20 Jokes that only intellectuals will understand – Explanations!
Well, this is a really tough one.
(Most, if not all the names mentioned in these jokes are ‘Geniuses’ in their respective fields).
Let’s try (the explanations below may be wrong; I’m just stating what I understand as the joke ‘means’):
1) Joke:
1.Ones, three friends decided to play hide and seek Einstein, Newton and Pascal. Einstein begins to count to ten. Pascal runs and hides. Newton draws a one meter by one meter square in the ground in front of Einstein then stands in the middle of it. Einstein reaches ten, uncovers his eyes, and exclaims “Newton! I found you! You’re it!” Newton replies “You didn’t find me. You found a Newton over a square meter. You found Pascal!”
Explanation: A unit of “Pascal” (1 Pa) = (1 N/m^2), read as “Newton over a square meter” (N/m^2)
2) Joke:
- A mathematician and an engineer experimented together. They were both put in a room and at the other end was a nude woman on a bed. The experimenter said that every 30 seconds they could travel half the distance between themselves and the woman. The mathematician ramp off, calling it pointless. The engineer was still in. The mathematician said “Don’t you see? You’ll never get close enough to actually reach her.” The engineer replied, “So? I’ll be close enough for all practical purposes.”
Explanation: Zeno’s Paradox (distance is not “discrete” but “continuous” so though the numbers defining the gaps exists “infinitely”, the gap itself doesn’t exist infinitely since Limit for the “size of gaps” (as the no. of gaps –> infinity) = 0 and eventually he will reach her –> distance of “gap” = 0).
3) Joke:
3.A Buddhist monk come near a burger food truck and says “make me one with all things.” The Buddhist monk pays with a $20 bill, which the trafficker takes, puts in his cash box, and closes the lid. “Where’s my change?” the monk asks. The vendor replies, “Change comes from within”.
Explanation: A double meaning. No change is to be received externally. Hence the monk must get his change from within him as he teaches that principle. Also, some believe that by the power “within” they can “change” anything (to which I don’t subscribe for we’re “not God” to be able to have that Power).
4) Joke:
- Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting in a coffee shop rewriting his first gulp of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I would like a cup of coffee please. No cream.” the waitress replies, “I’m sorry sir, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
Explanation: This guy believed in “existence precedes essence” and so he remarked, “human beings have no essence before their existence because there is no Creator”. So, here an analogy is drawn where “existence” = represented by the “milk” while “essence” = represented by the “cream”. Hence, by his ‘logic’ somewhat (crudely), “no cream” (essence) must be preceded by “no milk” (existence).
5) Joke:
5.Three friends, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Godel and Warner Heisenberg come into a bar. Heisenberg turns to the other and says “Manifestly this is a joke, but how can we tell if it’s funny?” Godel replies “We can’t know that because we’re inside the joke.” Chomsky says “Of course it’s funny, you’re just telling it wrong.”
Explanation: Their remarks represent their famous ‘proofs’. That is, Heisenberg (wrote on ‘uncertainty principle’ –> hence his remark is “uncertain”), Godel (wrote a Mathematical proof on ‘incompleteness’ of a system within itself –> hence his remark is that he “can’t know” because it’s “incomplete” being “inside” the joke itself) and Chomsky (who wrote on “formal languages” reflects that we’re looking at it from a ‘wrong grammar’ point of view to derive the ‘uncertainty’ and ‘incompleteness’ contradictions to this ‘joke’).
6) Joke:
6.It’s hard to take kleptomaniacs and wordplay seriously. Why? They take things literally.
Explanation: “Kleptomaniacs” (those who steal for “no” reason and it’s a possible psychological disorder) and “wordplay” (just a ‘witty’ use of words exploiting on ambiguity and intended puns) “take” (items-kleptomaniacs, words-in wordplay ‘literally’) and since their “reasons are unclear”, we can’t take both “seriously”.
7) Joke:
7.What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
Explanation: A Rhetorical question often contains the ‘intended answer’ in it. Hence by ‘joking’ with it, we can’t be sure of the ‘answer’ too (a ‘joke’?)
8) Joke:
8.Three logicians walk into a bar. The mixologist asks “Do all of you want a drink?” The first logician says “I don’t know.” The second logician says the same. The third says “Yes!”
Explanation: Using ‘logic’ here, the first two logician’s reply of “I don’t know” (means either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’) while the third logician answered ‘yes’. Hence, since the mixologist (in his question) requested “a reply” for “all” three of them, we have (by logic’s analogous rule of ‘intersection’ by Set Theory), These:
(1st reply – ‘yes’ or ‘no’) and (2nd reply – ‘yes’ or ‘no’) and (3rd reply – ‘yes’) only ‘intersect’ (and) with the “possible answer” = “Yes!” . Thus, all three of them get a drink.
