Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 15, 2010

  1. Silverknights
    JanLC  about 14 years ago

    Didn’t the mythbusters do this one?

     •  Reply
  2. Thinker
    Sisyphos  about 14 years ago

    WWMS? (What will Mom say?–Or Dad, since Jennifer apparently ran off….)

     •  Reply
  3. Grog poop
    GROG Premium Member about 14 years ago

    Yay! A Danae classic.

    9 out of 10 end up face down! Interesting, but I think I’m batting 1000 without even trying.

     •  Reply
  4. Missing large
    kossuth  about 14 years ago

    … actually it’s 80%. 10% are butter-side up, and 10% were not buttered :) although I will grant you 5% on that one (50% of 10%).

    Doesn’t seem messy to me (runs off to submit results to journal)

    k.

     •  Reply
  5. Tartan colorado
    oranaiche  about 14 years ago

    JanCinVV said, 36 minutes ago

    Didn’t the mythbusters do this one?

    Ayuh. Season 3, Episode 4.

     •  Reply
  6. Obedient
    Basqueian  about 14 years ago

    My old mare loved bread, especially butter topped wheat, the brand name stuff, not the store brand, and she also liked donuts. All but the lemon filled ones, which she regarded as a low down, dirty trick. Bagels were, according to her, very stale, inedible donuts. I’ve been pretty careful to not feed such things to my new horse, as bread is expensive these days. Carrots are much cheaper.

     •  Reply
  7. Avatar
    ArtyG  about 14 years ago

    Day old bread is great horse feed. If you can get a steady source from a bakery it makes a great feed supplement. The US Cavalry used to feed it to their horses as part of their standard feed.

     •  Reply
  8. Mooncat
    docopenhaver  about 14 years ago

    @Nabuquduriuzhur

    Actually, I think the fact that she’s buttering TOAST may have something to do with it…..

     •  Reply
  9. Missing large
    dnihilist  about 14 years ago

    Wiley, is Danae pronounced Dan-nay or Duh-nay?

     •  Reply
  10. X phan 64
    invisifan  about 14 years ago

    dnihilist: a classical Latin pronunciation would be “Duhn-eye” — try it ^_~

     •  Reply
  11. Dave
    davecancer  about 14 years ago

    It depends on how high she tossed it and if she put a flipping notion on a corner of the slice plus the psi or the barometric pressure and the time of year.

     •  Reply
  12. Exploding human fat bombs hedge 060110
    Charles Brobst Premium Member about 14 years ago

    Butter is heavy, bread is light. And your @zz is grass.

     •  Reply
  13. Missing large
    puddleglum1066  about 14 years ago

    Scientific American did an article about this many years ago (probably before Mythbusters). Turns out it’s true, the bread usually lands butter side down. The explanation is that most of the time the bread is slid off the table, imparting a bit of rotational momentum to it… and because most tables are about the same height, most of the time break knocked off a table has just enough time to do one-half rotation on the way down. Hence, butter side down most of the time.

    The article also explained why you’re more likely to take an umbrella and not need it or leave it behind and need it than you are to correctly take the umbrella and need it.

     •  Reply
  14. 2
    hereforthehumor115  about 14 years ago

    Dan - uh- ay.

     •  Reply
  15. Missing large
    coot31  about 14 years ago

    And if you take an umbrella, whether you need it or not, there’s a 90% chance you’ll leave it somewhere while you’re out.

     •  Reply
  16. 104 2745
    Trebor39  about 14 years ago

    Of course, Danae, you’re going to clean that all up.

     •  Reply
  17. Danae
    Wiley creator about 14 years ago

    dnihilist said, “Wiley, is Danae pronounced Dan-nay or Duh-nay?”

    The latter… or better still, DAH-nay.

     •  Reply
  18. 061
    pawpawbear  about 14 years ago

    No controversy this morning? Where is my “Non Sequitur” and what have you done with it?

     •  Reply
  19. Tarot
    Nighthawks Premium Member about 14 years ago

    the version of the buttered bread to the floor theory that I heard was:

    if you drop a slice of buttered bread on the carpet, the value of the carpeting is in direct proportion to the likelihood of the buttered side landing down

    or some such

    it’s just another version of murphy’s law I guess—-

    murphy was a .prick, wasn’t he?

     •  Reply
  20. Birthcontrol
    Dtroutma  about 14 years ago

    And when our species was dropped on the planet, did we land butter side up, or not?

     •  Reply
  21. 689 6897683 blue rebel alliance logo png transparent png
    KEA  about 14 years ago

    Wonder if she’s going to try Wright’s Hypothesis now and strap the buttered bread to the back of a cat. (who always land right side up, of course.)

