ADMINISTRATIUM
Investigators at a major US research university recently discovered the heaviest element known to science. The element, tentatively named administratium, has no protons or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have one neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistant vice neutrons, which gives it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called morons. It is also surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since it has no electrons, administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction it comes in contact with.
According to the discoverers, a minute amount of administratium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally have occurred in less than a second.
Administratium has a normal half-life of approximately three years, at which time it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion to the assistant neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. In fact, an administratium sample's mass actually INCREASES over time, since with each reorganization, some of the morons inevitably become neutrons, forming new isotopes.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to speculate that perhaps administratium is spontaneously formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "critical morass."
THE NEW MATH
Teaching Math in 1956: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?
Teaching Math in 1966: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
Teaching Math in 1976: A logger exchanges a set "L" of lumber for a set "M" of money. The cardinality of set "M" is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set "M". The set "C", the cost of production, contains 20 fewer points than set "M." Represent the set "C" as a subset of set "M" and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set "P" for profits?
Teaching Math in 1986: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. Her cost of production is $80 and her profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
Teaching Math in 1996: By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees? There are no wrong answers.
Teaching Math in 1997: By laying off 40% of its loggers, a company improves its stock price from $80 to $100. How much capital gain per share does the CEO make by exercising his stock options at $80? Assume capital gains are no longer taxed, because this encourages investment.
Teaching Math in 1998: A company out-sources all of its loggers. The firm saves on benefits, and when demand for its product is down, the logging work force can easily be cut back. The average logger employed by the company earned $50,000, had three weeks vacation, a nice retirement plan and medical insurance. The contracted logger charges $50 an hour. Was outsourcing a good move?
Teaching Math in 1999: A laid-off logger with four kids at home and a ridiculous alimony from his first failed marriage comes into the logging-company corporate offices and goes postal, mowing down 16 executives and a couple of secretaries, and gets lucky when he nails a politician on the premises collecting his kickback. Was outsourcing the loggers a good move for the company?
Teaching Math in 2000: A laid-off logger serving time in Folsom for blowing away several people is being trained as a COBOL programmer in order to work on Y2K projects. What is the probability that the automatic cell doors will open on their own as of 00:01, 01/01/00?
A STUDENT'S HISTORY
OF THE WORLD
(One of the fringe benefits of being an English or history professor is
receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay or report.
Here is the history of the world, pasted together from genuine student
bloopers, collected by teachers throughout the U.S.)
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple. A snake was present at the time. God got tired of creating the world, so He took the Sabbath off.
Noah built an ark, which the animals came on to in pears. Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark. Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night. Samson was a strongman who let himself be led astray by a Jezebel like Delilah.
Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies, and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
The Jews were a proud people and throughout history they had trouble with the Gentials. Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients.
The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments. Moses died before he ever reached Canada. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in Bibical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history. They invented three kinds of columns -Corinthian, ironic, and dorc. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption. When Mary heard that she was the mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta. When the three wise guys from the east side arrived, they found Jesus in the manager. St. John, the Blacksmith, dumped water on his head.
The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 decibels.
One of the opossums was St. Matthew who was by profession a taximan. The epistles were the wives of the apostles. A Christian should have only one spouse. This is called monotony.
Then came the Middle Ages when King Alfred conquered the Dames.
King Arthur lived then with brave knights on prancing horses and beautiful women and Joan of Arc was canonized by Bernard Shaw and victims of the blue-bonnet plaque grew boobs on their necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
In midevil times people were alliterate. The greatest writer was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and literature. During this time, people put on morality plays about ghosts, goblins, virgins, and other mythical creatures.
The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their life.
Martin Luther was nailed to the church door for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull.
It was painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of the blood. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.
Shakespeare was the greatest writer. In one of his plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy.
Then came the enlightenment. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in autumn, when the apples are falling off trees.
Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between, he practiced on an old spinster. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English.
Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and Inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and began reproducing by machine.
The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers. Then came the First World War, which ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
CHOOSE YOUR PROFESSION
A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.
The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!"
The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!"
The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greenskeeper. Let's have a word with him."
"Hi George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?"
The greenskeeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."
The group was silent for a moment.
The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them." The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"
TEST QUESTION
What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers?
Mechanical Engineers build weapons; Civil Engineers build targets.
