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| Cultural Shift | [[ Aaron and Harold walking in an autumn woods, by a lake or stream. ]]
/ Harold: Solving Global Warming will require a dramatic shift in the way we normally think. / Harold: Instead of focusing on the short term, we must realize that sacrifices now can have long term benefits. / Harold: Instead of just thinking about ourselves, we have to understand how out actions impact the larger community. / Aaron: We are so screwed.
/ {{alt text: As if global warming wasn't a big enough problem, there are both practical and cultural changes needed to solve it.}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=421 |
| See You in the Funny Pages | [[ Aaron and Harold at a table, both reading newspapers. ]]
/ Harold: The key to making syndicated comic strips is to never offend anyone. / Aaron: Well, they offend me.
/ Harold: Why's that? / Aaron: They offend my sense of humor.
/ {{alt text: When I was ten-years-old, all I wanted was to be in the funny pages.}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=422 |
| The Surprise Paradox | [[ Harold and Raymond talking... ]]
/ Raymond: Me and the other guys have decided to throw you a *surprise party* sometime between now and Friday.
/ Harold: Wow, thanks! / Harold: But I guess the surprise party can't be on Friday.
/ Raymond: Why's that? / Harold: If you wait until the end of the week, then on Thursday night I'd know it must come the next day, and it wouldn't be much of a surprise.
/ Raymond: Hmmm... I guess that's true. / Harold: And if it can't be on Friday, it can't be on Thursday either, because I'd know on Wednesday night that it has to be the next day. / Harold: Come to think of it, one can work back and argue that it's impossible to have a surprise party on _any_ day.
/ [[ Raymond stands with hands on hips, thoughtful...]] / [[ Harold stands, arms folded, looking happy, slightly smug, having proved his point. ]] / [[ Suddenly Aaron, Ferdinand, and Alp all pop in from the left...]]
/ Aaron, Ferdinand, Alp: *SURPRISE!!!*
/ [[ Harold is shocked, Raymond smiles.]]
/ {{alt text: So is the surprise paradox really a paradox or not?}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=423 |
| Just Imagine the Feynman Diagram | [[Alp and Ferdinand. Alp is holding a flashlight in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. The flashlight is on, and Alp is shining the beam on the paper. ]]
/ Alp: Wanna hear an amazing fact? You see this flashlight shining on the paper?
/ Ferdinand: Yeah. / Alp: According to the path integral formulation of Quantum Mechanics, to understand how the light gets to the paper, one must consider _every_ _possible_ _path_ that the light can take. / Ferdinand: Jeez, I feel violated. / {{alt text: A comic about the disturbing implications of the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics..}} / {{keywords: physics}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=424 |
| Politicized Entertainment | [[ Harold and Aaron walking in a late-fall woods. The sky color suggests it maybe just after sunset (or before sunrise?). ]]
/ Harold: The use of divisive politics as entertainment is big business these days. / Harold: On the right, there's Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh... / Harold: But the left is no better, with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. / Aaron: Isn't promoting laughter a fundamentally different goal compared to inciting anger?
/ {{alt text: Are there fundamental differences between the right and left's political entertainment?.}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=425 |
| Communal Memory | Harold: We think of memories as only being in our own minds, but really they're communal in their nature. / Harold: People used to share stories verbally to ensure that certain memories and knowledge would never be forgotten. This was eventually replaced with books. / Harold: Today it has spread to a global scale with the internet, which takes pressure off our individual minds to remember as much specific information. / [[ Ferdinand at the computer with Alp looking on. Harold joins them... ]
/ Alp: Did you find it on Wikipedia?
/ Ferdinand: Nope, I guess it doesn't exist.
/ Harold: What are you looking for?
/ Ferdinand: Some comic called "Calamities of Nature"
/ {{alt text: Memories aren't just of an individual, but are a function of the values of a community.}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=426 |
| Going Dutch | [[ Harold and Aaron sitting at a table, each reading a newspaper. ]]
/ Harold: California will be voting on a measure to legalize and tax marijuana this fall.
/ Aaron: It's about time. / Aaron: Legalization will result in a major reduction of law enforcement costs, open up space in overcrowded prisons, and raise billions of dollars for a fiscally crippled state. / Harold: But what about the moral decay of society?
