Abstruse Goose: Witch Hunt

Our boy, Abstruse Goose, has gone missing again. We sympathize: anyone posting anything on the regular is bound to run dry sooner or later. (The exception of course is the People of LWON.) Anyway, luckily AG has left an archive of cartoons, some of witch turn out to be timely.

Abstruse Goose: Flight of the Good Ideas

My own pile of good ideas I’ve had and forgotten is smaller than AG’s — probably he’s just brighter than I am.  But this is a deeply depressing cartoon.  AG doesn’t think so.  His title for the download is:  good_artists_copy_great_artists_steal_and_the_greatest_artists_dumpster_dive_. _________ https://abstrusegoose.com/589

Abstruse Goose: pop phys

“Pop phys,” I assume, means popular physics.  And as someone who encounters physics in her writing, I have to say, AG is onto a big, big problem here, the Explanations of Physicists.  My late husband was a physicist, and his explanations to me went on for what seemed like hours and always ended with, “Your […]

Abstruse Goose: A Tale of One City

AG’s giving Dickens a happy ending here.  The cartoon’s secret mouseover says to consult paragraph 1, chapter 3, of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.  In that chapter, a banker is on his way to a mysterious meeting in which he’s to learn who was buried, how that person came back to life, and […]

Abstruse Goose: Cosmic Backyard

Ok, I thought, I’m an astro writer, I got this.  For one thing, you wouldn’t use astroseismology to look at the pulses of a pulsating white dwarf: pulses are relatively long, astroseismology looks for little jitters. For another, AG spelled it “asteroseismology,” laughably wrong.  After further investigation, the astro writer learns a lesson: never second-guess […]

Abstruse Goose: The Naked Intellect

Our boy is back!  Abstruse Goose was our go-to back-up for 100 years, then he unaccountably disappeared for another hundred.  And now, with no explanation (and we don’t need one), he’s back amongst us and our hearts rejoice. This one you can figure out without knowing what Bayesian priors are. I know a little because […]

Abstruse Goose: Argument from Obliviousness

I’d use this tactic on my nearest and dearest but it takes a certain emotional composure and psychological distance, and right when I should be doing killer obliviousness, I get irate and jump in with both feet and lose the argument entirely.  I personally see this as a virtue.   http://abstrusegoose.com/558

Abstruse Goose: At the Bench

One sympathizes.  Being a writer, mad or not, isn’t as much fun as in the movies either. It’s just one word after another, the right words in the right order in sentences; and one sentence after another, the right sentences in the right order in paragraphs; and one paragraph after another, the right paragraphs in […]