1503: Squirrel Plan

2024-10-03T17:46:48Z

172.64.236.103: see talk page; this is NOT a comic about furries or featuring furries. It's just funny animals (tvtropes term)

{{comic
| number = 1503
| date = March 25, 2015
| title = Squirrel Plan
| image = squirrel plan.png
| titletext = [Halfway to the Sun ...] Heyyyy ... what if this BALLOON is full of acorns?!
}}

==Explanation==
These particular squirrels are ambitious but misguided, like the characters in the myth of {{w|Icarus}} and {{w|Daedalus}} (it should be noted that [[Randall]] does not see it that way, as seen in the bottom of {{what if|30|"Interplanetary Cessna"}}), or the {{w|Tower of Babel}}. The squirrels' understanding of astrophysics is lacking,{{Citation needed}} regarding the distance to the Sun and appropriate transportation to reach it in addition to the need to resist the sun's heat and exist in the vacuum of space. Their belief that the Sun is made of acorns reflects their uniquely acorn-focused worldview, a reference to the tendency of real-life squirrels to gather and store acorns as winter food, as well as their single-minded dedication to overcoming obstacles (even [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg elaborately-constructed obstacle courses]) for the sake of obtaining nuts.

The title text reveals that "halfway to the Sun," 75 million kilometers from all known acorns in our universe, the airborne squirrel seems to jeopardize the entire mission because he wants to test if the balloon itself is full of acorns. Basic observational skills will tell anyone that acorns are not lighter than air,{{Citation needed}} but the idea follows the logic stated by the squirrels: If the Sun, being so magnificent, must be full of acorns, then a balloon powerful enough to take a squirrel to the Sun must also be powered by something amazing, like acorns. Obviously, neither the Sun or balloons are filled with acorns.{{Citation needed}} That we know of..... Maybe those squirrels were onto something.

Usage of balloons for space travel is a prominent motif in early science fiction; see, for example, "{{w|The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall}}" by Edgar Allan Poe.

==Transcript==
:[There are three squirrels. One is suspended from a balloon. The other two are sitting on the ground, looking up at it.]

:Squirrel to the right: Once you've chewed a hole in the Sun, shoot the balloon to fall back to earth, then pull the parachute ripcord to land.

:Squirrel tied to balloon: Are you '''''sure''''' it's full of acorns?

:Squirrel to the right: Look how bright and magnificent it is! What ''else'' could be in there?

==Trivia==
*It is commonly believed that real squirrels use their ''tails'' as parachutes, although as yet [http://io9.com/5946627/squirrel-hurls-itself-through-a-fourth-story-window-scampers-off-unscathed "there have been no observational studies on the aerodynamics of free-falling squirrels."]
*In the real world [http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=1020.0 helium balloons cannot escape the stratosphere.] Perhaps the squirrel only ''thinks'' he's halfway to the Sun. Or maybe the acorns in the balloon are pushing on the [[1404:_Quantum_Vacuum_Virtual_Plasma|quantum vacuum virtual plasma]].
*The "shooting a hole in the balloon" is based on Larry Walters, who actually flew in a lawn chair suspended below a large cluster of helium balloons, using a pellet gun to shoot out balloons to descend. Featured in {{what if|62|What If: Falling With Helium}}.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Squirrels]]

Talk:312: With Apologies to Robert Frost

2023-09-02T15:09:00Z

172.64.236.103:

Since the wiki is so new, I thought I'd motivate a discussion about the topic here, first, rather than just blindly charging in and mucking up the text on the main page. Later, if there's no objection, I'll merge the points here into the main page.

A few clarifications.
# The description is flawed somewhat, in that Lisp (which adherents humorously "insist" means "Lots of Insidiously Silly Parens") is in fact very strict about matching parens. The problem is that parens are ubiquitous; every nontrivial expression starts with an opening paren, and ends with a close paren. This differs from Perl, which, depending on how it's written, may end with a semicolon, closing curly brace, or sometimes even another character.
# The comparison between Perl and Lisp is a little off the mark, too. Lisp is a very simple language (structurally; I shan't vouch for conceptually) which has the "elegant" characteristic that programs and data are essentially the same thing: lists of sub-expressions. It is quite easy for a Lisp program to build a data structure which is itself a runnable program. This "feature" is frequently exploited in artificial intelligence circles. Perl, on the other hand, is a haphazard accretion of syntactic oddities so complex that the grammar cannot be modeled using standard compiler tools. On the other hand, it can, with an economy of syntax, perform some very powerful operations, and has a vast library of utility functions that make very complex operations "easy" to do.

Now, putting on the Opinion hat, my take is that the suggestion that the universe is written in Perl refers to the "messiness" of physics, chaos theory, and the like, somehow being attributed to the quirks surfaced by the implementation; if it were to be done again the comparative "elegance" of Lisp would, one is led to believe, result in a universe that at some fundamental level was simpler and more consistent, with predictable beginning and end.

[[User:IronyChef|IronyChef]] ([[User talk:IronyChef|talk]]) 02:31, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

:To what degree is the rigidity of matching parentheses a feature of Lisp and not a feature of specific implementations of it? I remember one of my professors telling me that they used to just throw a bunch of parentheses at the end of the program. I know in at least one implementation, there is at least a variable that, when true, causes the interpreter to ignore extra right parentheses. As for Perl, if you wish to add more information to the explanation about it, then I'd say go ahead. However, at present there's not really any comparison between the two languages at all in the text. I didn't feel that it was especially necessary to understand the details of Perl to get the comic, so I didn't describe it beyond calling it a popular computer programming language. [[User:Erenan|Erenan]] ([[User talk:Erenan|talk]]) 12:03, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

::Almost all implementations of Lisp require exact parenthesis matching. The Common Lisp spec requires the reader to issue an error if there's an unmatched right paren. The Scheme spec is less demanding about making the implementation report such errors, but a standards-conforming program still needs matched parens. There are a few exceptions, though. Several Schemes let you use "()", "[]", or "{}" as delimiters. But other than your note about Lispwork's *ignore-extra-right-parens*, I only know of one that deliberately lets you have mismatched parens: Interlisp lets you use "]" to match all the pending open parentheses, up to the most recent "[". So, for instance, you could write "(let [(there (be light])", and the "]" would act like "))". (Genera may have adopted this too; I don't remember offhand.) This didn't seem to take off, though (I suspect comic #859 is relevant). Most Lispers I know just use slime-repl-closing-return (C-RET in the REPL) or slime-close-all-parens-in-sexp (C-c C-] in a Lisp buffer). [[User:Piquan|Piquan]] ([[User talk:Piquan|talk]]) 02:45, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Lisp rhymes with myth and with, but only if you have a lithp. Think he did that on purpose?
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.157|108.162.238.157]] 14:18, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that I was randomly sent to a few before this comic after first reading #859 ( ( ) thus leaving me oddly satisfied... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.147|108.162.216.147]] 08:04, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I feel like writing a comment here, but my computer can only handl- '''SEGMENTATION FAULT'''

ok ip 108.162.238.147, thx for giving us another segfault --an user who has no account yet

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1503: Squirrel Plan

Talk:312: With Apologies to Robert Frost