fare, posts by tag: joke - LiveJournal

Je ne me souviens plus d'où je tiens cette blague mais tous mes amis africains ou africanophiles s'accordent à en confirmer la vérisimilitude, et suspectent qu'elle est basée sur une histoire réelle, à peine épicée.

C'est l'histoire d'un jeune politicien africain idéaliste, qui vient en stage en France. Là, il est pris sous l'aile d'un parlementaire spécialiste dans les infrastructures publiques. Un jour, le député invite son protégé dans une de ses villas, une grande maison fort jolie en haut d'une colline, avec vue imprenable sur la Riviera (sur un terrain précédemment déclaré inconstructible, acheté à vil prix à l'ancien propriétaire au nom de la femme du député, puis reclassé comme constructible, quelle chance). Notre jeune idéaliste, né dans la brousse, s'émerveille de tout ce confort paisible et spacieux. Il demande à son mentor:

— Comment, vous qui vous sacrifiez pour le bien public, même avec vos indemnités d'élu et en investissant au mieux, avez-vous pu vous permettre d'acheter une telle villa?
— Ah, mon jeune ami! Regarde bien tout en bas de la colline.
— Je ne vois rien. Juste la côte... des maisons... une autoroute...
— Aha! Eh bien figure-toi que cette autoroute a coûté plusieurs milliards.
— Oui; mais quel rapport?
— Tu sais bien que j'ai beaucoup de poids sur les dossiers autoroutiers. Cette villa, c'est ma commission sur l'autoroute que tu vois en bas.
— Oh!

Plusieurs années plus tard, le jeune africain est devenu lui aussi parlementaire influent et maintenant ministre des transports. Il reçoit son ancien mentor qui vient lui rendre visite. Et là, ce n'est pas juste dans une belle villa qu'il accueille son homologue, mais dans un palais magnifique, avec marbre, ors et diamants, servants et servantes.

— Monsieur le ministre, je suis ravi de voir que vous avez aussi bien réussi!
— C'est tout grâce à toi, mon ami qui m'a aidé à me lancer dans la politique.
— Mais je vous en prie. Cependant, je me demande: comment avez-vous fait, vous qui vivez dans un pays tellement plus pauvre que le mien, pour vous payer un tel palais tellement plus grand et plus beau que tous les miens réunis?
— Aha! Mais, cher maître, je n'ai fait qu'appliquer les leçons que tu m'as enseignées autrefois.
— Comment cela?
— Eh bien, te souviens-tu de l'autoroute pour construire laquelle ton gouvernement envoie des milliards à mon pays?
— Oui, bien sûr: c'était sur mon projet de loi, et vous savez bien que j'ai reçu ma petite rétro-commission, pour laquelle je vous suis d'ailleurs fort reconnaissant.
— Bon, alors, regarde en bas de la colline.
— Hum... j'ai beau regarder, je ne vois pas l'autoroute. Où est-elle?
— Mais mon ami, elle est tout autour de toi. Ce palais, c'est l'autoroute que tu ne vois pas en bas!

N'allez pas dire à un Africain que l'état (d'ordures) veut son bien, ou est la solution à quelque problème que ce soit. Il vous rira au nez. Du plus petit fonctionnaire au plus grand ministre, les hommes de l'état (d'immondice) sont tous des corrompus, hiérarchisés selon leur degré croissant de sociopathie. Le mythe de "l'état notre ami" est une fable pour occidentaux aisés, et pour victimes abruties par la propagande étatique omniprésente du berceau au cerceuil. L'état (de criminels) n'a jamais été que la pseudo-légitimation de la violence, et le désarmement par les bureaucrates des victimes de leur racket — qui se retrouvent sans défense face aux terroristes fanatiques aspirant à devenir calife à la place du président. Je laisserai donc à Doug Casey la morale de cette histoire: L'aide internationale peut être définie comme un transfert d'argent, des pauvres des pays riches vers les riches des pays pauvres.

Let's assume Santa visits all NYC households with children at midnight, delivering a measly average of .5 kg of toys at each place. With 30% of 3 million households having children, that's 9e5 stops. Assuming the households more or less equidistributed over the 7.8e8 m^2 area of city, a circuit to cover them with 9e5 stops, using either a linear scan or a fractal scan a la Hilbert Curve or Polya sweep has a length of the order of sqrt(surface*households) = 2.6e7 m. Let's assume one order of magnitude savings because of non equidistribution, so only 2.6e6 m, to cover in 60s. Therefore the average speed of Santa, assuming instant stops, is 4.3e5 m/s. If he carries all his undelivered toys all the time, the average weight of toys he has to carry is 9e5*.5/2 kg = 2.2e5 kg. So his kinetic energy while traveling is .5 * 2.2e5 * (4.3e5)^2 J = 2e16 J, which is that of an atomic bomb hundreds of time more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. But since he has to stop and resume 9e5 times, this energy is released in the environment at every stop while decelerating and then again while accelerating, so the net result of the visit is a dissipation of energy of 2 * 9e5 * 2e16 J = 3.6e22 J, which is hundreds of thousands of times worse than the greatest nuclear weapon of all times, the Tsar Bomba, except directly delivered to households with children. Of course, all these numbers are lower bounds and constitute a very optimistic scenario. To be even more optimistic, let's suppose that Santa is even more clever, and actually makes intermediate stashes of toys that he manages to instantly load and offload, and arrange his circuit so that on each segment of his fractal path he only carries the toys for that destination; this way, he might reduce the average weight of toys to something of the order 1kg or so. Assuming he is himself a weightless elf and that so are his sleigh and reindeers, so that only the toys are physical objects subject to the law of physics, that's a hundred-thousand fold saving in energy, which brings us back to only a few Tsar Bombas. Again, delivered directly to households with children. I recommend you not be in town or anywhere near children at midnight on this (or any) Christmas.