/ Aaron: Don't worry, we still have alcohol for that. / {{alt text: Comic about Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. It legalizes various marijuana-related activities and permits local governments to collect taxes.}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=427 |
| Vegetarians Can Eat Bacon, Right? | [[ Ferdinand in a yellow-green field with a green tree, meets a young woman. ]]
/ Ferdinand: Want some bacon?
/ Woman: [[ Smiling gently ]] Sorry, I'm a vegetarian. / Ferdinand: Don't worry, it won't necessarily make you a carnivore. / [[ The woman is getting annoyed... ]]
/ Ferdinand: For example, I know straight girls who have made out with other chicks, but I don't consider them lesbians. / [[ Ferdinand, now lying on the ground, has been thoroughly roughed up! Hurting, he groans: ]]
/ Ferdinand: Maybe she _is_ a lesbian because she clearly doesn't appreciate a man's opinion. / {{alt text: Eating bacon doesn't make you a carnivore anymore than straight girls making out makes them lesbians. }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=428 |
| The Scientific Process | [[ Aaron and Raymond walking in a woods of tall trees with skinny trunks. ]]
/ Raymond: I wonder why anyone would dedicate themselves to something as cold and mechanical as science. / Aaron: It actually requires a lot of creativity to devise and test ideas so as to figure out how nature works. / Aaron: The path taken toward scientific knowledge is very individualized and depends on a given scientist's unique sense of aesthetics. / Aaron: Science is art. / {{alt text: Science and art have a lot more in common than most people usually assume. }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=429 |
| How Do You Measure Love? | [[Alp walk into the living room and Harold is standing next to a record player holding the album cover to Led Zeppelin's II.]]
/ Alp: What are you listening to?
/ Harold: Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." / Alp: It bothers me when Robert Plant sings "I'm going to give you every inch of my love."
/ Harold: Why, too graphic? / Alp: No, He's British-- He should use the _Metric_System!_ http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=430 |
| No Turning Back | [[ Harold and Aaron out walking. Two roads diverge in front of them. ]]
/ Harold: In Life you have one of two choices, and both require a compromise. / Harold: Either you can dedicate yourself to becoming really good at one thing, but miss out on the breadth of other experiences... / Harold: ... or you can know a little about a lot of things, but at the expense of having the depth of a single specialty. / [[ Harold and Aaron have reached a cliff- they stand at the brink. ]]
/ Aaron: What have you decided to do?
/ Harold: I've dedicated my life to worrying about which of these two options I should choose. / {{alt text: Is it better to specialize or diversify? If only life wasn't so short.}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=431 |
| What Advice Would You Give? | [[ Panel: If you could make a phone call back in time and give your 15-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? ]] / Raymond: You're probably not going to retire off your comic book collection. / Ferdinand: If you want to be the coolest guy at Prom, wear a bacon tuxedo! / Harold: If you're wondering when the "Good Times" will begin, this is it. / Aaron: Don't worry if you don't fit in now, you'll find people you can relate to in college. / {{alt text: If you could make a phone call back in time and give your 15-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=432 |
| Love Versus Hate | {{This comic has three panel: Two normal-sized panels, stacked, on the left, and a large panel, the width of three panels of a four-panel comic, and equally tall.}}
/ {{Panel one is the upper left.}}
/ [[Harold, talking to us, standing in front of a blue-gray background.
/ The BG fades to gray, radially, around the sides.]]
/ Harold: The consolidation of information on the internet allows us to learn about the values and attitudes of people, in ways never before possible.]] / {{Panel two is the lower left.}}
/ [[Harold, same BG.]]
/ Harold: Here is a plot of the ratio of hits for 'Googling' "I love ________",
/ divided by the number of hits for "I hate ________", using various terms. / {{Panel three is the large one. But you had that figured out, already! Right?}}
/ [[The data are shown in a scatter-plot diagram: A two-dimensional graph, showing where an X value intersects with the Y value, for a given datum. The (vertical) Y-axis is labeled:
/ Google hits for "I love ________" divided by
/ Google hits for "I hate _______", using a logarithmic scale, four decades below unity, plus three decades above unity.
