Poise Puns

Everyone knows the Pythagorean theorem, but few people know that Pythagoras was an avid and accomplished explorer who visited the new world before the Vikings or Columbus ever laid eyes on the continent. On one of his early visits he encountered a village and happened upon a woman, heavily pregnant sitting on the hide of a bear. He asked her what she was doing and she told him that she wanted to give birth on the hide so that her child would have the strength of a bear when he was born. As he walked further into the main part of the village he saw another woman, again quite pregnant sitting on the hide of a deer. When asked she replied that she wanted her child to have the grace and agility of a deer. Seeing a trend he was taken aback when he saw a very pregnant woman sitting on the hide of a hippopotamus. Surprised both at the choice and at the existence of such a creature, he wondered what she must wish for her child, but she replied that there just weren’t any other hides available for her so she took what she could get.

Many years later when he returned to the same village, he encountered the first woman and asked about her child. Was he as strong as a bear? She pointed him out and sure enough, her son was busy ripping a stump out of the ground with his hands, as strong as a bear! Amazed, he sought out the second woman, who pointed out her son, running through a field at great speed, as graceful and agile as a deer! Intrigued to say the least, Pythagoras sought the third woman. She pointed out her son, and he didn’t believe his eyes - he was both as strong as a bear and as graceful as a deer; a mountain of a man with grace and poise.

He wrote in his now-famous travel journal his amazing discovery; that the sons of the squaws on the two smaller hides are equal to that of the squaw on the hippopotamus.

A young man comes up with a great idea for a new shipping method. He designs everything himself, hires people to create models, and deduces that he can use old fashioned boating technology to increase shipping speeds by up to 350%. This is obviously a great innovation, so he calls up a former Business professor from college and gets into contact with a manufacturer. The manufacturer makes the man come in and present his design to the board of directors, so they schedule a meeting in two weeks.

At the meeting, the board is blown away. The man’s charisma, design, and equations all point to a massive innovation in shipping. The company is poised to make a huge profit. Construction starts immediately.

On his flight back, the man happens to sits next to his old buddy from high school, Jimmy. Jimmy tells the man that he has just blown the farming world wide open. His new GMO potato produces five times as much energy and has been the talk of the world. Jimmy says that all the news outlets have been reporting potatoes to be the next big superfood, and his design is poised to make him millions, if not billions of dollars. Jimmy pitches the man for the entire plane ride, and convinced him. They hop on the next flight back to visit the board of directors once again. The board is shocked. Both ideas stand to make billions of dollars for the company, but there is one slight problem.

The CEO says to the man, “we know you have these two ideas. However, we can only allocate enough resources to make one of them profitable. I recommend you take some time off and really decide which of these ideas you want our company to produce. We can schedule a meeting in a few weeks if that works for you.”

The man says right back to the CEO, “I’m going to take a walk and clear my head. This is a big decision” and walks right out of the room.

Not even five seconds later the man comes back into the room and says “I’ve made my decision. Let’s go with the shipping method.” This shocks the CEO, who says “are you sure?? This is a billion dollar decision and you only took five seconds to think about it.”

The man looks back at him and says “well, in this business time is money— so I decided to make my decision schooner rather than tater”