3127: Where Babies Come From - Revision history

FaviFake: Undo revision 411485 by YZ100 (talk)

2026-05-01T09:23:25Z

Undo revision 411485 by YZ100 (talk)

YZ100 at 22:13, 30 April 2026

2026-04-30T22:13:58Z

208.59.176.206: /* Explanation */

2026-02-28T01:23:45Z

‎Explanation

Xkdvd: Linking a similar comic.

2026-02-27T19:42:27Z

Linking a similar comic.

BobcatInABox: /* Transcript */

2025-09-12T22:50:12Z

‎Transcript

99.229.27.24: /* Explanation */

2025-08-27T16:58:01Z

‎Explanation

BunsenH: /* Explanation */ changed C&H link to one that gets around GoComics signup

2025-08-25T14:42:37Z

‎Explanation: changed C&H link to one that gets around GoComics signup

71.46.92.136 at 18:18, 24 August 2025

2025-08-24T18:18:40Z

2001:67C:2628:647:32:704:0:357 at 17:56, 24 August 2025

2025-08-24T17:56:01Z

2001:67C:2628:647:32:704:0:357 at 17:55, 24 August 2025

2025-08-24T17:55:52Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 09:23, 1 May 2026
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	[[Category:Geology]]		[[Category:Geology]]
	[[Category:Weather]]		[[Category:Weather]]
		+	[[Category:Sex]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:13, 30 April 2026
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	[[Category:Geology]]		[[Category:Geology]]
	[[Category:Weather]]		[[Category:Weather]]
−	~~[[Category:Sex]]~~

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 ;Software Engineer: An {{w|off-by-one error}} (aside from [[2248: New Year's Eve|being a difficult theme to build a party around]]) is a common programming mistake where a value ends up off by one. This is most frequently the result of confusion about whether lists of items are indexed {{w|Zero-based numbering|starting at position 'zero'}} or with the first of them at the more language-like position 'one'. A birth could also be described as a "population" metric suddenly [[605: Extrapolating|increasing by one]]; or, alternatively, a baby could cause a previously accurate static population metric to become off-by-one from the new correct total. This could also be referring to an unplanned pregnancy, which would lead the local population to be one higher than the parent(s) may have calculated.
-;Geologist: The baby is said to have been created by the process of differential erosion, in which softer rocks are eroded more quickly, leaving harder rocks behind. Arguably, a geologist who was making a serious attempt to compare geological and biological processes would recognize that the growth of a fetus has much more in common with accretionary, rather than erosional, mechanisms. Granting that the geologist depicted is witty and not clueless, this explanation is the most intentionally farcical, the most {{w|List_of_Calvin_and_Hobbes_characters#Mom_and_Dad|Calvin's Dad}}, of the five. (The Wikipedia article on Calvin’s dad mentions that he gave explanations about babies involving purchases at Sears and Kmart.)  The suggestion that everything is removed except for the desired result is fairly often used to describe how sculptors work, and similar craftspeople such as woodcarvers.
+;Geologist: The baby is said to have been created by the process of differential erosion, in which softer rocks are eroded more quickly, leaving harder rocks behind. Arguably, a geologist who was making a serious attempt to compare geological and biological processes would recognize that the growth of a fetus has much more in common with accretionary, rather than erosional, mechanisms. Assuming that the geologist depicted is witty and not clueless, this explanation is the most intentionally farcical, the most {{w|List_of_Calvin_and_Hobbes_characters#Mom_and_Dad|Calvin's Dad}}, of the five. (The Wikipedia article on Calvin’s dad mentions that he gave explanations about babies involving purchases at Sears and Kmart.)  The suggestion that everything is removed except for the desired result is fairly often used to describe how sculptors work, and similar craftspeople such as woodcarvers.
 ;Meteorologist: Turbulent mixing of air masses ("turbulence") has been experienced by just about everyone who has ever been in an airborne aircraft. Turbulence can occur at all levels of the atmosphere from the ground up, and is frequently accompanied by clouds and precipitation, although the moisture alluded to here is likely that of bodily fluids and the turbulence being more about a tangible physicality between people. It is a pungent metaphor for coitus.

