It's what's on the inside that counts

 

Lost in space

The idea for today's cartoon comes from my faithful padawan. I like the "planet" variation on the gag. It made me laugh.
 

Halfway there

May all your leftovers stay fresh!
 

Out of the best books

You have to learn somewhere.

Balance to the Force

The Powers That Be (my family, mostly) have limited me to one of these alphabet gags per year, and that only during my self-proclaimed Geek Week.

Until next year!

It's all about the base

 It's that dreaded time of year again! Geek Week, the week approaching Pi Day, in which we dump our bad STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) jokes in one fell swoop! The good news is, it's only one week. Enjoy!

Editor's note: Just a quick word about today's cartoon — the original caption had the girl choosing to change majors rather than deal with the harassment she receives from her peer. That was a little too close to the unfortunate reality, and not at all empowering to women who are interesting in pursuing the sciences as a career. I like this result better: it shows the social awkwardness of many males in the field (I work with engineers on a daily basis, remember), and the woman simply carries on with what she's doing.

So, yeah, sometimes a lot of thought goes into these cartoons. Go figure!

Sketchbook: Taking Alma's advice

Let's just see what beginneth to grow...

Culture club

OK, maybe it's not fair to pick on Justin Bieber all the time...

Special Edition: Spacetime!

Call me a nerd, but I thought the news about the discovery of gravitational waves was really cool, especially since they were predicted in Einstein's theory of relativity.

It's fun when a genius gets proven right. But it's even better when you can throw in a Star Wars reference as well!

Trip Scrapbook No. 4

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to CERN, the largest science and research complex in the world, and home to the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator that they used to find the Higgs boson.

For science geeks, it was amazing.

The LHC was undergoing maintenance, so our group was able to go down (30 stories down) to see it up close and in person. It was unbelievable. Our science teacher was over the top!

The LHC will start up again in September, so we were one of the last groups that could actually see it. A once in a lifetime experience!

If you're actually interested in seeing any of our photos, they're compiled on our Flickr site.

Object lesson

This is probably why they don't have me teach Sunday school very often.

Somewhere beyond the stars

Welcome to the Beckstrom Buzz's first ever Geek Week. Actually, it's only a half-week, stretching from Douglas Adams' birthday to Pi Day on the 14th. The next few days, the cartoons I post here are going to be, well, geeky (as opposed to the rest of the time, right?). There's a good chance that they'll only appeal to a very small segment of the population.

For example, today's cartoon is set in an area in the far reaches of our solar system, the Kuiper Belt. It's similar to the asteroid belt, but on beyond Neptune. Add to that the Loch Ness Monster and what do you get?

Blinded by science

Sometimes I think the Internet is like a giant refrigerator where people stick stuff up on it and say, "Look what I did!"

This is one of those entries. It's not a gag, just some illustrations I did for a project at work. They illustrate the concept of discovery.