The Ultimate in subtle humor

[Reply #40 on:]

payn> believe me i know how subtle it is, i learned about it in my 3rd/4th year of CompSci at University, atleast in depth. 
edeltraut> that was absolutely in no way clearer at all, infact i think i'm more confused.  the cat will be both alive and dead because it exists in a box with an atom?
getak2003> what? that is neither correct nor related.  he says he takes after him, not descended from him.
seriously, somebody stop this guy, i just follow him around the board correcting him.
lastly, i just rewatched that part and fry's reaction is no more similar to farnsworth's "huba, va, wha?" than anything else he says, its just a few confused grunts.

[Reply #41 on:]

Gonna disagree with you on that last point, JD.  Considering Billy West does both of the voices (Fry and Farnsworth), and also considering that was the joke, that he takes after him (figure it out for yourself).  Taking after people includes mannerisms, after all, and that is definitely a mannerism.

[Reply #42 on:]

since when did you ever correct me JD?

this is the first time i ahve ever heard of you!
or cared to read the name

[Reply #43 on:]

Back on the subject of Schroedinger's cat:

:raises hand:

Umm, err - UK'er, so not a major, but a student of Computer Science and Cybernetics.

However, the main reason I know about Schroedingers is because I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (another Douglas Adams book), and it's referenced. Interesting twist - Adams at one point in the book claimed that this experiment had indeed been done, but when the box was opened to observe the result, the cat was gone. It had got fed up of being gassed by the experiment repeatedly and sodded off  .

[Reply #44 on:]

getak2003> if you had bothered to read any of the topics u had posted on, especially the ones u start "those damn time skips" and "futurama, delivery impossible" you would notice me correcting u ad nauseum
nixorbo> farnsworth's "awha???" goes is short, connected and has a raised intonation
fry's uh, huh wha? is longer, detached and little intonation change. i disagree with you sir!

[Reply #45 on:]

Yay!  My 100th post!
I wanted to do it in my favorite topic.
 

[Reply #46 on:]

 

Originally posted by JDHannan:
nixorbo> farnsworth's "awha???" goes is short, connected and has a raised intonation
fry's uh, huh wha? is longer, detached and little intonation change. i disagree with you sir!

No. No. No. Well, actually yes. But no. Fry does say it differently, but maybe because he's, uh... NOT FARNSWORTH! It isn't even a subtle joke, it's just a joke. It was in there on purpose. Fry and Farnsworth are related. They make similar noises. It's funny. Laugh. LAUGH, DAMN YOU!
              

::realizes he just corrected a post that is almost a month old::

Aww, forget it.

[Reply #47 on:]

yeah probably
i was just on a roll correcting getak2003

[Reply #48 on:]

yall are getting me frusterated. im bearly passing algebra, which is odd because i find physics simple.

[Reply #49 on:]

see--that stuff is cool and interesting--why do you have to do all the uninteresting science crap to get to do that stuff

what is the four-color theorem?

[Reply #50 on:]

ALthough i didnt see mention of the four-color theorem in here... if my memory of university is correct (which its probly not if u know how sick i am) it might be the theory that you can color any map with any shape countries so that no 2 countries that are connected in any way are the same color.  Try it, it works.
  /.\
  ---
imagine if the / \ and --- are countries, or the borders of countries.  also the . is a country.  this is the most countries you can make connect at once where every country is touching every other country. 

[Reply #51 on:]

It's late, I'm tired and bad at math, just wanted to say something different about all this.

To us, getting across the nation in a single day is trivial.  One plane, one flight one day.  For settlers a hundred or so years ago, this was not the case.  Getting across the country meant months of hard, and life-threataning travel.  If you told a story back in those days about getting from one side of the country to the other in a single day, it had better be a punchline.

In this same sence, Futurama is taking an intellectual approach to saying that our present, most difficult tasks will eventually become so trival that they will be reduced to a forgotten reference in a store room somewhere. 

It's good to know the full meaning of the reference, but the real joke is that the joke is on us, that we haven't gotten it figured out, but the future will.