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:42, 27 February 2026
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	;Historians (title text): Instead of proffering an explanation for "where babies come from", the historians (plural) lodge a complaint about the difficulties they have encountered in obtaining the data needed to substantiate the babies' provenance. The plaint is a common preamble and disclaimer in formal history publications. Rather than answer the question in the general, they appear to be trying to answer it for each individual baby by questioning those thought to be responsible. The historians express surprise and indignation that their efforts to obtain "better documentation" of the "initial events" (the mating behavior) leading to baby formation are seen as prurient and voyeuristic, and are met with resistance.		;Historians (title text): Instead of proffering an explanation for "where babies come from", the historians (plural) lodge a complaint about the difficulties they have encountered in obtaining the data needed to substantiate the babies' provenance. The plaint is a common preamble and disclaimer in formal history publications. Rather than answer the question in the general, they appear to be trying to answer it for each individual baby by questioning those thought to be responsible. The historians express surprise and indignation that their efforts to obtain "better documentation" of the "initial events" (the mating behavior) leading to baby formation are seen as prurient and voyeuristic, and are met with resistance.
		+
		+	A comic with a similar theme is [[3212: Little Red Dots]].

	==Transcript==		==Transcript==

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 :Geneticist
 :Hairy: Recent admixture event, roughly 0.001 Kya.
 :Astronomer
 :Ponytail: Low-impulse ejection from a parent body.
 :Software engineer
 :Hairbun: Off-by-one error in the population calculations.
 :Geologist
 :Cueball: The area was originally a uniform plane, but the non-baby parts eroded at higher rates.
 :Meteorologist
 :Megan: Moist ground-level turbulent mixing.

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 ==Explanation==
-{{incomplete|Copy pasted from talk ↓ [[User:CalibansCreations|'''<span style="color:#ff0000;">Caliban</span>''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 16:41, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
+Children are often curious, and ask a lot of questions about the world around them. "Where do babies come from?" is one such question that tends to come up at some point, and is notable as one that many adults are uncomfortable giving correct answers to, because of the common reluctance to discuss sex-related matters with youngsters. While children are sometimes told that there's a baby inside a pregnant woman's tummy, the issues of how the baby got in there,<!-- I LOVE the way this is phrased, please keep it!!--> or how it's supposed to get out, are often dodged. There are a variety of common myths about where babies come from, as told to children, such as "brought by a stork", "found in a cabbage patch", or [https://web.archive.org/web/20241128040214/https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/04/18 "built from a kit"]. This comic presents a variety of answers to that question, supposedly from the point of view of specialists in several different areas of science, and expressed in the vocabulary of the specialist's field. Some of them are allusions to the process of conception or childbirth; others are simply incorrect.
 The experts might be deliberately misleading the questioner by using very euphemistic terms that would likely not be understood by a child to avoid personal embarrassment, deliberately over-'simplifying' the explanation as a {{w|Lie-to-children|stepping stone}} to the eventual more specific truth, or else themselves be ignorant/misled about the process. In each case, however, their abstraction of the process is described in terms that are actually relatively technical ones from their own field, to the presumed audience, showing that they are not necessarily able to find the right level of explanation, as well as not having used a less obtuse reframing of the topic much closer to that of actual reproductive biology. "How is babby formed?" was a [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-is-babby-formed notorious meme] from the early 2000s.

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 | titletext = Historians: Contemporaneous documentation of the initial events is often sparse, and in fact people often get testy and uncooperative when we urge better documentation for the historical record.
 }}
 ==Explanation==
 {{incomplete|Copy pasted from talk ↓ [[User:CalibansCreations|'''<span style="color:#ff0000;">Caliban</span>''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 16:41, 20 August 2025 (UTC)
-<big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big>CRAPPED{{:{{PAGENAME}}}}
 GoComics now requires paid subscriptions, so the link to the Calvin and Hobbes comic should probably be changed to an image that doesn't have this restriction. [[Special:Contributions/2001:8003:1DC8:7900:ACDF:2A0D:1D9F:87F5|2001:8003:1DC8:7900:ACDF:2A0D:1D9F:87F5]] 03:15, 17 August 2025 (UTC)
 :I don't have a subscription to GoComics, and the link works for me... on my desktop machine, at any rate. But not on my phone. I don't know where the difference lies. Perhaps the versions of Firefox and Chrome that Windows 8.1 supports aren't advanced enough to play with GoComics's demands. BunsenH (talk) 23:30, 17 August 2025 (UTC)