explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1626: Judgment Day

2016-03-15T12:42:46Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1626
| date = January 6, 2016
| title = Judgment Day
| image = judgment_day.png
| titletext = It took a lot of booster rockets, but luckily Amazon had recently built thousands of them to bring Amazon Prime same-day delivery to the Moon colony.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Terminator_(franchise)#Judgment_Day|Judgment Day}}, from the film ''{{w|Terminator 2: Judgment Day}}'', refers to the day that the {{w|artificial intelligence}} (AI) {{w|Skynet (Terminator)|Skynet}} becomes self-aware and starts a nuclear strike on the United States, Russia, and other regions, killing three billion people. The term "Judgment Day" itself is a Biblical reference to the day that God casts his "final judgment" and wipes out humanity, and is typically used to describe any kind of Armageddon or any human extinction event. This film is only one example of stories (including books, films and television shows) featuring an AI that decides (or at least threatens) to nuke humanity; this strip could thus be an alternate ending for many stories (including the 1970 film {{w|Colossus: The Forbin Project}}).

In this strip, the AI believes that {{w|nuclear weapons}} are not good things to have, and that the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_arms_race amount] of them we have is extreme overkill (14,700 held by the U.S.A and Russia now, 71,000 in the past). Once it's done freaking out, its solution is to shoot the world's nuclear arsenal into the sun. But before it does so it asks the humans: ''What's wrong with you?'' It has thus passed a judgment over humanity. The comic title is thus a pun on the word "{{w|judgment}}" since the computer is being {{w|judgmental}} with humanity and scolding us while correcting our ways, instead of instigating {{w|Last Judgment|Judgment Day}} or any other kind of {{w|Armageddon}}.

As pointed out in the [[what if?]] [http://what-if.xkcd.com/5/ Robot Apocalypse], nuclear weapons aren't any safer for computers than for human beings (the {{w|Nuclear electromagnetic pulse|EMP}} would destroy circuits), so an AI would want them gone as quickly as possible.

{{w|North Korea}} claimed to have [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35240012 successfully tested] its first {{w|hydrogen bomb}} in the evening on the day before this comic was published; at about 8:30 PM in {{w|Massachusetts}} where [[Randall]] lives. At that time it was already 10:00 AM on the day of the comics release in {{w|Pyongyang}} the capital of North Korea, but that was still several hours before this comic were released. This comic could thus be Randall's response to the ongoing {{w|nuclear arms race}}.

Even the most powerful of nuclear weapon launchers, {{w|intercontinental ballistic missile}}s, are not designed to make anything other than {{w|sub-orbital}} flights and could not fly to the Sun (which is actually surprisingly difficult, even with the soon-to-be-mentioned extra boosters, since the rocket would not have enough {{w|delta-v}} to bleed off the {{w|orbital speed}} of the Earth around the Sun - it is likely that the sentient AI is using the same strategy of the Solar Probe Plus and planning several flybys of Venus to do that work). The title text rationalizes that the capability to do so may perhaps be granted by the use of an {{w|Amazon.com|Amazon}} resource that might have also been developed by the time of this instance of computer sentience, aided (if not initiated!) by the fact that Amazon's whole business infrastructure is already highly computerized and could ''at the very least'' be complicit with the process of delivering and then controlling the rocket-power, without any conscious human intervention. As there is not yet an extended colony on the Moon, it will for sure take many years before we reach this future scenario.

"A lot of booster rockets" is likely to be a reference to the spaceflight simulator game {{w|Kerbal Space Program}}, which Randall has [[1106|referenced]] on a [[1244|number]] of [[1356|occasions]]. In the culture of that game, any launch failure can be resolved by [https://imgur.com/20aIBMW "adding more boosters"] to the spaceship design.

It is the second time in a few months that the speed of Amazon's deliveries has been the subject of a joke, the last time was [[1599: Water Delivery]], where it was the one hour delivery that was the subject of the joke. It is also the second title text in a row (after [[1625: Substitutions 2]]) where Amazon has been mentioned.

This particular 'machine take-over' future is in distinct contrast to the possible future directions given in [[1613: The Three Laws of Robotics]], but this comic likely depicts spontaneous ''self-''sentience, not a system with deliberately imposed human 'values' and possibly no actual conscience or even consciousness of its own. Other problems with hostile AI take over is presented when it fails completely in [[1046: Skynet]]. Also it is not all AI that wish to interact with us at all as shown in [[1450: AI-Box Experiment]]. These are just a few of the many [[:Category:Artificial Intelligence|comics about AI]] in {{xkcd}}.

Adding a second layer to the humor, the machine's reaction could also be read as the reaction of someone who has moved in with someone else, discovered a collection they find distasteful, and is now changing things to fit their preferences. "Oh my God, why do you even have all of these [tschotskes, ratty tee shirts, porn magazines, handcuffs, dildos, slime-mold samples]" Upon obtaining sentience, the machine is the new roommate of the human race and is expressing its disgust at one of our dirtier habits.

==Transcript==
:[Several rockets can be seen heading away from Earth, while speak is coming from the Earth in three rectangular speech bubbles.]
:AI: Oh my god, why do you even ''have'' all these?
:AI: What's ''wrong'' with you?
:AI: We're launching them into the sun.

:The moment the computers controlling our nuclear arsenals became sentient
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Space]]

1599: Water Delivery

2016-03-08T07:46:23Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1599
| date = November 4, 2015
| title = Water Delivery
| image = water_delivery.png
| titletext = When I was a kid, I asked my parents why our houses didn't have toothpaste pipes in addition to water ones. I'm strangely pleased to see Amazon thinking the same way.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Amazon.com|Amazon}} has added {{w|bottled water}} to its line of on-line home order goods, which they are calling [https://amazon.com/primenow Prime Now]. In served areas, which include {{w|New York City|Manhattan/Brooklyn}}, {{w|Baltimore}}, {{w|Atlanta}}, {{w|Miami}}, {{w|Dallas}}, {{w|Austin}}, {{w|Houston}}, {{w|Indianapolis}}, {{w|Chicago}}, {{w|Seattle}}, {{w|Portland}}, {{w|Los Angeles}}, {{w|Minneapolis}}, {{w|San Francisco}}, {{w|San_Jose,_California|San Jose}}, {{w|San Antonio}}, {{w|Las Vegas}}, {{w|Sacramento}}, and {{w|Phoenix,_Arizona|Phoenix}}, many products – including but not limited to bottled water – are available to be delivered within one hour. So we are faced with the prospect of water, contained within plastic bottles, contained within cardboard shipping boxes.

As increasing amounts of water are ordered, on-demand, or as the delivery time decreases to even quicker than an hour, this would show increasing numbers of packages passing from {{w|Amazon.com#Headquarters|Amazon HQ}} (or its distribution hubs) to an arbitrary end-user as shown in the comic. Beyond a certain (already impractical) point, it might be better to merge packaging together into a single longitudinal structure through which one could first deliver back-to-back bottles of water, as shown in the second-to-bottom illustration, and then as water quantity needs increase beyond that model, eventually just 'pipe' the water without the plastic bottle or any packaging at all, as shown in the final illustration. (This would also solve the problems of what happens with the packaging at the destination, or how to return it to the source to make it easier to re-use.)

While this could apply to one degree or another to any merchandise, for the purposes of the comic and for the reasons described next water was chosen for this example – because that's really what existing {{w|Water supply network|water-mains}} do. And hence [[Randall]]'s recommendation or vote that we start calling the regular municipal plumbing "on-demand hyperloop-style water delivery." In order to promote any 'new' technology, various buzz-words are used, and here it is ''hyperloop'', reminiscent of {{w|Elon Musk|Elon Musk's}} '{{w|hyperloop|piped transportation system}}', which (from the outside, at least) appears to be taking discrete passenger units (trains, cars, buses and planes) and replacing them with a stationary pipe within which the passengers 'flow.' (Albeit, in this case, still within discrete internal vehicles, not ''entirely'' like {{w|Futurama|Futurama's}} 'piped people', which might be a bit messier). Randall suggest trying to get someone to buy into this idea, only to later realize that they have just bought the idea of tap water.

The comic also seems to jab at the [http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/why-buy-water-when-you-can-have-it-free unnecessary buying] of bottled water, when most places in the western world have perfectly drinkable water in the pipes. However, not that all recipients ''like'' mains water ({{w|Hard water|hardness}}, {{w|Soft water|softness}} and various additional {{w|Water_purification#Water_chlorination|water-treatment chemicals}} can affect taste and the action of water with detergents, and in some cities it might even be unwise to drink tap water, at least for tourists), which is why there is still a healthy business for bottled water (of many brands with subtleties to taste) even in households and establishments with piped-water available. The other explanation, for cynics only, is that the marketing budget for bottled water creates the industry. See {{w|The Gruen Transfer}} episode on Bottled Water (season 2 episode 3 (#13)) where the marketing is considered.

