Ask a Stupid Quetion Get a Stupid Answer

[zoobyshoe]

What's a non sequitur, and why is it two words ?

And it is for that reason that young Alfred never learned to do ciphers with his left foot.


I can't get the image of young Alfred and Albert there on the beach, prodding the weird, purple jellyfish with sticks, ruminating over what made it tick, already, at the tender age of eight, sporting the white moustache and wild hair that were their hallmarks in old age. But since they only had one moustache between them, and Alfred commandeered it for most of their childhood (untill he was pressured into relinquishing it to Albert), whose moustache was Alfred wearing in the photographs taken of him during the remaining years of his life?

 

[Gokul43201]

But since they only had one moustache between them, and Alfred commandeered it for most of their childhood (untill he was pressured into relinquishing it to Albert), whose moustache was Alfred wearing in the photographs taken of him during the remaining years of his life?

Trick quetion : there are no later years' photographs of Alfred. We all know that he vaporized one beautiful summer day, when he was sitting at Danken's (the local ice cream parlor), and thinking about weird, purple jellyfish, between spoonfulls of blackberry ice cream. There were several eyewitnesses that will, to this day, recount to you how the ice cream swallowed einstein (it's a relative thing) or how the end of his spoon spontaneously heated up to a temperature of several thousand kelvin, for long enough to just incinerate poor Alfred. Anyway it's quite certain there were no photographs of him taken after that day.

The curious thing though is that all the eyewitnesses also recall seeing Alfred wipe his moustache repeatedly - especially just before he said something like "I think, therefore you are!" ("Ich denke, folglich bestehen Sie"). So the quetion still remains, eh ?

 

[Math Is Hard]

I would suggest then it was a "moo-stache" rather than a mustache observed on his upper lip. It was the thick pinkish-white remnants of blackberry ice-cream and his standard milk chaser which he repeatedly wiped away.

If Alfred said "I think, therefore you are" and Alfred no longer is, then, am I is?

 

[zoobyshoe]

If Alfred said "I think, therefore you are" and Alfred no longer is, then, am I is?

I think so.


Which brings a strange recollection of mine to mind: once, when I was slithering in the fashion of an alarmed salamander through the cold wet, fallen fall leaves, on a forest floor in a Vermont wood, after having nearly been discovered trying to abscond with one of a certain Mr. Barker's bushel baskets of apples, I happened upon a granite slab buried in the leaves. There was nothing special in particular about this, since ancient glaciers left granite slabs and boulders strewn all over New England, but this one seemed to be covered with remarkable symbols.

It looked like nothing less than a language. Perhaps composed of ideograms. Perhaps it was phonetic, I couldn't say. I couldn't say if the lines should be read left to right or up to down. I couldn't say if it were indo-european or sino-mongolian. I couldn't say if it I were even looking at it right side up. All I can say is that it looked to be an artifact, with human intellect behind it.

Curious, I put my back into it and flipped the slab over to see if there was more on the other side.

Just then, an alarmed salamander slithered away through the cold, wet fallen fall leaves on the forest floor, like some schoolboy crawling on all fours away from the farmer whose apples he'd just tried to steal.

I suddenly felt reduced to something like a figure in an M.C. Escher drawing.

How do you suppose that happened?

 

[SEG9585]

You were shrunk by the machine from "Honey I shrunk the kids" and was lying down on an Escher drawing, when someone stepped on you. Hence, you became part of the drawing.


Whats the maximum temperature possible before energy starts to decompose into somethin that isn't energy?

 

[Gokul43201]

Oh, this is T_{MJ}, the jellyfish melting temperature (not the temperature of the "black-or-white body radiation" - but that's a different story). At this temperature, the inside curved surface of the jellyfish becomes undefined, and hence gravity disappears. Actually, it is believed that the entire gravitational potential energy of the system morphs into a state of general uneasiness. (This is more confusing than a state of general relativity.)

Do you know how difficult it is to determine the properties of this state ?

 

[Rahmuss]

Y is Mas Elivashun not listd hear? End how miny thymes wil it knead too bee? Whuts a fork four?

 

[Trancid]

Duh, a fork is used to get some sense out of the rubbish you made...

Can anyone translate what our dear friend Rahmuss said above here?

 

[Marzright]

:¿ )

Can you see the upside down question mark I use for my nose?
(in the tittle)

Ahhh, but more seriousle. I thought there was no such thing as a stupid question, because we are all reaching out the what we make as the new edge of are ignorance.
Mabe there are just stupid awsers. Ex: that's a stupid question.

