An Engineer, a Physicist and an Economist

Unlike stock markets, my blogging activity has been at an all-time-low during the last weeks due to something which we could call "intense end-of-study activities", e.g. job interviews and a thesis... As both projects have recently been completed and my spare time has become more abundant again, there is finally time to read non-university related books again :-) Well maybe not totally non-university related, but nevertheless very recommendable to anyone who is interested in financial markets is Benoit Mandelbrot's "The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets", an introduction to fractals as a means of modelling financial markets. Today, I stumbled across the following joke, which is, according to the author, and old one - nevertheless it was new to me and I think it is quite funny :-)

An engineer, a physicist and an economist find themselves shipwrecked on a desert island with nothing to eat but a sealed can of beans. How to get at them? The engineer proposes breaking the can open with a rock. The physicist suggests heating the can in the sun, until it bursts. The economist's approach: "First, assume we have a can opener..."