What if there’s evidence for the magic, because it’s just sufficiently-advanced technology and/or the influence of one or several extra-dimensional beings?
Dina’s like one step away from going “science is my rifle, intellect is my blade. Care to do battle? I thought not” in this strip and it’s legitimately the funniest thing I’ve ever seen her do.
I love Dina. She’s always been a really great character and she never really lost that as she rose in prominence in that usual way for long running series where a small scale character gets some popularity and eventually you have an entire modern TV show about a guy who looks like Boba Fett.
Come on Dina, how do you explain love if it isn’t magic? And before anyone tries to scientifically explain love, I will force feed you candy hearts until you understand love or get diabetes, whichever comes first.
I don’t see anything homophobic about that explanation, there’s too many other advantages in sex as a method of conflict resolution for it be strongly selected against. Just look at bonobos for example; their entire society is based on sex, both hetero and homo.
How about ‘compelling animals otherwise heavily inclined towards political competition to not tear apart the next generation’s support structure’? That also accounts for non-romantic love and touches on stuff like the gay uncle effect.
The explanation to Sarah’s schadenfreude mechanism remains unclear, but that is no reason to assume that it is magic. When something is unexplained, one cannot simply fill the gap with some placeholder fairy tail to explain it. When something is unexplained, it’s just that: unexplained.
On the contrary, placeholder fairy tails are fine as long as they’re testable. If you don’t agree, I must suspect you don’t keep up with modern physics.
Heterodyne is the name of an evil cyberpunk megacorp but instead of building killer robots or AIs they’re just aggressively straight.
The badass cyberpunk rebel will storm their building and then they’ll complain that everyone’s picking on them and if they were gay then everyone would be fine with the corporate dystopia.
“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology” is a lot older than Girl Genius. ISTR Larry Niven way back in the 80’s but the earliest appears to be 1984.
The Foglio’s variant is a little different – “sufficiently analyzed”, not “advanced”. It also doesn’t necessarily hold, depending on how your magic works.
The original is of course Clarke’s 3rd law from 1973.
There are a ton of variants, my favorite of which semantically equivalent to the 3rd law: “Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.”
Booster appears to be looking into the viewfinder at the top of the camera rather than holding it at arm’s length and staring into a little screen on the back, as one would expect of a DSLR. Makes me think Booster is old-school and still shooting on film — probably Ilford HP5 or Kodak Tri-X pan black-and-white for the true retro touch — with an ordinary SLR.
Uh what? DSLRs all have viewfinders, that’s where the SLR part comes in. Even mirrorless cameras have EVFs, and Booster having an interest in photography will likely use something that will have a viewfinder. It’s very likely it’s a digital camera, there’s a LCD on the back of their camera.
DSLRs still have optical viewfinders, usually through-the-lens prism ones too.
But then again, college student. DSLRs are expensive, but 35mm SLRs are cheap and generally use the same glass. They just cost a lot more per shot (if you can still find a place that develops film on-site), but the pretentious might argue that means they have to carefully pick and choose their shots carefully instead of popping off a dozen and keeping the good one.
Yeah, looking through the viewfinder is no indication as to whether its a film-based SLR or a DSLR. For me the clue that it’s a 35mm one is that whilst lots of people will look through the viewfinder of a DSLR while taking the photo, they’ll normally look at the screen right after to see if the picture has come out okay, and Booster isn’t doing that.
Dina, please don’t buy into the dogmatic stupidity of “magic vs science” thinking. Acting like someone is unclean because they used the word ‘magic’ or similar phrases to describe something is prejudicial thinking at its most blatant, and is just about as ‘unscientific’ as you can actually get.
Yeah, I was having similar thoughts. This is basically how the other side of the “War against Christmas” hardcore atheists like to react when somebody wishes them Merry Christmas and it bothers me almost as much as the religious pushers. If somebody does not intend active malice when they talk about something special to them, and are extending genuine goodwill, why not just take the blessing (whether you believe in it or not) in the spirit it was offered? Otherwise, without the ability to compromise, we will all devolve into warring tribes with whom the only ultimate outcome is subjugation or death. And I think that would be a very sad world to live in.
She’s not yelling because belief in magic is unscientific. She still talked and was somewhat friendlyish (yes, a lot of qualifiers) with Joyce when she was very much religious. She’s yelling because she was made part of something she stands very much against. They had a connection founded on a lie. It’s a different argument.
Just because we haven’t worked out a way to measure it doesn’t mean that something doesn’t exist yet. It just means that we don’t have a way to detect or measure it.