If we think its a stupid question, I'm thinking we alread understand it and just think its simple. Or we don't understand it at all. Mabe you can seriousle have a question outa place... WEll the other day well doing my medical studies we (my class) were talking about forms of application of medicine, my teacher asked "does anyone know what a plaster is" and I asked "your not talking about the building supplie are you?" I got a Timmy Tally for that one, so I guess I took us back in a loop.

Is my form of writting to self richious?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Reminder:

The game has a form. When posting you first answer the quetion posed in the post preceeding yours. Then you may pose a new stupid quetion.

 

[Math Is Hard]

Do you know how difficult it is to determine the properties of this state ?

If we go alphabetically, this is somewhat harder to determine than the properties of the state of California and slightly easier to determine than the state of Euphoria. Simpson's error bound yields +/- 0.000675 for this.

Back in the day when my eating habits were less-cautious, I sometimes used a utensil provided by a popular fast-food vendor that was touted as part spoon and part fork. I have often wondered what the marketing advantage was for calling this a "spork" rather than a "foon". Can you explain?

 

[Moonbear]

I have often wondered what the marketing advantage was for calling this a "spork" rather than a "foon". Can you explain?

It's quite well known that 'foon is a contraction for "buffoon." According to the neighbors of the inventor, his wife was heard screaming one night, "You 'foon, what sort of useless contraption have you made this time? Get out of my house you worthless, piece of {bleep}! You'll send us to the poor house yet with these useless inventions of yours!" That same night, she tossed all his junk out onto the front lawn and torched his collection of useless inventions. Being overly sensitive about being called a 'foon from then onward, he decided to call the invention the spork.

Speaking of inventions, a most popular example in hypothetical scenarios is the widget. What exactly is a widget?

 

[Gokul43201]

A widget is the guy that gets most badly beaten up in school. He is a combination of a wimp and a midget.

I always escaped getting beaten up in school because I had mastered Oiler's Method. Whenever some bully came to beat me up, I would cooly inform him that I was a master of the Oiler Method, and he would run away in shame and frustration. Anyone else use this for getting out of tight spots ?

 

[bootsam]

KY and a wink usually does it for me.

 

[Finhed]

KY and a wink usually does it for me

so is it the entire state of Kentucky you like?

 

[zoobyshoe]

I always escaped getting beaten up in school because I had mastered Oiler's Method. Whenever some bully came to beat me up, I would cooly inform him that I was a master of the Oiler Method, and he would run away in shame and frustration. Anyone else use this for getting out of tight spots ?

No. I was that bully.


How have things veered from stupid quetions to idiotic chatter?

 

[Math Is Hard]

stupid quetions, like most things in nature, follow their own cycle, I guess.

Speaking of cycles, is it true that nocturnally roving jellyfish tend to "Spring Forward" onto the land in Spring, and "Fall Back" into the ocean in the Fall?

 

[zoobyshoe]

stupid quetions, like most things in nature, follow their own cycle, I guess.

Speaking of cycles, is it true that nocturnally roving jellyfish tend to "Spring Forward" onto the land in Spring, and "Fall Back" into the ocean in the Fall?

It's more like "Slither forward" and "Slide back".

How is it that on some computer monitors the cleverly misspelled, and clearly phrased thread title "Ask a Stupid Quetion, Get a Stupid Answer" seems to read as "Post Random Idiotic Chatter, Especially If It's Not Funny"?

 

[Math Is Hard]

Simple. It's what us IT folk call a PEBKAC.

The biggest drawback to using Oiler's method on a bully, is that you will tend to underestimate the bully. It's also a rather long process that involves stopping, making a correction, and re-estimating the bully, until the bully oftentimes will flee out of boredom rather than shame.
What are some other ways of dealing with bullies that mathematicians and physicists might employ?

 

[zoobyshoe]

What are some other ways of dealing with bullies that mathematicians and physicists might employ?

Most resort to cutting deals concerning homework. Some, less realistic ones, try to convince themselves that the bully, being taller and heavier, exists in a different inertial frame whose time is dilated enough that he'll be too slow to hurt them. That doesn't much work.


Recently I was fortunate enough to be the originator of the newest addition to the English Language, the neologism: schrephimacious. However, the exertion of creating this word left me exhausted with no energy left to forge a meaning for it. Would anyone care to supply a definition for it?

