Wapsi Square Forum

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

GlytchMeister wrote:Wrong Barb.

Yup.

Now you get to guess how my young and normally baffled-by-elder-jokes self managed to figure this one out.

Did you watch a lot of reruns, or just make a visit to Wikipedia?

GlytchMeister wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

GlytchMeister wrote:Wrong Barb.

Yup.

Now you get to guess how my young and normally baffled-by-elder-jokes self managed to figure this one out.

You've been watching edumincational television, because you decided to get smart? but you accidentally tuned into an episode of Star Trek which involved Spock singing "On The Way To Eden" and you feldon the stairs trying to get away?

I looked at the URL.

The name and the picture mean absolutely nothing to me.

Dave wrote:You've been watching edumincational television, because you decided to get smart? but you accidentally tuned into an episode of Star Trek which involved Spock singing "On The Way To Eden" and you feldon the stairs trying to get away?

Bad Dave, very bad Dave! No, no, no!

Barbara Feldon, Get Smart.

Barbara Eden, I Dream of Jeanie.

I will admit, recent photos of Barbara Eden yield no clue to the fact that she's a month shy of her 85th birthday.

And 99 still looks good at 83.

Hansontoons wrote:

Dave wrote:You've been watching edumincational television, because you decided to get smart? but you accidentally tuned into an episode of Star Trek which involved Spock singing "On The Way To Eden" and you feldon the stairs trying to get away?

Bad Dave, very bad Dave! No, no, no!

Barbara Feldon, Get Smart.

Barbara Eden, I Dream of Jeanie.

Posilutely! I was simply exercising my right to deliberately sow further confusion with a barrage of puns (all of which have dubious origins, and tend to stare ominously at passers-by).

Meet Graham, the person we might be if we had evolved to survive car crashes.



I wonder what we'll look like after a few millennia of evolving to survive the Internet and its flame wars?

Man, that guy must hate trying to buy shirts... And hats...

But he can certainly hold his own in a bar fight. You could smash every barstool and bottle on his head, smack him with a few pool cues, and all he has to do is give you a solid head-butt, and you're getting coloring books for Christmas.

Also, on an unrelated note (DON'T READ THIS IF YOU'RE EATING AND HAVE A WEAK STOMACH!):

One downside to being a hairy guy is that, without warning, one of those hairs could become ingrown, or make it easier for the pore to become clogged, resulting in a large zit that forms overnight. I rolled over this morning, thinking I had rolled onto my phone charger. So, I reached under myself to sweep it aside, and nothing was there. I tried sweeping it away again, nothing changed. So I rolled onto my side, and grabbed my phone to go online... And it was plugged in.

So I rubbed the sore spot to find a bump, thought it was a crumb or something, only it wouldn't brush off. So I looked, and there it was... A large whitehead that felt pretty solid. Once I actually popped it (the contents had halfway solidified), the whole area stopped hurting.

I should probably scrub with something abrasive when I'm in the shower from now on, to better exfoliate dead skin and whatever else is there.

Alkarii wrote:Also, on an unrelated note (DON'T READ THIS IF YOU'RE EATING AND HAVE A WEAK STOMACH!):

One downside to being a hairy guy is that, without warning, one of those hairs could become ingrown, or make it easier for the pore to become clogged, resulting in a large zit that forms overnight. I rolled over this morning, thinking I had rolled onto my phone charger. So, I reached under myself to sweep it aside, and nothing was there. I tried sweeping it away again, nothing changed. So I rolled onto my side, and grabbed my phone to go online... And it was plugged in.

So I rubbed the sore spot to find a bump, thought it was a crumb or something, only it wouldn't brush off. So I looked, and there it was... A large whitehead that felt pretty solid. Once I actually popped it (the contents had halfway solidified), the whole area stopped hurting.

I should probably scrub with something abrasive when I'm in the shower from now on, to better exfoliate dead skin and whatever else is there.

