in all fairness I should divulge that I first heard this punch line uttered by Carol Jones, administrative assistant at and graduate of the International Development Education Program (IDEP) at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1980s while I was a student in that program. Carol applied the line locally by saying, “in Pittsburgh the shortest distance between two points is under construction.” That’s funny enough, but I thought it might also be funny for Albert Einstein to say it; he’s appeared on portfoliolongo.com before.