practical engineering

A spoof industrial promo for the Rockwell Retro Encabulator, a deadpan stream of technobabble about an imaginary machine. It is a classic engineering in-joke.

A comedy video in which a salesperson demands that a web developer fix a down website, with the two talking past each other. It won a Webby award.

A short comedy video of the Turbo Encabulator, a piece of technobabble nonsense describing an imaginary machine in deadpan engineering language.

An Onion News Network satirical segment about a memorial dedicated to the future victims of a dam that officials know will fail. It is a dark joke about known infrastructure risk and inaction.

A one-minute clip of Scotty from Star Trek giving advice to engineers about managing expectations in estimates. It is a comedic bit of workplace wisdom.

Penn and Teller help Rob Pike and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs play a prank on Nobel-winning physicist Arno Penzias. The clip shows the gag and its setup.

A scene from the film Back to School in which Rodney Dangerfield takes his first economics class and brings real-world business experience to a classroom exercise on widgets. It shows the gap between school and the real world.