I’m not saying that I believe in magic. I’m saying that you shouldn’t base your idea of reality too closely on what science is and isn’t able to prove. At least not just yet.
If we have no means whatsoever to detect it, you have no reason to believe it’s any different from any other fancy that pops into your head. Which makes it exactly as real as unicorns and the GOPs conscience.
To Dina, it is preferable that Sarah observing others being in a bad mood made her happy, rather than believe that Sarah was happy due to some “strange action-at-a-distance” phenomena without basis in science. Better to be an asshole than a magical thinker.
At this point I would like to see Dina react to a Religious Scientist. There are quite a few out there that see Science as human kind unfolding God’s creation and understanding it as best as they can.
Partly why Suvi from Mass Effect Andromeda was one of my favorite characters in that game. It’s a unique, but true to life, perspective to see in a Sci-Fi game.
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so wait
does this improve Sarah’s move or bring it down
what’s Joyce doing rn
(Booster doing like this)
Dumbing of Age Book 11: Because ANGELS Do Not EXIST
Word of Alt-text has other ideas. So do I, come to think of it.
DOA 11: I Thought Your Emotional Shenanigans were Evidence Based!
So this clocks in at three book titles
DOA 11: How DARE you implicate me in your Wizardry!
DOA 11: I’m Being Magically Forced Into Being Happy.
Doh! Just now loomed at the alt text myself…
DOA 11: I should have looked before I leapt
DOA
11anthology edition: I should have carefully analyzed the situation before opening my mouth but, I didn’t and, now here we are.Or would it be, “I should have loomed before I wove”? :taps chin:
:waves at everyone:
*waves back*
(good thing for the moderation check, i almost accidentally doxxed myself with autocomplete when i changed the capitalization on my email)
This strip has so many good potential book titles.
What if there’s evidence for the magic, because it’s just sufficiently-advanced technology and/or the influence of one or several extra-dimensional beings?
Only if there’s a tiny Becky popping up in the corner yelling “But if that’s true, how do YOU exist, Dina???”
Seriously, Becky not being here is terribly unfair to her. How many perfect opportunities for really over-the-top sappy statements do you get?
You had ONE JOB, comments section. ONE job – come up with titles for future books. That’s it! And Willis beat you to it. Sad.
I mean, it wouldn’t be the same without those “Damn you, Willis” moments..
I just thought they wanted to get Sarah and Dina into the shot, but that reading works, too.
Dina: BURN THE WITCH!
Booster: Neat! *snap*
Well according to Mary’s Halloween pictures, Sarah is a witch.
Booster Boosting Rodriguez
and there goes the magic
My Little Dina: Friendship is Evidence Based
Check the joy barometer every once in a while, nobody wants a Joy Big Bang.
Also, yes, wide and either very high or low.
Oh no, the bffs are fighting! D:
No, Booster, ANGEL, not angle
hehe–
*puts a single penny into a jar labeled ‘The Oldest Trick in the Book’*
Booster can be your angle or yuor devil.
Are you calling that angel fat?
nah, they said a WIDER angel would be best, so obviously the angel is too skinny.
Perfect reference!
Non angeli sed angli.
literally the oldest joke
(except i think the original was “Non angli sed angeli”?)
Yep. “Not Angles but angels”. But this situation is the other way round.
Isn’t the oldest joke that one about women never not farting in their husband’s lap?
This strip is just literally perfect. Absolutely would not change a thing.
I feel like Dina is getting more antsy over this sort of thing, not less. Maybe biting her tongue over Becky going to church is getting to her?
Ohh, that makes sense. I thought Dina was being a lil more intense than usual.
her body’s been friendzoned. watch the hell out, folks.
*puts on “Take Me to Church”*
BURN THE WITCH
What do we also do with witches?
Build bridges out of them?
She turned me into a newt!
I got better.
Just don’t go shutting down the government.
Turning persons into random amphibians is no basis for a system of government.
Dina’s like one step away from going “science is my rifle, intellect is my blade. Care to do battle? I thought not” in this strip and it’s legitimately the funniest thing I’ve ever seen her do.
I love Dina. She’s always been a really great character and she never really lost that as she rose in prominence in that usual way for long running series where a small scale character gets some popularity and eventually you have an entire modern TV show about a guy who looks like Boba Fett.
… Wait, will Diana’s indignant fury serve to further exacerbate Sarah’s excellent mood?
I think Booster is here to prevent that
Let’s make Booster grumpy and see what happens!
Come on Dina, how do you explain love if it isn’t magic? And before anyone tries to scientifically explain love, I will force feed you candy hearts until you understand love or get diabetes, whichever comes first.
