State Capitals

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Juneau, you can look it up online?

A Late Leslie Nielsen Comic

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Your mind tricks won't work on Leslie Nielsen.
And, technically, it's a late Late Leslie Nielsen comic,

which references this comic.

Math & Technology

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


I know people like this.
Sometimes I *am* people like this.
I can only imagine what poor Michele is thinking caught in the middle there.

Student Excuse Functions

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


But you didn't.

The Saddest Function

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Coming Soon: the Top Excuse Functions for Students!

Applying the Fundamentals

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


It's always the same old story, a case of x or y... And I'm shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to find math in this comic!

Numerical Turn of Phrase

I enjoy numbers, and I enjoy reading even though I don't always enjoy reading about numbers because it can get very tedious. Nevertheless, occasionally someone puts chocolate in my peanut butter (or gets peanut butter on my chocolate), and you get something like this:

"Samia of Fife was five feet tall, exactly, and all sixty inches of her were in a state of quivering exasperation. She weighed one and a half pounds per inch and, at the moment, each of her ninety pounds represented sixteen ounces of solid anger."

I just enjoyed that line and thought it a great way to open a chapter and introduce a character. And two things occurred to me only as I type it: even though it's science fiction, the measurements are not in metric, and the weight of 90 pounds is given without any consideration for actual gravity of the planet. What would the Galactic Empire think?

Unfortunately, I was left scratching my head by a phrase used two pages later:

"... made her an object of mild derision to people who were accustomed to thinking of the aristocratic Ladies of Sark as devoted entirely to the glitter of polite society and, eventually, acting as incubators for at least, but no more than, two future Squires of Sark."

Now, since "at least" means no less than, what this sentence is saying is that ever "Lady" is expected to have no less than nor no more than two children. In other words, two children. Now, I'd want to call this guy some kind of hack, but since it was Isaac Asimov, most would likely disagree with me.

So, okay, so maybe "hack" is too strong, but it was still a weird way to say "two and only two", or simply "exactly two".

Four-Color Theorem

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


According to the Four-Color Theorem, four crayons should be enough to color in any turkey.

This year, I'm thanking for places like Raising Our Kids for having pictures of turkeys to color in because I didn't have the time nor patience to make my own. For that matter, I didn't have the patience to color in a turkey that had 2 or 3 times the number of sections. (And let's not even get into the grayscale pixelation issues!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

New Additions

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


The last of the original sketches from the year before I started the comic. It was on the back of an index card and slightly faded, so it didn't scan too well, but you get the idea.

It's About Time

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


B.C. or not B.C, that is the question ...

You know why there is no metric time? Because they tried it and everyone thought it was stupid.
A cm is not the same as an inch, a meter is not a yard, a liter is not a quart, so "BCE" should not be the same as "B.C."

If they need a new calendar with a different start date, might I suggest "After Ford"?

Try, Try Again

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Yes, it should be "Seven of Thirteen", but any geek would rather have "Seven of Nine".

Banach-Tarski Comics

In the comments on reddit about this Luke Surl comic involving Banach-Tarski, there was the following list of Banach-Tarski-inspired comics:


http://mrburkemath.blogspot.com/2009/10/humpty-dumpty.html

http://brownsharpie.courtneygibbons.org/?p=82

http://spikedmath.com/234.html

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2339.html

I was happy to be included. 8-)