9) Joke:
9.A Roman man walked into a bar and asked for a Martin-us. “You mean a martini?” asked the bartender. The Roman replied, “If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it.”
Explanation (this one from the internet): Most words that end in “us” are pluralised by changing the “us” to and “i” (e.g. cactus –> cacti, genius –> genii). And most of those words have Latin roots. So the Latin scholar thinks of “martini” as being plural, so he singularises it by calling it a “martinus”.
10) Joke:
10.Another Roman entered into a bar, holds up two fingers, and said “Five beers please!”
Explanation: In Roman numerals (symbols used even in Mathematics), two fingers held up in a “V” shape represents the number “5”.
11) Joke:
- A logician’s wife was expecting a baby. The doctor hands the baby to the dad. His wife asked if it’s a boy or girl. The logician replied “Yes.”
Explanation (got this from the internet too): The answer “Yes” causes the statement “boy or a girl” to be “True” since it’s an “or” operator here.
12) Joke:
- Boy, I tell ya, entropy ain’t what it used to be.
Explanation (a little help from the internet): Firstly, The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system can only increase. Entropy is a measure of disorder. Hence, it’s not true when applied to certain things such as the “shuffling of cards”. As you shuffle the cards (closed system – no new cards added nor any card removed), the we can’t be certain that the “disorder” (cards not in order) increases (as this Law requires) or decreases (may happen by ‘chance’/probability).
13) Joke:
13.How do you explain the difference between a plumber and a chemist? Ask them to pronounce “unionized” (mistake in the article for this ‘word’).
Explanation (from the net again): A more labor-conscious plumber would pronounce the word as “yoon-yun-ized.” A chemist would probably say “un-eye-on-ized.”
14) Joke:
14.Why do engineers mix up Christmas and Halloween? Because Oct 31 = Dec 25
Explanation: “Oct” is a short form for “Octal system = Base 8” while “Dec” is a short form for “Decimal system = Base 10” for the Mathematical definition of number bases. Hence Oct 31 = 3×8^1 + 1×8^0 = 24 + 1 = 25 and Dec 25 = 2×10^1 + 5×10^0 = 20 + 5 = 25 as well!
15) Joke:
15.The phone rung and he shouted “Oh! I forgot to feed the dog.” Pavlov was at a bar enjoying a pint.
Explanation (an explanation from the internet based on Biology with Psychology – response to ‘bell’ produces the act of ‘salivation for the dog’ by ‘routine’ inherent response/learning—> Whenever the Bell is rang, the dog gets ready to eat. This time, the phone acts as the Bell in his absence): In his experiment, Pavlov used a bell as his neutral stimulus. Whenever he gave food to his dogs, he also rang a bell. After a number of repeats of this procedure, he tried the bell on its own. As you might expect, the bell on its own now caused an increase in salivation
16) Joke:
16.Once Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve noble gases here.” Helium doesn’t react.
Explanation: Helium (an inert gas) is about the most “non-reactive” gas around chemically-speaking (Chemistry fact).
17) Joke:
- Shrodinger’s cat walks into the bar and doesn’t.
Explanation (from the internet – Quantum Physics): Depending on the light conditions, the cat appears either alive or not. Seen a ghost? Hehe.
18) Joke:
- A Higgs Boson walks into a church. The clergyman says “We don’t allow Higgs Bosons in here.” The Higgs Boson replied, “Well, without me, you can’t have mass.”
Explanation (from the internet, I didn’t know!): The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle discovered and announced at CERN. It would explain why some fundamental particles have mass when the symmetries controlling their interactions should require them to be massless, and why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force. Co-incidentally it is called as the god particle, which can create mass. Here it is used to effect of the church mass.
19) Joke:
19.A programmer’s wife asks him to pick up a loaf of bread and, if they have eggs, get a dozen. The programmer comes home with a dozen loaves of bread
Explanation: Logic syntax in programming languages: “If…, then…”. Reading differently, since the store has eggs (fulfilling the “if” condition, “If they have eggs”) then he proceeds to buy a dozen loaves of bread (fulfilling the “then” condition, “then get a dozen”).
20) Joke:
- There’s a band called 1023 MB. They haven’t had any fizgigs yet though.
Explanation: Another IT joke but Mathematically-linked. Every IT hardware expert knows that these bytes (MB = Mega Bytes) are counted in the “powers of 2” namely, “2, 4, 8, 16, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024” (MB) etc. Also, 1 Giga byte = 1024 MB or Megabytes by definition (1023 is one less than 1024 and hence there’s a misfit in the “naming/definition” here).
