My wife’s grandfather just emailed me this joke:
Two missionaries are looking down into jungle clearing at hundreds of natives gathered around a stone likeness of a huge zero.
They strain to hear what they’re all chanting, but finally make it out: “Nulll, nulll, nulll…”.
“My God!” one says quietly to the other. “Is nothing sacred?”
This is cool on many levels. First, I get emails from my 85 year-old grandfather in-law (my dad refuses to even read an email on the screen if you get it up there for him, let alone use the computer to send an email). Second, the emails he sends are most often geek-humor. Granted, he is a chemical engineer so he has earned his right to relate to Dilbert. But it just goes to show you that even if you think the hyper-fast paced internet-fueled information explosion is changing all the rules, some things about human nature remain the same: there are nerds among us, and we like nerd-jokes. There’s comfort in continuity.