Back in the Soviet Union, a group of men, chained together in a vehicle that takes them to a remote gulag facility, discuss what befell to each of them.

Says the first: "my story is as unjust as it is sad. It was my birthday, so my wife gave me a watch as a present. But it was a poor quality watch and the next day it was already 5 minutes slow. And so of course, I arrived 5 minutes late at work. That's when the Political Commissar nabbed me and I was convicted, to five years of prison, for lack of revolutionary spirit, anti-social behavior and counter-revolutionary activities.

Says the second: "oh that's nothing: my story is even more unjust and sadder. It was my birthday, so my wife gave me a watch as a present. But it was a poor quality watch and the next day it was already 5 minutes fast. And so of course, I arrived 5 minutes early at work. That's when the Political Commissar nabbed me and I was convicted, to ten years of prison, for sabotage and espionage."

Says the third: "oh that's nothing: my story is more unjust and sadder than both of yours. It was my birthday, so my wife gave me a watch as a present. And it was a good quality watch and the next day it was still on time. And so of course, I arrived at work exactly on time. That's when the Political Commissar nabbed me and I was convicted, to fifteen years of prison, for buying a watch from the West."

Says the fourth: "oh that's nothing: my story is more unjust and sadder than all of yours!" It was my birthday, but my wife couldn't afford to give me a watch as a present. And so the next day I arrived as usual at the same time as everyone. That's when the Political Commissar nabbed me and I was convicted, to twenty years of prison, for absolutely nothing." To which the other convicts reply in choir: "You're such a liar: Everyone knows nothing is only three years!"

A few years later the very same men meet again, this time in Free America where they migrated, while again being chained as they are taken to a correctional facility. They tell each other their respective stories.

Says the first: "my story is as unjust as it is sad. I founded a successful company, and my product was priced 5% higher than competition. That's when the Feds cracked down on me and confiscated 25% of my company's profits, for price gouging.

Says the second: "oh that's nothing: my story is even more unjust and sadder. I founded a successful company, and my product was priced 5% lower than competition. That's when the Feds cracked down on me and confiscated 50% of my company's profits, for dumping and unfair competition.

Says the third: "oh that's nothing: my story is more unjust and sadder than both of yours. I founded a successful company, and my product was priced the same as competition. That's when the Feds cracked down on me and confiscated 75% of my company's profits, for price collusion and anti-trust violations.

Says the fourth: "oh that's nothing: my story is more unjust and sadder than all of yours!" My company was only so successful, and my products weren't much comparable in price to those of the competition. That's when the Feds cracked down on me and confiscated 100% of my company's profits, for absolutely nothing!" To which the other convicts reply in choir: "You're such a liar: Everyone knows nothing is only 15%!"

In the country where I come from, health care is free.

Is it?

Yes: doctors and nurses work for nothing. Their job is so deeply satisfying to them that they don't need either food or sleep, not even a bath. They are born ready-to-work with medical omniscience and so don't need years of expensive parenting and training. Moreover, hospitals and medical equipment grow naturally in otherwise infertile land.

Oh my! Nuclear-powered robots have taken over your country and control all resources!

Did I tell you about the free education?

A plane flies over Poland. Aboard, Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope are convening in a top secret meeting to settle the future of the World. Suddenly, a thunderstorm breaks up and the plane is struck by lightning. The passengers find out to their dismay that there is only one parachute as the plane twirls down in flames towards its fateful crash.

Question: Who is saved?

Answer (rot13): Cbynaq

I resent being called heterosexual. I'm straight. I'm in the norm. I'm orthosexual. Those people, they are different. They are the heterosexuals.

(That, and don't forget that the average human has one boob and one testicle.)

Unlike what its name suggests, the museum of Bellas Artes doesn't have a lot of Fine Arts, but it still is well worth the short and cheap visit. You won't find classics there, but mostly copies of those Funny Arts that our XX^th century ancestors used to call Modern, where conceptual jokes replace the exaltation of natural shapes. It notably contains a few mural paintings and other works by well-known mexican and other latin american artists, who obviously spent more time learning communist ideology than acquiring mastery of perspective and anatomy. On the other hand the over-the-top architecture with its marble halls illuminated with sunlight from the glass cupolas is quite worth the visit in and of itself.

To an individualist, society does whatever anyone does. To a collectivist, society does whatever everyone does.

Thus, when he says something could or should be done, an individualist says that someone should do it, and he may not mean anyone in particular but himself: he is actually saying he is ready to contribute to the thing happening.

When he says something should be done, a collectivist says that everyone should be contributing to that thing happening, and he means about everyone but himself: if he sees his role anywhere, it's in telling others who to do, bidding them into subservience by the magic power of his words, helped by the compelling use of public force; in no case does he mean that he himself should contribute any of his own resources.

"How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?"
A- "None, the market will take care of it."
B- "Every one of them and non-libertarians too, because we all are the market."
C- "I'll do it, for a dollar."

When some people keep telling the same — very good — absurd old joke about absolute relativity, the same discourse about the limit of discourse, then insist on the joke being taken seriously and the discourse being held sacred, refusing to acknowledge the limitations of its own simple meaning, and waste their lives repeating it and commenting it, the obvious conclusion is that the joke is on them.

mood: crazy

music: Bugs - What's up doc?

He's been my all-time fav' hollywood star, if only for the name I can't quite manage to pronounce; now you can know his dark secrets: Skrwy Skwrl.

In other news, I'm looking for a job starting in january 2005. Time to complete my CV.