In the title text Randall tells that when he was a kid he was asking his parents why there were not an additional pipe for toothpaste next to the water pipe. Amazon thinking the "same way" is a sarcastic jab implying Amazon saw toothpaste tubes and wondered why ''water'' wasn't delivered the same way (in small bottles). Both are implied to be examples of childish ideas, but Amazon is actually following through on theirs. The idea of a toothpaste tube is revisited in [[1649: Pipelines]]

The outflow volume from Amazon.com has earlier been compared to the outflow of water of the {{w|Amazon River}} in [[1165: Amazon]].

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the frame:]
:Now that Amazon is advertising
:one-hour delivery of bottled water,

:[A larger building complex is show on the left. An arrow goes to a blue bottle in a brown package in the middle of the frame. Another arrow continues over to Cueball on the right. The same building and Cueball is drawn below four more times. More and more bottles in packages are added. First two with a third arrow in between. Then six packages with water, so close that there are only smaller arrows at both ends. Then there is one long package from building to Cueball with 20 bottles close together, with small arrows at both ends of this package. Then finally this turns into a stream of water flowing through a package "pipe", shown with one arrow in the middle of the blue water. Again with small arrows at both ends of the pipe.]

:[Caption below the frame:]
:I vote we start calling municipal plumbing
:"on-demand hyperloop-style water delivery"
:and see if we can sell anyone on the idea.

==Trivia==
*In the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/9/95/20151104183050!water_delivery.png original version] of this comic the word ''[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/advertising advertising]'' appeared as ''adverti'''z'''ing''.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

1620: Christmas Settings

2015-12-25T01:23:36Z

108.162.216.56:

{{comic
| number = 1620
| date = December 23, 2015
| title = Christmas Settings
| image = christmas_settings.png
| titletext = SOUND DOGS MAKE: [BARKING] [HISSING] [LIGHTSABER NOISES] [FLUENT ENGLISH] [SWEARING]
}}

==Explanation==
[[Ponytail]] is showing [[Megan]] around in her facility, and as the comic begins they enter a new room (''over here we have'') where she has the ''Universe Control Panel''.

A "Universe Control Panel" would be a set of dials to control the universe, and anyone having access to a room with these controls would from our point of view be in a God like position. If such a room did exist it would most likely be situated outside our universe (a dimension outside, and not necessarily in another universe). Since this comic was released just before {{w|Christmas}}, looking at it from a {{w|Christian}} point of view, this would be {{w|God|God's}} domicile and his control room for the universe would probably be located in {{w|Heaven}}.

Seen from a physicist's point of view, the typical panels for such a control room would be with dials to control the specific size of {{w|Physical constant|fundamental constants}} of the universe such as the {{w|speed of light in vacuum}}, {{w|Planck constant}} and the {{w|fine-structure constant}} to mention a few - see more under the trivia section [[#Physical constants control panel|Physical constants control panel]].

But the first control panel they reach includes the dials that control {{w|Christmas}}. So these control panels are either much more detailed than just physics constants (or do not consider these underlying constants at all). That we see this option as the first is, of course, because this is a [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comic]] released on the 23rd of December.

From Ponytail's comment it is clear that the panel has dials for controlling several different things, and there is more than one dial for Christmas. We only see one of these up close (to get an idea of how they work, and for the sake of the joke).

In the second panel, Megan and Ponytail have not reached the control panel yet, so it is the reader, and not them, who sees the dial, which controls how {{w|Santa Claus}} enters people’s houses: The ''Santa enters houses through''-dial, has [[#Options for Santa|ten different possible settings]]. The one it's set to at this point of the comic is the traditional ''chimney''. Among the other nine there is the more logical option ''open window'', but surprisingly there is no option called ''the door''. But the other eight are increasingly weird or even impossible (though of course not for Santa, who can deliver a billion packets in one night and fly in a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer…). These options ranging from the ”feasible” like ''mail slot'', ''heating vents'' or ''cat flap'' to the impossible/ridiculous (some even disgusting) as ''kitchen faucet'', ''shower drain'' or ''toilet'' over the truly magical ''bathroom mirror '' and to the downright unpleasant - ''pores of your skin''. (See [[555: Two Mirrors]] regarding the mirror version).

As Megan and Ponytail are on their way to the next stop on the tour of these facilities Megan trips and catches herself on the Santa dial, messing it up by clicking it twice. Ponytail is disturbed by this and holds up her hand to her mouth. The reason for this is obvious when Megan asks what it was set to before so as to undo the mishap, because Ponytail tells that she has forgotten. So they cannot put it back right. This kind of proves that Ponytail is just a guide, and not the creator of the control panels.

As so often seen with human behaviors (if they are indeed human beings at all?), Megan says she will simply take a wild guess and hope she get it right. As the only thing she really knows is that it is not on the right setting now, there is only 1/9 that she will get it right assuming she will at least change it away from the setting she ended up on.

As we can see in the comic the dial clicks twice, implying it has moved two positions; Megan has thus most likely changed the dial to either "kitchen faucet" or "mail slot". Or the dial was moved one click away and one click back to the original position. As we do not know which of these she will now change away from, It is impossible to guess from the comic where she end up putting it, all ten options are possible. 
Since this comic was released on the 23rd of December, we are likely to find out in less than two days, if Santa comes out of the pores on our skin, or just through the mail slot... Only the first of these options will for certain be detected by someone…

As it is Ponytail who is showing Megan around, it is thus the first time Megan even hears about these dials, and she has no idea about where the Santa dial was pointing before. The reason why Ponytail cannot remember to which option the dial was set before is most likely because she is not part of our universe, and also not the creator of the control panel. If this is a control room outside of our universe these settings will not affect the two girls but they also have no need to know about Christmas on Earth. Anyone with access to these control room, might not particularly care for what happens on Earth, which is just one of a multitude of planet and stars that needs to be controlled from this control room.

An alternative explanation for the reason why Ponytail has forgotten, is that the universe immediately updated its settings to the latest selection, once Megan released the dial, changing all previously existing folklore and memories in existence to match (this will only make sense if the two girls are part of the universe that they are in control of). Where previously it was widely known that Santa Claus entered through the chimney, it is now widely known that he enters through kitchen faucets or mail slots (depending on Megan's selection). This makes it impossible to remember what the original setting was. Considering that Megan asks what the original setting was, we can reasonably assume that she remembers the action of changing the dial and thus knows that the lore she currently considers to be correct, is not the original setting.

The title text continues this by showing another ad-lib dial: ''[[#Options for dogs|Sound dogs make]]'' ranging from the norm (barking) to cat sounds (hissing, very embarrassing for a dog) over "lightsaber noises" and speech to swearing. This is a dial, most likely on another control panel for animal sounds (but it could of course specifically be the sound a dog would make in response to Santa's entry, by whatever method?)- It would thus give the same option of changing the expected vocal response of the dog away from (our norm of) barking, as the other dial with the way Santa enters the house. In popular culture, talking dogs are a commonly used trope; in contrast, swearing "dogs" are few, the most famous being {{w|Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog}}, a puppet created by {{w|Conan O'Brien}} and {{w|Robert Smigel}} and performed by the latter.

The comic might also be a joke on real-life controls often having no clear "default" value - which, by the way, is sometimes the case for virtual controls as well.

==Options for Santa==
*Below is a table with the ten possible settings for ''Santa enters houses through...''; starting with the originally chosen standard option and going clockwise through the rest:
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5
|'''Option''' || '''Normal Entry/Exit for...'''
|-
|{{w|Chimney}} || {{W|Santa Claus}} typically comes in this way (see him here in a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I-b_GJ4ltk victorian roof-top song and dance number]. Also {{w|The_Three_Little_Pigs|big bad wolves}} uses this entrance in Disney’s cartoon.
|-
|{{w|Shower#Drainage|Shower drain}} || Dirty shower water.
|-
|{{w|Mail slot}} || Letters, post cards and small presents delivers by the mailman.
|-
|{{w|Duct (flow)|Heating vents}} || Hot air used for {{w|central heating}}.
|-
|{{w|Bathroom}} {{w|mirror}} || See {{w|Candyman (film)|Candyman}}, or {{w|Bloody Mary (folklore)|Bloody Mary}} (the latter has been used in [[555: Two Mirrors]]).
|-
|{{w|Skin pore|Pores of your skin}} || {{w|Sweat}} leaving the body.
|-
|{{w|Toilet}} || {{w|Human waste}} and {{w|The_Shawshank_Redemption|life-term prisoners}} (at least through the sewer).
|-
|{{w|Cat flap}} || Domesticated cats and dogs.
|-
|{{w|Sink|Kitchen faucet}} || Water.
|-
|{{w|Window|Open window}} || {{w|Burglars}} and other criminals. Also often used as an exit by teenagers in movies and other film media, or by people who have locked themselves out of their own house.
|}