Oh, to be 1,020-something.  Time makes fool of us all.

[Reply #52 on:]

yes, that is definitely the joke, Clemens, that they have a listing of every P and NP problem and they're in a storeroom that we never see again in an office that would never have use for them.  its like having a bible in the basement of Macintosh HQ
they're clearly evil and they probably cant even read without a ultra-friendly interface, so the bible is no good, but its an extremely useful book

[Reply #53 on:]

the club in a clone of my own looks like the biff tannen club in back to the future part II

[Reply #54 on:]

 

Originally posted by zozer:
yall are getting me frusterated. im bearly passing algebra, which is odd because i find physics simple.

How can you find physics simple and barely pass algebra? Don't make no sense to me.

[Reply #55 on:]

One really obscure reference I spotted was in Roswell That Ends Well. There is a famous video that allegedly shows the autopsy of one of the aliens recovered from the Roswell crash. While it has never been conclusively proven to be a fake, there are several points about it that seem unlikely. One of these points is that in the background you can see a phone with a curly wire - while not completely unheard of, these were extremely rare back in 1947. Now look at Zoidberg's autopsy scene in RTEW - there is a curly phone wire in the background! Now that's obscure, you'd need to be some kind of sad nerd to spot that one... oh, right.

Also, another part of the P/NP joke, both sets are of infinite size so it would be impossible to write them down.

[Reply #56 on:]

maybe they have come up with a way of modelling every different type of problem with a finite set...

[Reply #57 on:]

not so much a joke, more a detail.

did anyone notice the full moon seen on Mars U during the scene where robot house was sneaking round with the panty raid ladder was potato shaped?

one of the martian moons phobos or deimos which both happen to be potato shaped.

[Reply #58 on:]

hey, no thread-jacking
as much as i like having a multi-page thread, this is not related to *checks what this page was about*
yeah! P & NP, well no i guess its really about ultimately subtle jokes
alright, i take it back.
good post!

[Reply #59 on:]

This might be stretching things, but I was watching the commentary on "The Last Starfighter" and noticed what might be a tenuous link to "Roswell That Ends Well."

In the ep, red- and blue-colored fields interact the throw the ship through time. In "The Last Starfighter," the director talks about the space travel sequences, and notes that the stars ahead of the starcar look more blue, and the stars behind look more red thanks the the starcar speeding towards/away from the light from both sources.

What's really interesting is when the starcar makes the "jump" through space -- the director mentions somehing about "time dilation," but I'm not sure if that's relavent -- the blue in front and red in back sort of form two parallel lines as we see the star car from the side. The two lines race towards each other, react, and instantly the ship arrives at its destination, with no time having passed for its occupants.

So, two things with red and blue interacting at the moment of a time-related travel event. Coincidence? I'd like to think not. 

[Reply #60 on:]

i think both reference the "blue shift" effect.

when you travel toward a light source(eg, a star), light waves you perceive get "squished" together resulting in a shorter wavelenghth. this causes a shift to the blue side of the color spectrum. as the lighted object gets further away, the perceived wavelength is "stretched" resulting in a reddish shift.

and as you go faster, everything in front becomes "bluer" and behind you "redder".

it's a lot like a fire-engine siren coming from a distance, then passing you and going away. the pitch from the observers point gradually goes from high to low though the siren is really wailing at a constant frequency.

astronomers use this blue shift to predict speed and distances of stars or something...

[Reply #61 on:]

 

Originally posted by feralHuman:
astronomers use this blue shift to predict speed and distances of stars or something...

I thought it was called red shift.

And I already know about the effect of speed on the light waves; what I was really referencing was the coincidence of blue & red fields and time travel of a sort in both. As I said, a tenuous link.

[Reply #62 on:]

In astronmy, you use red shift (we live in an expanding universe).  However, you do have both blue or red shifts.  Combined, they are called the Doppler effect.

[Reply #63 on:]

 

Originally posted by Lionel Hutz Esq:
Combined, they are called the Doppler effect.

Ah, thank you, I was trying to remember the name of that thing, since I was going to try to give the standard police siren example, but figured I'd look stupid if I couldn't even remember its name. 

