Birds are falling out of the sky! Is it the apocalypse? We can only hope, but birds are also pretty easily confused and animals massively drop dead all the time so the apocalypse is going to need other signs. As Michio Kaku explains* poor eyesight, tight formation flying and disorientation of the lead bird is [...]
This was actually supposed to come out on Tuesday, right after the final installment of the Super Moon series. Alas, work has kept me burning the midnight oil and here it is. Good news is that next week I should have some exciting Festival stuff up, including details on this year’s live webcasts. Exciting!
“What is the Sam Harris Disease™?” I hear you ask (no pun intended). Let me explain… Two months ago, I began to experience a slight decrease in hearing and a very faint ringing in my left ear. This has never happened before, and I thought it would spontaneously remit, as spontaneously as it started. For [...]
With that our series winds to a close. I have a few bonus bits to make up for possible comic deficits at the end of the month. Good times were had by all. We met some astronomers in zombie form, had some real action, gained a roommate, and saw the return of Jim Farrelly, ironic [...]
I’ve always loved the taste of coffee. Weak, creamy, sweet coffee. You probably do too; when asked people tend to state their desire for strong, rich blends, though in reality most of them want anything but. The question is, is it good for you? That’s dubious (and should be obvious that it depends on your [...]
I think the comic today speaks for itself. Our Super Woo adventure has reached its explosive climax, and much will be revealed in the next part. The advantage of running a series nearly two weeks after the event it is inspired from is that when I get really busy, at least I have a plan. [...]
What does a chimp have to do to get some respect? Santino seems to be an awesome specimen. Then again I’ve never been to a zoo, watched a chimp and not said ‘that guy is #$%@ awesome! he’s just sitting there and it’s hilarious”. It’s very easy to anthropomorphize animals in general but it’s especially [...]
It’s been about a week since lunar perigee, but I’ve still got one or two of these in me. Today we join Oz and Matt exploring a terrestrial phenomenon that rears it’s yolky head at every celestial occurrence. That’s right, balancing eggs. So far I haven’t seen anybody claim that you could balance an egg during the [...]
If you rewind the tape of evolutionary history and then re-run it*, there are no guarantees things will turn out the same. You can thank healthy doses of random chance for that. Any given branch of life might just not show up. The same idea would apply to rewinding the Betamax of human history; small [...]
When I drew last Wednesday’s comic, it was intended as a throwaway. You know, mention the super moon, tie-in to running joke that making incorrect statements about astronomical phenomena cause astronomers to pop out of the woodwork like Candyman or Beetlejuice, throw in a zombie Phil Plait. It was in that last step where I [...]