Category: comics

Matthew Inman: a very short documentary

November 12, 2015 • 1:30 pm

If, like me, you love The Oatmeal comics created by Matthew Inman, you’ll want to see this three-minute documentary of his life, “My life in 171 seconds,” described on the Oatmeal page this way: “Saucony made a mini-documentary about my cartooning, eating, and running habits. This was shot in my house in Seattle, Washington over a couple of days.”

Be sure to read one of Inman’s latest and most poignant strips, “It’s going to be okay,” which has a surprise ending. And here’s one of my favorites (apologies if I’ve posted this before). Inman seems to have a love-hate relationship with cats, which you might see in the documentary above.

cat_whiskey

h/t: Diane G.

SMBC Kickstarter raises money for religion-themed comic compilation, features “Speciation”

October 20, 2015 • 10:45 am

Zach Weinersmith of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is raising money on Kickstarter to finance a collection of his religion-themed comic strips. The project is “Religion: Ruining Everything since 4004 BC.” A bit of information:

What’s in the Book?

The book is a collection of the best religion jokes on SMBC over the last ten years! And, as a bonus, there will be a number of exclusive comics. The number will be determined by the amount of funding raised during the kickstarter.

Is This Book Mean to Religion?

Not really. Or, at least, the nature of the humor isn’t mean-spirited, but the comic does mock plenty of sacred concepts. If you are a religious person, we hope you laugh in the same way we hope science fans laugh at the science jokes in our last book.

Um. . . I wonder if Zach realizes the futility of that hope.

So far the project has has raised almost $70,000, and the rewards for contributing include a spiffy Abridged Bible. But what I like best, feeling somewhat self-aggrandizing today, is the two-minute video ad used to promote the project, which includes a cameo of the book I’m proudest of—and the one that’s least read. It’s 40 seconds into the video, and I’ve made a screenshot (click on it to go to Zach’s page):

Screen shot 2015-10-19 at 3.27.22 PM

Note that her hair is on fire! It’s the work of Satan. . .

UPDATE: Another pair of twe**ts:

h/t: JJE

The disutility of utilitarianism

September 15, 2015 • 11:00 am

From Zach Weinersmith’s strip SMBC, via Matthew Cobb:

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Matthew is of course a Brit, and his email of this link to me was headed “Ouch!” But of course one problem with this argument is that by voicing your own views on morality, you might improve society. That, after all, is the reason why civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights have become the norm. They were not promulgated by “silent judgement.” But maybe I’m making too much out of a humorous and clever strip.

Comics and convergent evolution in trees

September 3, 2015 • 1:30 pm

Here’s a recent xkcd strip called “Magic tree”, which has an evolutionary twist:

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When you “mouse over” the strip, you see this:

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In other words, artist Randall Munroe is giving a humorous example of “convergent evolution,” in which those trees that most closely resemble cellphone towers are those that leave their genes. This form of evolution would, over time, produce trees that resemble those towers. This example is bogus, of course, because a tree generation lasts a long time—longer than cellphone towers have been around. But if you want to read about real examples of convergent evolution, try the Wikipedia article or Eric Pianka’s nice essay at the University of Texas zoology website.

In WEIT I briefly discuss convergent evolution, giving the famous example of convergence between species of placental mammals and marsupials in Australia. I also give an example from plants: the strong resemblance between cacti in the New World and euphorbs in the old.

But there are also examples in which non-treelike plants have, similar to the example above, evolved to resemble trees. I’ll leave readers to hunt for those, but put your answers in the comments below.

h/t: Steve, John

The cartoon that has it all

August 23, 2015 • 11:10 am

As reader Ben Goren said when sending me this Non Sequitur strip by Wiley Miller, it has it all: evolution, faith, and cats!

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But it also shows one of Americans’ most common misconceptions about evolution: that what evolves are individuals over their lifetimes, not populations over long periods of time. This is a common misunderstanding of how bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics, giving rise to the idea that individuals somehow acquire a physiological tolerance to the drugs.