– Unknown

Q. What do you call a person who hangs around musicians a lot?

A. A drummer.

How can you tell when there is a drummer at your front door?

The knocking gets faster. Slower. Faster…

Dan is throwing a party, and being a very intelligent guy decides that a good way to break the ice is to ask everyone what their I.Q. is, and then strike up an appropriate conversation from there. The day of Dan’s party rolls around, and when the first guest knocks on the door, he greets the person and asks them what their I.Q. is.

“210.” replies Jim, the first guest.

“Well, that’s great,” says Dan, let’s talk about astrophysics.

Dan and Jim talk about quasar formations and gravitational lenses for a while. Later in the party, someone else is at the door. “Hi my name is Dan; welcome to the party! What’s your I.Q.?”

The new guest, Konrad, responds with “175”.

“Great,” says Dan. “Lets talk about advanced math. Bob and Konrad debate over the latest calculus theorems.

Much later in the party, after many more guests had arrived and been engaged in lively conversation by Dan, yet another guest arrives at the door. “Hi, my name’s Dan; welcome to the party, what’s your I.Q.?”

The guest replies after putting some thought into it, “ummm, 85?”

“Well, that’s great,” says Dan, “what kind of drumsticks do you use?”

– As told by

Gay shlafen: Yiddish for “go to sleep”.

Now doesn’t “gay shlafen” have a softer, more soothing sound than the harsh, staccato “go to sleep”? Listen to the difference:

“Go to sleep, you little wretch!” … “Gay shlafen, darling.”

Obvious, isn’t it?

Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and so on, but that’s just the point. It has to start with committed individuals and then grow.

Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won’t be funny when everything is written in Yiddish. And we’ll have to start driving on the left side of the road so we won’t be reading the street signs backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I think not, my friend, I think not.

— Arthur Naiman, “Every Goy’s Guide to Yiddish”

A lawyer and an engineer were fishing in the Caribbean. The lawyer said, “I’m here because my house burned down, and everything I owned was destroyed by the fire. The insurance company paid for everything.”

“That’s quite a coincidence,” said the engineer. “I’m here because my house and all my belongings were destroyed by a flood, and my insurance company also paid for everything.”

The lawyer looked somewhat confused. “How do you start a flood?” he asked.

A couple of years ago, the Seattle Symphony was doing Beethoven’s Ninth under the baton of Milton Batter. At this point, you must understand two things:

1. Bass players hate playing Beethoven’s 9th. There’s a long segment in this symphony where the bass violins don’t have a thing to do… not a single note for page after page!


2. There’s a tavern called Dez’s 400 right across the street from the Seattle Opera House, rather favored by local musicians.

It had been decided that during this performance, after the bass players had played their parts in the opening of the Ninth, they were to quietly lay down their instruments and leave the stage rather than sit on their stools looking and feeling dumb for twenty minutes. Well, once they got backstage, someone suggested that they trot across the street and have a few brews.

They had quickly downed the first couple of rounds when one said, “Shouldn’t we be getting back? It’d be awfully embarrassing if we were late.”

Another (presumably the one who suggested this excursion in the first place) replied, “Oh, I anticipated we could use a little more time, so I tied a string around the last pages of the conductor’s score. When he gets down to there, Batter’s going to have to slow the tempo way down while he waves the baton with one hand and fumbles with the string with the other.” So they had another round and finally returned to the Opera House, a little tipsy by now. However, as they came back on stage, one look at their conductor’s face told them they were in serious trouble.

And if you thought things couldn’t get worse, both first stand players soon passed out right in their chairs! Batter was furious and on the verge of completely loosing it, as he began making gestures at the bases while trying to finish the piece and flip tied pages.

But the absolute *worst* part of it: (brace yourself)

Batter was up at the bottom of the Ninth, the score was tied with the basses loaded and two men out.

It was slightly before Thanksgiving. The trip went reasonably well, and he was ready to go back. The airport on the other end had turned a acky red and green, and loudspeakers blared annoying elevator renditions of cherished Christmas carols.

Being someone who took Christmas very seriously, and being slightly tired, he was not in a particularly good mood.

Going to check in his luggage (which, for some reason, had become one suitcase with entirely new clothes), he saw hanging mistletoe. Not real mistletoe, but very cheap plastic with red paint on some of the rounder parts and green paint on some of the flatter and pointier parts, that could be taken for mistletoe only in a very Picasso sort of way.

