Tag Archives: physics

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In The Beginning

And God said, “Let there be a Big Bang,” and there was a big bang; and from the Big Bang emerged matter and radiation.

And God saw the Big Bang, that it was a great explosion; and the evening and the morning were the first billion years, 14 billion years ago.

And God said, Let there be hydrogen and helium and let them swirl randomly; and let some of the gas swirl into regions of higher density; and let those regions of greater density contract themselves into proto-galaxies; and let the proto-galaxies contract themselves further into galaxies.

And when they had done so, God said, Let there be stars.

And the first stars began to form within the galaxies; and when the gases whereof they were made had sufficiently compressed, there began thermonuclear burning and lo, there was starlight.  And the evening and the morning were the third billion years, 11 billion years ago.

And to assure that man would not quickly understand His great works, God gave unto the speed of light, a finite limit of 300,000 kilometers a second, and to the atmosphere of the Earth, when He got around to creating it, five billion years ago, He gave turbulence and distortion, and opacity to many kinds of radiation; and further to confound Man’s understanding, He placed throughout the universe, quasars, neutron stars, black holes and other strange peculiarities.

And God looked upon the work of His singularity approvingly and said, Lo, it is a puzzlement.  And it was a puzzlement.

Could we ever expect a universe with anything as strange as Man in it, to be simple?  God the mathematician, God the astrophysicist, moves in mysterious ways.  Simple theories set forth by simple men with very limited knowledge mean that the creation story of the Bible is likely to be wrong, and the likelihood of the Bible being wrong on any given subject increases as Mankind’s knowledge and understanding increases.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?  Then he is not omnipotent.  Is he able, but not willing?  Then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing?  Then whence cometh evil?  Is he neither able nor willing?  Then why call him God?

Epicurus: circa 300 BCE

 

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Old Bag Fibbing Friday

Time for a mixed bag from Pensitivity101 last week:

  1. What is poppycock?

It is the bane of my diet.  It also violates several laws of physics.  I vow to ignore it, and pass it by, on the other side of the store aisle.  It must contain Dark Matter, because it distorts the floor, causing me to ooze over, and snuggle up next to it.  And how can eating a 12 ounce can of it cause me to gain three pounds??

2.  How did the word nincompoop originate?

The original wording was “Shit-For-Brains,” but the Woke Warriors branch of Cancel Culture LLC insisted that it needed to be toned down, so that no-one would be offended.

3.  What is a rolodex?

It’s an expensive watch that a fool with dyslexia buys, in a car park.

4.  What is a Chimera?

To Hell with all those high-falutin’, pretentious Greek names!  Chimera is the strange name of the fraternity at the off-beat, local Liberal Arts College.  It’s full of those who don’t fit in anywhere else.  Unlike The Hasty Pudding Club, or The Skull and Bones, its elite group is known as The Square Peg – Round Hole Compilation.

5.  What is Playdoh?

It’s when you’re doing a stage adaptation of The Simpsons, and you land the role of Homer.

6.  What is a gingernut?

It’s when a Bobby must chase a wrongdoer, on a bicycle, and quickly mounts a bit too carelessly.

7.  Where will you find a sphinx?

It is a set of muscles found in the lower abdomen, which control output from the bladder and intestines.

8.  What is a hypothesis?

It is an essay published online or in print, from some fool anti-vaxxer.  Vaccines have been proven to work against smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, polio and more.  Suddenly, for COVID19, these idiots not only don’t believe the various vaccines are effective, but that they are so important that Bill Gates wants to track them.  Is there a vaccine against stupidity??!

9.  What is a pentadecagon?

Have I mentioned my redneck neighbours?  After some middle-of-the-night excitement recently, they told me that they had proof that Satan was real.  They used barbecue lighter fluid to draw an inverted, five-point star on the wooden veranda behind their house, set it aflame, and prayed that Lucifer would reveal himself.

When he didn’t, and the flames died, they went to bed.  Quick action by the fire brigade saved the house, but that deck is gone!!  Could we get a couple of booster shots of that stupid vaccine, please??!

10. What made the Mona Lisa smile?

The new, Tesla-manufactured, heavy-duty batteries for her vibrator finally arrived.

 

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Gettin’ Physical Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 went all geeky on us, and asked some deep, technological questions, to which I have shallow, silly answers, that may have some vague relation to truth and reality.

Physics
What came before the big bang?

A teen-aged, trans-dimensional entity, clumping around the meta-verse in its size 13 sneakers.

What did Galileo drop off the tower of Pisa?

