2010-03-03
Original: 2010-03-03 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Two people sit in front of a computer monitor displaying a page of dense text. A woman with reddish-brown hair and glasses sits behind a man with gray hair and glasses who is at the keyboard.
Woman: CARL SAGAN WAS RIGHT! THERE'S A HIDDEN MESSAGE EMBEDDED IN π!
Man: THIS PAPER IS GOING TO ROCK ALL OF MATHEMATICS!
Caption below the comic (paper title and abstract):
On the understanding of transcendental numbers and the fabric of the Cosmos.
Abstract:
If you turn the 21,115th through 21,120th digits upside-down in a calculator, it spells “boobs.”
Votey:
A block of stylized seven-segment / calculator-style digits and letters, rendered upside-down so that read normally they form words. The middle row prominently spells out “BOOBS” among the calculator-font characters.
Two people sit in front of a computer monitor displaying a page of dense text. A woman with reddish-brown hair and glasses sits behind a man with gray hair and glasses who is at the keyboard.
Woman: CARL SAGAN WAS RIGHT! THERE'S A HIDDEN MESSAGE EMBEDDED IN π!
Man: THIS PAPER IS GOING TO ROCK ALL OF MATHEMATICS!
Caption below the comic (paper title and abstract):
On the understanding of transcendental numbers and the fabric of the Cosmos.
Abstract:
If you turn the 21,115th through 21,120th digits upside-down in a calculator, it spells “boobs.”
Votey:
A block of stylized seven-segment / calculator-style digits and letters, rendered upside-down so that read normally they form words. The middle row prominently spells out “BOOBS” among the calculator-font characters.
Alt text
A webcomic panel shows a woman with reddish-brown hair and glasses leaning over the shoulder of a gray-haired man at a computer keyboard, both staring at a monitor full of dense academic text. The woman exclaims, “CARL SAGAN WAS RIGHT! THERE'S A HIDDEN MESSAGE EMBEDDED IN π!” The man adds, “THIS PAPER IS GOING TO ROCK ALL OF MATHEMATICS!” Below the comic is the title and abstract of their paper: “On the understanding of transcendental numbers and the fabric of the Cosmos. Abstract: If you turn the 21,115th through 21,120th digits upside-down in a calculator, it spells ‘boobs.’” The joke: the world-shaking hidden message in pi is just the classic calculator gag where digits read upside-down spell a silly word. The votey (aftercomic) is a panel of blocky calculator-style seven-segment characters drawn upside-down; reading the middle row, they spell out “BOOBS,” delivering the punchline visually.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.