Humor
© 2008 Max Lent
I receive a lot of jokes and humorous stories by email
from colleagues and friends. This page contains a collection of
the ones I believe are worth sharing.
Enjoy,
Max
A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He
reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and
shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet
him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The woman below replied,
"You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the
ground. You are between 37 and 38 degrees north latitude and between 114
and 115 degrees west longitude."
"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist. "I am," replied the
woman, "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything
you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of
your information, and in fact I am still lost. Frankly, you have not
been much help so far." The woman below responded, "You must be in
Management." "I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you are
going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot
air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you
expect people beneath you to solve your problems. You are in exactly the
same position you were in before we met, but now, according to you, it's
my fault."
WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY
Contributed by Dan Hertzson
Does this expression ring any bells?
The US standard railroad gauge is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
This is a really odd number. Why was the gauge used?
Because that is the way they built them in England and English
expatriates built the U.S. railway system. Why did the English build
them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same
people who built the
pre-railroad tramways, and that was the gauge they used then.
Why did "they" use the gauge then? Because the people who built the
tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building
wagons, which used the same wheel spacing. Okay Why did the wagons have
this
rather odd spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the
wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in
England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So, who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long
distance roads in Europe and England for their legions. The roads have
been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots
formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of
destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial
Rome they all had the same wheel spacing The United States standard
railroad gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial
Roman war chariot.
Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are
handed a specification and wonder what horses ass came up with it, you
may be exactly right This is because the Imperial Roman chariots were
made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses
Now, the twist in the story. There is an interesting extension to the
story about railroad gauges and horses behinds.
When we see a space shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big
booster rockets attached to the side of the main tank These are solid
booster rockets or SRB's. Thiokol make the SRB's at their factory in
Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB's might have preferred to
make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from
the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory
happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRB's had to fit
through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad
track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses behinds.
So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's advanced
transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the
width of a horse's ass.
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