[Reply #64 on:]

I was watching 2ACV17 "War is the H-Word" today and I picked up on a joke I had missed the first three times I saw the episode. Zapp tells "Lee" that he's been reading a fascinating book on life in Ancient Greece. I believe the Ancient Greeks were big on homosexuality - and of course, Zapp is questioning his sexuality by being attracted to Leela in disguise.

Don't know how subtle it really is to everyone else, but it had gone over my head before.

[Reply #65 on:]

 

Originally posted by Jesse X Barboza:
I believe the Ancient Greeks were big on homosexuality - and of course, Zapp is questioning his sexuality by being attracted to Leela in disguise.

Not only were they okay with it, in ancient Sparta new warriors were often given as "apprentices" to experienced warriors. The thinking was that their sexual relationship would lead to group unity and greater camaraderie on the battlefield.

[Reply #66 on:]

JDHanan, that P/NP math joke is a bit obscure -- will have to read more on that. Good show!

I like in a Simpsons episode where Nelson tells Lisa, "That's like asking the square root of a Million -- no one will ever know." But of course, Lisa knows but says nothing.
And in same episode when Prof Frink says, "Pi is exactly 3!" to the shock of an assembly of scientists, to get them quieted down.

Watching a Vol. 2 episode, I recently noticed a subtle reference/joke when Bender and company are at the movies, and in the dark the three characters from Mystery Science Theater 3000 are in audience and proclaim, "No talking during the movie!"   
Missed this the first time on Fox, so was slightly subtle for me... 

[Reply #67 on:]

Originally posted by LAN.gnome:
 I thought it was called red shift.

you gotta be shifting me 

[Reply #68 on:]

Aah! Crikey! Sometimes I think I'm pretty clever. Today I don't.

Could someone explain the kegalizer thing to me?

[Reply #69 on:]

*whew*...
maybe u'll get it when u're older...
umm
Kegal exercises are exercies women can do to...
umm...
keep it together... downstairs...

[Reply #70 on:]

this is nto a double post, they are almost a month apart
I just noticed in The Simpsons Halloween Special, Season 4, when Homer goes into the 3D world, one of the things floating around is a little thing that says "P=NP"
someone sure likes that joke (besides me)

[Reply #71 on:]

All these science mumbo jumbo jokes make my head hurt.

[Reply #72 on:]

 

Originally posted by edeltraut:
I thought the point of this thread was for us nerds to feel smug.

An explanation of Schrödinger's cat here.

 http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/ion/qucomp/cat.htm

Here is another explanation of Schrödinger's cat.

[Reply #73 on:]

 

Originally posted by JDHannan:
I just noticed in The Simpsons Halloween Special, Season 4, when Homer goes into the 3D world, one of the things floating around is a little thing that says "P=NP"
someone sure likes that joke (besides me)

Same subject, different jokes. 

[Reply #74 on:]

ok i cant be botherd to get my head round the p  and np stuff, but if you do then its not really that much of a clever or original idea of putting them together

[Reply #75 on:]

Says the person who can't be bothered to get his head around the p and np stuff. 

[Reply #76 on:]

Oh yeah, actually they're not the same joke.  they're the opposite!
one says P and NP are separate and one says they're equal
that just blew my mind again! 

[Reply #77 on:]

Just made the damned weirdest connection...

The DOOP (democratic order of planets) acronym sounds EXACTLY like the word 'dupe', which means fool.

Anyone following me? 

[Reply #78 on:]

Uh, not really. Kinda like saying the Fathers Against Rude Television acronym sounds like 'fort', meaning they're strong. Or something. 

[Reply #79 on:]

 

Originally posted by Asylum-Fry:
The DOOP (democratic order of planets) acronym sounds EXACTLY like the word 'dupe', which means fool.

Anyone following me?   

Yeah, I am.   

On a similar note, the United Nations acronym is UN.  "Un-" is a prefix which means "not", "opposite of", or "to reverse or undo".  I think that there's some subtle humor in that, as well.