Abstruse Goose: Math Doesn’t Suck

AG’s little mouseover says, “. . .except algebraic geometry.  Algebraic geometry pretty much sucks.”  I’m going to have to take his word for it, I’m profoundly innumerate.  Moreover, if AG hadn’t added the caption, I would have said this cartoon was about physics.  Physics is the science, the knowledge; math is just the language — [...]

Abstruse Goose: Over-thinking the Problem

In the olden days of innocence, I used to ask my doctor about curing my various compelling anxieties and he said not to worry about it, most accomplished professionals were a little obsessive-compulsive.  I wasn’t an accomplished professional so I assumed he was talking about himself and his friends, one of whom must have been [...]

Abstruse Goose: Moment of Clarity 2

If you remember from our last episode,  Abstruse Goose:  Moment of Clarity 1, our plucky hero has had a moment of clarity about quantum mechanics.  The clarity was brief and, sadly, it passed.   He tried again months later and this time, he hung onto his moment long enough to begin fretting about quantum spin.  The [...]

Abstruse Goose: Moment of Clarity 1

You doubtless remember quantum mechanics: the deeply incomprehensible chain of reasoning about how particles are also waves; and the waves aren’t physical but waves of probability; and any given thing about which you’re certain means you’re uncertain about something else.  And so on, far into the night.  The worst thing about it is, apparently it’s [...]

Abstruse Goose: Mmmm, Evolution

Abstruse Goose adds, in a sneaky little popup, that this is his best argument for intelligent design.  Given the finely-honed excellence of BLT’s,  Darwin might want to back down. http://abstrusegoose.com/339

Abstruse Goose: High-Energy Biology

You understand the joke, right? that high-energy physics learns the nature of subatomic particles by hurling them at other subatomic particles and when the particles collide, studying the debris?   So this is funny. Also disturbing. http://abstrusegoose.com/156

Abstruse Goose: Band of Brothers

Some atoms, like the ones on the skin of your hand, are happy to give up their electrons.  And the electrons congregate in some mysterious way, as AG says, into a band of brothers.  The band is relentlessly negative, so when you get near enough to something positive, like a dryer or a doorknob, the [...]

Abstruse Goose: Convergent Subsequence

The title is a little joke about a math term, “convergent sequence.”  No way on earth can I understand convergent sequences and I doubt if anybody can explain it to me.   “Converging consequences” — now that makes a kind of horrible sense, like maybe an east coast snow storm.  Anyway.  I hope this will be [...]

AG: End Times for a Scientist’s Career

This happens.  An astronomer said that he found, as astronomers do, something that looked unusual and that turned out to be an unusual form of a usual thing.  But before he figured that out, a reporter happened to ask him what’s new, and the astronomer said he’d found this unusual thing, couldn’t figure it out, [...]

Abstruse Goose, Stardust, & Entropy

Abstruse Goose added a mysterious little tag that says something like, “Now, how many pop culture references can you find?”  None for me, not one, geezer that I apparently am.  But I did get the astronomy/physics references. The stardust one:  maybe you already know this but most every element — the lithium in our batteries, [...]