A super-saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold.
A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle.
Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
A person should take a bath once in the summer, and not quite so often in the winter.
The hookworm larvae enters the human body through the soul.
When you haven't got enough iodine in your blood you get a glacier.
It is a well-known fact that a deceased body harms the mind.
Humans are more intelligent than beasts because the human branes have more convulsions.
For fainting: rub the person's chest, or if a lady, rub her arm above the hand instead.
For fractures: to see if the limb is broken, wiggle it gently back and forth.
For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered, then kill it.
For nosebleed: put the nose much lower than the body.
For drowning: climb on top of the person and move up and down to make artificial perspiration.
To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose.
For head colds: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat.
For snakebites: bleed the wound and rape the victim in a blanket for shock.
For asphyxiation: apply artificial respiration until the patient is dead.
Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative.
Bar magnets have north and south poles, horseshoe magnets have east and west poles.
When water freezes you can walk on it. That is what Christ did long ago in wintertime.
When you smell an odorless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide.
• Source: Rukshan Jayawardene - The First Realizations That You're Not In College Anymore
You're waking up at 6 am instead of going to bed.
Beers at lunch get you reprimanded.
College sweatshirts are `casual' instead of dress-up.
Your parents charge rent.
Your parents walk in on you having sex, not your roommate.
The 4 food groups are no longer beer, pizza, ramen and cereal.
It's `getting late' when it's 9:30 p.m.
Three Words: School Loan Payments.
You make thousands of dollars a year - and still can't afford that dream Porsche.
You start eyeing the Light Beer section appreciatively.
Pickup football games mean that at least one person will be in the hospital by game's end.
Your friends are discussing,
THEN: GPA's, phone rates and tonsil hockey;
NOW: IRA's, Interest rates and their kid's orthodontia.
Sleeping on the couch is a no-no.
Naps are no longer available between noon and 6 p.m.
Sneakers are now `weekend shoes'.
The letter from mom and dad now have portraits of their `other' grandchildren instead of cash.
Dinner and a movie - The whole date instead of the beginning of one.
Your girlfriend being pregnant brings thought of tax deductions instead of coronaries.
Jack and Cokes become Dewers on the Rocks.
The only drugs you take are Tums and Tylenol.
That weak single you hit in the intramural softball game is now remembered as a Varsity dinger for the League Championship.
You get your news from sources other than USA Today, ESPN Sportscenter and MTV News.
Random hook-ups are no longer acceptable.
You wear more ties/skirts in a week than you owned while taking classes.
You find yourself reminiscing fondly of 2-hour Calculus exams.
You empathize with the characters from `Friends'.
METABOLISM SLOWDOWN.
Football season tickets go from $75 for the season with dozens of friends to $750 for the season with the three other guys who get away from the family.
Wine appreciation expands beyond Boone's and Mad Dog.
You actually eat breakfast foods at breakfast time.
Grocery lists actually contain relatively healthy food.
When drinking, you say at least once per night, `I just can't put it down the same as I used to'.
You are the only person over the age of 16 in your neighborhood with a Sega.