CAREER CHOICES
The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with an Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
TIME TO WORK
An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress. The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship.
The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and mystery he found there.
The engineer said, "I like both."
"Both?" Engineer: "Yeah. If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the lab and get some work done."
THE RIGHT CHOICE
An engineering student was walking across campus when another engineer rides up on a shiny new motorcycle.
"Where did you get such a great bike?" asked the first. The second engineer replied "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said "Take what you want.'"
The second engineer nodded approvingly "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit."
COLLEGE MONEY
Dear Dad,
$chool i$ really great. I am making lot$ of friend$ and $tudying very hard. With all my $tuff, I $imply can't think of anything I need, $o if you would like, you can ju$t $end me a card, a$ I would love to hear from you.
Love,
Your $on
Dear Son,
I kNOw that astroNOmy, ecoNOmics, and oceaNOgraphy are eNOugh to keep even an hoNOr student busy. Do NOt forget that the pursuit of kNOwledge is a NOble task, and you can never study eNOugh.
Love, Dad
THE TRUTH ABOUT COLLEGE
College is a bunch of rooms where you sit for two thousand hours or so and try to memorize things. The two thousand hours are spread out over four years. You spend the rest of the time sleeping, drinking, and trying to get dates.
Basically, you learn two kinds of things in college:
1. Things you will need to know in later life (two hours).
2. Things you will not need to know in later life (1,998 hours).
The latter are the things you learn in classes whose names end in -ology, -osophy, -istry, -ics, and so on. The idea is, you memorize these things, then write them down in little exam books, then forget them. If you fail to forget them, you become a professor and have to stay in college for the rest of your life.
After you've been in college for a year or so, you're supposed to choose a major, which is the subject you intend to memorize and forget the most things about. Here is a very important piece of advice: be sure to choose a major that does not involve Known Facts and Right Answers. This means you must not major in mathematics, physics, biology, or chemistry, or geology because these subjects involve actual facts. If, for example, you major in mathematics, you're going to wander into class one day and the professor will say: "Define the cosine integer of the quadrant of a rhomboid binary axis, and extrapolate your result to five significant vertices." If you don't come up with exactly the = answer the professor has in mind, you fail.
The same is true of chemistry: if you write in your exam book that carbon and hydrogen combine to form oak, your professor will flunk you. He wants you to come up with the same answer he and all the other chemists have agreed on. Scientists are extremely snotty about this.
So you should major in subjects like English, philosophy, psychology, and sociology-subjects in which nobody really understands what anybody else is talking about, and which involve virtually no actual facts. I attended classes in all these subjects, so I'll give you a quick overview of each:
ENGLISH: This involves writing papers about long books you have read little snippets of just before class. Here is a tip on how to get good grades on your English papers: Never say anything about a book that anybody with any common sense would say. For example, suppose you are studying Moby Dick. Anybody with any common sense would say that Moby Dick is a big white whale, since the characters in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand times. So in your paper, you say Moby Dick is actually the Republic of Ireland. Your professor, who is sick to death of reading papers and never liked Moby Dick, anyway, will think you are enormously creative. If you can regularly come up with lunatic interpretations of simple stories, you should major in English.
PHILOSOPHY: Basically, this involves sitting in a room and deciding there is no such thing as reality and then going to lunch. You should major in philosophy if you plan to take a lot of drugs.
PSYCHOLOGY: This involves talking about rats and dreams. Psychologists are obsessed with rats and dreams. I once spent an entire semester training a rat to punch little buttons in a certain sequence, then training my roommate to do the same thing. The rat learned much faster. My roommate is now a doctor. If you like rats or dreams, and above all if you dream about rats, you should major in psychology.
SOCIOLOGY: For sheer lack of intelligibility, sociology is far and away the number one subject. I sat through hundreds of hours of sociology courses, and read gobs of sociology writing, and I never once heard or read a coherent statement. This is because sociologists want to be considered scientists, so they spend most of their time translating simple, obvious observations into scientific-sounding code. If you plan to major in sociology, you'll have to learn to do the same thing. For example, suppose you have observed that children cry when they fall down. You should write: "Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies of prematurated isolates indicates that a casual relationship exists between groundward tropism and lachrimatory behavior forms." If you can keep this up for fifty or sixty pages, you will get a large government grant.
