0224: "LISP"

[Toeofdoom]

Hacked together with perl

[SNAFU]

I wish I could get my hands on the universe's source code.

First, I would make intelligence proportionate to beauty.
Second, I would make kinetic energy = 1/2 * m *v^3 just to see what would happen.

[screech]

Yay for a 2001: A Space Odyssey reference!

We need more obscure references in the world...

[ShoeLace]

We need more obscure references in the world...

I would not have said 2001 was exactly obscure tho..

[Pathway]

I wish I could get my hands on the universe's source code.

First, I would make intelligence proportionate to beauty.
Second, I would make kinetic energy = 1/2 * m *v^3 just to see what would happen.

Can't do that. The kinetic energy formula is based on a) mathematics and b) the rest of physics. 1/2*m*v^3 would make physics an inconsistent system, and you'd probably get all sorts of weird things like the nonconservation of energy and violation of the equivalence principle and NO JUST NO. ONE HALF M VEE SQUARED IN NEWTONIAN MECHANICS NOW AND FOREVER. SIG HEIL! But seriously, no.

Yeah, and 2001's kind of nonobscure.

[dfoxfranke]

Nice one, xkcd. You just made this Lisp hacker nearly fall out of his chair.

[Lani]

For a good part of this comic, I thought he was referring to the speech impediment.

[Ronfar]

For the record, Perl was my first real programming language (BASIC doesn't count) and I still think it's awesome.

[dr7]

The universe is hacked together with perl? Well, that explains why the universe just ain't quite right...

Oh, perl, how I love to make fun of you.

[led_roflcopter]

I wish I could get my hands on the universe's source code.

First, I would make intelligence proportionate to beauty.
Second, I would make kinetic energy = 1/2 * m *v^3 just to see what would happen.

It's kind of hard to cube a vector and get a positive scalar. Unless you're OK with negative kinetic energy. Or energy being a vector.

[dr7]

But if we change it to cubed the universe might crash or something, which would be kinda cool. Or not, depending on your point of view.

[SNAFU]

It's kind of hard to cube a vector and get a positive scalar. Unless you're OK with negative kinetic energy. Or energy being a vector.

That's exactly the point.

I want weird, impossible stuff to happen. It would be fun to watch, as long as you save a backup file.

I could've said that I would change the static coefficient of friction for rubber on concrete, but that's boring.

[demeteloaf]

I wish I could get my hands on the universe's source code.

First, I would make intelligence proportionate to beauty.
Second, I would make kinetic energy = 1/2 * m *v^3 just to see what would happen.

In one of my physics classes the professor set up an excel spreadsheet, that had a graph of a planetary orbit that was made using a bunch of points calculated from the equation for force and stuff.

One of the cool features was that you could change the inverse square attraction of gravity into any exponent you wanted and see how the orbit changed.

It was actually pretty cool seeing how an orbit would behave if the gravitational attraction were actually GMm/sqrt(r) or something like that.

[warriorness]

So uh... how does one relate regexes to quantum mechanics?

I think God must've messed up escaping a character somewhere, because of all that wave/particle duality mess. If the universe were open-source, I would make light either one or the other, but not both.

[SNAFU]

So uh... how does one relate regexes to quantum mechanics?

I think God must've messed up escaping a character somewhere, because of all that wave/particle duality mess. If the universe were open-source, I would make light either one or the other, but not both.

Opensource universe would open the door for arguments about which universe distro is the best... I love it!

[svk1325]

Am I the only person to notice the lack of any alt-text?

[tylerni7]

The best part about perl is the ridiculous amount of modules.

http://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Quantum/

See? They already have modules for quantum mechanics.

[beinsane]

So uh... how does one relate regexes to quantum mechanics?

I think God must've messed up escaping a character somewhere, because of all that wave/particle duality mess. If the universe were open-source, I would make light either one or the other, but not both.

Some Perl for you:

Code: Select all

$a = 1;
$b = $a x 3;  # yes, the letter x!
$c = $b / 3;

Here, $b is the string $a repeated three times, in other words 111. $c is the number $b divided by 3, hence 37.

So, you see, Perl is well-suited for describing particle-wave duality, seeing as it can't decide whether its scalar variables are numbers or strings.

[kertrats]

My god...it's full of 'car's

[rs180216]

I wish I could get my hands on the universe's source code.

First, I would make intelligence proportionate to beauty.
Second, I would make kinetic energy = 1/2 * m *v^3 just to see what would happen.