==Options for dogs==
*Below is a table with the five possible settings for ''Sound dogs make''; starting with the current and continuing with the order in the title text:
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5
|'''Option''' || '''Normal sound for...'''
|-
|{{w|Bark (sound)|Barking}} || {{w|Dogs}} current standard sound in our universe...
|-
|[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hissing Hissing] || Typically a {{w|List of animal sounds|sound contributed}} to {{w|snakes}}, but also something {{w|cats}} are [http://www.animalplanet.com/pets/why-do-cats-hiss/ said to hiss], for instance as a reaction against a barking dog. It would thus be very frustrating for dogs if their noise was changed into that or their arch enemies.
|-
|{{w|Lightsaber|Lightsaber noises}} || A lightsaber makes a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kpHK4YIwY4 very unique sound], and as they are one of the most known props from the {{w|Star Wars}} universe, it is very relevant as the newest Star Wars movie {{w|Star Wars: The Force Awakens}} was released a week before this comic. Star Wars was also the main theme a month ago in the comic [[1608: Hoverboard]], the coin collecting game that celebrated [[Randall|Randall's]] new book.
|-
|{{w|Fluency#Speech|Fluent}} {{w|English language|English}} || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRcUcxtaX-Q Speaking dogs] are a common trope as are {{w|talking animals}} in general. A person who is native to a country where they speak English will usually be fluent in speaking English. But a person may not usually be described as being fluent in their {{w|Native tongue}}. But a person from a country who does not speak English as their first language, but who speaks it very well would speak fluent English.
|-
|{{w|Profanity|Swearing}} || It would be unpleasant for people who dislike swearing, and a big problems for movies such as {{w|Lassie}} where most of the soundtrack would have to be replaced by {{w|Bleep censor|bleeps}}. Swearing "dogs" are few, the most famous being {{w|Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog}}, a puppet created by {{w|Conan O'Brien}} and {{w|Robert Smigel}} and performed by the latter.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Ponytail are walking over to a console, Ponytail points towards it. They are drawn in a panel that is only half the width of the next panel below]
:Ponytail: Over here we have the universe control panel.
:Ponytail: These dials, for example, control Christmas.

:[A dial is shown. There is a label at the top and then there are ten settings, five symmetrically on the left and right side, but no setting straight up or down. It looks allot like the dial on a washing machine with different programs. The dial points towards the top left setting. All settings are labeled and there is a small line going to the point on the dial connected with each setting. The line at 3 and 9 o'clock are straight the other 8 are divided in two, where the first part goes horizontally and then bends either up or down, to end in the right position. Here the labele at the top and then the setting labels clockwise from top right, thus ending with the one the dial is set to:]
:'''Santa enters houses through...'''
:Shower Drain
:Mail Slot
:Heating Vents
:Bathroom Mirror
:Pores of Your Skin
:Toilet
:Cat Flap
:Kitchen Faucet
:Open Window
:Chimney

:[Ponytail is passing by this control panel looking back at Megan who trips and falls towards the console.]
:Megan: Whoops!
:Megans legs: Trip

:[Megan catches herself on the dial of the control panel and accidentally turns the dial. Ponytail has taken her hands to her mouth.]
:Dial: Click Click

:[Megan is standing in front of the console looking at the dial, Ponytail is standing behind it.]
:Megan: What was the Santa dial set to before?
:Ponytail: I forget.
:Megan: I'll just guess

==Trivia==
*In the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/7/73/20151223160450!christmas_settings.png original version] of the comic Ponytail erroneously said: ''These dials, for example, '''controls''' Christmas.''
**This was soon changed to the current (and grammatically correct) version with out the "s" at the end of controls ''These dials, for example, control Christmas.''
**Thus proving that it was intended that there were more than one dial, we just see the one that Megan later changed by mistake for the sake of the joke of the comic.

===Physical constants control panel===
*Below is a table with ten of the most likely dials to find on a Universe Control Panel for {{w|Physical constant|physical constants}}.
**(Please feel free to reorder or change out constants, if there are some “more important” constants left out, or reorder the list if that would feel more appropriate), and add more explanation.
**If just one of these constant had a slightly different value, life as we know it (or even star formation) might not have been possible, (see the {{w|anthropic principle}}). So it was good that it was only the Santa setting Megan screwed-on (up).
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5
|'''Dial label''' || '''Value''' || '''Constant governs…/what would happen if it changed etc.'''
|-
|{{w|Planck constant}} || h = 6.626 069 57 × 10−34 J·s ||
|-
|{{w|Speed of light}} || c = 299 792 458 m·s−1 || A low speed of light would delay the imagery one sees, as well as dramatically increase Redshift effect [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift] and potentially allow Faster-than-Light travel. Of course, FTL wouldn't be as beneficial if C was lessened.
''However'', it is likely that light (unfettered, i.e. in a vacuum) travels at the speed of light not because it is specifically the speed of light, but because it is the speed limit of all things. Changing 'c' would then no more allow FTL travel than raising it might make light outpace the likes of gravity wave effects.
|-
|{{w|Gravitational constant}} || G = 6.67384 × 10−11 m3·kg−1·s−2 || This setting would make things heavier or lighter, and cause orbits to change, potentially causing either collapse of orbital systems, or objects to escape.
|-
|{{w|Fine-structure constant}} || α = 1⁄137.036 || Someone must have turned the dial just a little away from 1/137…
|-
|{{w|Boltzmann constant}} || k = 1.380 6488 × 10−23 J·K−1 ||
|-
|{{w|Elementary charge}} || e = 1.602 176 565 × 10−19 C ||
|-
|{{w|Bohr radius}} || a0 = 5.291 772 1092 × 10−11 m ||
|-
|{{w|electron|Electron mass}} || me = 9.109 382 91 × 10−31 kg ||
|-
|{{w| proton|Proton mass }} || mp = 1.672 621 777 × 10−27 kg ||
|-
|{{w|Absolute zero|Temperature at absolute zero}} || T = 0 K = −273.15°C = −459.67°F ||
|-
|π || pi=ratio of circumference to diameter for any circle ≆ [[https://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/localgov/Second%20Level%20pages/indiana_pi_bill.htm][3.2]] || Noneuclidean planar geometry
|-
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Christmas]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Animals]]

1620: Christmas Settings

2015-12-25T01:21:32Z

108.162.216.56:

{{comic
| number = 1620
| date = December 23, 2015
| title = Christmas Settings
| image = christmas_settings.png
| titletext = SOUND DOGS MAKE: [BARKING] [HISSING] [LIGHTSABER NOISES] [FLUENT ENGLISH] [SWEARING]
}}

==Explanation==
[[Ponytail]] is showing [[Megan]] around in her facility, and as the comic begins they enter a new room (''over here we have'') where she has the ''Universe Control Panel''.

A "Universe Control Panel" would be a set of dials to control the universe, and anyone having access to a room with these controls would from our point of view be in a God like position. If such a room did exist it would most likely be situated outside our universe (a dimension outside, and not necessarily in another universe). Since this comic was released just before {{w|Christmas}}, looking at it from a {{w|Christian}} point of view, this would be {{w|God|God's}} domicile and his control room for the universe would probably be located in {{w|Heaven}}.

Seen from a physicist's point of view, the typical panels for such a control room would be with dials to control the specific size of {{w|Physical constant|fundamental constants}} of the universe such as the {{w|speed of light in vacuum}}, {{w|Planck constant}} and the {{w|fine-structure constant}} to mention a few - see more under the trivia section [[#Physical constants control panel|Physical constants control panel]].

But the first control panel they reach includes the dials that control {{w|Christmas}}. So these control panels are either much more detailed than just physics constants (or do not consider these underlying constants at all). That we see this option as the first is, of course, because this is a [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comic]] released on the 23rd of December.

From Ponytail's comment it is clear that the panel has dials for controlling several different things, and there is more than one dial for Christmas. We only see one of these up close (to get an idea of how they work, and for the sake of the joke).

In the second panel, Megan and Ponytail have not reached the control panel yet, so it is the reader, and not them, who sees the dial, which controls how {{w|Santa Claus}} enters people’s houses: The ''Santa enters houses through''-dial, has [[#Options for Santa|ten different possible settings]]. The one it's set to at this point of the comic is the traditional ''chimney''. Among the other nine there is the more logical option ''open window'', but surprisingly there is no option called ''the door''. But the other eight are increasingly weird or even impossible (though of course not for Santa, who can deliver a billion packets in one night and fly in a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer…). These options ranging from the ”feasible” like ''mail slot'', ''heating vents'' or ''cat flap'' to the impossible/ridiculous (some even disgusting) as ''kitchen faucet'', ''shower drain'' or ''toilet'' over the truly magical ''bathroom mirror '' and to the downright unpleasant - ''pores of your skin''. (See [[555: Two Mirrors]] regarding the mirror version).

