Talk:197: Ninja Turtles

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 02:20, 27 August 2013 by 184.66.160.91 (talk)
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Regarding the William Tell Overture's popular re-imagining, it has been said that "An intellectual is someone who can listen to [it] without thinking of the Lone Ranger," or very similar. (Wikipedia currently has a reference note about this that chiefly attributes it "... to Jack Guin writing in the Denver Post in 1962. (Brooklyn Barrister (1962), Volume 14, p. 107).", but it was an very well known anonymous pithy (and snobby?) statement a decade or two later, as I recall.)


The explain is wrong! This comic refers to this: Multi-Purpose Logistics Module. NASA did name that modules by real scientists and after that it was matched to this: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:05, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I dispute that. The MPLM was named after the TMNTs, and thus would contribute to their notoriety as such. There are no direct references to the MPLM, however, so the passage about them is at best overkill (at worse, useless). The main point is that the modern popular culture "hijacks" classical figures. --Quicksilver (talk) 05:09, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Randall did work at NASA in the past, if he wouldn't have the MPLM's in his mind while drawing this comic he must suffer on short term memory loss. He is joking about this coincidence.--Dgbrt (talk) 18:36, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Again, I dispute the relevance of MPLM to an explanation of this comic. To someone who doesn't know who the TMNT are and haven't heard of Donatello or Raphael, it seems overkill to have to introduce them and then pile on the MPLM layer. The title text refers to similar pop-culture characters, neither of whom have anything to do with NASA, and while the readers of xkcd tend to have a science-y bent, the MPLM is a very specific, technical thing that very few are likely to know about. Furthermore, this comic came out in December 2006, months after the previous MPLM mission. --Quicksilver (talk) 04:31, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
"There were 34 Space Shuttle missions to the ISS. MPLMs were flown twelve times". The first mission was Leonardo on March 8, 2001 at STS 102. The joke is just about the coincidence of the Ninja Turtles and the MPLM program.--Dgbrt (talk) 18:45, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Which joke? The joke in the comic or the joke in the comments? The comic makes absolutely no hint of any reference to NASA, the ISS, or the MPLMs. The joke is that the TMNTs hijacked the importance of the four Renaissance artists. I see no reason (apart from Trivia, which can be its own section) for including MPLM into an explanation. --Quicksilver (talk) 21:32, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

There is absolutely nothing in the comic that suggests it is related to the MPLM. I have removed this as it is off-topic for the explanation. If this was what the comic was about Randall would have put some sort of hint. Rocksteady and Bebop contradict this theory.

If someone wants to re-add it they should do so in a trivia section, as it is trivia not directly related to the comic. 184.66.160.91 02:18, 27 August 2013 (UTC)