Antagonistic

And if I see it crescent, what does that make me?

I know I’ve commented on comics before, as well as on incorrectly rendered moons. But the Family Circus above represents a classic astronomical faux pas—a couple, actually. With a bit of plain stupidity mixed in.

The plain stupidity I’ve already made reference to: it’s a crescent moon, duh. But also, if the moon were seen as a crescent as depicted, the sun would also be up in the sky—i.e., it would be daylight! And a more subtle point can be extrapolated from the orientation of the crescent: either Grandma’s getting Dolly and Billy up very early in the morning wherever they live in Middle America, or they’re staying up after dark in the Southern Hemisphere.

Anyway, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. I couldn’t resist, as a way of breaking my week-long silence.

Visualizing Science Education

Funny. I just got out of a meeting in which we were discussing public perceptions of science and the role of formal education. Then I see this comic: bored students learning (sans even rudimentary visuals) one of the most exciting results of modern cosmology. And made to feel small to boot!

Oddly enough, the kids’ science class is apparently taught by the brunet half of Hall and Oates, which would have made him no cooler in my generation than he is in this.