The large pizza that the Uber-Eats delivery guy had to schlep all the way to the top.  While a shame, he didn’t feel that it was that much of a loss, because it had Genoa salami, instead of hot Pisan sausage.

Is a Cartesian bear similar to a polar bear?

It depends on how you observe it.  From the shaded side, it does indeed look much like a Polar bear.  From the sunward side, it more resembles a casserole of lasagna.

What did Newton say when the apple landed on his head?

#$%@&*%#!!!  Oh – after that??!  That does it!  No more Mister Nice Guy!  I’m going to invent calculus to see if I can bend gravity, so that the next one misses me.

Why did Columbus think the world was round?

Because he kept getting calls from India and Pakistan, offering to have the ducts on the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa Maria cleaned.

What was Heisenberg uncertain about?

The whole LGBTQ2+ thing, and why so many good Christians, instead of worrying about their own sexuality, are so concerned about other people’s.  Eskimos rub noses to express love.  Too many Christians love to stick their nose in where it doesn’t belong.

What was the name of Schrödinger’s cat?

Iffy, until it died…. or did it??   🙄

When a photo finish decides the winner of a race, did they change the outcome by measuring it?

Not really!  It enlarged the noses of both front-running horses by the same amount.

What is the God particle used for?

A source of irony when Christian Apologists try to use it to define their pet deity into existence.

Is the theory of everything all you need to know?

In theory – YES.  But there will always be another irritating, smart-ass know-it-all, ready to bend your ear about some fool topic.  🙄

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Supply-Chain Fibbing Friday

Pensitiviy101 passed the buck again.  Questions this past week were supplied by Jim Adams @ https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/
Thanks Jim!

Early Humans

  1. What are Neanderthals?

They are the white-skinned descendants of ancient caveman savages – with very little evolution or improvement.  They are hairy, loud, thoughtless and inconsiderate.  Good Queen Bess II once referred to them as jumped-up oiks.  They wear their pants pulled down so far that their underwear hangs out – We’re probably lucky that they wear any, and that it’s clean, not gigantic plumber’s cracks.  They listen to rap music, while Negroes point and laugh at them, and think they’re Bad Boys.

  1. Why did man settle in the Euphrates Valley?

Mankind found a peyote-like shrub, and the best bud – after they discovered fire to smoke it with.  When Manolito set up a taco wagon, selling Mexican food and cervezas, they all decided to just sit back and chill out.

  1. What caused the Ice age?

I’m not sure.  I remember my Mother yelling at me to close the refrigerator door.  No-one has put any new food in it since you last checked, five minutes ago!  At the same time, my Father was yelling at my Brother, “Close the damned front door!  We can’t afford to heat the entire neighbourhood!”

  1. What kind of water is in the Yellow River?

The Isle of Dogs sits in the middle of it – lots of trees – lots of dogs – you do the math – just don’t eat yellow snow.

  1. What is the world’s oldest city?

I believe that it’s Tampa, Florida, where the average age is 92.683 years, blue hair is as common as fire ants, and they all eat some strange poultry dish called the Early Bird.

  1. Why did the Nile River rise every summer, overflow its banks, and flood Egypt?

Simple physics!  Heat causes thing to expand.  The summer is even hotter, so the water expanded.  The sand dunes got bigger too, but no-one noticed.  If you’ve seen one sand dune, you’ve seen…. Egypt.  😳

  1. Who invented soap?

Many people think that it was Proctor and Gamble, but it was really a Wall Street advertising firm whose name has been lost in the mists of time a froth of bubbles, and a blizzard of hundred-dollar bills in promotional fees.  Duz does everything, and Ajax was stronger than dirt.

  1. Why did Nimrod build the Tower of Babel?

He said that it was to get a better Wi-Fi connection, but I heard that his wife told him the mother-in-law was coming for an extended visit, and he needed someplace peaceful and quiet to re-string his bow.  (If you think that’s a euphemism for something, you’re probably phallically right.)

  1. Who is the Scorpion King?

Duh-Wayne Johnson!  Didn’t you see the movie??  He’s taking over Chuck Norris’s spot.  Someone asked him how he got the nickname, ‘The Rock?’  He took a run at a lake, and skipped 15 times.

  1. Why was the Great Pyramid built?

It was a practice session for I. M. Pei, for that monstrosity he inflicted on the Louvre and its patrons.  I don’t see the point of either.  He says that it’s because I’m too small.

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I Can Take No Credit

Thoughts on Science And Religion – Maybe Mix In A Little
Has any religious doctrine ever supplanted a scientific discovery?

