Talk:755: Interdisciplinary

It all came apart when the biology department's killer cuttlefish murdered the committee. -Pennpenn 108.162.250.155 00:12, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Can't say I blame them 162.158.78.82 02:54, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

link title The first thing that came to mind was the scene in the original book version of Contact by Carl Sagan. I can't remember if the movie had a similar scene, but the book's better anyway. Eleanor Arroway is trying to demonstrate to someone how her faith in science is unshakable by putting her face right up next to a displaced Foucalt pendulum. She then holds absolutely still while allowing the pendulum to swing away from her, then come back toward her. By conservation of energy, the pendulum should just reach her (at most) provided she hadn't moved from her position. But it turned out she did flinch, and when her observer "called her out on it" and claimed her faith in science perhaps wasn't that strong, she argued that it wasn't that - it was just decades of scientific condition trying (and failing) to overcome billions of years of evolution (the self-preservation instinct). I think that's what this strip was referencing, more than anything else. - Deepak 198.41.232.179 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I disagree Deepak... the experiment is independent of the scene in the book, and I think predates it. The book and the comic are both referencing the same phenomenon, but I don't see any evidence that the comic is referencing the book. 108.162.250.158 06:37, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

The explanation mentioned Black Hat, and while this seems like the kind of thing he'd do, the comic itself is void of our favorite class-hole.108.162.237.190 13:50, 24 September 2017 (UTC)