Back to School Tomorrow

NYC public school teachers go back to school tomorrow, Thursday, August 28, 2008. Yes, we have two days of work and then our first three-day weekend. Go figure. The kids come back next Tuesday.

Now before everyone out there who wasn't off for summer vacation starts cursing me (too late!), I'm not looking for pity or commiseration or anything like that.

I'm just using that as an excuse if I can't keep up the four strips per week pace that I've been keeping for the past couple of weeks.

Wish me luck.

Platonic Solids

(C)Copyright 2008, C. Burke. All rights reserved.

It's good to build a solid relationship.

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Famous Movie Math Quotes #12

(C)Copyright 2008, C. Burke. All rights reserved.

You didn't know that math smells?
My students say that Algebra stinks!

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Bananas in the Caribbean

So I've been back from vacation for over a week now and there's definitely some things I already miss.

We had sunlight on the sand. We had moonlight on the Sea.
We had mangoes and bananas you could pick right off the buffet tables...

And those bananas are what I miss. Instead of ripping them off while they're green so that they could ripen in a warehouse, they ripened on the trees until they were needed for your breakfast cereal! Fresh and delicious.

I wanted to stuff my pockets with them and bring them home with me!
There were, of course, three problems with doing this.

First, the practical problem: it would be quite messy.

Second, the legal problem: you can't take produce off the island and back to the U.S.

And third, and most importantly, the folks at the resort have seen it all. They have witnessed plenty of bizarre behavior and are absolutely unfazed by the antics of their guests. so no matter how much you may want it, you will not get a barmaid or hostess to ask, "Excuse me, sir. Is that a banana in your pocket?"

Kind of makes it just not worth it.

Wonder Twin Primes

(C)Copyright 2008, C. Burke. All rights reserved.

Something about their powers just doesn't add up.

Search Words	Google Hits
zan math	81,100
jayna math	94,600
wonder twins math	1,320,000
wonder twin prime	191,000

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How Jack Spends His Time

(C)Copyright 2008, C. Burke. All rights reserved.

There might be one more section, depending if Jack's last name is "Horner" or "Sprat",
or if it's Just Jack.

c.f.: What Makes Jack Dull

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Agent 56 Lives!

(C)Copyright 2008, C. Burke. All rights reserved.

He was last sighted in Vegas.

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Hamlet II: Claudius Strikes Back

(C)Copyright 2008, C. Burke. All rights reserved.

Hamlet could have done better had he had a pair of droids.


Click on the link to see the full cartoon.

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The 0'Factor, episode 7

(C)Copyright 2008, C. Burke. All rights reserved.

And when f(x) = 0, you can be sure
it's fair and balanced.

okay ... just lost half my readership on that one.


Click on the link to see the full cartoon.

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Cited as a Textbook Alternative

There's a math, science and technology wiki, MSTLiteracy, that has "great alternative text resources to use" with students. This blog was cited.

In particular, Reflections Across the X-Axis (Mother's Day) and The Price of Oil were linked for classroom use.

Thanks, George.

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New Cartoons coming on Sunday.

New comics to start soon

I'm back from vacation in Punta Cana and I'll be working on new comics soon. In the meantime, the last four-part series of The Adventures of Super-Stick-Man is up on the Comic Genesis site.

This sequence introduces the arch-nemesis Rotundo to the Super-Stick-Man mythos.
It also apparently contained a misspelling in the title page that I never corrected -- and after 27 years, I'm not correcting it now. The eraser could rip the page apart for all I know!

The series starts here: http://xwhy.comicgenesis.com/d/20080813.html

"You Enter the Room and See Four More Doors..."

Remember the old dungeon crawls that inevitably contained a room that contained nothing but doors? It was there to drive mappers insane. Or worse, it was there to throw you off the map by taking you through dimensional portals or such.

Or maybe you were about to re-enact something out of an old Looney Tunes or Scooby Doo chase sequence.

Well, I finally lived something that could be described as follows:

"As you enter the room, you see that it is empty save for four doors. There is one each at the ends of the rectangular room. The two on the wall opposite you have glyphs on the walls beside them..."

The glyphs represented the signs for the restaurant's Men's and Women's bathrooms, which was easier than having it printed in the five languages that were present on most of the signs around the resort. What was funny was what happened if you existed through one of the other two doors. You ended up in a different restaurant. Three fairly decent-sized dining establishments were centered around the bathroom they shared. (Oddly enough, we had suspected that they shared the kitchen.)

Okay, so it wasn't dimension-hopping, but when you suddenly find yourself in last night's restaurant thinking, "Something isn't right here", it can be both disconcerting and amusing at the same time.