2068: Banach-Tarskifield
| Banach-Tarskifield |
 Made by: Manyhills |
Explanation[edit | edit source]
The title refers to the Banach–Tarski paradox, a theorem which states that, given certain conditions, one ball can be turned into two balls, each identical to the original. Here, the ball is a ball of yarn, apparently doubled via such a transformation, as Jon, the original source of the new ball, has been removed from the strip.
The author mentions a forum filter, a piece of software which has a list of strings to search input for and either stop the whole input or, as in this case, replace it with a different string. The most common use is to keep words considered bad from being posted publically; occasionally, a forum owner will set additional filters to keep mention of things he doesn't like off of his forum. In the author's anecdote, the filter was used for a joke; given the nature of the Banach–Tarski paradox, the owner made it so the forum's filter would produce two "Banach-Tarski"s from one. The resulting behavior of certain forumgoers was, shall we say, predictable.
The author writes:[edit | edit source]
One of the forums I hang out on used to have a filter that changed "Banach-Tarski" to "Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski", until people started abusing the quote feature for exponential growth.
Original strip: 2000-10-03.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
{There is a ball of yarn}
{There are now two balls of yarn}
Garfield: Banach-Tarski.