I’m still a great proponent of the idea that, if you throw enough horseshit at the barn, sooner or later, some of it will stick – but it’s still horseshit. There have been thousands – tens – hundreds – of thousands of weird-ass religious ideas, proposals and theories advanced. That one of them finally proved (somewhat) correct is not revelation, but inevitable coincidence.
Matt Dillahunty says that the time to believe something, is when there is evidence, and evidence is provided by science. They may have been right, but they were right for the wrong reasons. This seems much like Christians observing something, and then going back through the Bible to find some vague passage that proves a prophesy.

Archon, you wrote — ” That one of them finally proved (somewhat) correct …” I have to ask — which one?

This post of Jim’s, about the Hindu Upanishads Science and Religion—Maybe Mix in a Little? – TheCommonAtheist (wordpress.com)  I was being my usual snarky, sarcastic self.  In no way did I mean to imply that their beliefs and claims held any validity.  One particular group of Neolithic Lotus-Eaters, out of myriads of others, felt that reality depends on randomness, and quantum-type fluctuations.  Modern day physics is finding that the existence of the universe may depend on randomness and quantum fluctuations.  There is no way to prove that one led to the other.

It’s like the stopped clock, that’s right twice a day.  Actually, it’s more like someone fired a shotgun at a wall, leaving fifteen or twenty buckshot holes in it.  Five years later, someone comes along, paints a target around one of them, and declares, ‘See!  They got a bull’s-eye!’

It is highly likely that Newtonian physics was supplanted by the Upanishads—the ideas from Hindu philosophy called quantum mechanics.  What’s different about the Upanishad -vs.- say, Christianity, is the Upanishad can be made into math by the most skilled of all scientific minds. It can be tested, and it can be fit into what we know about the nature of duality, consciousness, mind, and matter.

My nit-picky, pedantic nature insists that ‘supplanted’ means took the place of (another), as through force, scheming, strategy, or the like.  It is, therefore, modern, peer-reviewed, fact-driven, science-proven Physics, which has supplanted the Hindu Vedas.  They make no mention of “Quantum Mechanics.”  It is only now that some people are aware of it, that they want to take modern science, and retrofit it into a religion.  No smoke some ganja and pull it out of your ass Woo can replace it, or even claim to help develop it.

Through its language of mathematics, it is the science, not the religion, which can be investigated and proved.  It can ‘fit into’ the rest, in the same way that a rotten tomato, a dozen doughnuts, a dead cat, or a handgun, can individually be forced to ‘fit into’ any given paper bag.

Science at this level is somewhat uncertain, but I still prefer my dozen Quantum revelation eggs neatly and safely packaged.  The truth is much more likely to be revealed by Stephen Hawking and CERN, than by Shiva and Ganesh.

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Hail To The Chief

In Texas there is a town called New Braunfels, where there is a large German-speaking population.

One day, a local rancher driving down a country road noticed a man using his hand to drink water from the rancher’s stock pond.

The rancher rolled down the window and shouted: “Sehr angenehm! Trink das Wasser nicht. Die kuehe haben darein geschissen.”

(This means: “Glad to meet you! Don’t drink the water. The cows have shat in it.”)

The man shouted back: “I’m from New York and just down here campaigning for Trump’s Presidential run. I can’t understand you. Please speak in English.”

The rancher replied: “Use both hands.”

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tRump suffers from liabetes

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A couple were going to go on a vacation down South, but the wife had an emergency at her office. So they agreed that the husband would go as planned, and his wife would fly down and meet him at the hotel the next day.

When the husband got to the hotel and had checked in, he thought he should send his wife a quick email letting her know he’d got there OK.

As he typed in her email address, he made a typo and his message was sent to an elderly preacher’s wife instead.  It just so happened that her husband had sadly died the day before.

When the grieving old preacher’s wife checked her emails, she read the one from the vacationer, let out a piercing scream, and fainted on the floor.

At the sound of her falling, her family rushed into the room. They tended to her and then looked at her computer and saw this email on her screen:

Dearest,

Just checked in to my room. Everything is prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

P.S. It sure is hot down here.

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Two cows are standing in a field.

The first cow says to the second, “Have you heard about this mad cow disease?  It makes cows go crazy and then they die”.

The second cow replies, “Good thing I‘m a helicopter.”

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So all the animals all gathered and were having a party,

Everybody is drinking and talking and having a good time, suddenly a chameleon goes to the middle of the room, says, “Check this out” and starts changing color of his skin for a minute straight.

Once he’s done he says, “Let’s see any of you do the same”.

