Ask a Stupid Quetion Get a Stupid Answer

[zoobyshoe]

Why is i illegal to date Grecian Formula in Desertia?

Because Acute Pythagorophobia has reached near epidemic proportions there, and since the Desertians have no word for theorem they refer to theorems as "formulas". (Natives and linguists can tell them apart by ever so subtle differences in inflection.) At any rate, I am ignorant of the cause of the Acute Pythagorophobia.

What is the cause of the Acute Pythagorophobia?

 

[Gokul43201]

What is the cause of the Acute Pythagorophobia?

The fact that one of the members of Pythagorean triples ends up being non-numbers (or Ghost numbers).

For instance, they first figured out that if you drew a right triangle (often referred to as the wrong triangle for the paradox it resulted in) with a side of 3 units (or p2 units in Desertian notation) and a hypotenuse of 5 (p3) units, the number of units of the other side looked like it should be a number, but was clearly one they were ALL unfamiliar with.

So would it be fair to say that Acute Pythagorophobia is really a fear of the unknown ?

 

[franznietzsche]

So would it be fair to say that Acute Pythagorophobia is really a fear of the unknown ?

Absolutely not, they know what ghost numbers are, ghosts!

The real question is, how did they hear about pythagoras?

 

[plover]

The real question is, how did they hear about pythagoras?

Pythagoras became a celebrity on Desertia when broadcasts of the P.P.F. Philosophy[/size] Smackdown that was so popular in ancient Greece reached the Desertia the system and were picked up by many local channels.*

Why are Desertians so fond of tag-team philosophy?

* P.P.F. = Peloponnesian Philosophy Federation

 

[Math Is Hard]

After having been smacked-down by my philosophy professor many times tonight I think I can understand the appeal for the smacker if not the smackee.

This weekend I attended a performance art event. Upon leaving the occasion, I observed that these artists had gone out into the parking lot gluing plastic replicas of human body parts to the cars in the lot while we were inside watching the show. Some cars had heads affixed to them, some had elbows, others fingers, etc. (I am still unsure of the meaning of this.)
Imagine my shock and horror upon reaching my parking space to discover that my car had been toed! Is there anyway to fight this in court?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Imagine my shock and horror upon reaching my parking space to discover that my car had been toed! Is there anyway to fight this in court?

Your car wasn't actually toed, it was ticketed, by which I mean that toe is a free ticket to the groups next performance event The Art of the T.o.E.. There will be a T.o.E jam session by jazz artists in the group during intermissiom. Some people received free tickets to another upcoming event: The Art of the G.U.T.. Those tickets were particularly gross.


That particular group of performance artists also did a show once called Cirque du Poulet which features a lot of chicken parts dressed in dazzling costumes doing astonishing acrobatic feats on high wires and trampolines and bungee cords. I was completely blown away. How do you suppose they train a raw chicken thigh to do such clever things?

 

[franznietzsche]

How do you suppose they train a raw chicken thigh to do such clever things?

Threatening it with a deep fryer of course. You can't really reward a raw chicken thigh, so rather you train it by aversion.

what happens if the thigh finds deep frying to be rather slimming and attractive though? Then how would they train it?

 

[Gokul43201]

Relativistically ! If you want the thigh to leap 20 feet up into the air, you make the audience (or TV camera) plummet downwards.

Among the various military aircraft that I'm familiar with, I'm always puzzled by the choice of names for the A-10 "Warthog" and the MiG-27 "Flogger". Why pick such crazy names ?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Among the various military aircraft that I'm familiar with, I'm always puzzled by the choice of names for the A-10 "Warthog" and the MiG-27 "Flogger". Why pick such crazy names ?

What do you mean funny? Those are the cherished totems of the Secret Brethren (admittedly the brethren have a certain SM thing going).

If you want funny, how many patriots are involved with the Patriot Act?

 

[Gokul43201]

I know Tom Brady was invited to the State of the Union address, so guessing entirely on that basis . . . perhaps the answer is less than or equal to 1.

Anyway, there used to be a time when you could walk about the streets all day, eating cotton candy. Now 'they' are talking about amending the constitution to make this illegal. How do we stop 'them' ?

