It’s interesting that the best cartoonists generally become very popular almost at once, as Randall Munroe seems to have.  Is it because one can’t make cartoons that are as advanced for cartoons as my poems, say, are advanced as poems?  Not that there aren’t sophisticated cartoonists–but however sophisticated they are (and Munroe is one, it seems to me) they find their audiences comparatively quickly.  I do consider the best cartoonists the artistic equal of the best poets.  Maybe it’s because a cartoon can’t work if it’s as complex as those superior complex poems that gain an audience of more than a dozen or so.  A cartoon has to work in one step, it seems to me; a superior poem can, too, but may need two or many more steps.

Anyway, I visited Munroe’s website to get its URL so I could refer people encountering his cartoon in my previous entry could visit it and found this,  which I liked more than enough to post it here:

You can see it and many others of Munroe’s almost-always very funny cartoons here.

This cartoon, by the way, seems to me excellently to illustrate the way scientists always prefer to make things right for machines than for people. I think of the use of “centimeter” in stead of inch by scientists, and their utter expulsion of the best of lengths, the foot, and the fourth best, the mile. The second-best is the inch; the third-best, the yard. Strict logic and speed of use versus organic sensibility–rightness for the symbol center of the brain versus rightness for the rest of the brain–and body. Regarding date, the physically sensible date has to be day, month, year–the part of the month we’re in, then the part of the year, then the year. The smallest area, then the larger area that’s in, then the largest area it’s in. But computer access will be faster going the other way, so it wins. where science rules. But never in my world. (Just as, in my world, the 21st century began on 1 January 2000, not on 1 January 2001–because the twenties, for instance, begin with 20, not 21, even though most people don’t start counting from zero.)

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Hangover Part 2

Well, well, my blog has been updated. Which means that uploading images into it is twice as hard as it used to be.  Somehow, I seem to have gotten the cartoon by Randall Munroe below loaded. It’s from Strange Attractors, anthology of math-related poems JoAnne Growney and Sarah Glaz edited, and that I’m trying to use poems from in my Scientific American blog:

Yikes, no image, then one, then none, then three!  No just one, I hope.  I’ve been trying to get an e.mail to Randall without success.  But his work is “This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.”  Which means I’m free to use in non-commercially, as here (properly attributed).  I might add that I consider all my work similarly free for non-commercial use so long as it’s attributed to me.  Note: Randall would also like people stealing his work as I have here to let their readers know that it was taken from his website at http://xkcd.com–which the updated version of my blog won’t let me provide a link to for some reason.

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Weight Watchers Promotion Code

It’s interesting that the best cartoonists generally become very popular almost at once, as Randall Munroe seems to have.  Is it because one can’t make cartoons that are as advanced for cartoons as my poems, say, are advanced as poems?  Not that there aren’t sophisticated cartoonists–but however sophisticated they are (and Munroe is one, it seems to me) they find their audiences comparatively quickly.  I do consider the best cartoonists the artistic equal of the best poets.  Maybe it’s because a cartoon can’t work if it’s as complex as those superior complex poems that gain an audience of more than a dozen or so.  A cartoon has to work in one step, it seems to me; a superior poem can, too, but may need two or many more steps.

Anyway, I visited Munroe’s website to get its URL so I could refer people encountering his cartoon in my previous entry could visit it and found this,  which I liked more than enough to post it here:

You can see it and many others of Munroe’s almost-always very funny cartoons here.

This cartoon, by the way, seems to me excellently to illustrate the way scientists always prefer to make things right for machines than for people. I think of the use of “centimeter” in stead of inch by scientists, and their utter expulsion of the best of lengths, the foot, and the fourth best, the mile. The second-best is the inch; the third-best, the yard. Strict logic and speed of use versus organic sensibility–rightness for the symbol center of the brain versus rightness for the rest of the brain–and body. Regarding date, the physically sensible date has to be day, month, year–the part of the month we’re in, then the part of the year, then the year. The smallest area, then the larger area that’s in, then the largest area it’s in. But computer access will be faster going the other way, so it wins. where science rules. But never in my world. (Just as, in my world, the 21st century began on 1 January 2000, not on 1 January 2001–because the twenties, for instance, begin with 20, not 21, even though most people don’t start counting from zero.)

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Hangover Part 2

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Cartoons, Randall Munroe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Well, well, my blog has been updated. Which means that uploading images into it is twice as hard as it used to be.  Somehow, I seem to have gotten the cartoon by Randall Munroe below loaded. It’s from Strange Attractors, anthology of math-related poems JoAnne Growney and Sarah Glaz edited, and that I’m trying to use poems from in my Scientific American blog:

Yikes, no image, then one, then none, then three!  No just one, I hope.  I’ve been trying to get an e.mail to Randall without success.  But his work is “This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.”  Which means I’m free to use in non-commercially, as here (properly attributed).  I might add that I consider all my work similarly free for non-commercial use so long as it’s attributed to me.  Note: Randall would also like people stealing his work as I have here to let their readers know that it was taken from his website at http://xkcd.com–which the updated version of my blog won’t let me provide a link to for some reason.

.

Weight Watchers Promotion Code

This entry was posted on Friday, March 1st, 2013 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Cartoons, Randall Munroe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.