Mean Motion Puns

A man was recruited for a space colony

He had been posted to a planet 14 light-years from Sol. As his ship landed on the planet's glowing surface, he saw a car waiting for him.

"Welcome to Anti-Earth," The driver said, "don't worry we are going to change the name soon. I am here to take you to your quarters and show you the colony on the way."

They had been driving for a couple of minutes when the recruit saw glowing buildings far away.

"Why are the buildings shining like that?", he asked.

"Didn't they brief you about the colony?", the driver asked "We don't call it Anti-Earth for no reason, it's literally the opposite of Earth. Any element rare on Earth is as common as carbon (C) here, and interestingly carbon (C) doesn't occur naturally here. So we had to make good of what we had, the buildings are made of rare metals like radium (Ra) which glow in the dark."

After half an hour they arrived at what seemed the main highway, the road had a faint bluish glow and the sides were lined with metallic posts shining faintly in the double moonlight. They stopped near a small dilapidated shack with the words "COMMUNICATION OFFICE" crudely etched on the walls.

"This is your office. You are supposed to handle communications for the colony," the driver said. "We can't use any wireless communication as the high amount of radioactive gases in the atmosphere interferes with the signal, so we have to use a type of telegraph instead. Come on, I'll show you our most important resource."

They walked a bit till they reached a plantation full of bizarre trees. Some were made of precious metals, some of common earth metals and some of them were glowing radioactively.

"This is the plantation for building the posts. We brought these seeds from Earth and planted them, apparently as they couldn't get the conventional elements they just used what the soil contained. We just sell the gold (Au), silver (Ag) and platinum (Pt) trees to Earth, the iron (Fe) and aluminium (Al) are used for constructing equipment and there are some pretty rare elements like uranium (U) and astatine (At) (which is the rarest element on Earth) which are used for scientific research. However, these aren't what we are here for."

The driver motioned him to follow him towards a small area of trees with a silvery sheen to them.

"These are made of rhenium (Re) one of the densest elements with one of the highest melting and boiling points. It is strong enough to withstand the toxic atmosphere and radioa

I have a bunch of stupid baseball questions. I know most of the rules, I just want to make sure I have all my bases covered.

• Imagine there’s a fan of the team that is currently fielding in the stands, and that said fan has a prosthetic arm. The batter hits a pitch and sends it on a home-run trajectory into the stands. If the fan in the stands throws his arm at the ball and diverts it back in the field of play, can they rightfully say that they were just “lending the team a hand” by stopping the home run?

• Consider the exact opposite situation - the fan’s team is at bat and the batter hits a fly ball to the outfield. If Elastagirl from the Incredibles just happened to be the fan in question, can she spring into action and catch the ball before the outfielder has the chance to?

• Now, imagine I smuggled a water gun into the stadium on a particularly hot day, and I managed to squirt sticky black liquid onto the batter. Does that mean he can take a walk since he was “hit by pitch”?

• Consider the freak circumstance where a ball in motion collides with a bird, causing it to spiral in its descent and eventually collide in turn with an umpire. Can the player responsible for the ball’s motion be ejected from the game due to repeatedly flipping the bird at an umpire?

• Can a losing team sub out their man on the mound with a large quantity of beer to prolong the game? There’d still be a pitcher on the mound!

• If a pitcher throws a slider into the strike zone and the batter doesn’t swing, should the umpire consider it a strike, a ball, or the catcher’s dinner?

We were talking about American Sign Language and a few of us were showing what signs we knew. My coworker shows us the sign for milk, which is a motion as if you are milking a cow. He asks if we know what it means, and a few of us respond "milk." Then he does it again as he passes his hand in front of his face and asks, "How about this?" Everyone is stumped. He replies, "Pasteurized milk", everyone thinks about it for a few seconds, then lets out a collective groan.