Three Men Are In A Hot-air Balloon. Soon, They Find Themselves Lost In A Canyon Somewhere.

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Three men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves
lost in a canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an
idea. We can call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry
our voices far."
So he leans over the basket and yells out, "Helllloooooo!
Where are we?" (They hear the echo several times).
15 minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo!
You're lost!!"
One of the men says, "That must have been a mathematician."
Puzzled, one of the other men asks, "Why do you say that?"
The reply: "For three reasons. (1) he took a long time to
answer, (2) he was absolutely correct, and (3) his answer was
absolutely useless."


(I'm not sure if the following one is a true story or not)
The great logician Betrand Russell (or was it A.N. Whitehead?)
once claimed that he could prove anything if given that 1+1=1.
So one day, some smarty-pants asked him, "Ok. Prove that
you're the Pope."
He thought for a while and proclaimed, "I am one. The Pope
is one. Therefore, the Pope and I are one."

Donald Chinn, UC-Berkeley

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