Oh man, those Jews! They can be such clever little bastards sometimes, no? What I like about the jew in the comic is that he's clearly worked out this whole little joke, and is just waiting for a chance to use it. He can't just blurt it out and make this a nice one-panel comic, though, because there are too many elements ("What are you doing the day after Christmas?" "Well, I'm a Jewish physicist who doesn't observe Christmas, so it doesn't even have a definite date! Ha!"). So he sort of needs to string the non-jew along adding in each element in its own panel, in what is completely a sit-com fake-smile-at-the-camera-conversation conversation, and then hit him with the pun.
Aren't people supposed to hate puns? don't people consider them like the lowest form of comedy or something? I don't, but I thought that every other human being did.
Does this even work, science-wise? Can a physicist say "I can't observe X particle, therefore it doesn't have a set location" ? Or is it, "If it has a set location, then I can't observe it?" The whole "My belief means that no one can detect CHRISTMAS" seems real un-sciencey.
Quite frankly after panel two I was expecting a joke about the Jewish Calendar vs. the Everything Else Calendar, with The Jew not knowing when Christmas is because it jumps around every year (whereas from his perspective, Hannukah is always at the same time each year). Does that make sense? I think it's better than a crazy "Jew physicist doesn't know when christmas is" pun that relies on the double meaning of the word "observe."
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my god, the xkcd search function sucks.
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I'm going to e-mail the breadpig dudes about that spiderpig shirt, it bothers me too much.
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GUYS merry christmas to all of you, I am off to vacation on Mars for a week or so and as my christmas present to you, I am giving you all ALORIA (woooo!) to guest post for the week. aloria! i bet you $5 the first words she posts are "shit cocks." SEE YOU IN A WEEK!
Aren't people supposed to hate puns? don't people consider them like the lowest form of comedy or something? I don't, but I thought that every other human being did.
Does this even work, science-wise? Can a physicist say "I can't observe X particle, therefore it doesn't have a set location" ? Or is it, "If it has a set location, then I can't observe it?" The whole "My belief means that no one can detect CHRISTMAS" seems real un-sciencey.
Quite frankly after panel two I was expecting a joke about the Jewish Calendar vs. the Everything Else Calendar, with The Jew not knowing when Christmas is because it jumps around every year (whereas from his perspective, Hannukah is always at the same time each year). Does that make sense? I think it's better than a crazy "Jew physicist doesn't know when christmas is" pun that relies on the double meaning of the word "observe."
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my god, the xkcd search function sucks.
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I'm going to e-mail the breadpig dudes about that spiderpig shirt, it bothers me too much.
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GUYS merry christmas to all of you, I am off to vacation on Mars for a week or so and as my christmas present to you, I am giving you all ALORIA (woooo!) to guest post for the week. aloria! i bet you $5 the first words she posts are "shit cocks." SEE YOU IN A WEEK!
Right, the thing is, Christmas would only have no set date if everybody failed to observe Christmas, not just one dude. Though we should be glad Randall didn't remember this, because then he would have to be a Jewish solipsist physicist to get around it.
ReplyDeleteEh, close enough.
ReplyDeleteAlso, everyone loves puns, but they're afraid to admit it.
Truth: I didn't get the 'observe' pun until about two seconds ago. This comic completely baffled me. I'm pretty dumb.
ReplyDeleteI peed blood when I passed a kidney stone a few years ago. It was excruciatingly painful! My urine sample looked something like this. I'm apparently one of the youngest people to have one, at least at that particular hospital.
This comic is boring. What else should we talk about?
er, what's the pun? am i just retarded?
ReplyDeleteHere's a joke about the jewish calendar v. non-jewish calendar:
ReplyDeleteTwo men are sitting in synagoge. One says to the other, "When is Chanukkah this year?"
The other man replied, "Same time as always: the 25th of Kislev."
Bu-dum-TISH!
Careless, careless, careless. Since I observe Christmas, the wave function collapses to a single date and, ta da, Christmas has a definite date.
ReplyDeleteIts not a horrible pun, but I think he needs to move past "hey look, these two phrases have a common word and one of them is a science phrase!"