With a considerable degree of irritation and nowhere else to vent it, he said to the attendant, “Even if I were not married, I would not want to kiss you under such a ghastly mockery of mistletoe.”

“Sir, look more closely at where the mistletoe is.”

(pause)

“Ok, I see that it’s above the luggage scale, which is the place you’d have to step forward for a kiss.”

“That’s not why it’s there.”

(pause)

“Ok, I give up. Why is it there?”

“It’s there so you can kiss your luggage goodbye.”

An Engineer, a Physicist, and a Mathematician all go to the same Conference. University budgets being what they are, they all stay in the same cheap hotel.

Each room has the same floor plan, has the same cheap TV, the same cheap bed, and a small bathroom. Instead of a sprinkler system, the hotel has opted for Fire Buckets.

The Engineer, Physicist, and Mathematician are all asleep in bed. At about 2AM, the Engineer wakes up because he smells smoke. He looks in the corner of the room and sees that the TV set is on fire! He dashes into the bathroom, fills the Fire Bucket to overflowing with water, and drenches the TV set. The fire goes out, and the Engineer goes back to sleep.

A little while later, the Physicist wakes because he smells smoke. He looks in the corner and sees that the TV set is on fire. He grabs a handy envelope, estimates the BTU output of the fire, scribbles a quick calculation, then dashes into the bathroom and fills the Fire Bucket with just enough water to douse the flames. He puts the fire out and goes back to sleep.

In a little while, the Mathematician wakes up to the smell of smoke. He looks in the corner and sees the TV on fire. He looks into the bathroom and sees the Fire Bucket. Having determined that a solution exists, he goes back to sleep.

A physics student once got the following question in an exam:

“You are given an accurate barometer. How would you use it to determine the height of a skyscraper?”

He answered, “Go to the top floor, tie a long piece of string to the barometer, let it down ’till it touches the ground and measure the length of the string.”

The examiner wasn’t satisfied, so they decided to interview the guy: “Can you give us another method, one which demonstrates your knowledge of Physics?”

“Sure, go to the top floor, drop the barometer off, and measure how long before it hits the ground…”

“Not, quite what we wanted, care to try again?”

“Make a pendulum of the barometer, measure its period at the bottom, then measure its period at the top…”

“…another try?….”

“Measure the length of the barometer, then mount it vertically on the ground on a sunny day and measure its shadow, measure the shadow of the skyscraper…”

“…and again?…”

“walk up the stairs and use the barometer as a ruler to measure the height of the walls in the stairwells.”

“…One more try?”

“Find where the janitor lives, knock on his door and say ‘Please, Mr. Janitor, if I give you this nice barometer, will you tell me the height of this building?'”

A Mathematician, a Biologist and a Physicist are sitting in a street cafe watching people going in and coming out of the house on the other side of the street. First they see two people going into the house. Time passes.

After a while they notice three persons coming out of the house.

The Physicist: “The measurement wasn’t accurate”.

The Biologist: “They have reproduced”.

The Mathematician: “If now exactly 1 person enters the house then it will be empty again.”

An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are shown a pasture with a herd of sheep, and told to put them inside the smallest possible amount of fence.

The engineer is first. He herds the sheep into a circle and then puts the fence around them, declaring, “A circle will use the least fence for a given area, so this is the best solution.”

The physicist is next. She creates a circular fence of infinite radius around the sheep, and then draws the fence tight around the herd, declaring, “This will give the smallest circular fence around the herd.”

The mathematician is last. After giving the problem a little thought, he puts a small fence around himself and then declares, “I define myself to be on the outside!”

A mathematician, an engineer, and a physicist are being interviewed for a job. In each case, the interview goes along famously until the last question is asked: “How much is one plus one?”

Each of them suspects a trap, and is hesitant to answer. The mathematician thinks for a moment, and says “I’m not sure, but I think it converges”.

The physicist says “I’m not sure, but I think it’s on the order of one”

The engineer gets up, closes the door to the office, and says “How much do you want it to be?”

“Computers are worthless – they only give answers.”

In a foreign country a priest, a lawyer and an engineer are all about to be guillotined. The priest puts his head on the block, they pull the rope and nothing happens — he declares that he’s been saved by divine intervention — so he’s let go.

The lawyer is put on the block, and again the rope doesn’t release the blade, he claims he can’t be executed twice for the same crime and he is set free too.

They grab the engineer and shove his head into the guillotine, he looks up at the release mechanism and says, “Oh, wait a minute, I see your problem……”