Punctuated Equilibrium

Although my Calculus III and Electromagnetism classes at Lewis and Clark are extremely easy, and grade inflation is even worse than at Wilson, at least the repetitive boredom of the latter is punctuated by occasional moments of hilarity. There was the time that I was helping someone with a particularly grizzly triple integral only to discover that they didn't remember what u-substitution was. There are also the times at the beginning of class when the professor turns bright red and starts yelling incoherently to capture everyone's attention. Today witnessed one of those priceless moments of humor. It is a well-known fact that physics humor far surpasses math humor in being lame, but occasionally is so bad that it's good. Consider the following joke we heard today: What do you get when you cross an elephant and a grape? Magnitude of the elephant, magnitude of the grape, sine theta. What do you get when you cross an elephant with a mountain climber? You can't do it. The mountain climber is a scaler. Bad, eh? Certainly. But when told by a balding, middle-aged man for whom telling it is exciting, you can't help but laugh. It's almost like Culpepper telling math jokes. Actually, I'm wrong. Unlike Tolsen, she doesn't have any chance of actually being funny.