

Ask HN: What's the geekiest joke you know? - DanLivesHere

So Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Can I get you a beer?" Descartes thinks it over for a minute, and finally, replies, "I think not," and poof -- disappears.
======
prodigal_erik
Two mathematicians were having dinner in a restaurant, arguing about the
average mathematical knowledge of the American public. One mathematician
claimed that this average was woefully inadequate, the other maintained that
it was surprisingly high.

"I'll tell you what," said the cynic, "ask that waitress a simple math
question. If she gets it right, I'll pick up dinner. If not, you do." He then
excused himself to visit the men's room, and the other called the waitress
over.

"When my friend comes back," he told her, "I'm going to ask you a question,
and I want you to respond `one third x cubed.' There's twenty bucks in it for
you." She agreed.

The cynic returned from the bathroom and called the waitress over. "The food
was wonderful, thank you," the mathematician started. "Incidentally, do you
know what the integral of x squared is?"

The waitress looked pensive; almost pained. She looked around the room, at her
feet, made gurgling noises, and finally said, "Um, one third x cubed?"

So the cynic paid the check. The waitress wheeled around, walked a few paces
away, looked back at the two men, and muttered under her breath, "...plus a
constant."

—<http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/old90/constant.html>

------
templaedhel
Three lawyers and three engineers are traveling by train to a conference. At
the station, the three lawyers each buy tickets and watch as the three
engineers buy only a single ticket.

"How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?" wonders one of the
lawyers. "Watch, and you'll see," replies one of the engineers.

They all board the train. The lawyers take their respective seats while all
three engineers cram into a restroom and close the door behind them. Shortly
after the train departs, the conductor comes around collecting tickets. He
knocks on the restroom door and says, "Ticket, please." The door opens just a
crack and a single arm emerges with a ticket in hand. The conductor takes it
and moves on.

The lawyers see this and agree it is quite a clever idea. After the
conference, the lawyers decide to copy the engineers on the return trip and
save some money. When they get to the station, they buy a single ticket for
the return trip. To their astonishment, the engineers don't buy a ticket at
all. "How are you going to travel without a ticket?" asks one perplexed
lawyer. "Watch, and you'll see," replies one of the engineers.

When they board the train the three lawyers cram into a restroom and the three
engineers cram into another one nearby. The train departs. A few moments
later, one of the engineers leaves his restroom and walks over to the restroom
where the lawyers are hiding. He knocks on the door and says, "Ticket,
please."

------
cd34
A network engineer is sent over to Iraq due to his National Guard status being
changed. Immediately after he steps off the plane, he's hit with a wave of
heat and a drill sergeant pushes a gun into his hands and tells him to report
to the firing range.

He gets to the firing range, grabs a magazine, puts the magazine in and lays
down an impressive spray of bullets. The drill sergeant, suitably impressed
grabs his binoculars, looks at the target, but sees no bullet holes.

Sensing the engineer's embarrassment, he barks at him that bullets aren't
free, the US Government has gone to considerable expense to train him, feed
him and supply bullets, but, take another magazine, breathe before firing, and
hit that target.

The engineer breathes, fires a little more carefully and the drill sergeant
seems happy. He grabs the binoculars, looks down at the target and can't
believe his eyes. Not a single bullet hit the target.

The drill sergeant, notably irritated at this point starts yelling at the
network engineer, telling him that his country is depending on him and he
better hit the target this time, and hands him another magazine.

The network engineer taps the magazine on his helmet, blows some sand off,
places it in the rifle, puts his finger over the end of the rifle, pulls the
trigger and shoots the tip of his finger off. He tells the sergeant, the
bullet is leaving the rifle just fine, the problem must be on the other end.

------
joezydeco
Noah is escorting the animals off the Ark and next up is a pair of snakes.

 _"Go forth and multiply."_

The snakes just sit there, staring at Noah.

 _"I said go forth and multiply! What's wrong?"_

 _"We can't. We're adders!"_

PART II

Noah storms down the gangplank with an axe. He finds a large tree, chops it
down, and builds a table. He goes back to the Ark, grabs the snakes, and
places them on the table.