/ The (horizontal) X-axis is unlabeled. This leads one to believe the Y axis shows the ratio cited as its content, but the X-axis merely distributes the data, in a convenient manner.]]
/ Feynman (Richard, on presumes) is highest, at eight hundred.
/ Nose hair is lowest, at 0.00025 (two hundred fifty parts per million), equals four thousand to one!
/ Other entries include: Sex, bacon, coffee, porn, boobs, George W, Star Wars, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Sarah Palin, Betty White, pirates, ninjas, Star Trek, astronomy, astrology, homeopathy, math, art, mustaches, chest hair, money, and Michael Jackson. http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=433 |
| Childhood Amnesia | [[ Harold and Aaron walking under a clear, starry night sky. ]]
/ Harold: Childhood amnesia is a strange mystery. Most typically don't remember anything before 3 years old. / Harold: There are many theories why this is. Some hypothesize that it's due to limited language skills. / Harold: Others argue it's hard to build memories when you don't have the previous experiences to put things into context. / Aaron: What about the "I don't want to recall crapping on myself 10,000 times" theory? / {{alt text: Most people don't have memories of anything before around the age of three. Why is this? }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=434 |
| Happy 60th Birthday | [[ Harold sitting at home in an easy-chair, reading a paper. The wall is gray, the floor is brown, the chair is mauve. The door bell rings. ]]
/ < http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=435 |
| The Ig Nobel Prizes | Narrator: THE IG NOBEL PRIZES WERE AWARDED LAST WEEK TO CELEBRATE RESEARCH THAT MAKES PEOPLE LAUGH AS WELL AS THINK.
/ Narrator: LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT SOME OF THE WINNERS. / [[Woman clutches her throat with an expression of pain, man is pleading with Ferdinand, who is standing around and watching her]]
/ Narrator: THE MEDICINE PRIZE WENT TO RESEARCH SHOWING THAT ROLLER COASTERS CAN ALLEVIATE ASTHMA...
/ Man: HELP, MY WIFE IS HAVING AN ASTHMA ATTACK!
/ Ferdinand: SORRY, THE CLOSEST AMUSEMENT PARK IS 20 MILES AWAY.
/ Ferdinand: SHE'S A GONER. / [[Pilot is talking angrily with Ferdinand, who is holding a mop]]
/ Narrator: THE MANAGEMENT PRIZE WENT TO A STUDY FINDING THAT IT'S BETTER FOR COMPANIES TO GIVE STAFF PROMOTIONS AT RANDOM...
/ Pilot: HOW THE HECK DID YOU GET PROMOTED TO FLY A 747?
/ Ferdinand: APPARENTLY I'M A DAMN GOOD JANITOR! / [[Harold is on an operating table with a line drawn across his forehead, staring aghast at Ferdinand, who is dressed as a surgeon and holding a scalpel like a kitchen knife]]
/ Narrator: THE PEACE PRIZE WENT TO RESEARCH SHOWING THAT SWEARING RELIEVES PAIN...
/ Harold: WAIT, YOU'RE GOING TO DO BRAIN SURGERY ON ME WITHOUT ANESTHESIA?!
/ Ferdinand: SURE, JUST DROP ALL THE F-BOMBS YOU WANT.
/ Narrator: NOW THESE ARE SOME GREAT REASONS FOR BECOMING A SCIENTIST! http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=436 |
| Math Pays | Ferdinand: SOMEDAY I WANT A FERRARI TESTAROSSA.
/ Harold: HOW COULD YOU EVER AFFORD THAT? / Ferdinand: I'M GOING TO DO SOME MATH TUTORING.
/ Harold: HOW WOULD THAT MAKE YOU ENOUGH MONEY? / Ferdinand: I FIGURE I CAN OVERCHARGE. http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=437 |
| How to Get Traffic on the Internet | [[Ferdinand and Harold are talking. Harold is looking at some papers, worried.]]
/ Ferdinand: WHAT'S THE MATTER?