How would you be able to explain this thing if not this other thing?
If you try to explain thing without other thing I shoot you.
sounds llike a meme template tbh
Some say that love is a chemical compelling animals to breed but i find that argument rather homophobic and depressing. Also candy is bad for you.
I don’t see anything homophobic about that explanation, there’s too many other advantages in sex as a method of conflict resolution for it be strongly selected against. Just look at bonobos for example; their entire society is based on sex, both hetero and homo.
How about ‘compelling animals otherwise heavily inclined towards political competition to not tear apart the next generation’s support structure’? That also accounts for non-romantic love and touches on stuff like the gay uncle effect.
Love is the lie we scream to ourselves as float through the uncaring void.
Eat at Arby’s.
*plays Queen’s “A Kind Of Magic” on the P.A. speakers*
The explanation to Sarah’s schadenfreude mechanism remains unclear, but that is no reason to assume that it is magic. When something is unexplained, one cannot simply fill the gap with some placeholder fairy tail to explain it. When something is unexplained, it’s just that: unexplained.
On the contrary, placeholder fairy tails are fine as long as they’re testable. If you don’t agree, I must suspect you don’t keep up with modern physics.
How the hell did you both manage to spell fairy tale wrong? Unless of course your talking about the popular manga/anime series Fairy Tail.
Are you so sure they don’t mean fairies with tails?
Where do you get your info on modern physics? Deepak Chopra?
it is at minimum some flavor of Spooky Action at a distance, as Sarah’s mood improved while outside the line of sight of Joyce.
inb4 Booster making a general comment that applies to most people is called rude/abusive/assumptive
Nah, Booster is just proving they don’t have to be rude/abusive/assumptive to ruin a perfectly happy moment. They do it just by being around.
Making a general comment that apples to most people can absolutely be rude.
But Dina, if magic isn’t real, than Sarah’s situation can’t be wizardry! By accusing her of wizardry you acknowledge that wizardry exists!
Only evidence-based wizardry.
Magic, sufficiently analyzed, is indistinguishable from science. -Agatha Heterodyne, i forget the year and i’m not looking it up
Too bad. I looked it up for you, SO THERE!
2008 December 5.
NO, LEARNING AGAINST MY WILL!
Heterodyne is the name of an evil cyberpunk megacorp but instead of building killer robots or AIs they’re just aggressively straight.
The badass cyberpunk rebel will storm their building and then they’ll complain that everyone’s picking on them and if they were gay then everyone would be fine with the corporate dystopia.
But do they have nize hats?
“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology” is a lot older than Girl Genius. ISTR Larry Niven way back in the 80’s but the earliest appears to be 1984.
https://quotes.yourdictionary.com/author/quote/195789
The Foglio’s variant is a little different – “sufficiently analyzed”, not “advanced”. It also doesn’t necessarily hold, depending on how your magic works.
The original is of course Clarke’s 3rd law from 1973.
There are a ton of variants, my favorite of which semantically equivalent to the 3rd law: “Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.”
Thank you for knowing what semantics is.
Take it down a notch Dina, its not like your girlfriend doesn’t believe in a form of magic
(starts playing Queens Its a kind of magic, just because)
Wait, a strip where Booster is the reasonable one?
Booster appears to be looking into the viewfinder at the top of the camera rather than holding it at arm’s length and staring into a little screen on the back, as one would expect of a DSLR. Makes me think Booster is old-school and still shooting on film — probably Ilford HP5 or Kodak Tri-X pan black-and-white for the true retro touch — with an ordinary SLR.
Uh what? DSLRs all have viewfinders, that’s where the SLR part comes in. Even mirrorless cameras have EVFs, and Booster having an interest in photography will likely use something that will have a viewfinder. It’s very likely it’s a digital camera, there’s a LCD on the back of their camera.
Back in the day we had to use Verichrome Pan.
DSLRs still have optical viewfinders, usually through-the-lens prism ones too.
But then again, college student. DSLRs are expensive, but 35mm SLRs are cheap and generally use the same glass. They just cost a lot more per shot (if you can still find a place that develops film on-site), but the pretentious might argue that means they have to carefully pick and choose their shots carefully instead of popping off a dozen and keeping the good one.
Yeah, looking through the viewfinder is no indication as to whether its a film-based SLR or a DSLR. For me the clue that it’s a 35mm one is that whilst lots of people will look through the viewfinder of a DSLR while taking the photo, they’ll normally look at the screen right after to see if the picture has come out okay, and Booster isn’t doing that.
(exciting camera based revelations)
I get the feeling that Booster is one of those people who uses the camera as a barrier to the rest of the world.
