April 23, 2011

The favorite childhood joke of the brain scientist who focuses on the the perception of time.

A turtle enters the sheriff's office:
“I’ve just been attacked by three snails!” he shouts.

“Tell me what happened,” the sheriff replies.

The turtle shakes his head: “I don’t know, it all happened so fast.”

42 comments:

themightypuck said...

I was thinking about this today when I was looking at a satellite picture of a glacier which looks quite a bit like a river.

DADvocate said...

LOL. I wonder if any animals have a concept of time.

David said...

My grandkids will love this on Easter.

rhhardin said...

Jean Shepherd reported a cartoon of two snails on the back of a turtle.

"Hold on! Here we go!"

Paco Wové said...

He probably likes to visit Paris in the the spring.

Christy said...

So, what was the favorite childhood joke of the girl who became a constitutional law professor?

Kensington said...

There's nothing funny about assault and battery. The poor turtle...

Don't snails hang out in gardens? We should abolish gardens.

For the turtles.

Revenant said...

I've always liked that joke.

Unknown said...

I was in the middle of a fender bender some years ago; the one driver was trying to beat the light, the other jumped the gun and plowed into the right rear of the first, sending him spinning into me - all of us at different quadrants of a four-way intersection.

And, yes, I saw what was coming and very calmly thought, "Oh, my, I'm not going to be able to get out of the way", and the car spun in what seemed like slow motion.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if any animals have a concept of time.

My cats sure know when it's time to eat. Five p.m. can't come soon enough for them.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

But do drummers' brains explode spontaneously?

Unknown said...

That's a cute joke!

brian said...

Why did the teacher where sunglasses?










Because her pupils were so bright.

rhhardin said...

Time is actually an entropy gradient.

lemondog said...

Not for those with loose bowels.......

SCAD

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Video

Indigo Red said...

"Time is actually an entropy gradient."

Maybe so, but entropy isn't what it used to be.

Chip S. said...

Maybe so, but entropy isn't what it used to be.

Neither is nostalgia.

chickelit said...

Entropy can remain constant, but time waits for no one.

Indigo Red said...

In high school many years ago, while walking to my next class, I took a tumble down badly chipped concrete stairs. I went head over heals watching the whole event in slow motion as the world turned round and round. Sprawled at the bottom, I had my first epiphany: time is, in fact, relative. That didn't stop the teacher from marking me tardy, though.

Michael K said...

One funny phenomenon I've noticed as a surgeon for 40 years. We will be doing an operation and, in the simple parts of the procedure, we will be carrying on a conversation, the nurses, anesthesiologist and the surgeons. Then, we will get to a critical point and everyone stops talking. A few minutes later, with that part done, we will all pick up the same conversation at exactly the same point. Nobody will forget where they were.

Ann Althouse said...

"So, what was the favorite childhood joke of the girl who became a constitutional law professor?"

That's easy:

When is a door not a door? When it's ajar.

Jose_K said...

Two seconds in a hot stove are like two hours
Two hours with your sweethart in a hot stove are like two seconds.
Albert Einstein on the relativity of time

Jose_K said...

A house to become dirty only need s that you stop cleaning.
Robert Oppenheimer on entropy

The Crack Emcee said...

Proof Yoga Warps The Mind (And Ain't For Kids)

gerry said...

Similarly:

What did the snail on the back of the turtle say?


WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

deborah said...

Time, time, time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFRx4PkXeVM&feature=related

Penny said...

"Although Eagleman and his students study timing in the brain, their own sense of time tends to be somewhat unreliable. Eagleman wears a Russian wristwatch to work every morning, though it’s been broken for months. “The other day, I was in the lab,” he told me, “and I said to Daisy, who sits in the corner, ‘Hey, what time is it?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know. My watch is broken.’ It turns out that we’re all wearing broken watches.”

On that basis alone, I want to hang with this gang. I've been wearing the same broken watch for over a decade.

Penny said...

And this is for all you atomic clock owners...

"Clocks offer at best a convenient fiction, he says. They imply that time ticks steadily, predictably forward, when our experience shows that it often does the opposite: it stretches and compresses, skips a beat and doubles back."

vbspurs said...

David, I got similar jokes in case you want to tell them to your grandkids. These are the first jokes I ever recall hearing -- I was maybe in 3rd grade.

- "Why can't you send letters to Washington anymore?"

"Because he's dead."

