Jokes For Engineers

Warning
Some of these jokes will be sexist, racist or just plain silly but they made me laugh.  If you are of a sensitive disposition go back now.

These jokes have been collected over a number of years without saving the credits, so thanks to:  Joke A Day   mailto:join@jokeaday.com  and Dilbert  www.dilbert.com  amongst others for making the internet a fun place.

IN THIS year's Feedback Christmas Competition, we asked readers to think of a human trait or behaviour and then provide their own evolutionary explanation for it.

The quantity and quality of the response was heart-warming, making the judging very difficult. Certain themes, such as short sight, bald hair and snoring, were particularly popular - we are now totally convinced that snoring evolved as a way of frightening off animals when our ancestors were asleep in their caves.

Here, after much debate, are five of the winning entries. We will be publishing five more in our next issue (4 January 2003).


Why do men grumble for half an hour before leaving the house about the length of time it takes their wife to get ready, and then decide to either clean some shoes, cut their nails or water the lawn the moment the wife in question gets to the front door? 

This behaviour evolved in the earliest period of human cooperative hunting. Competing with big animals such as bears and lions, and hunting dangerous prey like mammoths, took a terrible toll on human life. This taken together with a lower average birth weight for baby boys led to a higher level of infant mortality among males, creating a serious gender imbalance that threatened the species.

It was vital to preserve the lives of adult breeding males, so they took to leaving the cave behind the females, so that anything nasty outside the cave would get the females first. However, males needed to get out there early in the morning - after all, it's the early hunter that catches the mammoth - so they would nag at the females to get going and then hang about looking busy until the females had safely defused any lurking danger, before setting off themselves.

Bonnie Ralph, London, UK 


WHY do fashion models look so unhappy when performing at fashion shows? 

For millennia, primitive tribes made human sacrifices to their gods and it became common practice to select a beautiful virgin for this purpose. Everyday attire in those days was very simple, consisting of some grasses or scraps of fur if you were lucky. However, it was considered propitious to dress the sacrifice more suitably to meet the god, so each village would gather together the most elaborate, even outrageous and expensive material to assemble into a complicated adornment for the maiden. 

The ceremony was a source of great joy to all concerned - except the sacrificial virgin who would understandably appear somewhat morose. Evolution has decreed that young women, even today, appear miserable when exotically dressed.

P. Webster, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK 


WHY do men often spit into a urinal before urinating? 

In the pre-plumbing past, men would urinate into weedy areas near trees. There was always a danger that venomous snakes might be lurking in these areas and could attack the urinator, possibly in a very sensitive spot. The pre-urination spit evolved to allow the urinator to flush out any snakes while his sensitive areas are still protected by his clothing.

Tim Laplaca, Boca Raton, Florida, US 


Why don't men ask for directions? 

The male trait of never asking for directions is a natural consequence of hunting. Revealing one's position by shouting "Excuse me, I seem to be lost" would ensure that the hunter was the next victim of the hunting party, as he would have scared away the game. It can therefore be assumed that modern-day men are the survivors of those hunters who never asked for directions.

Eamonn O'Riordan, Lucan, County Dublin, Ireland 


WHY do magazines run Christmas competitions? 

In the distant past, humans lived in small clans which were led by the alpha male. In order to maintain his position of dominance, the alpha male would set conundrums for the lesser males to solve. This distracted them from plotting to usurp him. 

The better the alpha male was at setting puzzles, the more chance he had of holding on to the advantages of his status. Conversely, the more easily a lesser male could solve a puzzle, the greater chance he had of mounting a successful challenge. Those who solved the puzzle were frequently rewarded by the alpha male, to ensure their loyalty. 

This activity eventually became ritualised, and was performed with great ceremony at tribal festivals. This defused tensions between individuals and helped to unite the group. 

In the modern age, information is power and those who control the dissemination of information - such as magazine publishers - are in the position of the alpha male. At festivals such as Christmas, they revert to their ancestral behaviour and set competitions for their readers.