As Megan and Ponytail are on their way to the next stop on the tour of these facilities Megan trips and catches herself on the Santa dial, messing it up by clicking it twice. Ponytail is disturbed by this and holds up her hand to her mouth. The reason for this is obvious when Megan asks what it was set to before so as to undo the mishap, because Ponytail tells that she has forgotten. So they cannot put it back right. This kind of proves that Ponytail is just a guide, and not the creator of the control panels.

As so often seen with human behaviors (if they are indeed human beings at all?), Megan says she will simply take a wild guess and hope she get it right. As the only thing she really knows is that it is not on the right setting now, there is only 1/9 that she will get it right assuming she will at least change it away from the setting she ended up on.

As we can see in the comic the dial clicks twice, implying it has moved two positions; Megan has thus most likely changed the dial to either "kitchen faucet" or "mail slot". Or the dial was moved one click away and one click back to the original position. As we do not know which of these she will now change away from, It is impossible to guess from the comic where she end up putting it, all ten options are possible. 
Since this comic was released on the 23rd of December, we are likely to find out in less than two days, if Santa comes out of the pores on our skin, or just through the mail slot... Only the first of these options will for certain be detected by someone…

As it is Ponytail who are showing Megan around, it is thus the first time Megan even hears about these dials, and she has no idea about where the Santa dial was pointing before. The reason why Ponytail cannot remember to which option the dial was set before is most likely because she is not part of our universe, and also not the creator of the control panel. If this is a control room outside of our universe these settings will not affect the two girls but they also have no need to know about Christmas on Earth. Anyone with access to these control room, might not particularly care for what happens on Earth, which is just one of a multitude of planet and stars that needs to be controlled from this control room.

An alternative explanation for the reason why Ponytail has forgotten, is that the universe immediately updated its settings to the latest selection, once Megan released the dial, changing all previously existing folklore and memories in existence to match (this will only make sense if the two girls are part of the universe that they are in control of). Where previously it was widely known that Santa Claus entered through the chimney, it is now widely known that he enters through kitchen faucets or mail slots (depending on Megan's selection). This makes it impossible to remember what the original setting was. Considering that Megan asks what the original setting was, we can reasonably assume that she remembers the action of changing the dial and thus knows that the lore she currently considers to be correct, is not the original setting.

The title text continues this by showing another ad-lib dial: ''[[#Options for dogs|Sound dogs make]]'' ranging from the norm (barking) to cat sounds (hissing, very embarrassing for a dog) over "lightsaber noises" and speech to swearing. This is a dial, most likely on another control panel for animal sounds (but it could of course specifically be the sound a dog would make in response to Santa's entry, by whatever method?)- It would thus give the same option of changing the expected vocal response of the dog away from (our norm of) barking, as the other dial with the way Santa enters the house. In popular culture, talking dogs are a commonly used trope; in contrast, swearing "dogs" are few, the most famous being {{w|Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog}}, a puppet created by {{w|Conan O'Brien}} and {{w|Robert Smigel}} and performed by the latter.

The comic might also be a joke on real-life controls often having no clear "default" value - which, by the way, is sometimes the case for virtual controls as well.

==Options for Santa==
*Below is a table with the ten possible settings for ''Santa enters houses through...''; starting with the originally chosen standard option and going clockwise through the rest:
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5
|'''Option''' || '''Normal Entry/Exit for...'''
|-
|{{w|Chimney}} || {{W|Santa Claus}} typically comes in this way (see him here in a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I-b_GJ4ltk victorian roof-top song and dance number]. Also {{w|The_Three_Little_Pigs|big bad wolves}} uses this entrance in Disney’s cartoon.
|-
|{{w|Shower#Drainage|Shower drain}} || Dirty shower water.
|-
|{{w|Mail slot}} || Letters, post cards and small presents delivers by the mailman.
|-
|{{w|Duct (flow)|Heating vents}} || Hot air used for {{w|central heating}}.
|-
|{{w|Bathroom}} {{w|mirror}} || See {{w|Candyman (film)|Candyman}}, or {{w|Bloody Mary (folklore)|Bloody Mary}} (the latter has been used in [[555: Two Mirrors]]).
|-
|{{w|Skin pore|Pores of your skin}} || {{w|Sweat}} leaving the body.
|-
|{{w|Toilet}} || {{w|Human waste}} and {{w|The_Shawshank_Redemption|life-term prisoners}} (at least through the sewer).
|-
|{{w|Cat flap}} || Domesticated cats and dogs.
|-
|{{w|Sink|Kitchen faucet}} || Water.
|-
|{{w|Window|Open window}} || {{w|Burglars}} and other criminals. Also often used as an exit by teenagers in movies and other film media, or by people who have locked themselves out of their own house.
|}

==Options for dogs==
*Below is a table with the five possible settings for ''Sound dogs make''; starting with the current and continuing with the order in the title text:
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5
|'''Option''' || '''Normal sound for...'''
|-
|{{w|Bark (sound)|Barking}} || {{w|Dogs}} current standard sound in our universe...
|-
|[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hissing Hissing] || Typically a {{w|List of animal sounds|sound contributed}} to {{w|snakes}}, but also something {{w|cats}} are [http://www.animalplanet.com/pets/why-do-cats-hiss/ said to hiss], for instance as a reaction against a barking dog. It would thus be very frustrating for dogs if their noise was changed into that or their arch enemies.
|-
|{{w|Lightsaber|Lightsaber noises}} || A lightsaber makes a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kpHK4YIwY4 very unique sound], and as they are one of the most known props from the {{w|Star Wars}} universe, it is very relevant as the newest Star Wars movie {{w|Star Wars: The Force Awakens}} was released a week before this comic. Star Wars was also the main theme a month ago in the comic [[1608: Hoverboard]], the coin collecting game that celebrated [[Randall|Randall's]] new book.
|-
|{{w|Fluency#Speech|Fluent}} {{w|English language|English}} || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRcUcxtaX-Q Speaking dogs] are a common trope as are {{w|talking animals}} in general. A person who is native to a country where they speak English will usually be fluent in speaking English. But a person may not usually be described as being fluent in their {{w|Native tongue}}. But a person from a country who does not speak English as their first language, but who speaks it very well would speak fluent English.
|-
|{{w|Profanity|Swearing}} || It would be unpleasant for people who dislike swearing, and a big problems for movies such as {{w|Lassie}} where most of the soundtrack would have to be replaced by {{w|Bleep censor|bleeps}}. Swearing "dogs" are few, the most famous being {{w|Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog}}, a puppet created by {{w|Conan O'Brien}} and {{w|Robert Smigel}} and performed by the latter.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Ponytail are walking over to a console, Ponytail points towards it. They are drawn in a panel that is only half the width of the next panel below]
:Ponytail: Over here we have the universe control panel.
:Ponytail: These dials, for example, control Christmas.

:[A dial is shown. There is a label at the top and then there are ten settings, five symmetrically on the left and right side, but no setting straight up or down. It looks allot like the dial on a washing machine with different programs. The dial points towards the top left setting. All settings are labeled and there is a small line going to the point on the dial connected with each setting. The line at 3 and 9 o'clock are straight the other 8 are divided in two, where the first part goes horizontally and then bends either up or down, to end in the right position. Here the labele at the top and then the setting labels clockwise from top right, thus ending with the one the dial is set to:]
:'''Santa enters houses through...'''
:Shower Drain
:Mail Slot
:Heating Vents
:Bathroom Mirror
:Pores of Your Skin
:Toilet
:Cat Flap
:Kitchen Faucet
:Open Window
:Chimney

:[Ponytail is passing by this control panel looking back at Megan who trips and falls towards the console.]
:Megan: Whoops!
:Megans legs: Trip

:[Megan catches herself on the dial of the control panel and accidentally turns the dial. Ponytail has taken her hands to her mouth.]
:Dial: Click Click

:[Megan is standing in front of the console looking at the dial, Ponytail is standing behind it.]
:Megan: What was the Santa dial set to before?
:Ponytail: I forget.
:Megan: I'll just guess

==Trivia==
*In the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/7/73/20151223160450!christmas_settings.png original version] of the comic Ponytail erroneously said: ''These dials, for example, '''controls''' Christmas.''
**This was soon changed to the current (and grammatically correct) version with out the "s" at the end of controls ''These dials, for example, control Christmas.''
**Thus proving that it was intended that there were more than one dial, we just see the one that Megan later changed by mistake for the sake of the joke of the comic.