I have a scar across my abdomen where a bit of the original skin had been shoved down into the wound and ended up a centimeter or two under the new skin that formed. And apparently at least one of those old hair follicles was still active. Every now and then I'd get a really sore red bump there, then a really thick hair would tear its way through and the whole thing would start bleeding. So I'd get some forceps and yank it out, everything would heal, and then the whole process would eventually repeat. Finally I got tired of it and just burned the follicle, and it hasn't caused any problems since.

Macgyver, For the Win!

MacGyver? Sounds more like Rambo.

I'm just revisiting the Abominable Charles Christopher webcomic, which I hadn't looked at in ages, and found this really cute one:

The problem with doing something like that is that only those who understand those equations (as in, not only took those courses in high school and/or college, but actually remembers them and probably uses those calculations regularly) will understand that.

The only one I'd even seen before is the last one. (Velocity = distance divided by time)

Alkarii wrote:The problem with doing something like that is that only those who understand those equations (as in, not only took those courses in high school and/or college, but actually remembers them and probably uses those calculations regularly) will understand that.

The only one I'd even seen before is the last one. (Velocity = distance divided by time)

Is that a problem?


On the comic page itself (which is linked by the image in my post), one of the comments explains what they are:

Odo • 3 years ago wrote:I actually did my first facebook share with this strip. Potential energy, freefall, Friction, acceleration, spinning and finally a simple average velocity. Love it all.

Once I had read his comment, I could figure out some of them (I hadn't even bothered to try to figure them out, before reading the comments). My first reaction was "Huh, I don't get it..." Then, upon reading the comments, I re-read the comic, and went "Hmm. That's clever."

freefall: the speed at a given time = negative (gravitational acceleration * length of time since starting to fall) + original speed at time of drop

friction: friction = mass * acceleration (?)

average velocity: speed = distance / time

In my case, it helps that I'm a Frog (tie-in to another conversation elsewhere...): I know that "v" stands for "vitesse", meaning "speed"...
(Because I hadn't thought to use "velocity" as you did, Alkarii... People whose English is not their first language sometimes tend to gravitate towards the "simpler" synonyms, even when they know the more sophisticated ones...)


And if the comment had not been there, I would have had the choice to look up the formulas, and appreciate the cleverness afterwards, or remain baffled. I don't know how much research I would have done, but I probably would have tried to figure it out for a bit...

Still, the concept is simplistically sophisticated: an otter going down a slide into water, yet is aware of all the scientific formulas involved in his (her?) descent. It's cute.

Force = mass x acceleration

The friction one is when the otter is shown sliding from the side.

Also, the splash has a calculus derivative of some sort happening in it.

GlytchMeister wrote:Force = mass x acceleration

See, I knew that... But I figured the "force" must be that required to overcome friction. So I second-guessed myself, and got it somewhat wrong...

GlytchMeister wrote:The friction one is when the otter is shown sliding from the side.

I couldn't figure out that one.

GlytchMeister wrote:Also, the splash has a calculus derivative of some sort happening in it.

I hadn't noticed. Now that you mention it, I do see it in the splash...

Of course, the last time I worked with such formulas was in 1985-86...


And that's the beauty of this particular strip. As you try to figure it out, you go back to it and grasp yet another portion...

Shoot, didn't notice the equation for force there.

You know how Wikipedia has an "In the News" section on the front page? Apparently, with all that's going on in the world... A hot air balloon catching fire and crashing in Texas, resulting in 16 deaths, is something major enough to warrant being mentioned on the front page of Wikipedia. Keep in mind that, while obviously tragic, that section is typically for things that are typically considered major international news.

Things like the shooting at that mall in Germany, big science stuff like a solar-powered plane circumnavigating the planet for the first time, things like that. But if this balloon accident had happened at a major event or something, I could see that. But if that were the case, why not mention that part, too?

The thing may be that this is one of a number of such events, just the largest.

Dave wrote:Meet Graham, the person we might be if we had evolved to survive car crashes.



I wonder what we'll look like after a few millennia of evolving to survive the Internet and its flame wars?

If I looked like that, would I want to survive a car crash?