Suddenly an octopus appears from the crowd and says: “Hold my beer, hold my beer, hold my beer, hold my beer, hold my beer, hold my beer, hold my beer, hold my beer.”

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Why did the chicken cross the road?

Aristotle: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

Isaac Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest.  Chickens in motion tend to cross the road.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road, or whether the road moved under the chicken, depends on your frame of reference.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

Wolfgang Pauli: There was already a chicken on this side of the road.

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A beginner’s guide to physics

Relativity: When the family gets together
Black holes: What you get in black socks
Critical mass: A big group of film reviewers

Hyperspace: Where you park at the superstore

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“Take a pencil and paper,” the teacher said, “and write an essay with the title If I Were a Millionaire.” Everyone but Philip, who leaned back with arms folded, began to write furiously.

“What’s the matter,” the teacher asked. “Why don’t you begin?”

“I’m waiting for my secretary,” he replied.

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Reality Is Weird

Weird

A Christian Apologist shut his mouth, and in doing so, (almost) shut mine.  I found him under the above title, making claims like

Either (1) an infinite and eternal consciousness called God chose to create our universe with a purpose… OR! (2) Our universe randomly appeared out of an infinite and eternal nothingness by itself for absolutely no reason at all. These are the only two reasonable options.

I left him a response that he apparently did not like.  He posed another question, but I could see that he wouldn’t like the answer to it either, and it would cease being a comment, and become a blog-post of its own.  I went back in my ‘notifications’ to pick up the beginning, but he had disappeared.  I accessed his post, and found that he had disabled all comments.  I did not realize that him doing that erased all existing comments on my site.  The following first bit is from fading memory.

Neither of your options is reasonable, and you limit your argument by claiming that there can only be two.  A little thought and research would show that there are more then that.  (1) You have not proved that “God” created the Universe, or that there is/was a purpose. (2) Your random appearance from nothing, for no reason claim is so highly unlikely that no reputable astrophysicist would espouse it.

Can you provide any other scenarios?  Either there is purpose, or there isn’t.

This is what he missed.

Imagine a race of spaceless, timeless beings.  One of them, the equivalent of an eight-year-old boy, possesses the singularity which will become our Universe.  Perhaps it is a function of the non-space where he exists, that it occasionally spits out singularities.  Perhaps he found and kept it, like a fossil – or perhaps it’s a toy that his kindly uncle made for him.  He’s been told to keep it safe on a shelf, but accidentally knocks it off, and it falls to the floor and opens up into our known Universe.

Forget about those possibilities, and let our little extra-dimensional kid grow up a bit.

Now he needs a project, like a volcano, for science class.  He decides to build a little mathematical model to demonstrate the laws of physics within material matter.  As he is winding it up, he gets a little goo from a non-material pseudopod on it, and one of the perfect orbs develops life on its surface, like mold.

In the first scenario, the entity which caused our Universe to exist, was not the Creator.  There was no ‘Choice.’  There was no purpose!  In fact, it was an unintentional accident.  The Instigator can hardly be regarded as “God.”

In the second scenario, the Creator, and the Instigator, are the same Astral Squid – which still doesn’t qualify as “God.”  The act of creation, and the resulting Universe, are both intentional, but the creation of life – Us – has no purpose.  In fact, if the Nebulous Nerd knew that his science project was contaminated, he/she/it/they might want to polish the planet clean…. Oh, wait, that Noah flood wasn’t rain; it was Poly-dimensional Purell.

Well, now, the question should be: out of these two equally-weird explanations, which one is best supported by evidence, logic, and reason? Which one is more Possible, Plausible, and Probable? Which one is most believable?

Actually, the question is: which of these two equally-weird pairs of explanations is best supported by evidence, logic, and reason? Which one is more Possible, Plausible, and Probable? Which one is most believable?

I know that most Apologetics would dismiss my hypotheses as childish, but they both are as probable – likely more so – than either of his restrictive offerings.  If a rank amateur like me can easily come up with two alternatives, surely intelligent, educated scientists can come up with more, and better.

Religion

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Flash Fiction #210

Success

PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll

FOCUS ON SUCCESS

Jacob attributed his ongoing academic – and hoped for, future –success, to his ability to compartmentalize and prioritize his mind; family here, sports over there, and social in the back corner.

He was aware of the hot chick in science class, with the top and shorts that were so tight that even he had trouble breathing, but he had a physics exam to write.

He didn’t understand just how he did it, and felt somewhat sorry for those who couldn’t – only somewhat. Many of them just didn’t seem to try. Achievement is obtained through Focus: straight A’s first – then go swimming.