 

[franznietzsche]

Anyway, there used to be a time when you could walk about the streets all day, eating cotton candy. Now 'they' are talking about amending the constitution to make this illegal. How do we stop 'them' ?

have every single person you know, and every person they know, etc. Call 'them' and leave a voice message every 5 minutes telling them not to do it. Even if they stop listening to the messages, the sheer annoyance of having that many missed calls will eventually coerce them into not committing this irrational act of 'illegalification'.

The real question is why haven't 'they' tried before?

 

[zoobyshoe]

The real question is why haven't 'they' tried before?

Because they have only recently accepted that cotton candy is not actually made of cotton, a notion that the cotton candy lobby seemed continually able to prevent them from questioning, by distracting them with under-the-table "gifts" of cotton candy, in the color of their choice.

In 1920, Alfred E. was persuaded to publish JELLITIVITY, The Special and the General Theory, with the subtitle: A lcear splxenatoin thta nyaneo cna standunder. In chapter IX: The Jellitivity Of Smilatinanity, Alfred provides his reader with a rigorous definition of smilatinanity in order to then go on and demonstrate that it is jellitive. The conditions for smilatinanity are met when: an observer positioned at the midpoint between two incredibly sarcastic people is wilted equally on both sides at the same time by the sound of their ego-crushing guffaws.
How then, though, does he go on to demonstrate that this is jellitive?

 

[plover]

Smilatinanity is, of course, a neuropathy occurring in smilodons. It is rumored that the Neanderthals were driven to extinction due to their inability to provide coordinated bursts of sarcasm while being attacked by a 400 pound cat with 7 inch teeth. A smilodon that has been properly smilatinundated (as the process of applying smilatinanity is called) will cross its eyes, acquire a greenish hue on its foot pads, and warble show tunes while attempting to upstage everybody (which attempt will often cause the smilodon, in its feline confusion, to plunge over the nearest cliff). As the aesthetic sensibilities of the hominids of that era were not very developed, a smilodon was quite harmless in that state.

But how, you may say, is this jellitive? Well, at some point, hominids developed aesthetic sensibilities, which of course were offended by the sight of an enormous cat making like Ethel Merman. The most sensitive among this new breed of hominid would, in fact, expire on the spot. (It is fortunate that soon after this evolutionary development, every last smilodon was kidnapped by aliens for use in nefarious interplanetary experiments in musical theater.) When the autopsies were carried out it was found that some of the internal organs of their fallen comrades had jellitivated into an undifferentiated mass. There are also those who believe that this result was simply an artifact caused by the crude tools used in the autopsies of the era.

When jellitivity was first proposed, there was found to a temporal paradox that indicated that show tunes would spontaneously move through time by jumping to different species even though experiments showed that there was no medium to support this transmission. How was this paradox resolved?

 

[Math Is Hard]

I believe Alfred refuted this argument by showing that if one species says "to-MAY-to" and another says "to-MAH-to" then the whole experiment should be called off.

Today my biology teacher asked me to write an essay on jellyfish. I complained that jellyfish were very slippery and hard to write on. She kicked me out of her class. What should I do now?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Today my biology teacher asked me to write an essay on jellyfish. I complained that jellyfish were very slippery and hard to write on. She kicked me out of her class. What should I do now?

I don't know, but it sounds like she had your best interest in mind: she realized you never make it through the upcoming paper on lions.

Speaking of biology: if plover's explanation of The Jellitivity of Smilatinanity is not simply weird, purple propaganda perpetrated by a jellyfish in bird's clothing, then why, since the big cats are all gone, does anyone still write papers on smilatinanity?

 

[Gokul43201]

Just For Kicks.

Now, wouldn't that make a nice campaign slogan for Kerry ?

 

[skiboka33]

yes, it would, and I am im dumbass...

wouldn't that make a good campaign slogan for bush?

 

[Math Is Hard]

I don't understand what the phrase "im I am dumbass" means, therefore the phrase cannot be evaluated as a campaign slogan or even as a general statement.

Isn't a bushkerry a furry little sharp-toothed animal that lives in the Australian outback?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Isn't a bushkerry a furry little sharp-toothed animal that lives in the Australian outback?

That is correct, yes. The aboriginals are leary of its sharp!pointy!teeth! and do not bother it.


Having recently confabulated the word "trid" for the first time, I have begun to ponder what its denotation might be. A quick perusal of my favorite collegiate dictionary has revealed that it doesn't seem to have existed as a word in the English language before I posted it just now. Therefore, I wonder if someone would be so kind as to supply a definition of it that will assure it a place in, say, entomology?