/ Harold: OUR WEBSITE NUMBERS ARE DOWN. WE NEED TO GET MORE TRAFFIC. / Harold: MAYBE WE NEED AN EYE CATCHING IMAGE TO DRAW PEOPLE TO OUR SITE -- SOMETHING THAT'S EXCITING AND CUTTING EDGE, AND WHICH REPRESENTS ALL THE ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES THAT MAKE THE INTERNET SO POWERFUL. / Ferdinand: I'VE GOT IT! / [[Ferdinand is proudly showing Harold a frameds picture of a kitten with a hat surrounded by flowers, Harold is grabbing his head in utter horror.]]
/ Ferdinand: TA-DAH!
/ Harold: AHHHHHH! http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=438 |
| Self-Esteem | [[ Raymond and Harold walking in the woods--]]
/ Raymond: If you act like you have low self-esteem, then you probably _do_ have low self-esteem. / Raymond: But if you act like your have _high_ self-esteem, then you're probably overcompensating because you again have low self-esteem. / Raymond: So does anyone _not_ have low self-esteem?
/ Harold: I have _no_ self-esteem. / {{alt text: Does anybody NOT have low self-esteem?}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=439 |
| Time Dilation | [[ Aaron and Harold talking in a field. ]]
/ Aaron: According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, the faster you go, the slower time proceeds. / Harold: Wow, could that be the secret to fighting getting old? / Aaron: No, but that doesn't stop people from trying.
/ [[ View pulls back to show Ferdinand in the background with a nice red sports car. ]]
/ Ferdinand: Hey guys, check out the new Corvette I got for my upcoming high school reunion! / {{alt text: According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, time progresses slower the faster you go. }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=440 |
| Low Hanging Fruit | [[ Harold and Aaron talking under a fruit tree loaded with apples, ripe and easily within reach. ]]
/ Harold: Missionaries often focus on converting people who are poor and face hardship and adversity. / Harold: But doesn't it say something if the people most susceptible to this are those that are most vulnerable? / Harold: If one really wants to demonstrate the power of faith, he or she should focus on converting those with the most sophisticated criticisms of Religion. / Aaron: _Nobody_ has enough faith to believe that would work. / {{alt text: Missionaries love low hanging fruit. }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=442 |
| It's Not Coming Back | [[Alp and Harold stand at the edge of a cliff, overlooking the water.]]
/ Alp: Check out my spiffy, new invention, The Super-Duper Boomerang!
/ Harold: Wow, let's try it! / [[Alp throws the boomerang.]]
/ < http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=443 |
| Physics Pick Up Lines | [[ Panel: Dating Pro tip: Using Physics in your pick up lines is guaranteed to get you some *action*. ]] / [[ Ferdinand in a bar, tries out physics pick up lines ]]
/ Ferdinand: Hey Baby, do you want to learn about stimulated emission?
/ Woman: Looks like my years of Kung Fu training are finally going to pay off! / Ferdinand: Excuse me, would you like to compare resonant frequencies?
/ Woman: Want to see if your face resonates with my boyfriend's fist? / Ferdinand: Hey Ladies, do you want to help me solve the three-body problem?
/ Women: Should we kick your ass individually or at the same time?
/ [[Sub-panel: Note: the "action" you get may not be what you were looking for.]] / {{alt-text: Disclaimer: using physics pick up lines may result in you never getting a date again. }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=444 |
| Fear the Beard | Harold: Ferd, are you excited that the Giants are in the World Series?
/ Ferdinand: Just a minute. / [[ Ferdinand grits his teeth, makes a little effort...]]
/ Ferdinand: ARRGG!! / [[ Hair sprouts on Ferdinand's face as he continues to strain... ]]
/ < http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=445 |
| No Appreciation | [[ Ferdinand appears to be making a balloon animal from a brownish-maroon colored balloon. ]]
/ Ferdinand: Okay, just one more twist and I'll be done. / [[ Alp watches as Ferd tries to hand his creation to a little girl. ]]
/ Ferdinand: Here's your little doggie.
/ Child: [[ running away ]] AIIEEE!! MOMMY!! / Alp: What's the matter with that kid?
