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jackFor sunflowerinrain and the nice librarian in the black dress I can't remember the name of.
An elephant, an engineer, and a mathematician walk into a building and the mathematician says "If two people leave, the building will be empty again," and the engineer scratches himself with his tusks and trumpets loudly.
An elephant, an engineer, and a mathematician walk into a building and the mathematician says "If two people leave, the building will be empty again," and the engineer scratches himself with his tusks and trumpets loudly.
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Date: 2006-02-20 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 07:44 pm (UTC)And I admit mathematicians would say "one of us" refering to a set containing only themselves, but most people wouldn't, so that might add another layer of confusion.
Chriss Pattern is one of my heroes, you know.
Date: 2006-02-20 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 10:35 pm (UTC)Chris Patten was a minister in John Major's first government and seemed like one of the few of them with any sense. So of course he lost his seat at the 1992 election. Rather than hang around waiting for a Tory safe seat to become available however he then went off to be the last governor of Hong Kong, where he massively annoyed the Chinese government by introducing democratic reforms shortly before the handover (and that's while I like him). He then spent a while as an EU commissioner and is Chancellor of the University of Newcastle and of some other university.
He's written several books. The only one I've read is East and West but I hope to read his more recent works too some time.
Anyway the actually relevant point is that during the 1992 election he was associated with a poster campaign warning of "Labour's double whammy", a previously not widely heard phrase which attracted a certain amount of attention from pundits. (At the time I considered it perfectly obvious what it meant but evidently I was better than national journalists at figuring out what previously unfamiliar words might mean. Or something.)
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Date: 2006-02-20 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 12:57 pm (UTC)...it occurs to me that:
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Date: 2006-02-22 05:47 pm (UTC)What? Why?
* It would be better still if it was a duck, not an elephant.
What? Why?
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Date: 2006-02-22 05:53 pm (UTC)Explaining jokes never works, but.
The recipient of the joke starts thinking there's three people. Then the mathematician's strange remark makes them realize that there must only have been two, relying on the fact that species and speciality could be taken to be orthogonal, for a laugh.
But if they think further then they realize they can eliminate one of the variables - i.e. which of the mathematician and engineer is the elephant - without having to know its value. Probably only a mathematician would think this, and it's this connection between the recipient and the figure in the joke that makes it funny.
As for the latter, because ducks are all-purpose comedy vertebrates.
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Date: 2006-02-22 05:58 pm (UTC)Not to make them funny, but in service of understanding humour... :)
But if they think further then they realize they can eliminate one of the variables - i.e. which of the mathematician and engineer is the elephant - without having to know its value.
Ah! I think I see. I was confused, as I wasn't sure what you were replying to, nor what you were talking about :) So, you suggested (in jest) phrasing it in such a way that one of the mathematician and engineer does an elephant-defining action but without specifying which?
As for the latter, because ducks are all-purpose comedy vertebrates.
Sorry, that second query was mainly for repetition humour value. But I think elephants trump ducks. If you cross them you get platypi, which are *inherently* comic.