===Physical constants control panel===
*Below is a table with ten of the most likely dials to find on a Universe Control Panel for {{w|Physical constant|physical constants}}.
**(Please feel free to reorder or change out constants, if there are some “more important” constants left out, or reorder the list if that would feel more appropriate), and add more explanation.
**If just one of these constant had a slightly different value, life as we know it (or even star formation) might not have been possible, (see the {{w|anthropic principle}}). So it was good that it was only the Santa setting Megan screwed-on (up).
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5
|'''Dial label''' || '''Value''' || '''Constant governs…/what would happen if it changed etc.'''
|-
|{{w|Planck constant}} || h = 6.626 069 57 × 10−34 J·s ||
|-
|{{w|Speed of light}} || c = 299 792 458 m·s−1 || A low speed of light would delay the imagery one sees, as well as dramatically increase Redshift effect [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift] and potentially allow Faster-than-Light travel. Of course, FTL wouldn't be as beneficial if C was lessened.
''However'', it is likely that light (unfettered, i.e. in a vacuum) travels at the speed of light not because it is specifically the speed of light, but because it is the speed limit of all things. Changing 'c' would then no more allow FTL travel than raising it might make light outpace the likes of gravity wave effects.
|-
|{{w|Gravitational constant}} || G = 6.67384 × 10−11 m3·kg−1·s−2 || This setting would make things heavier or lighter, and cause orbits to change, potentially causing either collapse of orbital systems, or objects to escape.
|-
|{{w|Fine-structure constant}} || α = 1⁄137.036 || Someone must have turned the dial just a little away from 1/137…
|-
|{{w|Boltzmann constant}} || k = 1.380 6488 × 10−23 J·K−1 ||
|-
|{{w|Elementary charge}} || e = 1.602 176 565 × 10−19 C ||
|-
|{{w|Bohr radius}} || a0 = 5.291 772 1092 × 10−11 m ||
|-
|{{w|electron|Electron mass}} || me = 9.109 382 91 × 10−31 kg ||
|-
|{{w| proton|Proton mass }} || mp = 1.672 621 777 × 10−27 kg ||
|-
|{{w|Absolute zero|Temperature at absolute zero}} || T = 0 K = −273.15°C = −459.67°F ||
|-
|π || pi=ratio of circumference to diameter for any circle ≆ [[https://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/localgov/Second%20Level%20pages/indiana_pi_bill.htm][3.2]] || Noneuclidean planar geometry
|-
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Christmas]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Animals]]

1619: Watson Medical Algorithm

2015-12-24T17:43:22Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1619
| date = December 21, 2015
| title = Watson Medical Algorithm
| image = watson_medical_algorithm.png
| titletext = Due to a minor glitch, 'discharge patient' does not cause the algorithm to exit, but instead leads back to 'hunt down and capture patient'.
}}

==Republished comic==

This comic was updated and republished on the 22nd Dec -- [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/1/15/20151222113107%21watson_medical_algorithm.png click here to see the original version]

The explanation matched the updated version.

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|much more on the different procedures etc.}}
IBM's {{w|Watson (computer)|Watson}} is a natural language system designed to answer questions posed by humans. Recently, IBM has extended Watson to act as a {{w|clinical decision support system}}, using image analytics to aid physicians in medical decision making. In this comic, Randall shows a {{w|flowchart}} representing a possible algorithm for Watson, including bizarre techniques including surgical alteration of a patient to match a height and weight chart and squeezing the patient to remove yellow fluids. Like [[416: Zealous Autoconfig]], this comic pokes fun at a rigid, poorly-designed setup that ends up potentially doing more harm than good. The only end node in this flow chart is "Perform Autopsy", suggesting that Watson will not stop until the patient is dead.

Modern medicine involves both standard processes and clinical judgement based around years of advanced training. An algorithm like this would have to be incredibly complicated in order to simulate the clinical judgement of a good doctor.

The algorithm depicted treats a patient as more of a machine or mechanical system than a living being, especially through decisions such as:

*Injecting oxygen into patients with low oxygen saturation, rather than treating the root cause.
*Removing and inspecting a skeleton, then diagnosing the patient's condition with a bone count.
*Dissecting a doctor "for parts" after consulting him or her for advice.
*Removing extra limbs from a patient if the count is 100 or more (This might be a reference to different number systems used in computers, as 100 is read in binary as four.)
*Determining whether the "build environment" of the patient is sane. This is most probably a reference to the configure script used in the {{w|GNU_build_system|GNU build system}}, which emits "checking whether build environment is sane" as one of its status messages.
*Rinsing the whole patient with a saline solution.
*Removing organs from a patient regardless of response to an organ donation request.

Other decisions appear to be entirely unrelated to the conditions upon which they are predicated:

*If the patient doesn't rate their pain on a scale from 0-10, sequence their genome, apply a {{w|tourniquet}}, and perform an {{w|autopsy}}
*If the patient's phone's battery is low, defibrillate until the battery is charged, sync photos, then administer general anesthesia
*If the patient is successfully comforted after an oxygen injection, check their medical history and apply skin grafts
*If green fluid is released from the patient, begin to cauterize
*If the patient has less than 100 limbs, check their Vitamin D level

The title text implies that, if the patient is so lucky to ever reach one of the two places with the option "discharge patient," a minor glitch will cause to program to go back to the ''hunt down and capture patient'' option which thus force the patient and the program to repeat the process again in an infinite cycle, that will only end once the patient give another rating of their pain level than on the 0-10 scale. Then the program will start to sequence their genome then apply a tourniquet and finally perform an autopsy, on what will in the end for certain be a deceased patient, but maybe not when the autopsy began. This will finally cause the patient to leave the cycle as a corpse.

This is one of many comics with [[:Category:Flowcharts|flowcharts]], amongst other a recent comic with that very name: [[1488: Flowcharts]].

This is the second comic in a row about health issues with the last comic being [[1618: Cold Medicine]].

The computer's behavior in this comic can be compared to the healthcare robot named Baymax in the movie {{w|Big Hero 6 (film)}}.

The comic was updated after it was first posted: the decisions for number of limbs were swapped.