- How do you get an one-armed monkey out of a tree?"

"Wave."

- "Miss, miss, I need to go take a leak!"

"Johnny! The proper word is urinate. Use that correctly in a sentence."

"Okay, miss. Urinate, but if you had bigger tits, you'd be a ten."

...okay, that last one was in 9th grade, and maybe you can skip it with the grandkids. :)

Cheers,
Victoria

vbspurs said...

Class factotum wrote:

My cats sure know when it's time to eat. Five p.m. can't come soon enough for them.

My little dog sleeps in my ginormous bed (Cali King) with me. When going to sleep, I kiss him, wish him a good night, and tell him, rest easy 'cause we need to wake up bright and early at 8!

A few times I've forgotten to set my cell phone alarm for 8 AM, but EXACTLY at eight o'clock, my little one starts tugging at my hair.

I'd like to see a bloody turtle do that.

Cheers,
Victoria

Mike aka Proof said...

Science nerd joke:

Werner Heisenberg (of the uncertainty theory) was driving and pulled over for speeding. When the cop asked him if he knew how fast he was going, he replied, "No, but I know exactly where I am."

traditionalguy said...

I knew drummers were different...like Crack Emcee. In fact I suspect that Crack is secretly interested in a Possibilian Belief System.

Penny said...

Traditionalguy?

You are a SAINT among "Possibilians", for not judging.

I can only assume you've reached the same status among your Christian family and friends?

After all...Not all Saints are from New Orleans.

mariner said...

Victoria,
I'd like to see a bloody turtle do that.

I suspect getting your hair tugged by a bloody turtle wouldn't be quite as cute as you think.

Cheers,

mariner

Penny said...

Want to do jokes? OK...

New joke...

Know what I love about Althouse?

Her sense of... "TIMing"!

ha ha ha ha!

Penny said...

That joke was WAY too personal.

Sorry for laughing.

It was nearly unkind, and surely ill-timed.

Even the Easter Bunny is rolling his eyes!

Penny said...

Whew!

Least Brer Rabbit hasn't called in the White Rabbit for any "FINAL determination".

White Rabbit, you're cool man. We just don't want you to be on the jury.

May we suggest something more comfortable?

Retirement, perhaps?

Michael K said...

My cat did better than that. When it was dinner time, he would grab my legs and hang on as I walked past the basement stair door. I used to feed him in the basement so the dog wouldn't eat his food. Actually, they both ate out of the same bowls but the dog ate faster.

Harry Phartz said...

3 snails set out one day to go for a holiday. After 3 months of traveling they reached their destination only to find that they remembered the food for the holiday, but forgot the water.

They decide that one snail must go back and get the water. They drew straws and the little one lost. But before he left he made the other 2 promise that under no circumstances are they allowed to eat the food.

They agreed. So off he went.

Six months pass and the snail hasn't returned. After 12 months the little snail has still not returned, so the medium snail asks the big snail if they could eat some food. The big snail said "No! We promised that under no circumstances will we eat any food."

After 24 months the little snail still hasn't returned and the medium snail asks the big snail if they could just have a little food because they are both starving. The big snail responds as before("No we promised.")

After 30 months and the little snail had still not returned the medium snail begs the big snail for some food, claiming that they would die if they didn't. The big snail relented and said that they would only eat because they would otherwise die.

So they ate some food to fill their tummies.

As soon as they had finished eating, the little snail came out from behind a tree and said "Hey, you guys promised! I am not going to go get the water now."

Anne M Ford said...

Time is relative, it all depends on which side of the bathroom door you are.

wv: ginfer, don't ginfer what I didn't ginply.

Anne M Ford said...

sorry, gimply.

Mr. Forward said...

My fav childhood joke fits right in here so I will repeat it for those few who might have missed it.

"There was once a man from the city who was visiting a small farm, and during this visit he saw a farmer feeding pigs in a most extraordinary manner. The farmer would lift a pig up to a nearby apple tree, and the pig would eat the apples off the tree directly.
The farmer would move the pig from one apple to another until the pig was satisfied, then he would start again with another pig.
The city man watched this activity for some time with great astonishment. Finally, he could not resist saying to the farmer, "This is the most inefficient method of feeding pigs that I can imagine. Just think of the time that would be saved if you simply shook the apples off the tree and let the pigs eat them from the ground!"
The farmer looked puzzled and replied, "What's time to a pig?""