Booster’s role as newcomer and observer works well with the photography hobby. (Or was this for a class?)
Puts them in a position to where showing up in different places or around other people and for it to be pretty explainable.
It’s an interest, I went back to check several strips ago.
Stop having fun wrong!
are you a wizard
Oh hey, look!
It’s party-pooper Booster!
Quick, Booster. Before their art disappears.
Tsk. Imagine being only able to draw things you believe exist.
(Before anyone jumps on this, remember what site you’re posting to.)
Also, this plot continues to be delightful even with Booster.
I think that Booster has decided to focus on his art and let the crazy people sort themselves out for once.
*Their art.
Dina, please don’t buy into the dogmatic stupidity of “magic vs science” thinking. Acting like someone is unclean because they used the word ‘magic’ or similar phrases to describe something is prejudicial thinking at its most blatant, and is just about as ‘unscientific’ as you can actually get.
Yeah, I was having similar thoughts. This is basically how the other side of the “War against Christmas” hardcore atheists like to react when somebody wishes them Merry Christmas and it bothers me almost as much as the religious pushers. If somebody does not intend active malice when they talk about something special to them, and are extending genuine goodwill, why not just take the blessing (whether you believe in it or not) in the spirit it was offered? Otherwise, without the ability to compromise, we will all devolve into warring tribes with whom the only ultimate outcome is subjugation or death. And I think that would be a very sad world to live in.
I mean, I get what you’re saying, but it feels a bit like “Dina, please react to this the way a neurotypical would”.
She’s not yelling because belief in magic is unscientific. She still talked and was somewhat friendlyish (yes, a lot of qualifiers) with Joyce when she was very much religious. She’s yelling because she was made part of something she stands very much against. They had a connection founded on a lie. It’s a different argument.
Might want to pack the telephoto instead and back away instead, Booster. xD
They’re gonna need the kind of zoom they get on traffic helicopters, or maybe a Keyhole spy satellite.
Booster’s not doing anything bad yet, as long as they stick to taking photos of things and not people without permission.
First time I’ve seen Dina angry. Scarysaurus.
Then you missed when Joyce said she thought evolution was a myth.
Now I’m imagining Dina saying “witchcraft” like Frollo in Hunchback of Notre Dame and it’s a very strange image in my head, but kinda funny.
Don’t, Dina!
Your anger will only feed her, possibly causing her smile to make the top half of her head come off!
Just because we haven’t worked out a way to measure it doesn’t mean that something doesn’t exist yet. It just means that we don’t have a way to detect or measure it.
I’m not saying that I believe in magic. I’m saying that you shouldn’t base your idea of reality too closely on what science is and isn’t able to prove. At least not just yet.
If we have no means whatsoever to detect it, you have no reason to believe it’s any different from any other fancy that pops into your head. Which makes it exactly as real as unicorns and the GOPs conscience.
We can deduce the existence of ‘dark magic’ by seeing its effects, even if we can’t detect it directly.
Exactly! And since our crops have been ruined by the unseasonal weather, clearly this old woman needs to be burned alive!
– How do you know she is a witch?
She weighs the same as a duck…
For all those saying Dina is being irrationally angry; what if she’s just trying to be angry for Sarah’s sake like she did back in the dorm?
Is it just me, or is angry Dina kinda terrifying?
Oh no. This may end the friends between Sarah and Dina forever!
Booster reminds me of Asterix and The Roman Agent (La Zizanie). They just walk in, say a few words, and arguments start.
“Wizardry!” Love it!
I like how Booster takes a few steps away from Angry Dina.
To Dina, it is preferable that Sarah observing others being in a bad mood made her happy, rather than believe that Sarah was happy due to some “strange action-at-a-distance” phenomena without basis in science. Better to be an asshole than a magical thinker.
IDW Beast Wars is go.
Hopefully this one doesn’t end with, like, all the characters and plotlines getting sidelined for MOAR G1.
Well, if Sarah’s hypotheses is correct, she should be manic, right now.
And just like that, the cheerful mood is gone.
At this point I would like to see Dina react to a Religious Scientist. There are quite a few out there that see Science as human kind unfolding God’s creation and understanding it as best as they can.
Partly why Suvi from Mass Effect Andromeda was one of my favorite characters in that game. It’s a unique, but true to life, perspective to see in a Sci-Fi game.
Get in the robot, DoAverse
Did Booster just sliiiiide all the way away from the awkwardness
if so how does one learn to do that?
Pteronadons don’t exist either, Dina.
I’m way late, but it’s “I think a wider angel would be best.”