Derivative

Last year during an evening of samosas and discussion on various science topics with our math professor, a few of my friends and I put on a short skit. Said skit involved a purely fictional encounter between Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Galileo Galilei and Blaise Pascal in which these four science giants argued over which of them held claim to the title of best scientist of the 17th century. I must preface this tale by telling you that we are four very nerdy people in an exceptionally nerdy programme, so for the entirety of our performance we were batting clever little science puns and nerd jokes, all the while trying not to dissolve into fits of giggles. But the pièce de résistance was a heated debate between myself as Newton and my friend S as Leibnez. If you were to meet S, she would likely be the last on your list to ever yell at someone - that's just her demeanor. She's a petite, quite book worm who is an out-and-out nice person. I'm a hot-head with a European background so I can get quite...vocal, but I'm also pretty shy in public so unless you're a close relative you'll probably never see the should-have-been-born-with-red-hair side of me. Needless to say it came as a great surprise to our classmates when we got all fired up about the long-standing debate over who invented calculus first (and is the overall better mathematician).

Since then, its been a running joke between us; often forgotten but laying just beneath the surface, ready to come to light when I text her a picture like this...

Figure 2: Newton is on top once again!

I'm not really sure why it is so amusing, but this little "argument" between two people who agree on almost every other topic we discuss never fails to make me smile. As such,  I stumbling across things like the XKCD comic at the beginning of the post always makes me ridiculously happy. 

I hope you come across something today that makes you laugh too.

- H

P.S. The Night of the Mathematical Skit has also resulted in a joke about my friend E and Galileo. She shudders at the sound of his name, excellent teasing material. ;)