 _"Now, go forth and multiply!"_

 _"We can't! We told you, we're adders!"_

 _"With a log table, even adders can multiply!"_

(Thanks to C.L. Liu at U.Illinois for that one.)

------
daz_miller
not geek, but a great letter none the less

Dear Sir,

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to
pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have
elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the
funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly
deposit of my Pension, an arrangement, which, I admit, has been in place for
only thirty eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window
of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the
inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me
to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally
attend to your telephone calls and letters, but when I try to contact you, I
am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity
which your bank has become. From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with
a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and
hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque,
addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you
must nominate. Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any
other person to open such an envelope.

Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen
employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I
know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no
alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be
countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory details of his/her financial
situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by
documented proof. In due course, I will issue your employee with PIN number
which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be
shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button
presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank
service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let me
level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as
follows:

1\. To make an appointment to see me. 2\. To query a missing payment. 3\. To
transfer the call to my living room in case I am there. 4\. To transfer the
call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping. 5\. To transfer the call to my
toilet in case I am attending to nature. 6\. To transfer the call to my mobile
phone if I am not at home. 7\. To leave a message on my computer (a password
to access my computer is required. A password will be communicated to you at a
later date to the Authorized Contact.) 8\. To return to the main menu and to
listen to options 1 through to 8. 9\. To make a general complaint or inquiry,
the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated
answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait,
uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an
establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.

Your Humble Client

(Remember: This was written by a 98 year old woman; DOESN'T SHE MAKE YOU
PROUD!)

~~~
JacobAldridge
The footnote at the end and urban legend status [1] make this less funny to
me, though it would be nice try and enforce the letter.

[1] <http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/takethat.asp>

------
tworats
Programmer comes home late with lipstick on his collar and face, smelling of
perfume.

Wife is glaring at him.

"Honey, I have to tell you the truth" he says. "You remember Judy from
accounting? We ended up talking, getting close, one thing led to another, and
I ended up sleeping with her. I'm so sorry".

Wife glares at him some more.

"I don't believe you for a second, you lying son of a bitch. You stayed late
programming again, didn't you?"

------
DarrenLehane
So this SEO expert walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar,
bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor

------
daz_miller
A hillbilly asks his son what he learned in school that day. The son responds,
"Pie R squared". The angry father comes back with, "What are they teachin' you
in that place? Everybody knows cornbread are squared; pie are round!"

C isn't that hard: void ( _(_ f[])())() defines f as an array of unspecified
size, of pointers to functions that return pointers to functions that return
void

It takes a million monkeys at typewriters to write Shakespeare, but only a
dozen monkeys at computers to run Network Solutions

and my fav

I'm sorry for the double slash (Tim Berners-Lee in a Panel Discussion, WWW7,
Brisbane, 1998)

U didnt mention they had to be funny :)

------
mopoke
Why do mathematicians always confuse Halloween and Christmas?

Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec.

------
albahk
01010111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 00100000
01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101000 01101001 01100011
01101011 01100101 01101110 00100000 01100011 01110010 01101111 01110011
01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110010 01101111
01100001 01100100 00111111

~~~
swah
01010100011011110010000001100111011001010111010000100000011101000110111100100000011101000110100001100101001000000110111101110100011010000110010101110010001000000111001101101001011001000110010100101110

~~~
tdoggette
Please delete this. It's stretching the page.

------
kd0amg
What's purple and commutes? An abelian grape.

What's purple and commutes and is worshipped by a limited number of people? A
finitely-venerated abelian grape.

What's purple and had all of its children committed to mental hospitals? A
simple grape (it has no proper, normal subgrapes).

------
tst
One day Heisenberg is stopped by the police. The officer walks to Heisenberg's
car. Heisenberg: "Anything wrong Officer?" Officer: "Do you know what speed
you were doing, Sir?" Heisenberg: "No, but I know exactly where I was."