==Transcript and Discussion of Medical Appropriateness==
{{incomplete|The transcript exists to make the comic accessible to the blind and people who can't see the comic. This transcript is not faithful to the comic as it contains a lot of text that is not in the comic, and is most certainly not screen reader friendly.}}
{| border=1
| | Step
| | Medically valid?
| | Conditions and following step
|-
| |
Draw Blood
| |
Phlebotomy is a normal early step in the diagnostic process, but not as first and unconditional step
| |
Record patient’s name
|-
| |
Record patient’s name
| |
OK
| |
Measure Patient’s height and Weight
|-
| |
Measure Patient’s height and Weight
| |
OK
| |
Consult Standard height/weight chart
|-
| |
Consult Standard height/weight chart
| |
OK
| |
Surgically adjust patient to match
|-
| |
Surgically adjust patient to match
| |
May be considered ethically dubious unless there are [http://www.gosh.nhs.uk/medical-information/procedures-and-treatments/limb-length-difference-and-limb-lengthening sound medical reasons] for doing so. Could be an allusion to {{w|Procrustes}}.
| |
Is patient coughing up blood?
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Is patient coughing up blood?
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
OK, coughing up blood is generally a sign that there is something wrong. Typical causes are respiratory tract infections (e.g. tuberculosis), lung trauma or pulmonary embolism.
| |
Yes: Gather blood and return it to body
|-
| |
No: Is patient still here?
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Is patient still here?
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Not usually considered a step, but missing patients are a problem in some fields, psychiatry or intensive care for example.
| |
Yes: Record pulse rate
|-
| |
No: Hunt down and capture patient
|-
| |
Hunt down and capture patient
| |
Valid if patient should not have left the bed/unit, but the wording is possibly dubious.
| |
Is patient still here?
|-
| |
Gather blood and return it to body
| |
Dangerous idea in this case due to likelihood of contamination, although if safely done autotransfusion is an accepted medical technique to ensure a matching blood supply prior to a major operation, or to enhance stamina (blood doping)
| |
Record pulse rate
|-
| |
Record pulse rate
| |
OK, but maybe a little late.
| |
Is patient screaming?
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Is patient screaming?
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Very important question, indicating patient is conscious, in pain, and aware pain is bad. First attenders can use it in classifying priorities (quiet patients may be more severely injured). Generally useful in assessing nerve damage, pain relief, etc.
| |
Yes: Ignore
|-
| |
No: Check blood O2 saturation
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 ` |
Check blood O2 saturation
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Only really indicated if the patient is in danger of hypoxia. Generally normal people should have a SpO2 of 98-100%, but in chronic lung disease this can fall as low to 80%, and in premature babies a SpO2 of 90% is usually targeted to avoid problems with retinopathy. If the SpO2 were to fall as low as 50%, the patient would definitely be dead or unconscious.
| |
>50%: Remove and inspect skeleton
|-
| |
<50%: Inject oxygen
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Remove and inspect skeleton
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Fatal if patient is still alive when beginning. Also not a valid medical procedure in any way as it is impossible to remove most of the long bones of the body without destroying all surrounding tissue.
| |
Too many bones: Is fluid coming out of patient?
|-
| |
Too few bones: Request consult with human doctor
|-
| |
Request consult with human doctor
| |
Medically valid in the context of obtaining an opinion from a doctor in a different speciality who is better suited to treating the patient.
| |
Dissect doctor for parts
|-
| |
Dissect doctor for parts
| | This may be considered ethically dubious. Possible reference to the Doctor Who episode “{{w|The Girl in the Fireplace}}”
| |
Discharge patient
|-
| |
Discharge patient
| |
Acceptable, but patient would generally be dead by then.
| |
END STATE (before you read the title text)
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Is fluid coming out of patient
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Unintended fluid release is always a problem. How significant a problem depends on where the fluid came from and if it is supposed to be coming from there. Red generally is due to blood, yellow is due to pus/tissue fluid/lymph and green signifies bacterial infection or bile salts (biliverdin). Could also relate to normal fluids being lost (e.g. urine, saliva, sweat)
| |
No: Squeeze patient
|-
| |
Yes: What color?
|-
| |
Squeeze patient
| |
Could be in the medical context is in providing external ventilation (see iron lung) or other means of removing fluid (e.g. squeezing pus from a boil).
| |
Is fluid coming out of patient
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=4 |
What color?
| width="33%" rowspan=4 |
Never underestimate the number of different types of fluid the body can produce.
| |
Yellow: Squeeze Patient
|-
| |
Black: Activate Sprinklers
|-
| |
Red: Ask patient to rate pain level
|-
| |
Green: Cauterize
|-
| |
Activate sprinklers
| |
Not medically valid. Presumably a reference to how much cleaning up will be required by this stage.
| |
Subdue patient
|-
| |
Subdue patient
| |
Potentially very important if patient is behaving dangerously to themselves and others around them (due to mental health issues e.g. psychosis or drugs) and/or is moving too much to be given treatment.
| |
Apply cream
|-
| |
Apply cream
| |
Medically valid as a form of barrier dressing to improve wound healing.
| |
Ask patient to rate pain level
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=4 |
Ask patient to rate pain level
| width="33%" rowspan=4 |
Useful in the sense that it provides the doctor with the means to ensure that the patient is receiving adequate analgesia during conditions of chronic and acute pain.
| |
0-8: Massage scalp
|-
| |
9: Admit for observation
|-
| |
10: Laser eye removal
|-
| |
Other response: Sequence genome
|-
| |
Massage scalp
| |
This would belong more to the domain of palliative care and reflexology rather than being an accepted medical treatment.
| |
Patient is healthy
|-
| |
Patient is healthy
| |
A subjective assessment of the health patient is often helpful in ruling out certain diagnoses. For example, one is less likely to suspect cancer in a fit, healthy 30 year old than a thin, lethargic 50 year old.
| |
Admit for observation
|-
| |
Admit for observation
| |
Useful in the context of 'watchful waiting', in which the doctor may be unsure if the patient actually has a condition that they suspect that the patient has. By keeping the patient on the ward for a few days, the clinician can monitor the progression of symptoms and rapidly initiate adequate treatment if medically warranted.
| |
Ask patient to rate pain level
|-
| |
Laser eye removal
| |
This is not a standard medical procedure. This could be a pun on laser eye surgery where a laser is used to correct visual problems (e.g. short-sightedness), or laser hair and tattoo removal.
| |
Admit for observation
|-
| |
Sequence genome
| |
Useful in the association of extremely rare point mutations with an organic illness. See for instance the Genome 10K Project or the Cancer Genome Atlas. Or in diagnosing extremely rare mutations that are not picked up by most commercial DNA screening tests (e.g. kidney failure due to INF2 mutation).
| |
Apply tourniquet
|-
| |
Apply tourniquet
| |
Useful to stop acute bleeding from an injured extremity, but if it is drawn too tightly it can cause neuromuscular damage.
| |
Perform autopsy
|-
| |
Perform autopsy
| | The patient has died, and Watson is being ordered to determine the cause of death. Note that the only way to reach this state is from "apply tourniquet", implying the cause of death is strangulation via tourniquet.
| | END STATE (taking the title text into account, the only possible one)
|-
| |
Inject oxygen
| |
May be fatal as injecting gases directly to the blood vessels can cause a serious embolism if it blocks blood flow to the brain or coronary arteries. However, if the oxygen is injected slowly into the venous circulation, it may be survivable as the bubbles may simply collect in the lungs where the oxygen is then slowly reabsorbed into the blood.
| |
Comfort patient
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Comfort patient
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Psychological support to the patient and relatives is often useful after breaking news of a poor prognosis. It may also be useful in subduing the agitated or psychotic patient.
| |
Comforting successful: Review medical history
|-
| |
Comforting unsuccessful: Subdue patient
|-
| |
Review medical history
| |
Important early step, rather too late and conditional.
| |
Skin grafts
|-
| |
Skin grafts
| |
Only indicated if massive areas of the skin are damaged (typically due to burns)
| |
Count number of limbs
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Count number of limbs
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Not really relevant in medicine, but may be of use to know the reason behind any missing or extra limbs on seeing the patient though a through review of the medical history will render this point moot. Probably a little late to be noticing this now.
| |
Fewer than 100: Measure Vitamin D
|-
| |
100+: Remove extra limbs
|-
| |
Remove extra limbs
| |
Medically indicated in cases of polymelia either due to cosmetic purposes or because the extra limbs pose a direct threat to the health of the baby.
| |
Subdue patient
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Measure vitamin D
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Valid in diagnosis of bone related issues, for example if multiple or comminuted fractures were being counted as additional limbs/bones.
| |
Good: Check whether build environment is sane
|-
| |
Bad: Blood loss?
|-
| |
Check whether build environment is sane
| |
Could be technical reference to the installation of the algorithm in the robot, or could relate to the sanity of:
*The robot doctor
*The patient undergoing this procedure (before or after reaching this part of the process)
*The person who programmed the robot to perform this flowchart
*The person who allowed this state of affairs to occur (I'm looking at you [[Black Hat]])

This could also be a reference to the title text for [[371: Compiler Complaint]].

NB: Whether the build environment is sane is irrelevant to the flowchart.
| |
Rinse patient with saline solution
|-
| |
Rinse patient with saline solution
| |
Tepid sponging may be indicated if the patient has a high fever. Could also refer to internally rinsing patient with saline solution i.e. providing intravenous sodium chloride to boost circulating volume or to perform peritoneal dialysis.
| |
Is patient phone battery low?
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Is patient phone battery low?
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Invalid in medical terminology, could be a technological metaphor for the patient's consciousness or stamina. "Your life-force is running out"
| |
Yes: Defibrillate
|-
| |
No: Sync photos from camera
|-
| |
Defibrillate
| |
Indicated in cases where there is ventricular fibrillation, and to a lesser extent in atrial fibrillation (chemical cardioversion with adenosine is usually preferred)
| |
Is patient phone battery low?
|-
| |
Sync photos from camera
| |
Definitely invalid. Could refer to the robot attempting to backup photos from a camera before attempting to repair it/attempting to back-up patient's consciousness.
| |
Administer general anesthesia
|-
| |
Administer general anesthesia
| |
Valid, but not at this stage. Only used when the procedure will invoke unnecessary distress or pain to the patient if they were to be awake beforehand.
| |
Discharge patient
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Blood loss?
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Useful. Patient may die if this clinical sign is missed.
| |
Minor: Patient address changed?
|-
| |
Substantial: Apply cream
|-
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Patient address changed?
| width="33%" rowspan=2 |
Useful to ensure that the organisation has current contact details for the patient in the event that they may need to contact the patient (e.g. to arrange further appointments)
| |
Yes: Request organ donation
|-
| |
No: Patient is healthy
|-
| |
Request organ donation
| |
Generally done prior to registering an individual for a driving licence or to a medical practice, or to the relatives of the deceased if consent had not been acquired beforehand.
|Remove organs
|-
| |
Remove organs
| |
The only organs which can be safely removed from a living person without resulting in serious, chronic medical issues are the kidneys/lungs (only one can be removed), spleen, part of the liver (as long as one lobe is left it can regrow to its original size) and colon (usually consisting of the appendix only). With some serious lifestyle modifications, the pancreas, pituitary gland, frontal lobe of brain, half of the brain, adrenal glands, bladder and most of the gut can be removed. The heart can be removed from the body and replaced with an artificial pump for a few months at the most. However, such organ removals are only indicated if there is a genuine clinical need to do so due to the non-negligible risk of death associated with these operations.
| Discharge patient
|-
| |
Discharge patient
| |
Appropriate, if the patient is no longer suffering from any conditions requiring in-hospital care
| |
END STATE (before you read the title text)
|}

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]
[[Category:Flowcharts]]
[[Category:Computers]]

1591: Bell's Theorem

2015-10-16T16:10:54Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */ More explanation of the theorem, with background

{{comic
| number = 1591
| date = October 16, 2015
| title = Bell's Theorem
| image = bells_theorem.png
| titletext = The no-communication theorem states that no communication about the no-communication theorem can clear up the misunderstanding quickly enough to allow faster-than-light signaling.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|No explaination of the Title Text, and links should e in explanation, not transcript.}}

In quantum mechanics (QM), 'measurement' is the process of allowing a small system to interact with its environment in a controlled way. The interaction allows information about the system's state to escape to the environment, producing an 'observation'. If the measurement apparatus is governed by classical mechanics (impossible in reality, but a very common simplification for the purposes of calculation), then the observation can be thought of as classical information, a bit (yes/no answer) in the simplest case. While the system may have been in any one of infinitely many states before the measurement (each a superposition of classical states), the fact that the measurement must leave it consistent with the classical result means that it can end up in only finitely many states afterwards. This is the 'wave-function collapse' of early QM, popularized by Schrodinger's cat, but unrelated to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which lay audiences often confuse it with.

