2893: Sphere Tastiness

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Sphere Tastiness

Title text: Baseballs do present a challenge to this theory, but I'm convinced we just haven't found the right seasoning.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a STRANGELY TASTY MOON MADE OF RUSSIAN PELMENI - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic graphs the tastiness vs size of four roughly spherical objects: melons, grapes, Earth, and the Moon. Melons and grapes are, in this context, small and very tasty to most people, but the Earth and Moon are large and made of rocks and metals, which are not usually considered very tasty. It is unknown what the line would be like if Randall included grapefruit.

The comic takes these four data points and makes a regression with them. Randall interpolates from this line that there must be a medium-sized sphere that "tastes okay".

The title text points out that baseballs seem to refute this theory since they're not usually depicted as tasty, but they're between the sizes of grapes and melons. However, it suggests that if the right seasonings were found, they would be as tasty. Baseballs are balls used in the sport baseball, usually made out of a combination of a rubber or cork centre wrapped in yarn, and covered either by either horsehide, cowhide or synthetic leather. Although most baseballs may not be immediately lethal to consume, baseballs are not likely to be very delicious to eat by the sheer nature of the taste of the materials that make up it, something that any seasoning is unlikely to be able to mask (at least in reasonable quantities).

This is the second comic in a row to feature fruit, graphs and predictions, after 2892: Banana Prices, and continues the theme of a logarithmic axial scale to facilitate plotting a linear regression. Here the line is interpolated between known data, rather than extrapolated beyond it. This would ordinarily be far more accurate than extrapolating outside the range of known data. However, this regression line is unlikely to be accurate, given that there are only four points and they come in very close pairs, making it two. Also, it should be noted that edible things are not manufactured in 800-meter (½-mile) spheres, as that may be hard to prepare and consume. The 800-meter wide sphere could also be a small asteroid or other celestial object, but would not be very tasty, as they are made of of rocks and metals, just like the Earth and the Moon. If this is true, Randall’s interpolation on the graph would probably be incorrect. Or perhaps the problem is just seasoning, just like a baseball. However, it is hard to believe that sauce is the solution to making rocks tasty.

Other fruit opinions have previously been mentioned in 388: Fuck Grapefruit.

The comic refers to this plot as research. This is an exaggeration, since four data points are rarely considered sufficient for research purposes.^{[citation needed]} Plotting data on a logarithmic plot and then drawing a line through it, is a common way to visualize data. It makes the exponential relationship of the data more comprehensible. An example of that is the Gutenberg–Richter_law where the magnitude of earthquakes (a logarithmic scale) in a particular region is plotted together with the frequency resulting in a fairly straight line.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Graph with Y axis using an arrow indicating tastiness from "Not Tasty" to "Tasty" and X axis labelled "Sphere Diameter (meters)" with a logarithmic scale running from 10^-5 to around 10⁸ (with 10^-3, 10⁰, 10³ and 10⁶ labelled).]

[The graph contains two points for "Grapes" and "Melons" at the "Tasty" end of the Y axis, between 10^-2 and 10^-1 meters, and two points for "The Earth" and "The Moon" at the "Not Tasty" end, both around 10⁷ meters. A straight dashed line shows a linear interpolation between the points. There's a circle with a question mark about halfway between them.]

[Caption below the panel:]

My research suggests the existence of an 800-meter sphere that tastes okay.

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Discussion

base balls are delicious after boiling and peeling172.68.64.212 00:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

You seem to be confusing baseballs with eggs. Barmar (talk)

And who the hell calls baseballs “bAsE bAlLs”. 42.book.addict (talk) 02:40, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

who's the authority on whether or not the earth and the moon are "not tasty"????, i think the moon would be pretty delicious actually 172.69.71.71 00:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)GR8GH

Some Apollo astronauts reported that moondust tastes and smells like gunpowder. Barmar (talk) 00:28, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Yum! 42.book.addict (talk) 02:41, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Sounds delicious to me.172.70.85.26 11:09, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

My favorite! L-Space Traveler (talk) 12:56, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Sure, if you like green cheese! 172.70.207.123 03:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I actually quite like a good blue cheese, and had a blue (red) leicester only yesterday. But some actual sage derby would fulfil the role of a green one quite tastily. 141.101.99.112 04:56, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Green_cheese can be perfectly tasty - it's just a young unaged cheese.141.101.99.26 11:13, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

"Not like any cheese I've ever tasted"-Wallace172.70.127.43 21:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

In Fuck Grapefruits, watermelons were just slightly tasty. Does he like other melons so much that the average melon is as tasty as grapes? Or has he learned how delicious watermelon actually is? Barmar (talk) 00:42, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that he probably just learned how delicious watermelon is. 42.book.addict (talk) 02:41, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Watermelon is different genus (albeit in the same family) to most melons, so I'd assume watermelon is excluded here.172.69.194.162 11:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Of course silly discussion but the melons is listed below grapes on the tasty scale. And if that scale is also log then they could be deemed to taste much less nice than grapes even with this slight difference. Maybe even grape fruit would be close to this line? But also melons does not mean water melons! --Kynde (talk) 06:33, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

This comic is begging for another of his four-corner plots, not a line graph. Ball bearings: lower left. Bowling balls: middle bottom. Tapioca: upper left. Cheese balls: upper middle. 172.70.207.123 03:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

My first thought was that he clearly isn't accounting for frequency, because I'm pretty sure there's a lot more oranges than baseballs...

