Reading the Comics, May 4, 2019: Wednesday Looks A Lot Like Tuesday Edition

I didn’t get this published on Tuesday, owing to circumstances beyond my control, such as my not writing it Monday. I have hopes of catching up on all the writing I want to do. Someday, I might.

Marcus Hamilton and Scott Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace for the 2nd hardly seems like Dennis lives up to his “Menace” title. It seems more like he’s discovered wordplay. This is usually no worse than “mildly annoying”. Joey seems alarmed, but I must tell you, reader, he’s easily alarmed. But I think there is some depth here.

Marcus Hamilton and Scott Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace for the 2nd of May, 2019. This is twice in three months that this venerable comic’s made an appearance here. Who saw that coming? This and past appearances of Dennis the Menace are at this link. Future appearances should be, too, if they happen.

One is that, as we’ve thought of counting numbers, there is always “one more”. This doesn’t have to be. We could work with perfectly good number systems that have a largest number. We do, in fact. Every computer programming language has some largest integer that it will deal with. If you need a larger number, you have to do something clever. Your clever idea will let you address some range of bigger numbers, but it too will have a maximum. We’ve set those limits large enough that, usually, they’re not an inconvenience. They’re still there.

But those limits are forced on us by the many failings of matter. What when we get just past Plato’s line’s division, into the reasoning of pure mathematics? There we can set up counting numbers. The standard way to do this is to suppose there is a number “1”. And to suppose that, for any counting number we have, there is a successor, a number one-plus-that. If Joey were to ask why there has to be, all Dennis could do is shrug. This makes an axiom out of there always being one more. If you don’t like it, make some other arithmetic. Anyway we only understand any of this using fallible matter, so good luck.

This progression can be heady, though. The counting numbers are probably the most understandable infinitely large set there is. Thinking about them seriously can induce the sort of dizzy awe that pondering Deep Time or the vastness of space can do. That seems a bit above Dennis’s age level, but some people are stricken with the infinite sooner than others are.

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts Begins rerun for the 2nd of May, 2019. The strip originally ran the 23rd of March, 1951. When I have reason to discuss Peanuts, either the current-newspaper-reruns or these early-50s reruns, the essays should appear here.

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts Begins rerun for the 2nd has Charlie Brown dismiss arithmetic as impractical. It fits the motif of mathematics as an unworldly subject. There’s the common joke that pure mathematics even dreams of being of no use to anyone. Arithmetic, though, has always been a practical subject. It introduces us to many abstract ideas, particularly group theory. This subject looks at what we can do with systems that work like arithmetic without necessarily having numbers, or anything that works with numbers.

John Atkinson’s Wrong Hands for the 3rd of May, 2019. Other essays featuring by Wrong Hands are at this link.

John Atkinson’s Wrong Hands for the 3rd is the Venn Diagram joke for the week. I’m not sure the logic of the joke quite holds up, but it’s funny at a glance and that’s as much as it needs to do.

Scott Hilburn’s The Argyle Sweater for the 4th of May, 2019. The many essays discussing The Argyle Sweater appear at this link.

Scott Hilburn’s The Argyle Sweater for the 4th is the anthropomorphic geometric figures joke for the week.

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And a couple of comic strips mentioned mathematics, although in too slight a way to discuss. Dana Simpson’s Phoebe and her Unicorn on the 30th of April started a sequence in which doodles on Phoebe’s homework came to life. That it’s mathematics homework was mostly incidental. I’m open to the argument that mathematics encourages doodling in a way that, say, spelling does not. I’d also be open to the argument you aren’t doing geometry if you don’t doodle. Anyway. Dan Thompson’s Brevity for the 2nd of May features Sesame Street’s Count von Count. It’s a bit of wordplay on the use of “numbers” for songs. And, of course, the folkloric tradition of vampires as compulsive counters.

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With that, I’m temporarily caught up on my comics. I’m falling behind almost every week, though. Come Sunday, the next essay should appear here.