56 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
56 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
From hall%vice.ico.tek.com@relay.cs.net Fri Aug 17 09:17:19 1990
|
||
From: hall%vice.ico.tek.com@relay.cs.net
|
||
Subject: Pure Mathematics
|
||
Keywords: science, smirk
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
[Acquired many years ago from the Math Department at Brigham Young
|
||
University. They credited it to the _Princeton Tiger_]
|
||
|
||
|
||
POOR PURE PERCY P
|
||
|
||
Percy P was a mathematician
|
||
whose "pureness" was never denied.
|
||
But he found one day, to his sorrow,
|
||
that his theorems had been applied!
|
||
He had used all the standard precautions;
|
||
his papers were pointedly dry!
|
||
But his own esoteric notation
|
||
had been solved by a physicist spy!
|
||
|
||
The colloquium buzzed with the gossip;
|
||
he could offer no valid excuse.
|
||
Percy P was a traitor of traitors,
|
||
for his work was of PRACTICAL USE!
|
||
Nobody dared to defend him.
|
||
Could it be that he'd plead the crime
|
||
That his work was just then needed
|
||
to effect quantization of time?
|
||
|
||
Ignored when he joined conversations;
|
||
one would think that he poisoned the air.
|
||
And he felt on his way to the office -
|
||
a new man might be in his chair.
|
||
A committee was in operation,
|
||
working twenty four hours a day,
|
||
Deleting his name from the journals,
|
||
and throwing his reprints away.
|
||
|
||
He knew where his future was leading,
|
||
no sense in prolonging the pain;
|
||
He left with a handful of papers,
|
||
and never was heard from again.
|
||
So take heed all you mathematicians
|
||
who pretend your endeavor is pure;
|
||
Tho' your luck may hold for a decade,
|
||
in the end you can never be sure.
|
||
--
|
||
Edited by Brad Templeton. MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA
|
||
Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply.
|
||
|
||
Jokes ABOUT major current events should be sent to topical@looking.on.ca
|
||
Anything that is not a joke submission goes to funny-request@looking.on.ca
|
||
|
||
|