Ask a Stupid Quetion Get a Stupid Answer

[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?

 

[Math Is Hard]

Damn! I knew the day would come when we would have to have this talk with Jimmy P. Our little Chopnik is growing up.

OK, who wants to explain it to him?

 

[BoulderHead]

Not me!
Ok, ok, the truth is that entire lot is illiterate and Santa’s simply been winging it all these years, hoping nobody would notice…


What’s up with the tooth fairy these days?

 

[Moonbear]

The Tooth Fairy ran off with one of Santa's helpers, and rumor has it they've taken over the whole syndicate. Apparently they've been extorting the Easter Bunny to buy chocolate eggs from only their supplier or risk having some compromising photos of him and Cupid released onto the internet.

Where did the shape of Valentine's hearts come from, since that certainly isn't what a real heart looks like?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Where did the shape of Valentine's hearts come from, since that certainly isn't what a real heart looks like?

I have grave, grave doubts about the stupidity of this quetion. I wonder if "quetion" is really the accurate term for it? Is it not actually a perfectly logical question is stupid quetion's clothing? I am afraid to touch it, since I might, inadvertantly, not give a stupid anser.


Speaking of the Whitehouse, is it not true that the plot of the film Casablanca was inspired by that incident in Special Relativity where the guy on the train and the guy on the embankment compare notes about the timing of the lightning flashes, disagree, and one says to the other "I think this is the start of a long argument," merely twisted into a happy Hollywood ending?

 

[Math Is Hard]

I'll never forget the original version. It was so touching the way the two scientists parted and then eventually re-united in the end after their disagreements on space-time geometry. "Here's looking at Euclid." he told her.

What fundamental things actually apply as time goes by?

 

[franznietzsche]

Aging.

Where did all the samurai go?

 

[BoulderHead]

Where did all the samurai go?

They became consultants;
http://www.samurai.com/


Would you buy a computer from a man wielding a large sword?

 

[Gokul43201]

Yes, an Apple. And I'd ask him to throw it in the air and chop it in half. Then I'd pay him and go away.

When franznietzsche asked " Where did all the samurai go ?" did he mean "Where have all the samurai gone" in a Kurosawa-Cole-esque manner ?

 

[Moonbear]

Would you buy a computer from a man wielding a large sword?

You bet I would! :blush: Um, well, depending on how he was planning on using it if I didn't buy the computer.

Why wasn't my last question dumb enough?

***
You can ignore my dumb question and try answering the one before mine. Apparently I took too long playing with smilies and someone beat me to the answer.

 

[Math Is Hard]

When franznietzsche asked " Where did all the samurai go ?" did he mean "Where have all the samurai gone" in a Kurosawa-Cole-esque manner ?

I don't think he thought quite that hard about it. He was probably reminiscing about old Saturday Night Live episodes.

Moonbear: the problem is that your question wasn't truly a quetion, because it wasn't truly stupid. I am afraid there's a legitimate answer for your ponderance:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_146.html

Nice try, though! Keep hanging out with us, and you'll get stupider, I promise

Today while wandering down the sidewalk I pondered the children's rhyme "Step on a crack, break your mama's back".

What would happen to your mama if you accidentally stepped on a singularity?

 

[FZ+]

Her back would be broken on the quantum scale, for a time period of below one Planck unit. Hard to tell, really.

Why do the Ancient Greeks have a near-monopoly in algebraic symbols?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Why do the Ancient Greeks have a near-monopoly in algebraic symbols?

It was the most inscrutable alphabet available in the ancient Western world, at the time. Had the West discovered China a couple milenia earlier, things would be different.


Is it true that in exchange for fireworks technology from the Chinese, Marco Polo traded a mere eight cartons of Chef Boyardee Spagetti-Os?

 

[Moonbear]

Moonbear: the problem is that your question wasn't truly a quetion, because it wasn't truly stupid. I am afraid there's a legitimate answer for your ponderance:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_146.html

Nice try, though! Keep hanging out with us, and you'll get stupider, I promise

LOL! Now I get it. Does it count if I didn't know it wasn't a quetion when I asked it? As long as I haven't been disqualified from playing, I'll try harder to get it right...or is that not try nearly so hard?

Anyway, back to the game:

Is it true that in exchange for fireworks technology from the Chinese, Marco Polo traded a mere eight cartons of Chef Boyardee Spagetti-Os?

Absolutely not! O's were just not nearly so fashionable back then, and it was Chef Boyardee's predecessor, Chef Girlarwee who prepared the eight carton's of Spaghetti-Z's.

Why does it always rain on holiday weekends?

 

[Math Is Hard]

This is one way Native American tribes have conspired to wreak vengeance against the white man. All religious rain-making ceremonies are now held on holiday weekends.

