The very smallest one.

I've been watching the new Incredible Hulk movie, which came out on DVD this week. It's really quite good, even if the Hulk still creeps me out.

There's this fantastic line that I had completely forgotten about. Bruce Banner and Betty Ross are visiting Samuel Sterns, who may have a cure for Bruce's big, green condition. Dr. Sterns warns them about the dangers of miscalculating the antidote amount, and uses the phrase, "... if we miscalculate this by even the smallest integer ...".

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!

This is funny because of the blatant misuse of the term integer. The integers refer to the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., together with their negatives -1, -2, -3, -4, ... . So, in the normal sense of "smallest", there is NO SMALLEST INTEGER! Even if by "smallest", one means closest to zero (i.e. smallest in absolute value), then the smallest integer is just zero! To miscalculate by zero means to calculate EXACTLY CORRECTLY!

I'm not sure Dr. Sterns is such a great scientist. He clearly didn't pay much attention in math class. Of course, he is destined to become the insane super-villain known as The Leader, so his priorities are probably pretty out of whack to begin with.

Oh man, there's something else really funny from a movie that I wanted to write about, but I've completely forgotten what it is. Oh well. There's always room for one more post!