 

[Gokul43201]

schrephimacious : (adj.) showing properties of, or exhibiting the behavior of the class of brick-laying organisms known as the schrephimasons (Etymology - new zoobic) (pronunciation : scruffy-may-shus; click the ((@)) to hear pronunciation)

eg : A bunch of the olden dudes tried to build a Tower (of Babble or watchamacallit) to the Sun, in a schrephimacious manner.

also see schrephimaciously (adv.) : in a schrephimacious manner

eg : A bunch of the olden dudes tried to build a tower (of Babble or watchamacallit) to the Sun, schrephimaciously.

and also, if you're really into this kinda thing, see schrephimason (n.) : class of brick-laying organism (pronunciation : scruffy-mason)

Additional note : your sound player is intermittently malfunctioning.

What was the whole problem with this Tower of Babble (or watchamacallit) ?

 

[Rahmuss]

Ever Answer Absurdity

Can anyone translate what our dear friend Rahmuss said above here?

Y is Mas Elivashun not listd hear? =
Why is Mass Elivation not listed here?

End how miny thymes wil it knead too bee? =
And how many times will it need to be?

Whuts a fork four? =
What's a fork for?

The meaning of which is meaningless, which is what this discussion is all about.

 

[zoobyshoe]

What was the whole problem with this Tower of Babble (or watchamacallit) ?

Apparently (although I wasn't there, myself) Old King Berhardarrabi sent out a bunch of clay tablets to anyone and everyone who'd ever visited Babylon. The tower was mentioned as one of the most visited tourist attractions in the city. So all these classless tourist types started showing up out of nowhere to gawk at the tower. Alot of them started to scrawl graffiti. The schreffimasons were polite at first, then they got a bit snappy toward the vandalistic tourists. The tourists, however, didn't get the schreffimasons occupational jargon, and considered it to be gibberish. They went home reporting that the builders of the tower were babling. That's the version that got written down. The tower never got finished, of course, because the tourists kept kicking parts of it over.

I recently noticed that my sound player is intermittantly malfunctioning. Checking inside, I discovered several gremlins cavorting. I have placed them in a recently vacated hamster cage, but they seem to have no desire to run their excess energy off on the wheel. Instead, they seem determined to discover a way to make the wheel squeek as loudly as physics will permit. Thinking about it, that's probably what I should really have expected. What should I do with them?

 

[Gokul43201]

Keep the gremlins safe till there's a war...and then drop them on the enemy. This may sound like crazy advise but this is just how WWII was won. The RAF pilots were finding loud screeching noises and other strange anomalies with their planes and electronics. It took a while before they found that the mischief was due to a bunch of gremlins in the works. Immediately realizing the destructive power of the gremlins, they collected them all up and dropped them on the Nazis.

Why didn't the Americans drop gremlins on the Japanese ?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Why didn't the Americans drop gremlins on the Japanese ?

This was tried but, it turned out that the fine art of gremlin handling was part and parcel of the ancient samurai tradition. They didn't even blink.

Thinking I'd gotten lucky in a crowded neighborhood this morning, I started to turn into what appeared to be the last empty parking spot within ten miles, only to find someone had left a kitty parked there. It doesn't seem right that a kitty can legally take up a whole parking space, does it?

 

[plover]

Hairball on the bridge...

I never thought it was right that a kitty should take up a whole computer keyboard, but does that stop them?

If you look at larger and larger areas for which it holds that the set { X | X is a parking spot, not occupied(X)=car } contains only one element (call it P), the chance that occupied(P)=kitty approaches 1. Follows directly from the axioms defining kitty.

When you leave the kitty, do you know when to walk away and when to run?

 

[zoobyshoe]

When you leave the kitty, do you know when to walk away and when to run?

I do not generally know, no. Therefore I slither away in the fashion of an alarmed salamander.


One time I found a kitty sitting there with an addressed, stamped envelope it its mouth. Should I have:

a.) Mailed the letter?

b.) Mailed the letter and the kitty?

c.) Mailed the kitty?

d.) Mailed myself?

 

[selfAdjoint]

I do not generally know, no. Therefore I slither away in the fashion of an alarmed salamander.


One time I found a kitty sitting there with an addressed, stamped envelope it its mouth. Should I have:

a.) Mailed the letter?

b.) Mailed the letter and the kitty?

c.) Mailed the kitty?

d.) Mailed myself?

Obviously you should have refreshed the kitty-letter. (You knew that was coming!)

Assuming you mailed yourself, what would the return address be?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

All of my mail goes out with The White House as a return address.

So what do you think the president does with my stuff?

 

[jimmy p]

So what do you think the president does with my stuff?

... well only the classiest toilet paper is used in the White House.




I always send a letter off to Santa Claus at Christmas telling him I have been good and give him a list of what I want. He never delivers what I want though. Why is this so?