     •  Reply
  22. J p engagement
    CashewJim  about 14 years ago

    Dah-neigh?

     •  Reply
  23. King of fantasy by jarling art
    jrcarter53  about 14 years ago

    Since butter is heavier; she should try margarine. It’s lighter and you could get a 50 50 split. Fat free might even do better?

     •  Reply
  24. What has been seen t1
    lewisbower  about 14 years ago

    Danae. one question

    Does the six second rule still apply and if so, for both sides?

     •  Reply
  25. Moose2 copy
    HowieL  about 14 years ago

    This is one of my all-time Most Favorites. I still have the one cut from the Sunday paper within view. It’s dated Jan. 8, and the most recent year Jan. 8 was on a Sunday was 2006 (the one before that was in 1995). Science IS really messy!

     •  Reply
  26. Me 3 23 2020
    ChukLitl Premium Member about 14 years ago

    & the results often annoy authorities.

     •  Reply
  27. 8724545 avatar medium
    runninanreadin  about 14 years ago

    Ummmm…I think she needs more testing…just so the results are more accurate…and her name is pronounced “Evil”…lol

     •  Reply
  28. Th giraffe
    lazygrazer  about 14 years ago

    If the buttered-side-down theory is correct, then why do we waste our time buttering people UP…?

     •  Reply
  29. V  9
    freeholder1  about 14 years ago

    Wow, and she’s recording results and everything. Kid would never make it in the business of oil science. There: I tried to be controversial.

     •  Reply
  30. Missing large
    dnihilist  about 14 years ago

    Thnx Wiley and guys

     •  Reply
  31. Jason fox
    JasonFoxIsMyHero  about 14 years ago

    Thanks Wiley, but here in my part of New Jersey, we say DAY-nuh.

     •  Reply
  32. J money
    Joseph Krois  about 14 years ago

    The heat of the bread… Does things to the head… And as toast is naturally dishonest… Hence the results are dubious at best… So with all the flavor…. In the experiment we savor… Shouldn’t just eating it be the final test?…

     •  Reply
  33. Bill
    washton  about 14 years ago

    The outcomes of this type of experiment can be evaluated using a binomial distribution. With the null hypothesis that there is a 50% probability the butter side lands down, 10 trials and 9 successes. The probably of that occurring by chance alone is less than .098% – one in one thousand.

     •  Reply
  34. Smokey stover
    ububobu  about 14 years ago

    This phenomenon is known in radio circles as the Heaviside layer and is useful every 11 years.

     •  Reply
  35. Missing large
    cartwrights  about 14 years ago

    And what is the probability that I will spill coffee on my white shirt, as I just did? (not because this was too funny, but because I’m not real neat and frequently do this.)

     •  Reply
  36. Missing large
    jhouck99  about 14 years ago

    @Wiley:

    I realize she’s your creation and therefore you are the ultimate authority, but I always thought Danae was homonymous with deny. Which would be fitting since she is so often in denial…

     •  Reply
  37. Ngc891 rs 580x527
    alan.gurka  about 14 years ago

    I don’t spill coffee on my white shirt, but dollars to donuts, if I eat anything with tomatoes in it, they will find a home on my shirt. Conversely, if I wear a red or dark colored shirt, it will remain spotless after having a spaghetti dinner with a glass of red wine.

     •  Reply
  38. Hawaii5 0girl
    treered  about 14 years ago

    HowieL, you’re right, 1/1/06. and I still LOVE it!

     •  Reply
  39. Yellow pig small
    bmonk  about 14 years ago

    Some years back, some physicists analyzed the chance that a piece of bread would slide off a table and fall–they showed that the most likely result was a half-turn so the butter side is down. Murphy was right.

    Further, they noted, the table height was set by the height of human comfort, and that was limited by the height at which brains would be concussed in a trip, or about 3 meters. So, in any reasonable world, Murphy was right.

     •  Reply
  40. Missing large
    NightOwl19  about 14 years ago

    Hi - pretty sure no one is reading this since this is two days old, but she should run some controls in her experiment to test for bias:

    1) label one side of the bread slightly with marker (assumed near-zero mass), to see if there is bias in how she tosses the bread.

    2) drop 50% of the trials starting from butter side up, and 50% of the trials starting from butter side down (getting her hand messy).

    As long as it is in the name of science and on a floor that is washable, I have no problem with this. ‘Course I don’t have kids yet (not likely to at this point), so my opinion doesn’t mean much….

     •  Reply
  41. Missing large
    zev.farkas  about 14 years ago

    I read it, NightOwl19 (i’m a bit behind in my comic reading…), and I think her father needs to put some controls on her scientific method… :)

    Nightowls - we do more after 9 PM than most people do all day!

     •  Reply
Sign in to comment

More From Non Sequitur