 

[plover]

Being a four-letter word, "trid" is obviously an Anglo-Saxon term. There is a 7th century chronicle usually assumed to have been written at the court of Hrothgar the Fleabitten that uses it, but unfortunately this is the only occurrence in the extant literature of the period. The apparent meaning is "that brownish beetle that often gets under your gambeson in a delicate place and at the worst possible moment". There is an argument that the practice of "ferret legging" traces its origin to a method of dealing with this beetle that was apparently invented by Hrothgar.

In pursuit of the utmost authenticity for his military re-enactments, Lord Ushant Rosewiggin Thrushburnmoorport VI, 17th Earl of Dufflehintington (for those not up on their heraldry, I note that Thrushburnmoorport is pronounced "Thumpet") has offered a substantial reward to any entomologist who can identify the species of beetle that was referred to as a trid, so that he might introduce them into his armor at appropriately inconvenient points in the fray. The cupidity of entomologists being what it is, how have those learnèd folk been pursuing this prize?

 

[zoobyshoe]

The cupidity of entomologists being what it is, how have those learnèd folk been pursuing this prize?

It is, indeed, a sad fact for that particular science that most of its practitioners are in it for the money, so the means used to try and claim this prize have been less than ethical. Dr. Spender Svindler, for example, having noticed that "trid" was "dirt" spelled backwards, concocted a forged document that purported to prove the evidence from the times of Hrothgar the Fleabitten had been written by someone afflicted with palinopsia, meaning that the reference to "trid" had actually been a reference to dirt. Lord Ushant, of course, did not want dirt. He wanted bugs. The prize money was refused.


What were some of the other attempts to claim the prize, and how did they unravel?

 

[Math Is Hard]

It wasn't until much later after Svindler's devious attempt, that the nature of the prize itself became known. The details of the prize were kept secret in a tightly guarded, rolled up scroll of parchment. In 1938 a young bug-collector named Melvin approached the heirs of Dufflehintington with a specimen he labeled a trid. He didn't have a whole lot of evidence for why it was the sought-after insect, but the heirs were pretty much sick of people bothering them year after year about the stupid legendary prize, so they let him have it.
Melvin was to be rewarded by taking a chessboard and placing a trid on the first square, two trids on the first square, four on the third, and so on, doubling the number of trids on each new square. Upon the reaching the last square, all the trids were to be gathered up and poured into Melvin's shorts.
Melvin never showed up to claim the prize and everyone just sort of forgot about it after that.

but - who cares about all that. What I really want to know is if you can get really good Vienna sausages in Vienna?

 

[plover]

What I really want to know is if you can get really good Vienna sausages in Vienna?

Strangely enough this question was recently answered by philosopher Helmut Vermurungen of the Österreich-Flügelhornische Institut für Philosophie und Bühnenbild. In his book Lebensmittel und das Theater, he writes: 'When you are in Vienna, all of the sausages around you are, strictly speaking, Vienna sausages. Thus the category of "Vienna sausages" ceases to have any meaning as the situation of being-sausage becomes a subvection of the situation of being-in-Vienna. Since as argued previously, an interior-social qualia such as "goodness" can not pass through a subvection when attaching to an object, we see that while the concrete sensory arena of Vienna may encompass "good sausages", it is prevented from encompassing (or even serving as an abstract stage for) "good Vienna sausages".'

Why is the bushkerry so fond of Vienna sausages?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Why is the bushkerry so fond of Vienna sausages?

They are easy prey. The Vienna sausage is anatomically incapable of achieving any appreciable ground speed during a persuit.

Recently I received a PM from a total stranger with the following text:

"Zobbyshoes,

How cum jelitivity can predict length dilation for weerd perple jeelofish what maths sre there to algebraicly show this? Plees do not confuse me with conservation of energy?

-FurrinTwerp746*1"

What do you suppose I should respond?

 

[Gokul43201]

You should try : "Whoahahahahahah...ummmm, yeah, heeheehee...gulp(feeling guilty)...hahaha, fooled you !"

I've always wanted to mail myself weird stuff (like used condoms, or a partially chewed up celery stick) in perfectly transparent envelopes (so the mailman can see what's inside)...just to see if USPS can be counted on.

Do you think they'd deliver ?

