Measurable Set Puns

A marine mammal research group captured a rather odd porpoise on a recent trip. It appeared to have feet! After they had photographed and measured the poor thing, they prepared to set it free.

"Wait a minute," said one of the researchers, "wouldn't it be humane to have our ship's doctor amputate the feet so that it can live like other porpoises?"

"Not on your life!" exclaimed the doctor. "That would be defeeting the porpoise."

"Hey, barkeep!" he says, struggling to keep control of his quarry. "Any room for me and my friends?"

The bartender smiles and sets down some plastic cups. The man plops his friends inside, but the cups are too small.

"Um...barkeep?" the man says, pulling them out again. The bartender reaches for some larger mugs, but as he places them next to the cups, it becomes obvious that even these will be too small for the pigs.

Seeing the man struggle to continue holding them, the bartender runs to the kitchen for help.

A cook emerges, holding several large measuring cups. "Sorry, I just used these to make a batch of cheese dip, but they're all yours!"

The man carefully plops each pig into its respective gooey yellow cup.

Arms exhausted, breathing heavily, he drops into a stool at the end of the bar, between his tiny friends and a beautiful girl.

He glances her way, gasping coyly. "Hey...I'm...Tom."

She smiles, having watched the whole ordeal. "Hi Tom, I'm Liz. And if you don't mind me asking..." she laughs, looking over his shoulder, "what was that all about?"

He glances back at the bar. "Yeah...sorry," he pants. "I wanted...to impress you, but...it turned out to be...a pretty cheesy...pig-cup line."

Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.

The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...

ahem...

Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.

Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.

Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.

The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.

That's the theory, at least.

Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.

Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out