/ Ferdinand: Nobody appreciates my sausage creations. / {{alt-text:It's hard as an artist to not be appreciated. }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=446 |
| Feynman Would Approve | [[Harold and Ferdinand stand together with a sunset off in the distance. Ferdinand looks excited with his arms raised over his head in triumph.]]
/ Ferdinand: I did it! I completed classes in classical mechanics, complex analysis, abstract algebra, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, special relativity, and quantum field theory! / Harold: Wow, that's a lot of work! Why did you do it?
/ [[Ferdinand pulls out a piece of paper with some writing on it.]]
/ Ferdinand: I wanted to achieve my lifelong dream of calculating this one Feynman diagram. / [[The last panel shows a closeup of a Feynman diagram that looks like a woman.]] / {{Alt text: The Feynman diagram for two photon scattering never looked so good.}} / {{keywords: physics}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=447 |
| 56 Years, But Worth the Wait | [[ An old comic strip from Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" This is taken from the comic that appeared in newspapers on December 22, 1962 ]]
/ [[1st panel: Charlie Brown and Linus sitting on a sidewalk step, heads in their hands, arms resting on their knees, looking sad and glum.]] / [[2nd panel: Same as the first.]] / [[3rd panel: Same as the preceding panel, except Charlie Brown speaks: ]]
/ Charlie Brown: Why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher? / [[4th panel: Ferdinand appears with good news.]]
/ Ferdinand: CHEER UP GUYS! WE FINALLY WON IT ALL!
/ [[ All rejoice, hand in the air, big smiles, happiness abounds! ]] / {{alt test: Who would have thought that Charlie Brown's team would finally win someday? Congratulations Giants! }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=448 |
| Apples and Oranges | [[ Harold and Alp sitting at the end of a dock in a lake with a sunset in the background. ]]
/ Harold: ...I don't agree, you're comparing apples and oranges.
/ Alp: Wait, apples and oranges? Is that supposed to imply to *dissimilar* things? / Alp: Apples and oranges are both fruits that we eat and juice. They have a similar size, shape, and weight. / Alp: In many languages oranges are referred to as apples. The Latin "Pomum Aurantium" literally means "Golden Apples". / Harold: So what would you suggest as a better saying?
/ Alp: "You're comparing Apples and weapons-grade plutonium!" / {{alt text: Apples and oranges? Can't it at least be apples and bananas?}} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=449 |
| Guest Comic by the Buttersafe Guys | [[Guest Comic by the Buttersafe Guys]]
/ [[Harold and Aaron take a walk.]] / Harold: How come in our comics, everyone has just eight fingers and one very large eyeball? / Harold: I mean, evolutionarily, we probably shouldn't even exist. We lose our eye, that's it! There's no backup. Heck, you don't even have eyes! Why are you still here? And with eight fingers, good luck trying to buy gloves in the wintertime! / Aaron: You know Harold, it could be worse.
/ Harold: How do you mean?
/ Aaron: Well, we could be those guys.
/ [[ Aaron points ahead...]] / [[ Aaron and Harold are now on background hilltop. A sign points down to "Buttersafe". In the foreground: a pair of characters in the Buttersafe style.]]
/ Aaron: Huge heads, tiny eyes, and zero fingers. Can't even hold a jar. / {{alt text: Thanks to Alex Culang and Ray Castro, creators of the webcomic Buttersafe, for providing today's update. }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=450 |
| Guest Comic by Adam Huber | [[ Guest comic by Adam Huber ]]
/ [[ Harold and Aaron taking a walk. Head-only view of Harold, Aaron a little further from the viewer. ]]
/ Aaron: I don't see the point of trying to be a good person. / [[ View focuses on Aaron making hand gestures. ]]
/ Aaron: Someday the Universe will collapse in on itself and all of this will have been for nothing. / Aaron: Good people will be just as atomized as the bad people so why bother? / Harold: Well, I still wish you wouldn't pour Nair in the swimming pool.
/ [[ Distant view of both. Harold has bare pink skin from shoulders down to his feet. Aaron points back at Harold. ]]
/ Aaron: See, it's folks like you that are gonna make Armageddon a real drag. / {{alt text: Thanks to Adam Huber, creator of the webcomic Bug, for providing today's update. }} http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=451 |
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