This could go another way though
Could that make all beautiful people geniuses and all ugly people stupid as well?

edit
also, it would be fun to watch those sexy geniuses move in rediculous ways with Kinetic Energy all haywire and whatnot.

[Toeofdoom]

Am I the only person to notice the lack of any alt-text?

There was alt text... once you click on the picture and go to the actual site...


Anyway, with our OSU project (Open source universe) I wanna know what would happen if we say... changed nuclear binding energy by oh, 1% or so. or shifted the most stable element from iron to... uhmm... mercury. y'know, dont just switch a few words in the book, change the underlying plot or some shit.

[Drooling_Sheep]

I think messing with the constants would me more fun. For example if you had a slider that could adjust the speed of light. Then you could lower it down to a more attainable speed like 5m/s and see what traveling at close to light speed is like. Though you'd run into problems like the surface of the earth moving at faster than light speed relative to the rest of the galaxy. Or mess with planck's constant to make the dual nature of matter and other quantum mechanical phenomena apparent on macroscopic scales.

[Toeofdoom]

Cool value to enter

c=87.9mph (faster than speed of light = time travel, eh?)


Add your own to the list

[joeframbach]

But if we change it to cubed the universe might crash or something, which would be kinda cool. Or not, depending on your point of view.

It's been done. http://www.timecube.com/

[dr7]

It's been done. http://www.timecube.com/

*blink* *blink* What... what was that?

Ignorance of the Time Cube, Life Cube &
Ineffable Truth Cube, indicts you Stupid.
Ignoring Cubic Creation indicts you evil.

Riiiiiight.

[rockintom99]

It's too bad they didn't let him on the Tom Green show.

[Daem0hn]

It's been done. http://www.timecube.com/

what the fsck? you stumbled upon this how?

[Arkohn]

It's a pretty famous internet joke. He did a radio intervie on Radio KoL a while ago, he's the most confused yet hilarious person in the world.

[Noam Samuel]

I must say that this comment does explain quite a bit about the nature of the universe. I mean, doesn't everything fit in a bit more if you consider the possibility of the world being a perl script gone wild?

[Darksun]

When I was learning Lisp/Scheme, I had a dream where everything in the world was defined in Scheme... it was wierd, really hard to explain, but one bit I remember was going into a pub, the doormen were brackets. Infact, there were quite a lot of brackets...

[nazgul]

[i]This parody was sung by Julie Ecklar (http://www.songworm.com/db/person/JuliaEcklar.html) on Roundworm(http://www.songworm.com/about/roundworm.html)

Parody of “God Lives on Terraâ€

[Fieari]

I've had this exact dream, in similar circumstances. No kidding. Well, minus the perl.

[bippy]

Cool value to enter

c=87.9mph (faster than speed of light = time travel, eh?)


Add your own to the list

I'm trying to make a joke about conserving energy and 1.21 gigawatts, but all I can think of is how he says "gigawatt" so that it sounds like something from a Jay-Z song lyric.

[MostlyHarmless]

Can we change pi to 3 while we're at it? Or I suppose you could change it to 1 and make fourier transforms prettier, but circles would look really weird.

[Ursus]

. . . he says "gigawatt" so that it sounds like something from a Jay-Z song lyric.

That's spelled "jigowatts." Jigga what? He also says "one point twenty-one," which anyone who can count should know isn't exactly optimal.

Optimal prime?

[Tuathal]

Wow... I don't see her name tossed around very often unless I'm on a filk site... I can't count the number of times I've gone to sleep at night with Walkabout playing...

[i]This parody was sung by Julie Ecklar (http://www.songworm.com/db/person/JuliaEcklar.html) on Roundworm(http://www.songworm.com/about/roundworm.html)

[space_raptor]

Well, the cool drawing makes up for the obscure (to some of us) subject.

I have no experience with LISP. Anyone care to briefly summarize why it's so good?

Also, I think it would be really cool if the speed of light was a lot slower, but still the same relative to everything else. You could turn on a light and watch the light crawl across the room. Tres cool.

[khmer]

Well, the cool drawing makes up for the obscure (to some of us) subject.

I have no experience with LISP. Anyone care to briefly summarize why it's so good?

Also, I think it would be really cool if the speed of light was a lot slower, but still the same relative to everything else. You could turn on a light and watch the light crawl across the room. Tres cool.

How would you see the light before it arrived at your eyes?

[william]

Oh god, I love Time Cube. You are all stupid and evil.

[Quake]

Personally I don't worry too much about this present mess ;

next bugfix could very well hide behind the corner..