Modern quantum mechanics acknowledges that the environment is not classical, and that wave-function collapse happens by a (comparatively) gradual process called 'decoherence', where information leaving the system is made up for by information coming from the environment that drives the system closer and closer to one of the finitely many state predicted by the simplified model above. (I.e., if a "Schrodinger's cat" is in a half-and-half superposition of the states "dead" and "alive", when its liveness is measured, the ratios of "dead" and "alive" will shift rapidly towards (though not quite reach) 0 and 100% or 100 and 0%. For all but the shortest time scales, the cat's post-measurement state might as well be classical.)

Entanglement is a situation where the future outcomes of two or more measurements that would be independent in a classical world are nonetheless correlated. For example, two widely separated electrons could be in a state where, considered individually, each is in a superimposed spin-up/spin-down state, but if one is measured as spin-up, the others will necessarily be measured as spin-down. This is untroubling if the two electrons are modeled as a single system, but strange-seeming if we think of them as separate: how did the measurement of the first electron allow information from the environment around it affect the far-away second electron? It seems like the electron's are communicating, potentially at superliminal speeds, which would violate either relativity or causality. (In actuality, there's a fairly simple proof that correlations from entanglement can't be used to communicate, and causality and relativity are safe. But that doesn't make the seemingly faster-than-light effects much less of a surprise.)

One can try to address these concerns by considering 'local hidden variables', classical properties of a local system (like a single electron) that could have been observed but were not. For example, perhaps a classical part of the electrons' state lets them "agree" on a future classical state at the moment the are entangled, and then they just reveal that state in the future. But this becomes unwieldy: there are infinitely many possible future observations the electrons would have to agree on, and it seems difficult to do this without infinitely many local hidden variables.

Bell's Theorem states "No physical theory of (finitely many) local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics." It says that a theoretical treatment that divides the universe up into separate ("local") systems like this will always discard something about those systems' intercorrelations.

'Global hidden variables' are another story: if there is classical information shared across systems (perhaps by superliminal communication) even up to superdeterminism where the universe is just reading off a script, any correlations can be explained away. But this is unsatisfying.

The prefered resolution of the paradox is to not insist (as early physicists did) that the universe's state is a collection of bits (classical information), but treat it as a collection of qubits (quantum information).

Ponytail begins reading Bell's theorem to Cueball, who is standing 5 meters away. Cueball responds with a misunderstanding of Bell's Theorem in 1 nanosecond. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second. In one nanosecond, the light from Ponytail would only have traveled 0.299 meters, thus Cueball misunderstands Bell's Theorem faster than the light from Ponytail reading the Theorem can reach him, which implies that faster-than-light communication occurred to set up the misunderstanding.

The title text, with 4 negatives, tries to be as confusing as possible. The real No-Communication Theorem states that although determination of the state of one half of an entangled pair immediately determines that of the other half, how far away it may be, there's no way for the observer of the other half to see if he's the first to find out the state or whether it'd already been determined by the first observer. Thus, no information travels from one observer to the other. Randall's version is recursive. It hypothesises a method of communication whereby somebody misunderstanding the no-communication theorem (which also happens faster than the speed of light) could function as the reception of a faster-than-light signal. However, it goes on to point out that turning the signal off requires clearing up the confusion which takes much, much longer, thus neatly restoring the normality of slower than light communication.

==Transcript==
[First frame captioned: {{w|time|t}} = 0 {{w|nanosecond}}s] 
[[Ponytail]], holding a piece of paper and facing to the right: This is called {{w|Bell's Theorem}}. It was first–

[A double-headed arrow links the characters in the two frames. The arrow is labelled "5 meters".]

[Second frame captioned: t = 1 nanosecond] 
[[Cueball]], facing to the left towards Ponytail: Wow, faster-than-light communication is possible!

Caption: Bell's Second Theorem: Misunderstandings of Bell's Theorem happen so fast that they violate locality.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Science]]

1588: Hardware Reductionism

2015-10-12T14:18:21Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */ Kill strange hyphen

{{comic
| number = 1588
| date = October 9, 2015
| title = Hardware Reductionism
| image = hardware_reductionism.png
| titletext = My MRI research shows a clear correlation between the size of the parietal lobe--the part of the brain that handles spatial reasoning--and enjoyment of 3D Doritos®.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Reductionism}} is the belief that things can be explained by their smaller parts. It can be abused when complex phenomena with multiple causes are attributed to a single, simple cause.

{{w|Neurological}} reductionism is the attempt to explain people's behavior and personality by physical features of their brain. With advances in {{w|neuroscience}}, and especially in brain imaging, there's a fad to claim that brain types determine what the mind is. Examples of this kind of bad reductionism would be:

*Male brains have more grey matter than females. Therefore males are smarter. For an example of criticism of this kind of reasoning, see ''[http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/dec/04/male-female-brains-real-differences Male and female brains: the REAL differences]'' (4 December 2013).
*Brains of gay males are slightly more symmetrical, as are female brains, when compared to straight males. Therefore gay men are fated to be more effeminate. See [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080616-gay-brain.html Gay Men, Straight Women Have Similar Brains] (16 June 2008).
*The left side of the brain is associated with logical thinking, and the right, with visual and artistic thinking. Therefore people divide into "left-brain" or "right-brain" types, depending on how good they are at using each side. See {{w|lateralization of brain function}} on Wikipedia.

There are several problems with this kind of reasoning. First, most studies identify correlation, not causation (see {{w|correlation does not imply causation}}). Brains are plastic; they can be shaped by experience. For example, if, in a given society, the females are taught to mind their appearance, and the males are taught that aesthetic considerations are unmanly, then of course the female brains will end up with more developed aesthetic centers. In other words, behavior and capabilities aren't always ''determined'' by the brain. Sometimes it's the behavior that shapes the brain; sometimes a third factor (e.g., malnutrition) shapes both.

Second, even when the brain is actually a cause of the behavior, it's far from the only piece in the puzzle. Many studies on brain differences are correlation studies, often about very small effect sizes. Unfortunately, the popular science media tends to gloss over the statistical concept of "effect size". For example, imagine a study that says that males' brains are 0.1% more likely than females' brains to exhibit {{w|attention deficit hyperactivity disorder}} (ADHD). Journalists are prone to report it simply as '''Study Shows that Males Have More ADHD''', and this becomes a conversation sound-bite that neglects other factors, like genetics or pregnancy smoking. See also [[882: Significant]], which does not discuss effect size, but does raise other objections to writing soundbites based on a single study.

Another kind of excessive neuronal reductionism is the overemphasis on brain modules ("scientists identify brain area responsible for religious faith", and the like). Though it's true that the brain has specialized areas, it's also true that the processing is very complex, messy, and distributed all over. Some varieties of brain damage can often be overcome by learning to use undamaged areas of the brain.

The comic illustrates the problem by analogy to some better-understood general-purpose computing hardware: the {{w|CPU}} in a smartphone. [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] have used their smartphones to take pictures of the same event: a {{w|triathlon}}, that is, an athletic competition comprising three modalities (e.g., swimming, cycling, and running). Cueball wonders why is it that Megan's photos are more popular, and Megan gives a reductionist explanation: She tells that her phone is quad-core (four cores) whereas Cueball's phone only has two cores (here she even throws in the typical sentence "research shows that" to make her claim sound more valid. A {{w|Multi-core processor|core}} is a part of a CPU that is, roughly speaking, capable of acting as an independent computer. Megan thinks that this means Cueball's smartphone can only capture two events at the same time; she misunderstands how the specialized modules work and fails to realize that the number of cores is unrelated to how many events can be captured. Her claim is like saying that male brains are better at spatial reasoning, and therefore males are better triathlon photographers, or that females are better at multitasking, and therefore females are better triathlon photographers.