Peter J. Bleackley, Horsham, Sussex, UK 


HOW do we explain the evolutionary trait of "beer goggles", the well-known phenomenon of members of the opposite sex becoming more attractive the more beer one drinks? 

This is due to the fact that beer is actually a parasite. In fact it has now parasitised standard human courtship behaviour to such an extent that little mating is possible without beer first being replicated many, many times.

This success is further reinforced by two other evolutionary tricks beer has evolved to complement its manipulation of human behaviour. "Brewer's droop" in males and the typical self revulsion felt in both sexes the morning after, when they realise what they've done, inevitably lead to further successful replication of beer the following evening - and so the cycle continues.

Dan Meredith, Wolston, Warwickshire, UK 


WHY do men carry a newspaper to the toilet and take a long time there? 

These are peculiarly male habits and were initially acts of defiance and defence. Members of a tribal group shared the same diet and had a similar odour that "foreigners" would recognise if crossing boundaries, so the men went as far as possible from their home camp to defecate and mark their territorial claims. By entering a neighbouring territory to defecate, men would show defiance to their neighbours, and by taking a long time over the action, demonstrate their bravery to fellow tribal members. However, this was not without risk, so it was normal to carry a weapon in case of ambush.

Consequently, not only do modern men require the comfort of something to carry, but the habits of taking a l ong time, boasting about where they have been, and producing a strong recognisable odour have also persisted. 

Mark Selby, Burley in Wharfedale, West Yorkshire, UK 


WHY do gentlemen prefer blondes? 

Since blonde hair, blue eyes and short stature are all products of recessive genes, a male who chooses a female with these characteristics can be sure that his genes will predominate in their offspring. This leads to a greater certainty that the children she produces are his (always a big worry for the male on the evolutionary score chart) because they are more likely to demonstrate his characteristics. Hence blondes are the most desirable mates.

Penny Hyslop, Cheam, Surrey, UK 


WHY is it that so many scientists seem to wear glasses? 

In evolutionary terms, hunter-gatherers with poor vision were seriously disadvantaged. These unfortunates were deemed a burden on the tribe and left to fend for themselves. So those with poor vision had to become useful to the tribe in other ways. 

To survive, they had to develop skills that were useful to the tribe, such as working with objects close up. So they made small delicate objects, and produced designs on slate or wood. While working on these, they theorised about such matters as "could this round object be used as a means to transport heavy materials from the hunting grounds?" or "if this piece of meat was introduced to fire, would it taste better and last longer?" 

In this way, these proto-scientists ensured their survival. The hunters and gatherers fed them because they were useful. 

Rhodri Jones, Nottingham, UK 


WHY is a scene of mountains, water, trees, sun, snow, etcetera so heart-warming and beautiful? 

As human beings evolved and became thinking, reasoning creatures, life must have been hard, brutish and short. As they were able to look to the future and see more of their hard life ahead of them, there had to be something to make life seem worthwhile. 

Those people who could look at a breathtaking scene and feel uplifted were more likely to fight to continue their existence. Those that viewed scenery as simply a collection of trees, grasses and some rocks were selected out of the gene pool.

Damian Wise, Portland, Oregon, US 

FINALLY, among the winners published in our last issue we included Eamonn O'Riordan's explanation of why men don't ask for directions. We felt O'Riordan just had the edge over Alec Cawley's explanation of the same phenomenon, but it was so close we've decided to publish Cawley's explanation as well and include him among the winners.


WHY won't men ask the way? 

This dates back to the hunter-gatherer days of primitive humans. People lived in small tribes, and the men went out on long forays for game. If they saw another human, it was probably from another tribe, who would be likely to attack a stranger. It would therefore be very dangerous to ask the way, and was selected against. Women, meanwhile, tended to gather food locally, so that anybody encountered was probably from the same tribe and safe to ask.

When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks.
The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: "What are these guys in the big suits doing?"
One of the astronauts said that they were practising for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.
Recognising a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.
So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon. Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message: "Watch out for these assholes. They have come to steal your land."