Also... in xkcdexplained
http://xkcdexplained.com/
They say its the uncertainty principle. I don't think thats true... I think uncertainty is that the better you know the position, the worse you can know the momentum (and vice versa). Anyone remember?
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteIt's closest to either the idea behind probability clouds (i.e. before observation you can only say how probable it is that you'll observe something in a given location) or he's taken a strong stance against realism (the idea that certain properties exist outside of observation)--something that has a backing in recent experimental work.
But yeah, it's at the narrowest an observer effect. Uncertainty states that certain pairs of properties "push" at each other in observer effects--this isn't that specific.
I love puns. This one is even halfway decent, but like I said in the previous topic, it's like Randall is just underlining phrases from one of his high school textbooks and looking up homonyms to create puns with.
ReplyDeleteOr basically what Anon 11:40 said.
Sucks, sucks, sucks...
ReplyDeleteIt could have been summarize in a sole panel, for the very reasons Carl gave us : who talks like this ? Nobody.
This is a lame joke. The kind of puns you use in the middle of a conversation to raise a smile in the assistance, then forget it immediately to carry on your speech. It definitely doesn't deserve four panels.
It doesn't even deserve stick figures to illustrate it. It could have been an alt-text.
But I guess it feeds Munroe's illusion that he is a brilliant scientist and makes clever jokes about physicists...
Hey, you know what ? I can't observe Randall's wit, hence I guess it doesn't exist, uh ?
I know people who talk like this, and it's always met with an awkward silence, and maybe a forced chuckle. They for some reason just can't hear it. I don't hate these people (I'm actually related to one), but I definitely don't want to read their genocide on comedy in a fucking comic
ReplyDeleteHe's had a full year to come up with a Christmas joke -- if this is the best we can get, then we've definitely got trouble.
ReplyDeleteAt least this didn't have couples having oh-so-geeky and oh-so-wacky ideas for making out.
Fernie, he still has another day, idiot.
ReplyDeleteAnon 11:40 wrote:
ReplyDelete>> They say its the uncertainty principle. I
>> don't think thats true... I think uncertainty
>> is that the better you know the position, the
>> worse you can know the momentum (and vice
>> versa). Anyone remember?
The uncertainty principle is much more general than that (but not so general as to make this comic resemble something funny) : IIRC, any two non-commuting observables have an uncertainty relation. E.g., position&momentum, or perhaps two independent axes of angular momentum (say Jz and Jx). There's also an energy-time uncertainty principle, but I don't recall how it comes about.
This comic doesn't make sense because there's no clear physical meaning to the term "observe."
Why does the second character need to mention that he's a physicist? Has Randall really reached the point of condescension that he needs to announce to his audience that he is, brace yourselves, ABOUT TO MAKE A PHYSICS JOKE!
ReplyDeleteHeck, he doesn't need to mention that he's Jewish either. Just that he doesn't know when it is, and reduce this whole painful thing to two panels.
I thought this was one of the better xkcds recently, but then I also think that Aquarians Love To Fuck is hilarious, so make of this what you will.
ReplyDeleteAt least Randall didn't spin this as a godawful Friends of Wigner thing, where the billion Christmas-observing Christians only become certain when somebody else observes them.
ReplyDeleteI got Carl a present too
ReplyDeleteOh right, uh... $12?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI may not be strictly correct here, but I differentiate between "pun" and "wordplay".
ReplyDeleteA pun is when things sound similar but not identical, and the basis of the joke is arranging words which are themselves indicative of the reference. As in "chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."
Wordplay is when a word is identical but a double meaning is used to create new context. That's what Randall did here, playing on the definitions of "observe."
I tolerate puns but adore wordplay, and I think had the setup been more concise this would have been a great comic.
Amarsir: while that is probably a useful distinction to make it's not strictly correct. Puns are, according to dictionary.com, "the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words."
ReplyDeleteGod this is terrible.
ReplyDelete"...i bet you $5 the first words she posts are "shit cocks."...."
