1029: Drawing Stars

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Drawing Stars

Title text: Screw these 36-degree angles. I'm converting to Judaism.

Explanation

Randall attempts to draw a five-pointed star; the easiest traditional way to do this free-hand is by drawing a pentagram, the simplest regular star figure in geometry. Once you've seen it done, you can usually draw a pentagram in one continuous motion. Unfortunately, while drawing the star Randall gets self-conscious and messes up, similar to how many attempts to draw the star go, especially when trying to remember how.

The correct way to draw a pentagram is to start like the first two panels, draw a line from the top point to the left leg, then from the left leg to the right arm. However, instead of drawing the next line upwards as Randall did, you need to draw it parallel to the "ground". After that, you go down to the right leg, then finish off with the top point.

In the title text, Randall takes the most extreme reaction to the problem by converting to Judaism just so he can use its six-pointed star symbol, which he hopes is easier to draw because it is composed of two equilateral triangles. This is completely absurd, as no sane human would change their entire religious beliefs just so they could more easily draw a star. ^{[citation needed]}

Transcript

HOW TO DRAW A STAR:

[A slightly curved line is drawn, starting with a point near the top center of the panel, and going downward and to the left at approximately a 23-degree angle, with an arrow at the end.]

[Another slightly curved line goes up and to the right, creating a 34-degree angle with the first line.]

So far so good...

[A third line goes up and to the left, creating a 58-degree angle with the last line. The drawing now sort of resembles a tent being blown over in the wind.]

Steady as she goes...

[The fourth line goes down and to the right, creating an approximately 47-degree angle with the last line, and our star is beginning to look a bit askew.]

...uh oh.

Shitshitshit

[The fifth line comes up at a 48-degree angle, completely missing the first point by a mile, and our star has failed spectacularly.]

ABORT!

ABORT!

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Discussion

They are however, incredibly easy to sew[1] 146.115.187.103 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The nice thing about knowing lots of geometric stars is that I could have easily salvaged that to make a slightly squashed 8-pointed star polygon (a.k.a. octagram, Schläfli symbol {8/3}). --Quicksilver (talk) 06:11, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Same here lol. I tried right after I read it and I actually got a tridecagram {13/5} thing. 108.162.222.148 16:54, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

The cursor and the drawing looks a bit like [turtle mode], that would explain the "Abort abort" reaction as the user would like to stop the script where it is. 108.162.229.111 12:01, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

He actually looks like he's very much on the right track to drawing an octogram. 108.162.219.226 21:23, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Isn't "converting to Judaism" not actually a thing? From memory there are strict rules governing who gets to be Jewish and who doesn't. Someone who isn't born Jewish won't ever be, no matter what.

You can definitely convert to Judaism and jews are commanded to accept converts as jews. Even if you are not born jewish, you can still convert. You might be thinking of being a kohen, which you can only be if your father was a kohen.172.70.38.46 03:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Reminds me of the Necronomicon gate symbol. It always struck me as looking like someone tried to draw a star, messed up, and then just kept going. DanielLC (talk) 09:27, 3 June 2024 (UTC)