The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Asterix creator Albert Uderzo came out of retirement at the age of eighty-seven to show his support for the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo (which translates as “Charlie Weekly”; “Charlie” is a reference to comic strip character Charlie Brown) in the best way he knew how: with his classic creation, Asterix the Gaul, pictured above saying “I’m Charlie too!”

Another good way to show your support for Charlie Hebdo is to enjoy this classic ditty by the great Serge Gainsbourg — his single, Comic Strip, featuring Brigitte Bardot:

Serge Gainsbourg – Comic Strip from Platform on Vimeo.

Here’s how the lyrics translate:

Come with me let’s get together in my comic strip
Let’s talk in bubbles let’s go BANG and ZIP
Forget your troubles and go
SHEBAM! POW! BLOP! WIZZ!

I’m the hero and when I’m fighting
I go BOMP and BOFF
And have a ball so
WHIN! VLAM! ZONK! and ZOMP!
And also
SHEBAM! POW! BLOP! WIZZ!

Come with me let’s get together in my comic strip
Let’s talk in bubbles let’s go BANG and ZIP
Forget your troubles and go
SHEBAM! POW! BLOP! WIZZ!

If you want to fly above the city
Follow me and PSSCHT just like a feather
WHOOSH and WIP we’ll fly along together
SHEBAM! POW! BLOP! WIZZ!

Come with me let’s get together in my comic strip
Let’s talk in bubbles let’s go BANG and ZIP
Forget your troubles and go
SHEBAM! POW! BLOP! WIZZ!

So my dear come here
Hang on to me SPLASH
I am near SMASH
I just remember this CRASH
Have nno fear
And CRACK give me a kiss
SMACK! SHEBAM! POW! BLOP! WIZZZZZ!

This series of photos reminds me of Whittier’s line:

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.”

Found via Catsmob. Click here to see the source.

The moral of the story: Life’s too short. Pet the dog.

If you like this sort of poignancy with a more pop culture flavor, here’s Jimmy Fallon talking with Nicole Kidman about the first time they met, and the terrible, terrible, terrible mistake he made:

The videogame site Gamespot ran the Jimmy Fallon story with the headline How Video Games Ruined Chances Of Nicole Kidman and Jimmy Fallon Dating, and you can imagine the indignation that followed in the comments section.

This just popped up on my computer’s screen:

So it would seem that I’m supposed to have an epiphany tomorrow. That’s pretty cool, but the thing bugging me is: how does my computer know this?

Eugene Stern, who blogs at Sense Made Here, describes himself as “interested in math and modeling and how they are used and taught in real life”. A friend of his pointed on Facebook to my recent post in which I did the math that the New York Times didn’t do when reporting on sales and rentals of The Interview.

He liked my post, and decided to do the math in a different way — a heuristic way that seems a little more intuitive, especially to people who might not be comfortable solving systems of linear equations. I’ve taken his reasoning and illustrated it, in the same style as my previous article.

Once again, here are the facts that we’re given:

Sony didn’t tell the New York Times how many of those 2 million viewing came from rentals and how many came from sales. However, we can do a little reasoning:

This gives us something to work with:

At the end of his proof, he writes:

The heuristic argument didn’t have any equations or unknowns, but at the heart of it we were still doing algebra!

The arguments aren’t exactly the same, and that’s OK: they both have their benefits, and one complements the other. The system of equations gives you a more systematic way of getting to the answer: you don’t have to guess (or make your way through some slightly twisted logic about averages). The heuristic argument gets you to the main point — more rentals than sales — more quickly and transparently. But, at their heart, they are both about using arithmetic operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing), and known relationships between quantities, to tease out even more information about those quantities. That’s algebra. And it’s valuable to be able to do it, one way or another.

Stern did a fantastic job. Some people had trouble buying into the solution I came up with using linear equations, but his heuristic approach has a “feel” to it that should convince even the biggest, most innumerate math-phobes. Well done, sir!