ReplyDeleteI bet you $10 it won't be "shite cocks"
Innit?
Shakespear adored puns, for what its worth.
ReplyDeleteYeah but Shakespeare pretty much invented the English language so he can get away with it.
ReplyDeleteNah just kidding. There's nothing like a good pun...and this comic is nothing like one.
The only thing I can think of that would be worse than this is:
First guy: Hey what are you doing?
Second guy: Eating some mincemeat pie.
First guy: That can't possibly be a mincemeat pie, it's round!
Second guy: What does that have to do with anything?
First guy: Well I'm a mathematician.
Secong guy: So?
First guy: Well everybody knows PIE R SQUARE!
If he turns this into an actual comic you have my permission to violently murder me.
SQUARED, Nate. SQUARED. They are SQUARE because they have been SQUARED. Nate. Nate.
ReplyDeleteCaptcha: blakerlo. I don't live on the Blakerlo line, unfortunately.
Nate: it could be worse if it ended like this:
ReplyDeleteFirst guy: Well I'm a mathematician.
Second guy: So?
First guy: Well everybody knows PIE R SQUARE!
Second guy: Well shut my mouth and do me without a condom.
since Randall loves post-punchline-dialogue so much
At first I was like "Well, this is like the least interesting comic Randall has ever done. Pretty sure people have been like 'lol people who were born on xmas get half as many presents' ever since birthdays and Christmas became exercises in conspicuous consumption. Whatever, at least there's nothing gross or outraging about it."
ReplyDeleteThen I read the title text and vomited like six times.
I think it's actually sarcasm that's considered to be the lowest form of humor. I find puns hilarious but then again, I also like xkcd so my opinion is irrelevant here.
ReplyDeletePeople who think sarcasm is the lowest form of humor are dumbasses.
ReplyDeleteSlapstick and jokes about erectile dysfunction are the lowest forms of comedy.
ReplyDeleteTrust me, I know.
I really don't know why you guys all hate this. I think Randall made a clever pun while making fun of physicists and also incorporating what's happening in the real world. If this is all about the pun, then wow.
ReplyDeleteCan someone tell me what's Randall's damage with the newest one? Ok I know some people's families allow a party halfway through the year for kids who have birthdays in close proximity to Christmas (meaning like 2 days before or on Christmas, any time before is fair game and a dick move if you don't want to buy to gifts) so that they don't feel shafted from less presents (as far as I'm concerned they don't care when they're past 35 and the presents aren't a big deal, but I personally don't think Randall will ever pass that maturity barrier)
ReplyDeleteAnother thing, what the Christ is with the alt-text? That's simply horrifying that he would write something like that and to think I used to be told that the real wit came from the extra text (back for the comics where he wrote fuck all in the actual comic and put everything in the alt-text) and now I'll bet those people who told me that will eat their words.
Every time I see the name Nate, I am reminded of "the longest joke in the world" and it's famous punchline.
ReplyDeleteAnd the xmas comic is just terrible. At least he didn't mention that they didn't shave pubic hair in the 80s, because clearly Randall's only knowledge of this time period comes from pornography.
what the fuck.
ReplyDeleteI like how the title text shows that Randall isn't 100% clear on how babby is formed. Sure he knows it involves sex, but I don't know anyone who was born the day after conception.
ReplyDelete"ever since birthdays and Christmas became exercises in conspicuous consumption"
ReplyDeleteMalethoth is a commmmuuuunnnniiiiisssstttt
I think that 680 would probably be slightly less bad if it was just the 'Happy Birthday...to those of you born on the 25th' text. There is some (mild, short-lived) humour in the subversion of expectations -- (a) on Christmas of course you'd not be expecting a birthday message, and (b) if you do see birthday messages in a Christmas context it's often some sort of reference to the birth of Jesus, which is hardly what you'd expect from Randall. So just having the Happy Birthday message could perhaps elicit a smile of sorts.
ReplyDeleteBut having the 'shafted' text puts the emphasis of the joke on the comment about the unfortunate date for a birthday, which is an entirely unfunny observation and one made probably by almost every 7 year old, arguing about who has the best birth date.