~~~
steve_g
Rene Descartes walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, "Give me a Bud
light." The bartender asks, "Do you want a glass?" Descartes says, "I think
not.." and promptly disappears.

~~~
steve_g
Wow, I just saw that this was the original posted joke. I guess great minds
think alike. Inferior minds don't read what they're responding to.

------
jokermatt999
How do you annoy a Lisp programmer?

(

~~~
joakin
Lol good one haha )

~~~
jokermatt999
I'm fairly certain it's original, unless I've forgotten the source.

And yes, every single time someone has had to post a closing parenthesis. (:

~~~
Natsu
I was tempted to post just a smiley in response to your post, but I wondered
if that would've been a bit too subtle :)

------
dwwoelfel
A joke of my own creation:

What's the par value of a zero-coupon bond with no maturity? Pee Dollars!

This joke didn't do very well in the last joke thread, so I'll explain it in
this one. Typically, the par value of a bond is represented by the letter P.
Maturity is when the bond pays out. A person with no maturity would hear "p"
and think "pee", so the joke is a pun on both P and maturity. But wait,
there's more! A zero coupon bond without expiration is worthless -- just like
pee dollars.

------
captaincrowbar
What goes, "Squawk! Pieces of seven! Pieces of seven!"?

A parroty error.

~~~
cperciva
That joke doesn't quite work: 7 and 8 have the same (odd) parity.

Pieces of nine, on the other hand...

~~~
cd34
unless one uses gray's binary

------
cperciva
Let epsilon be less than zero.

------
cd34
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary, and
those that don't.

------
sea6ear
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are each given the same problem.

1\. the engineer comes in, writes a few lines of equations, does some
calculations, and writes down the answer.

2\. the physicist comes in, derives some formulas, writes some equations,
writes some more equations, does some calculations and finally writes down the
answer.

3\. the mathematician comes in, lists some axioms, proves some theorems from
the axioms, writes equations across the entire whiteboard, gets another
whiteboard, fills it up with equations also, writes some final calculations
and finally says, "it can be solved."

------
kakaylor
The Physicist proof all odd numbers are prime: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is
prime, 7 is prime, 9 is experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime...

~~~
Natsu
I worry about anyone who believes that 1 is prime :(

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number#Primality_of_one>

~~~
kakaylor
It makes for a much better joke if you start at one ;-)

It is actually a pretty old joke, there are a few variations on it (one for
Computer Scientists, one for Mathematicians, etc...):

<http://www.phy.ilstu.edu/~rfm/107F07/EPMjokes.html>

~~~
Natsu
Oh, I recognize the joke, but I still worry about any engineers who believe
that 1 is prime :)

------
lovskogen
So this SEO writer goes into a bar, pub, grill, resturant, free, meal, wine,
beer, alcohol, girls, dance, sex.

------
joe_bleau
The English couldn't build a good computer because they couldn't figure out
how to make it leak oil.

------
xd
A SQL query goes into a bar, walks up to two tables and asks, "Can I join
you?", "yes naturally".

------
Andrenid
10 guys walked into a bar...

------
strick
How can you tell an extrovert programmer from an introvert programmer?

The extrovert programmer looks at YOUR shoes while he's talking to you.

------
peterbotond
what kind of bus do mathematicians travel? -- rhombus.

what kind of ears do trains have? -- engineers.

------
dfranke
What stabs from hell's heart and subsumes most of category theory?

Khan extensions.

------
dannytatom
A man walks into a bar. He is an alcoholic and it's destroying his family.

------
Mz
The closest thing I know to a geek joke (cuz I just can't tell jokes of any
sort) is the proof about hell being exothermic:

<http://www.pinetree.net/humor/thermodynamics.html>

~~~
mechanical_fish
While we're on the subject of classic physics jokes, I give you the subtle
opening of David Goodstein's _States of Matter_ :

 _Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics,
died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died
similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics._

------
mapu
Your mother is so fat, the recursive function computing her mass causes a
stack overflow.

Your mother is a convenient proof that the universe is still expanding
exponentially

Your mother is so fat that the coefficient of friction between her and her
surroundings is greater than static, rolling, or kinetic friction.

The integral of your mom is fat plus a constant, where the constant is equal
to more fat.

