1394: Superm*n

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Superm*n

Title text: See also: Spider-Man reboot in which he can produce several inches of web, doesn't need as much chalk powder on his hands when he goes rock climbing, and occasionally feels vaguely uneasy about situations.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Needs an explanation of the actual joke, as well as the title text. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic was posted one day after a supermoon, an informal astronomical event where a full moon occurs close to the Moon's perigee (i.e. the point where it's closest to Earth), causing the moon to appear larger and brighter (up to 14% and 30%, respectively). The conditions for a supermoon happen once every 411 days, and the loose definition of the term means that there are usually two or three "supermoons" per perigee (the next full moon on August 10 will also qualify as a supermoon). A supermoon is an astronomical event that occurs when a moon becomes full on the same day as its perigree -- the day when its orbit is closest to earth. This produces abnormally large and bright moons.

While this event is often considered beautiful to behold, it is hardly remarkable. The event is not rare, as it occurs approximately every 13.5 months. Furthermore, the moons apparent increase in size is only marginal -- the June 2013 moon, for example, was only 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons of the same year.

The comic points out that the use of the prefix "Super-" in Supermoon is rather hyperbolic, by depicting how unimpressive the comic figure Superman would be if he had similarly proportional increases in physical capacity relative to normal humans.

The title makes use of a regular expression, which could be used to capture either "Supermoon" or "Superman."

Transcript

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Discussion

Wildcard

Excellent description, but minor niggle: In "Superm*n' , the '*' is a wildcard. This isn't a regular expression that would match 'Superman' and Supermoon'. A regexp could be "Superm.*n" - the '.' means 'any character' and the '*' means 'as many times as you like'. (More selective regexps exist) If you were to interpret 'Superm*n' as a regular expression, it would match 'Supern' , 'Supermn', "Supermmn', Supermmmn' etc. So you could describe 'Superm*n' as a 'wildcard search that would match superman and supermoon'. 141.101.99.184 05:11, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

You're approaching this from a very specific context. You may be correct in that context, but there are plenty of different programs, protocols, languages, etc which use wildcards in various ways. I once worked as a 411 operator, and in the search software we used at the time, a search on "SUPERM*N" would have found both "Superman" and "Supermoon" if both of those were names in listings (although our supervisors would consider that too many keystrokes and would suggest "SUP*N" instead). - 108.162.242.10 05:58, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Oops, looks like I read the initial comment too quickly, didn't realize you were kind of making the same point I wanted to, you were just being more technical about it. Either way, I think the explanation of the wildcard in the article itself should be made vague enough to avoid further threads like this. - 108.162.242.10 06:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

It's clearly a Unix shell file glob. Jeremyp (talk) 09:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

This form of wildcard is used in the Windows command prompt as well, and is very well known for Windows users. I obviously can't speak for the full XKCD audience, but limiting the scope of that wildcard to Unix seems unnecessarily exclusive. (Wouldn't it be sufficient to just refer to it as a "wildcard" as a generic concept? I mean, You Know You're a Geek When...) KieferSkunk (talk) 20:12, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Having grown up on MS-DOS, I second this. I remember typing DIR/a:h/s *.exe or something similar to search for games hidden by other students on my school's computers. 173.245.62.62 11:18, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

I figured that the asterisk was used to replace the letter 'A' in the name of the character so that Randall was not using a copyrighted/licensed name and was therefore safe from possible legal action for unauthorized use.108.162.216.80 08:30, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

• Superm..?n (or, Superm.{1,2}n, Superm(a|oo)n, etc....) KangaroOS 10:58, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Came back to this comic through a link from another explanation, and sad that no one specifically mentioned Supermoron. I wouldn't want to meet that person. --BigMal // 162.158.75.10 18:55, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Colour

If a Trivia section is warranted for this comic, I think it should definitely be pointed out this is one of the rare strips that uses a colour other than black or white. Is there an available statistic on use of colour in xkcd? - 108.162.242.10 05:58, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Ya, I'd bite on this one. Jarod997 (talk) 12:20, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

There's a category, Category:Comics with color. --173.245.55.74 13:24, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Astronomy

In a similar tune to the supermoon, could the sun at perihelion be called a "superstar"? 103.22.201.239 08:36, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be the Earth at perihelion? --173.245.52.82 12:33, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

The sun at Earth's perihelion. 108.162.216.9 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I was gonna say, does the Earth get 12% larger when it's at perihelion to the sun? :) KieferSkunk (talk) 20:14, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

The sun appears about 3% larger to an observer on Earth at perihelion, compared to the sun we see during aphelion.[1] Not very apparent to the unaided human eye, given the other factors(including seasonal, diurnal and latitudinal variation) that influence our overall perception of the sun. (Not that I'm recommending naked-eye observations of the sun.) 173.245.62.62 05:27, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Web-slingers and supermen

The comment on the title text makes it sound as though Spiderman canonically shoots webs from his body and only in "some adaptations" has a mechanical device that does so. That's backwards. The machine is the original, the biological version is what happens in "some adaptations" (ie, films). 173.245.48.135 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Exactly right. I've edited the description. Also corrected the spelling of Spider-Man. 199.27.133.39 18:16, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Do we have the required information to calculate what percentage of people would have better than 107% of the average human strength, assuming a normal bell distribution? 103.22.201.239 07:15, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Though it's quoted from a stupid NASA press release, "14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons" is misleading, as Sky and Telescope has been pointing out for years, and in fact they told this same exact Superman joke about it back in 2012. 1.14 is the ratio between perigee size and apogee size. (Even then there are different numbers floating around. If you look at the numbers in this graphic it's either 1.124 or 1.134, in the same image describing the same event.) Perigee size versus average size would be more relevant. This is why Randall's joke is that Superman is 7% stronger than an average man. In the S&T article it was 8% stronger. Pesthouse (talk) 18:51, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Also... "14% Bigger"? Is that (apparent) diameter or area? (i.e. based upon the change in radians subtended to the eye or steradians, likewise.) Hopefully says something, in the sources, but it's a commonly disputable weasel-statistic (plus 14% bigger than 14% smaller doesn't return to the same size, so choose the right comparison but twist it and the unaware/charlatan statistics-vendor can give misleading figures). Talking generically, of course, as a pitfall we should not fall into, in everyday life. 141.101.99.192 11:56, 16 July 2014 (UTC)