Going to give this one a pass re: it's Christmas.
ReplyDeleteincredibly lazy comic but the alt-text reminded me that I like vintage porn so I thought it was pretty sweet.
ReplyDeleteDoes "observe" have a "double meaning?" I just looked it up in Merriam Webster and it has had the same meaning for 1000s of years.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is not so in your language but "observe" is used precisely correct in the xkcd strip as far as the English language is concerned. Physicist or layman ... the meaning is the same.
What is your native language, Carl?
To observe Christmas means to celebrate it, to participate in it etc. In the physics context, 'observe' means essentially to see, to perceive.
ReplyDeleteI guess there was a blizzard in the northeast in march 1982? I have to admit, if that is true, Randall does his research. His creepy, pointless research.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas!
I thought it was refering to the Denver christmas eve blizzard, but I suppose the Long Island April 6th blizzard could be what he's referencing.
ReplyDeleteApril 6.
ReplyDeleteThe Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle works like this:
ReplyDelete[Uncertainty in Position] * [Uncertainty in Momentum] >= [Planck's Constant] / 4 Pi
An "uncertainty" is like a degree of error. These can be actual numbers. Basically, the idea is that we can know a lot of information about an objects position, but then as a tradeoff, we won't know as much about its momentum (also, you can rewrite this formula a bit to make it in terms of energy, but I prefer it this way).
It basically says that even if we were to develop the most sensitive equipment possible, we can never truly know all information about an object at a particular time. The reason comes from elementary quantum mechanics. Schrödinger (hey look, I too can remember umlauts!) developed a "wave equation" for matter. Basically, he found a way to represent fundamental charged particles as waves instead of as matter. This essentially says that if light can be represented as both particle (photon) and wave, then so can matter. Furthermore, the wave equation tells us the probability that a particle will be at some location. Using these probabilistic results, you can derive Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
Of course, Schrödinger received a lot of crap for this theory. The whole concept of uncertainty bothered many scientists, including Einstein, who, IIRC, is known to have said "God does not play dice with the universe."
Anyways, enough of that... Randy has two jokes in 679 that are puns on the term "observation". The first is related to Schrödinger's infamous cat thought experiment. Since the pseudo-physicist in the strip is Jewish and doesn't "observe" Christmas, it can't have a definite date, just as because nobody observes the cat in the box, it cannot be definitely alive or dead. As Carl described it, an utterly pretentious and sad statement.
The alt-text states that physicists who want to keep Christmas the same cannot observe it. This is directly related to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as written above. One interpretation of the principle states that if we want to improve our ability to observe a particle, we must change its energy (and therefore momentum) to maintain the uncertainty relation. Therefore, Randy's joke does indeed fit.
I just find it lame mostly because it applies a physical concept to a nonphysical thing. Christmas is not a particle. Also, the situation is so contrived, it probably couldn't even work as a bash.org quote.
Damnit, that should read:
ReplyDelete> fundamental charged matter as waves instead of as particles
I need to proofread more.
Merry Christmas! :)
As to the search function - it's ohnorobot, which is really an excellent service provided that the webcomic actually UPDATES it. A softer world (a deliciously dark webcomic) has the same problem, often the only updates to the search feature is by readers, which is always risky business.
ReplyDeleteAloria, you got Carl a present? I was thinking about it, but he told me to forget it because he didn't want to give out his address.
ReplyDeleteThe search engine was designed by Ryan North. You are a fangirl of Ryan North, remember.
ReplyDeleteHow useless are you.
Anon, no comics past "the race: part 4" show up on Randall's ohnorobot. 100 comics ago.
ReplyDeleteWhose fault do you think this is?
I think Amarsir's distinction between puns and wordplay is important. I think of it more as puns of greater or lesser purity, but that's just semantics. However, I like puns more than wordplay, not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteNate and Sam, your proposed comic is hilarious.
the xkcd search is bad because many comics don't come up, and most old comics come up multiple times - so a search that should only bring up, say, 7 comics ends up giving you like 30 or 40 results, which are annoying to sift through.