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

friday-fictioneers-badge-web

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The Day I Almost Went Over Niagara Falls

Niagara

Dear (un-named deity), how did I ever survive childhood, to become the Grumpy Old Dude that I am today??

Early in the 1960s, my Father took our family to Niagara Falls. We rented a little cabin in the village of Chippewa, 5 miles above the Falls. I don’t know what it’s like there now, but back then you could stroll along the Canadian-side bank of the river, like a continuous park. Having been told of a picturesque picnic area, one day we set off downstream to take advantage of it.

If I was 6 or 7 years old, my brother was 3 or 4, and my Mother was busy holding or carrying him. Dad was laden with a box, full of food and drink, and I wandered along behind them. About halfway to our destination, there was a gnarly tree, growing out of the bank at a 45 degree angle, out over the river.

Someone had tied a rope to a branch, and a group of 13/14 year old boys were using it to swing out, and splash into the river. One lad would climb/walk up into the tree, and flick the end of the rope up to his compatriots. One by one they’d launch themselves, swim back, and one of them would take the spot in the tree.

I had a tree at home. It had a rope in it. I liked trees. I liked ropes. I liked swinging. 😯 When all had plunged into the river, I asked the kid in the tree if I could swing from the rope. Sure! And he flicked the end up to me.

I launched myself off the 8-foot high bank, and enjoyed a magnificent swing. I didn’t learn to swim until I was 14. When I reached the extent of the outward swing, I realized that I couldn’t let go – a little late! Holding on for dear life I swung back in, but the arc of the inward swing is never as long as the outward one, and it was nowhere near long enough to put me back up on that bank.

Actually, the point nearest the bank would have been the best time to let go. I’d have smacked into the clay and rock, and would have been able to scramble up the bank, dry and safe, but my Grade 1 brain was busy trying to figure out the physics of this whole thing.

Back out I swung. These guys wanted their rope back, and were shouting, “Let go! Let go!” Once more I swung back inward, this time again the arc becoming much shorter. As I reached the inner apogee – right or wrong – I let go…. and splashed down three feet from dry land.

I was used to a well-mannered Lake Huron, where you could walk out 100 feet before it got chest deep. In this river, three feet out put me in chin-deep water. Still, I scrambled out, and rejoined my family. If either parent noticed that my shoes, shorts and tee-shirt were drenched, neither of them mentioned it. Only later did I realize that I could have climbed up the rope, and down the tree, safely. At the time, I was a bit too busy to think of that. What do you think?? A young fool became an old one??  😕

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You’re Fired!

Fire Truck

A blonde calls the fire department and yells,
“Help me, help me, my house is on fire!”

The chief replies, “Ok, how do we get there?”

The blonde says, “Duh, the big red truck!”

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An English professor wrote the words,
“woman without her man is a savage”
on the blackboard and directed his
students to punctuate it correctly.

The men wrote:
“Woman, without her man, is a savage.”

The women wrote:
“Woman: Without her, man is a savage.”

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One day, Bill and Hillary went out to dinner.
The waiter asked Hillary what she wanted. She said,
“I’ll have the steak, well done, potato, chicken
soup…” the waiter asked, “what about the vegetable?”

Hillary said, “Oh, he’ll have the same”.

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According to my calculations, the problem
doesn’t exist.

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You know things have gotten bad when you have to
fake your orgasms while masturbating.

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It has just been discovered that research causes
cancer in rats.

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She tripped over a cordless phone…

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A guy walks into a bar – and says ouch!

Two blondes walk into a bar.
You’d think the second one would have noticed.

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An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow
why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t
happen today.

Laurence J. Peter

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An old man is on a park bench, crying. A concerned
pedestrian enquires, “Why are you crying?”
Old man: “I just celebrated my 85th birthday,
and I got married yesterday to an 18 year old
nymphomaniac blonde beauty who is all a man
could ask for”.

Pedestrian: “Then why are you crying?”
Old man: “I don’t remember where I live.”

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A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at
my suede jacket. ‘You know a cow was murdered for
that jacket?’ she sneered. I replied in a
psychotic tone, ‘I didn’t know there were any
witnesses. Now I’ll have to kill you too.”

***

Why is it that when you transport something by car
it’s called a shipment but when you transport
something by ship it’s called cargo?

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Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar.
One says, “I think I’ve lost an electron.”

The other says, “Are you sure?”

The first says, “Yes, I’m positive.”

***

A neutron walks into a bar, and asks the bartender,
“How much for a rye and coke?”

The bartender replies, “For you, no charge.”