Reading the Comics, April 2018: Another Normal Week Edition

And for another week running the pace of mathematically-themed comic strips has been near normal. There’s nowhere near enough to split the essay into two pieces, which is fine. There is some more work involved in including images for all the strips I discuss and this pace better fits the time I could make for writing this week. Will admit I’m scared of what’s going to happen when I have a busy week and Comic Strip Master Command orders more comics for me. I admit this isn’t an inspired name for the Edition. But the edition names are mostly there so people have a chance of telling whether they’ve read an installment before. The date alone doesn’t do it. A couple of words will. Maybe I should give up on meaningful names if there isn’t an obvious theme for the week. It’s got to be at least as good to name something “Coronet Blue Edition” as to name it “Lots Of Andertoons Edition”.

Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows rerun for the 1st riffs on quantum computers. You’ve maybe seen much talk about them in pop science columns and blogs. They require a bunch of stuff that gets talked about as if it were magical. Quantum mechanics, obviously, the biggest bit of magic in popular science today. Complex-valued numbers, which make for much more convenient mathematical descriptions. Probability, which everyone thinks they understand and which it turns out nobody does. Vector spaces and linear algebra, which mathematics (and physics) majors get to know well. The mathematics of how a quantum computer computes is well-described as this sort of matrix and vector work. Quantum computing promises to be a really good way to do problems where the best available approach is grinding it out: testing every possibility and finding the best ones. No part of making a quantum computer is easy, though, so it’s hard to say when we’ll have the computing power to make a version of SimCity with naturally curving roads. (This is a new tag for my Reading the Comics essays, but I’ve surely featured the strip some before.)

Frank: 'What are you doing in my room?' Ralph, in spacesuit gear and in front of a swirling vortex of light: 'Your room as the best electrical outlet to power my quantum computer.' Frank: 'Quantum computer?' Ralph: 'You wouldn't understand.' Frank: 'Try me, monkey boy.' Ralph: 'All computers and electronic systems are based on the binary principle. They operate using two states, on and off. The quantum computer utilizes the fundamental nature of subatomic reality. Instead of operating in two states it operates on a multitude of states between on and off. It doesn't calculate serially like a binary computer. It performs operations simultaneously across each state, across each different reality, if you will. Each quantum state is another universe, another time. Since there are multiple quantum states, there are, theoretically, multiple universes coexisting side by side. This quantum computer makes teleportation and time travel possible.' [Awkward pause.] Frank: 'OK, uh, just don't mess with my Star Wars collection.' Ralph: 'I knew you wouldn't understand.' [Alley Oop pops in.] — Frank Cho’s **Liberty Meadows** rerun for the 1st of April, 2018. First, good cameo. Second, this rerun’s being from around 2000 means quantum computers have been fit subjects for newspaper jokes about two decades now, and I didn’t realize that. And yeah, in the penultimate panel Cho says ‘with apologies and respect to V T Hamlin. (Hamlin created **Alley Oop**, and you can read my thoughts about the current strip on this link.) Cartoonists always write ‘apologies to’ when they use another artist’s characters and I don’t know how the convention started. Certainly not for cameos like this where it’s not like Oop does something that could damage his character.

Niklas Eriksson’s Carpe Diem for the 2nd is a mathematics-education-these-days joke. The extremely small child talking about counting-without-a-calculator as a subject worth studying. People are always complaining that people don’t do arithmetic well enough in their heads. I understand the frustration, considering last week I stymied a cashier at a Penn Station by giving $22.11 for my $11.61 order. I don’t know why he put in my payment as $20; why not let the machine designed to do this work, do the work? He did fine working out that I should get $10 in bills back but muddled up the change. As annoyances go it ranks up there with the fast food cashier asking my name for the order and entering it as “Joeseph”.

Kid: 'Yup, 'counting without a calculator' is a subject in its own right these days.' — Niklas Eriksson’s **Carpe Diem** for the 2nd of April, 2018. I’m kind of distracted trying to work out the perspective between the kid and the adult. Either the kid’s standing pretty far away or is really tiny and is standing on a chair.

Lard’s World Peace Tips for the 4th mentions the Möbius Strip. It’s got to be the most famous exotic piece of geometry to have penetrated the popular culture. It’s also a good shape to introduce geometry students to a “non-orientable” surface. Non-orientable means about what you’d imagine. There’s not a way to put coordinates on it that don’t get weird. For example, try drawing an equator on the surface of the strip. Any curve along the surface that doesn’t run off the edges will do. The curve just has to meet itself. It looks like this divides the strip into two pieces. Fine, then; which of these two pieces is “north” and which is “south” of this equator? There’s not a way to do that. You get surprising results if you try.

Waiter: 'Here's one for you.' Lard: 'Yes?' Waiter: 'Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip?' Lard: 'To get to the same side? At least that's what the chicken told me ... ' [ LATER ] The waiter is chasing the chicken along a Mobius strip: 'Come back here! You ruined my punchline!' — **Lard’s World Peace Tips** for the 4th of April, 2018. Until transcribing the strip for the alt-text here I didn’t realize it was a chicken, and not Lard, being chased in that final panel.

Karen Montague-Reyes’s Clear Blue Water rerun for the 5th has Eve deploying a mathematical formula. She’s trying to describe the way that perception of time changes over the course of events. It’s not a bad goal. Many things turn out to be mathematically describable. I don’t see what the equation is supposed to even mean, but then, I haven’t seen the model she developed that implies this equation. (This is not a new tag and I’m surprised by that.)

Eve: 'Remember when I told you I'd figured out how to slow down time?' Manny: '... by getting pregnant?' Eve: 'Exactly! Well, here it is. Eve's theory of pregativity! Ta-da!' Manny: 'Oh dear ... T = pt + 1y^2 - 0 ... Huh?' Eve: 'It explains time! How it slows down in pregnancy, then zooms to hyperspeed during baby's first year, resulting in a net gain of zero! I want a patent!' Manny: 'This makes NO sense whatsoever.' Eve: 'Well, not to a layman, no.' — Karen Montague-Reyes’s **Clear Blue Water** rerun for the 5th of April, 2018. I’m about 60% sure Eve is just describing Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome here, which carries over to the comics. (Remember over in **Rex Morgan, M.D.** that June Morgan carried her latest child for like two years.)

Dan Thompson’s Brevity for the 6th is some mathematics wordplay, built on the abacus. I’m not sure there’s more to say about this, past that you can do much more on an abacus. You can, at least. I keep reading directions about how to multiply with it and then I look at mine and I feel helpless.

Chinese real-estate agent: 'In this room, you'll notice the lovely stone abacuses.' Potential homebuyer: 'We just love granite counters!' — Dan Thompson’s **Brevity** for the 6th of April, 2018. My father’s trained me to be skeptical of granite counters, although I don’t remember why. In any case in our kitchen we’re keeping the counter as is, to respect the history of a house that’s nine decades old this year and that we hope to be in when it reaches its centennial. And because we like ourselves too much to inflict countertop-replacement work on us.

Bil Keane and Jeff Keane’s Family Circus for the 7th is a kids-mispronouncing-a-mathematics-word strip. I have even less to say about this. It’s a normal week.