ProphetZarquon (talk) 05:06, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Where do you place eyeballs in that graph? (Don't need to eat them to taste them... Only lick) 172.68.138.57 08:25, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

(But that means you're missing the best bit... Would you just lick an egg? Or even a scotch egg?) 172.69.195.124 15:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

It's a linear interpolation, Michael. How big could the error be? 10%? 108.162.245.166 03:51, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Grapes are spherical? I guess some varieties. Nitpicking (talk) 04:12, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

With a logarithmic x axis and an unlabelled y axis, I find calling it “linear interpolation” without further explanation disingenious. 172.68.110.121 08:08, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I think we have to give serious consideration as to how untasty the Sun is, and the possibility of subatomic particles being absolutely delicious. 172.69.79.189 10:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Can't we just ask whoever tasted quarks to figure out the different flavours?172.69.195.24 11:22, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Baseballs aren't the only questionable object for this theory..... think of the marbles!!!--162.158.154.73 12:41, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Marbles are tasteless. SDSpivey (talk) 14:44, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

In looking for something else that might fulfil the 800m sphere criteria I stumbled across this :o(| I'll make no comment on potential tastiness.172.70.90.191 12:58, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Soylent Green meatball. Barmar (talk) 16:31, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Galactus would totally disagree with this graph. 172.70.175.25 16:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

As would Unicron... and Dormammu...

ProphetZarquon (talk) 17:57, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

. . . Omnipotus . . . L-Space Traveler (talk) 12:56, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Here's a link to a mile-long hotdog miles-of-hotdog, while technically not a single hotdog nor a sphere it's a mile's worth of hotdogs. I recall there once being created a mile-long submarine / hoagie / po-boy sandwich, but couldn't find it on a quick google search. That also is not remotely spherical. Rtanenbaum (talk) 16:41, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

The moon is made of delicious cheese, isn't it? That would put it in the upper right corner. 172.71.102.15 16:53, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Giant peaches? 172.70.135.220 (talk) 17:04, 13 Febuary 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Am I reading this wrong, or is the mark for grapes just slightly to the left of the tick for 10^-1 m? Which suggests that grapes are about 8 cm wide? 172.70.38.82 19:21, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Looks to me like it's about 2/3 the way between 10^-2 and 10^-1. So call it between 10^-1.3 and 10^-1.4. Which is between 4cm and 5cm. Still a rather large grape, but perhaps more plausible if he's measuring across its widest dimension. 10^-1.6 (2.5cm) would perhaps give a more representative grape length, or maybe 10^-1.7 (2cm) if he normalised the measurements to account for their spheroid(ish) nature. But we'd also have to get in to the question of when is a grape a grape? There will be lots of grapes that will never reach more than a few mm, but not ones that we would normally eat. His melon looks to be about 10^-0.7, or 20cm, which again seems rather large for an average dimension (though proportionately less so than the grape).172.69.194.203 09:57, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if this is a reference to James and the Giant Peach 172.71.155.39 21:04, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

IDK how you'd define "tastes okay", but I bet you could find an 800m comet that's about 50% ice & 50% dust. Snuffysam (talk) 21:29, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I think you would need less than 50% of dust for "taste OK". Still, you may be on right track - there should be some comet consisting of mostly ice which would taste OK. -- Hkmaly (talk) 04:15, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Or one that was 50% dust and 50% ice cream.172.70.85.216 09:39, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Why and how did John Young taste the moon? I heard moon dust is cancerous, far more jagged than earth sand, and even if it WAS just earth sand, it would be awful to put anywhere near your mouth. 172.69.59.203 09:16, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I've heard it had some pretty nasty effects on Cave Johnson. 172.70.46.3 11:13, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

SPAAAAAAACEEEE!!!! Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 12:34, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure that when they removed their helmets back in the capsule, some of the dust was airborne. SDSpivey (talk) 14:44, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Anyone else notice that the Earth is slightly more tasty than the Moon? Weslar (talk) 16:40, 14 February 2024 (UTC)Weslar

This was mentioned, for some time (I even rephrased the original prose about it), but it seems to have been excised during a subsequent edit. The thoughts were that this is because there were known tasty bits in it. I refined that to "on the surface", or similar wording. 141.101.99.108 17:28, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Maybe the 800-meter sphere that tastes okay would be humans? 172.70.143.120 03:29, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Probably best candidate for the 800 m sphere that tastes ok would be some kind of fungus. 172.68.26.75 16:54, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Cheese. A big wheel of cheese. (Maybe blue cheese, for anyone still liking the idea of fungus...) 162.158.74.48 18:46, 16 February 2024 (UTC) -- addendum: no, wait, that'd be absolutely delicious, not "tastes ok". At least if it's actual proper cheese and not squeezy stuff or hamburger-slice stuff.

Jumon (the “j” pronounced like the “s” in “measure”), desert treat from India, perfectly spherical, between grapes and tangerines in size, and spiked upward off the scale for tastiness, also breaks this correlation. 172.69.34.172 21:42, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Is it worth mentioning that in "What if? 2" Randall says that stars (roughly spherical) taste overwhelmingly sour? Nitpicking (talk) 17:31, 19 February 2024 (UTC)