 

[Math Is Hard]

Let's find out. I have several transparent envelopes here at my office. I will mail them to you, empty, and then you can put stuff in them and them mail them again.

If I put transparent envelope inside a transparent envelope inside a transparent envelope inside a transparent envelope inside a transparent envelope will that arouse suspicions of USPS to the point that they might take action and what, I say what, do you suppose they'll do to us?

 

[balkan]

They are easy prey. The Vienna sausage is anatomically incapable of achieving any appreciable ground speed during a persuit.

Recently I received a PM from a total stranger with the following text:

"Zobbyshoes,

How cum jelitivity can predict length dilation for weerd perple jeelofish what maths sre there to algebraicly show this? Plees do not confuse me with conservation of energy?

-FurrinTwerp746*1"

don't be fooled by his seemingly clever question... it is worse than you thing...
his real screen name is jiten and he is an old nemesis of mine from a forum i used to hang out at, a long time ago... I'm sure of it...

i should never have looked at this thread... will it ever end?

 

[Gokul43201]

If I put transparent envelope inside a transparent envelope inside a transparent envelope inside a transparent envelope inside a transparent envelope will that arouse suspicions of USPS to the point that they might take action and what, I say what, do you suppose they'll do to us?

Not a thing, if you put in a sufficiently large number of transparent envelopes inside transparent envelopes. You see, they'll be stuck in a (nearly) infinite nested loop and will take forever (practically) to escape the loop and will be too exhausted to consider taking action.

Then again, they may enclose a million dollar check inside the final envelope and reseal all the envelopes and mail it back to you. You get your transparent mail and can see the million dollar check inside - but you know you have to go through a gazillion envelopes one at a time (it's no fun otherwise) to get to the booty.

What do you do ?

 

[plover]

There is a theorem that states that nesting a sufficient number of transparent envelopes will produce an "envolute", which is a mail route between layered parallel universes consisting of an endless sequence of envelopes-inside-envelopes. Once the envolute is formed, however, it requires an infinite amount of energy to remove one of the interior envelopes. In order to access the interior envelopes it is necessary to carry out intricate topological fibrillations on the outer envelope that can only be described in four dimensions. However, studies of the purple jellyfish Orbifoldus epimorphicus show that this creature moves by carrying out this fibrillation in a three dimensional space (measurements of this process were very delicate as the topological contortions produce the effect of length dilution in the jellyfish so that measurements of its motion require extra concentration on the part of observers). Thus a procedure has been found for everting an arbitrary number of layers of interior envelopes around themselves while simultaneously sealing them within the envolute in a process requiring no net energy. Unfortunately, while it is easy enough to seal a letter within the envolute and thus mail it to a parallel universe, a given envelope layer receives mail from a different universe than it sends to. Thus, since there is an infinite nesting of envelopes, and no method has been found for determining the receive layer from the send layer (or vice-versa), two way communication is still impossible. The USPS is happy about this as the time it takes to solve this difficulty may allow their bureaucracy to decide on the status of transdimensional postage.

(Some have said that the transparency of the envelopes should allow the return post to be seen when it is inserted into the envolute at the other end. This, however, would require that photons scattering off the letter be deflected back into the dimension from which they came, an event which, of course, has essentially zero probability.)

this thread... will it ever end?

Given that this thread has already passed from one PF incarnation to another, is it possible that some threshold has been reached and that the thread has become an e-envolute?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Given that this thread has already passed from one PF incarnation to another, is it possible that some threshold has been reached and that the thread has become an e-envolute?

I doubt it. I used to have a physics professor (literally: I kept him in a terrarium on the bookcase) who used to say "I haven't resolved Xeno's paradox yet, but I'm halfway there!" I think he may have crossed an e-envolute threshold once or twice. Could be he just tripped over the salamander, though.


Recently I reread a favorite of my childhood, Tom Lawyer by the great american humorist, Mock Twice. I thought: "What a tough job that must have been, going around humoring everyone all the time." Anyway, it was easier on the second reading to see how The Who adapted this novel into their rock opera Tommy. I hadn't before noticed the similarity between the game of "marvels" and pinball, nor had I realized that Tom's father, Captain Lawyer, didn't come home, his unborn child would never know him. The caves where treasure was hidden correspond to Tommy's Holiday Camp, and Injun Ernie easily becomes Wicked Uncle Ernie. Have I missed anything?