The ark lands after the Flood. Noah lets all the animals out, saying, "Go and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals. All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" asks Noah. "Cut down some trees and let us live there," say the snakes. Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes crawl over the earth, and everybody is happy. Perplexed, Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?" "Certainly," say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need logs to multiply."

Most of you probably understand, (or maybe not?) but I'll explain anyway: A logarithm is the exponent to which a base (eg base 10, which is what we count in normally) must be raised to arrive at the desired number. So log(10), assuming base 10, would be 1. log(100) = 2, log(1000) = 3, etc.

If you add two logs, the sum will be the log of the product of the whatever. That is to say, log(xy) = log(x) + log(y). So 2 + 2 = 4. log(100) + log(100) = log(10000) = 100 x 100.

Sweet. Now if only I could compute logarithms without a calculator.

P.S. It could also be written as (I don't know if Facebook folks will be able to see this) log₁₀ 100 + log₁₀ 100 = log₁₀ 10000. The 10's in that should be subscript if it worked. (Though I guess just log10 100 would work too...)