Of Uncertain Humor

Bad Website, No Cookies
Bad Website! No Cookies!

Yeah, I’m uncertain about both how many people will get both levels of this bit of humor and how funny those that do will find it. 😉

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Very Special Relativity

Albert Einstein TongueAlbert Einstein Tongue was without a reasonable doubt one of the greatest minds of the modern age. Einstein was both a scientist and a philosopher of science, a combination rarely seen today.

He is best known for his Theory of General Relativity and his Theory of Special Relativity. He should, however, also be known for his little-publicized Theory of Very Special Relativity.

Very Special Relativity (VSR, also known as the very special theory of relativity or VSTR) is the accepted sociological theory regarding the relationship between family and holiday time.

F=dc2

 
The formula for Einstein’s Theory of Very Special Relativity is Family(F) equals dysfunction(d) multiplied by the square of crazy(c). Thus, Einstein has mathematically proven the Family-Crazy equivalence during the holidays.

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Proving Velociraptor

I do understand that there are some that require that scientific explanations for everything and anything in order to believe in the possibility of their existence. I also understand that there’s a subset of those devotees of scientism that require mathematic proofs before they will consent to grant that something is possible.

With this understanding I’ve decided to help the many fans of the Cretaceous dinosaur known as the Velociraptor ( Velociraptor mongoliensis & Velociraptor osmolskae) I’ve decided to provide such mathmatic proof of their existence some 71 million years ago.

Velociraptor Equation
The Velociraptor Equation

So there you go, mathmatical proof via equation that the velociraptor did in fact exist. That we haven’t yet discovered and conclusively proved the existence of the distraptor or timeraptor shouldn’t be any more of an issue for anyone than the fact that we haven’t actually proved the existence of: dark energy, dark matter, quarks, tachyons, the Higgs-Bosun particle. or the graviton. 😉

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Claim The High Seat

The Great Houses are arrayed and truly they do and shall vie with one another for supremacy.

high-seat
Who Shall Claim The High Seat?

But which House shall hold the highest of thrones, or will this all end with dust or snow blowing across a vast field of graves?

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TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL – Learn it; accept it. You have no choice except to live it. TANSTAAFL is one of the fundamental laws of the universe, though one too many choose to ignore or refute.

Acronym: TANSTAAFL (/tan’stah-fl/)
Meaning: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
Source: Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress ( 1 )

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody always pays. To continue the analogy – It might be the diner, but in a way that is deferred or that he or she doesn’t recognize as payment. It might be restauranteur, either willing or due to some form of coercion. Or it might be some third-party, again either willing or due to some form of coercion. But, no matter who is getting stuck with the tab, somebody always pays.

Much like the law of Entropy, TANSTAAFL has it roots in thermodynamics but extends throughout all facets of existence. This is why Socialism and all the dreams of the entitlement society promulgated by the Liberals and Progressives are doomed to failure. Somebody always pays and, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money or, at least, the ability to access their money.

Yet Liberals and Progressives, despite their purported love of science, can’t understand this. The federal government, with their bipartisan adoration of wimpynomics, certainly doesn’t understand this. The eaters and takers living off of other people’s money most certainly refuse to consider understanding this. But in all these cases their refusal to accent and understand reality is moot; ignorance of the law is no excuse.

The problem is that TANSTAAFL, like all natural laws, isn’t subject to being broken. It is inviolate and cannot be circumvented any more than the law of gravity can be circumvented. It also, however, carries no punishment for attempted transgression; it merely has consequences.

It’s simple. Every regulation placed upon industry carries the price of reduced employment and higher costs. Every tax placed upon people carries the price of reduced spending power. Every time someone or some group is given a handout somebody else has their circumstance worsened.

None of the above should be construed as a blanket statement against social safety net programs or industry regulation. There’s a certain understood value in both.  The price of these things, however, needs to be carefully weighed before they’re put into place and this is something that neither the Leftists and their dependent demographics are willing or able to do.

~*~

NOTE: While Robert Heinlein popularized this acronym and attendant phrase, he did not create it. The earliest known occurrence of the phrase, “There ain’t no such thing as free lunch”, appears as the punchline of a joke related in an article in the El Paso Herald-Post of June 27, 1938, entitled “Economics in Eight Words”  and was repeated used multiple times before the 1966 publication of  The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress:

  • The phrase later, in 1942, appeared in an article in the Oelwein Daily Register.
  • In 1945, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” appeared in the Columbia Law Review
  • In 1947 it appeared in a column by economist Merryle S. Rukeyser.
  • In 1949 In 1949 the phrase appeared in an article by Walter Morrow in the San Francisco News and was part of the title of Pierre Dos Utt’s monograph, “TANSTAAFL: a plan for a new economic world order”
  • In 1950, a New York Times columnist ascribed the phrase to economist Leonard P. Ayres.

Heinlein’s popularization of the phrase may, however, have been the inspiration for economist Milton Friedman using it as the title of a 1975 book, There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.

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