The Transcription Contest Winner!
November 19, 2009 - Thursday
Drumroll please!
And the wining number is...
53!
Congrats to the grand prize winner. If this is your number, email me your choice for the prize. Thanks again to everyone for participating!
Transcription Contest Lucky Numbers Have Been Mailed
November 18, 2009 - Wednesday
Now that the transcription contest is over, I guess I could just do the drawing and announce the winner. But how much fun is that? We need to build the anticipation! So instead, I have emailed each of the participants a set of numbers based on the amount of transcriptions she or he completed (think of them as your raffle tickets). Visit here tomorrow, and I'll announce the winning number! See, aren't you on the edge of your seat now? If you helped transcribe some comics, but didn't get an email, email me because maybe I copied your address wrong.
With all the comics transcribed, it's interesting to see the stats on some search results. For example, which character appears in the most number of comics? Who appears the least? How many times are the words "pig" or "bacon" mentioned? How many times has a comic taken place at Alp's lab? How many times has Michael Jackson been mentioned? The possibilities are endless! (Well, maybe not endless.) Remember, just because the contest is over doesn't mean the transcribing has to stop. Hopefully, through the goodness of your hearts, you guys will continue to transcribe so that we can always keep the search up to date. Thanks again for everyone's help!
Picture from a Budding Artist
November 13, 2009 - Friday
You may remember that a while back I posted some artwork from my daughter. Well, she continues to amaze me, so I hope you don't mind a proud (and annoying) parent sharing some more. She turns three in a little over a week.
Many of you have probably noticed that the transcription contest is effectively over. Less than two weeks after I announced the contest, 292 comics were transcribed by you great readers. I was blown away by how blazingly fast it was done. I'll be doing the prize drawing as soon as I get a chance, and the winner should be announced sometime next week. In the meantime, you can still transcribe today's or next Monday's comics if you want to enter the contest (or increase you chance of winning).
A New Type of Supernova
November 6, 2009 - Friday
If you follow popular astronomy news, you may have seen a number of stories yesterday about a new type of supernova. Not only was this a really exciting discovery, but I was fortunate enough to have some of my artwork used for the news articles, for example on MSNBC, which you can see here (click the picture for a larger version):
So what's this picture of? First let me give you some background about this discovery. In latin "nova" means "new," and it is has historically been used to signify the sudden appearance of a new star in the sky. We now know that novae are due to explosive events associated with stars. A supernova is an especially bright nova, sometimes reaching a luminosity 100 billion times that of our Sun. Needless to say, that's pretty damn bright. These things can be seen clear across the Universe. A typical supernova is from the explosion of a star that is dying. And we can study them for a few months before the explosion dims and they can't be seen anymore. From this we've learned that all the heavy elements around us are created in these events. So if you're wearing a gold or platinum ring (or really almost anything around you), it's from the death of a star.
So what's so special about the supernova that was in the news yesterday? Instead of lasting a few months, it only lasted about a week, making it the fastest dimming supernova ever. In addition, there are indications that some really weird elements were created in the explosion. We're not 100 percent sure what it was, but it closely matches an idea that theorists proposed a few years ago. We observe binaries of stars where both stars are white dwarfs. White dwarfs are small stars leftover after stars like our Sun exhaust their fuel and die. One white dwarf is made of carbon and oxygen, and the other is made of helium (for reasons that are too complicated to get into). When these two stars get too close together, material is ripped off the less massive, helium white dwarf and falls onto the carbon-oxygen white dwarf. Theorists predicted that once enough of this helium had fallen on the surface of the other star, it would get hot and dense enough to explode, creating a supernova. (You may be surprised to hear that helium is so reactive, but remember helium got its reputation as an inert gas in reference to chemical reactions. For nuclear reactions, helium is extremely explosive.) Because this is just a surface explosion, and not an entire star being destroyed, it would last for a much shorter amount of time--just like what was observed! So you can see why astronomers are so excited and why there were many press releases yesterday.
My picture is my artistic interpretation of what this exotic binary looks like. In the upper-right side is the helium white dwarf with material falling off it onto the other star. But before this material can reach the carbon-oxygen white dwarf, it creates a disk (the star is the little blue bump at the center of the disk). Only once material is funneled down through the disk onto the surface of the other star does the material explode, giving this amazing and unusual supernova. This picture was drawn a number of years ago for my own research, at a time when I knew much less about digital artwork (because of this I unfortunately don't have any high-res versions). The stars and disk were drawn with color pencils, which I then scanned with a fax machine to load into my computer. I then used GIMP and a mouse to create the stars and all the nebulous stuff. No Photoshop, no tablet. The creation process was pretty archaic, but I guess it got the job done.
The World is Crazy
November 5, 2009 - Thursday
You'd like to think that we live in an age where science and reason are the guiding principles for making informed decisions. But I recently saw two news stories that reminded me just how far we still have to go before this becomes reality. In the first, there's a report that Iraqis are basically using magic wands to detect bombs at checkpoints. Before you start laughing, the Iraqi government has spent more than 85 million dollars on these devices, and the Iraqi Major General advocates abandoning bomb sniffing dogs and relying on these wands instead (maybe they should be called "tragic wands"). In a second story, just in case you think such craziness is limited to third world countries, the Senate is discussing healthcare provisions that would require insurers to cover prayer treatments as medical expenses. What year do we live in again?
Nova Evolution Site and Transcription Contest Update
November 4, 2009 - Wednesday
This year is the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin publishing On the Origin of Species. In honor of his amazing work, the television show Nova is running a series following the evolution that lead from apes to humans. In addition, Nova recently launched an evolution-rich website, which is full of all sorts of great articles and videos. I especially enjoyed the article by Carl Zimmer on the ten great advances in evolution made during the last decade.
In other news, the transcription contest is still going strong. As I'm writing this now, there are 192 comic strips transcribed, so we're about 66 percent complete. One unforeseen benefit of doing these transcriptions is that a lot of typos and spelling errors have been caught. A few of you have even been pointing these out to me in the transcription notes, which is especially appreciated because sometimes I miss the errors when I'm doing the approvals. Others of you have been including some funny commentary in your transcriptions notes, which has been entertaining for me to read.
Even though many, many different people have helped with transcriptions, a few of you have really gone above and beyond the call of duty. Currently the first-place transcriber is Larry with 56 transcriptions, second is Holly (Chubbles) with 46, and third is James with 42. But remember, everyone who does a transcription will be entered into the grand prize drawing, so don't let these guys discourage you. If you're looking for comics to transcribe, this list is a convenient place to start.