True story: Today I was up in our human resources office which is populated by understimulated civil servants when I noticed something peculiar. It is not unusual for one of the staff up there to decorate the office with shapes he cuts out of colored construction paper. He suspends these from the ceiling with strings.

Normally these are holiday-themed decorations, but today for some reason, he had fashioned fish and seaweed and long-tentacled paper jellyfish and dangled these from the rafters.

I was very concerned that one of these weird paper jellyfish was dangling a bit too close to my shoulder and might have resulted in a severe paper cut had I come any closer.
Were my fears unfounded?

 

[franznietzsche]

I was very concerned that one of these weird paper jellyfish was dangling a bit too close to my shoulder and might have resulted in a severe paper cut had I come any closer.
Were my fears unfounded?

Yes, origami is only lethal when dry.


Is it possible for me to ask a truly stupid question?

 

[plover]

What would happen to your mama if you accidentally stepped on a singularity?

"Steppin' on a singularity, sends your momma to a world of non-linearity"?

Can asking a truly stupid question cause someone's answer to tunnel back several posts and thus merge two of the realities predicted by the Many Stupidities hypothesis?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Is it possible for me to ask a truly stupid question?

All questions are, in fact, the tip of a truly stupid iceberg of immense proportions.

Can asking a truly stupid question cause someone's answer to tunnel back several posts and thus merge two of the realities predicted by the Many Stupidities hypothesis?

All questions are, in fact, the tip of a truly stupid iceberg of immense proportions.


How is it that the ability to recognise and intentionally repeat a misspelling has suddenly become an indicator of I.Q.?

 

[Gokul43201]

Since nobody spells words correctly anymore, it's hard to discern misspellings. Very, very hard.

Hwoeevr bdaly a clloection of wodrs be spelllt, their meainngs aer not dffiuclt to indetify.

Its definitely acceptible to write a lot of words like 'embarass', 'exhilerate', 'existance', 'manouvre', 'momento', 'restaurent, and 'reciept', without people notising that their spellt incorrectly.

Does it matter how you spell a word, so long as the other person gets your drift ?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Does it matter how you spell a word, so long as the other person gets your drift ?

No. But when people don't misspell things properly it can sometimes speak volumes.


Quetion: Having turned left at the first three corners I came to hoping to find the right left corner at which to turn by process of trial and error it occurred to me that seeking the right left corner was a logical error that could lead to beilderment, even if I found it. Should I turn right, seek the wrong left turn, or turn at the "left" corner (meaning, which ever one is left)?

 

[Tsu]

Yes. And use your buzzsaw.

Why?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Yes. And use your buzzsaw.

Why?

The North Pole.

If you left the right left turn between the left right turn and the right right turn, would you ever reach closure?

 

[zoobyshoe]

If you left the right left turn between the left right turn and the right right turn, would you ever reach closure?

I am unfortunately not at an advanced enough stage in my studies to be able to factor right right turns and wrong right turns into my navigation. All that leaves me with to select from are right left turns, wrong left turns, or left turns (meaning, which ever turns are left).

Which calls to mind the events of a summer evening in 1936 in the city of Strasbourg, Germany, or Strasbourg, France, when, as a lad of 27 I found myself to be in the highest state of inebriation, crawling on all fours toward the train station where I was to meet a Polish aviator of my acquaintance, and from which train station we were to depart together for the coast, changing trains here and there, until we'd made it to the town of Brest, curious, as we naturally were, to discover what it was like to stand in the center of that town, surrounded by Brest, Brest everywhere the eye could see, nothing but Brest.

At any rate, I crawled left in ever widening circles, determined to find the train station with this meticulous method of searching, since none of the locals seemed to understand a word I said to them in their own language, or mine. However, I became distracted when I noticed an outdoor café I used to frequent, passing by me each time the whirling city brought it round into my field of vision, and I decided to pull my increasingly uncooperative body toward it a little more each time it passed. I thought it would be a good place to reconoitre. I could not, at that time, have defined the word reconoitre to you, or myself, but instinct told me that café was the place to do it.

About an hour later I had just succeeded in pulling myself into one of the chairs on the terrace when the garçon came and handed me a note. I couldn't make out a word of it, so I resorted to the technique of the illiterate and held it up to my ear. It said: "All that is gold, glitters, but not all that glitters is gold."

"Hmmm," I thought," Not necessarily.

For twenty points, what five situations can you think of in which gold does not glitter?

 

[Gokul43201]

For twenty points, what five situations can you think of in which gold does not glitter?

If you paint the piece of gold with some nasty, brown paint, it will not glitter. Also, I think that if you dump the gold in some acid and take it out, it won't glitter. Not sure about the last one - I'm not very good with Chemystery. Also not great with numbers, but I don't think that's a big deal.

Now do I get my twenty points (if you don't have them all now, I can take 3 payments of 5 points, and I promise to give you change) ?