A CPU with more cores could process pictures faster, speeding up facial recognition or color filters. So it's true that Megan's CPU makes it slightly easier for her to take pictures. However, this has, at best, an extremely small effect on the number of "likes". There's a lot more going on with photography than the CPU of the phone: Megan's photographing skills, her luck in capturing interesting scenes, the number of online friends she has, etc.

So Megan misunderstands many things: the modularity of CPUs, the small effect of the CPU on the quality of her photography, and the actual causes of her success, much like people who reduce ability to structural features of the brain.

The title text is mocking reductionist explanations based on [[Randall|Randall's]] MRI ({{w|Magnetic resonance imaging|magnetic resonance imaging}}) research. One of the most famous (and [http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatial-reasoning-mia-in-matrilineal-society/ disputed]) claims about gendered brains is that women's brains are (slightly) worse at spatial reasoning. {{w|Doritos}} is a popular junk-food brand of {{w|tortilla chips}} that are typically so flat that they can called a 2D snack. In the 1990s Frito-Lay (PepsiCo) introduced a special 3D version, the {{w|Doritos#Doritos_3D.27s|3D Doritos}}. (These [http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/10/25-junk-foods-we-wish-still-existed/3d-doritos bloated snacks] took up more surface area in one's mouth, and had a hollow center filled with cheese-flavored air). So title text associates a larger spatial reasoning brain area with enjoyment of this three-dimensional variation of the popular junk-food snack; the conclusion could be that men like these 3D snacks more than women because of their better spatial reasoning, although there could obviously be several other reasons for such gender specific choice of junk-food. 3D Doritos were discontinued, but reintroduced in 2015, the year of this comic's release.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball hold his smartphone looking at it while talking to Megan who is holding her smartphone in her hand.]
:Cueball: Your photos from the triatholon (sic) got so many more likes than mine.
:Megan: Yeah - My phone is quad-core. Research shows that iPhones like yours have just two cores, so they have a hard time capturing scenes with three different events in them.

:[Caption below the frame:]
:If we talked about phone hardware the way we talk about brain hardware

==Trivia==
*There is an error in Cueball's comment where he says triath'''o'''lon instead of triathlon.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

1588: Hardware Reductionism

2015-10-12T14:17:42Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */ Touchups

{{comic
| number = 1588
| date = October 9, 2015
| title = Hardware Reductionism
| image = hardware_reductionism.png
| titletext = My MRI research shows a clear correlation between the size of the parietal lobe--the part of the brain that handles spatial reasoning--and enjoyment of 3D Doritos®.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Reductionism}} is the belief that things can be explained by their smaller parts. It can be abused when complex phenomena with multiple causes are attributed to a single, simple cause.

{{w|Neurological}} reductionism is the attempt to explain people's behavior and personality by physical features of their brain. With advances in {{w|neuroscience}}, and especially in brain imaging, there's a fad to claim that brain types determine what the mind is. Examples of this kind of bad reductionism would be:

*Male brains have more grey matter than females. Therefore males are smarter. For an example of criticism of this kind of reasoning, see ''[http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/dec/04/male-female-brains-real-differences Male and female brains: the REAL differences]'' (4 December 2013).
*Brains of gay males are slightly more symmetrical, as are female brains, when compared to straight males. Therefore gay men are fated to be more effeminate. See [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080616-gay-brain.html Gay Men, Straight Women Have Similar Brains] (16 June 2008).
*The left side of the brain is associated with logical thinking, and the right, with visual and artistic thinking. Therefore people divide into "left-brain" or "right-brain" types, depending on how good they are at using each side. See {{w|lateralization of brain function}} on Wikipedia.

There are several problems with this kind of reasoning. First, most studies identify correlation, not causation (see {{w|correlation does not imply causation}}). Brains are plastic; they can be shaped by experience. For example, if, in a given society, the females are taught to mind their appearance, and the males are taught that aesthetic considerations are unmanly, then of course the female brains will end up with more developed aesthetic centers. In other words, behavior and capabilities aren't always ''determined'' by the brain. Sometimes it's the behavior that shapes the brain; sometimes a third factor (e.g., malnutrition) shapes both.

Second, even when the brain is actually a cause of the behavior, it's far from the only piece in the puzzle. Many studies on brain differences are correlation studies, often about very small effect sizes. Unfortunately, the popular science media tends to gloss over the statistical concept of "effect size". For example, imagine a study that says that males' brains are 0.1% more likely than females' brains to exhibit {{w|attention deficit hyperactivity disorder}} (ADHD). Journalists are prone to report it simply as '''Study Shows that Males Have More ADHD''', and this becomes a conversation sound-bite that neglects other factors, like genetics or pregnancy smoking. See also [[882: Significant]], which does not discuss effect size, but does raise other objections to writing soundbites based on a single study.

Another kind of excessive neuronal reductionism is the overemphasis on brain modules ("scientists identify brain area responsible for religious faith", and the like). Though it's true that the brain has specialized areas, it's also true that the processing is very complex, messy, and distributed all over. Some varieties of brain damage can often be overcome by learning to use undamaged areas of the brain.

The comic illustrates the problem by analogy to some better-understood general-purpose computing hardware: the {{w|CPU}} in a smartphone. [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] have used their smartphones to take pictures of the same event: a {{w|triathlon}}, that is, an athletic competition comprising three modalities (e.g., swimming, cycling, and running). Cueball wonders why is it that Megan's photos are more popular, and Megan gives a reductionist explanation: She tells that her phone is quad-core (four cores) whereas Cueball's phone only has two cores (here she even throws in the typical sentence "research shows that" to make her claim sound more valid. A {{w|Multi-core processor|core}} is a part of a CPU that is, roughly speaking, capable of acting as an independent computer. Megan thinks that this means Cueball's smartphone can only capture two events at the same time; she misunderstands how the specialized modules work and fails to realize that the number of cores is unrelated to how many events can be captured. Her claim is like saying that male brains are better at spatial reasoning, and therefore males are better triathlon photographers, or that females are better at multitasking, and therefore females are better triathlon photographers.

A CPU with more cores could process pictures faster, speeding up facial recognition or color filters. So it's true that Megan's CPU makes it slightly easier for her to take pictures. However, this has, at best, an extremely small effect on the number of "likes". There's a lot more going on with photography than the CPU of the phone: Megan's photographing skills, her luck in capturing interesting scenes, the number of on-line friends she has, etc.

So Megan misunderstands many things: the modularity of CPUs, the small effect of the CPU on the quality of her photography, and the actual causes of her success, much like people who reduce ability to structural features of the brain.

The title text is mocking reductionist explanations based on [[Randall|Randall's]] MRI ({{w|Magnetic resonance imaging|magnetic resonance imaging}}) research. One of the most famous (and [http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatial-reasoning-mia-in-matrilineal-society/ disputed]) claims about gendered brains is that women's brains are (slightly) worse at spatial reasoning. {{w|Doritos}} is a popular junk-food brand of {{w|tortilla chips}} that are typically so flat that they can called a 2D snack. In the 1990s Frito-Lay (PepsiCo) introduced a special 3D version, the {{w|Doritos#Doritos_3D.27s|3D Doritos}}. (These [http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/10/25-junk-foods-we-wish-still-existed/3d-doritos bloated snacks] took up more surface area in one's mouth, and had a hollow center filled with cheese-flavored air). So title text associates a larger spatial reasoning brain area with enjoyment of this three-dimensional variation of the popular junk-food snack; the conclusion could be that men like these 3D snacks more than women because of their better spatial reasoning, although there could obviously be several other reasons for such gender specific choice of junk-food. 3D Doritos were discontinued, but reintroduced in 2015, the year of this comic's release.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball hold his smartphone looking at it while talking to Megan who is holding her smartphone in her hand.]
:Cueball: Your photos from the triatholon got so many more likes than mine.
:Megan: Yeah - My phone is quad-core. Research shows that iPhones like yours have just two cores, so they have a hard time capturing scenes with three different events in them.

:[Caption below the frame:]
:If we talked about phone hardware the way we talk about brain hardware

==Trivia==
*There is an error in Cueball's comment where he says triath'''o'''lon instead of triathlon.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

1575: Footprints

2015-09-09T18:20:34Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1575
| date = September 9, 2015
| title = Footprints
| image = footprints.png
| titletext = "There's one set of foot-p's cause I was totes carrying you, bro!" said Jesus seconds before I punched him.
}}

==Explanation==

The comic is a satirical graphical representation of the inspirational Christian poem "{{w|Footprints (poem)|Footprints}}," which has been recounted in many versions and is of disputed authorship.

The basic idea of the poem is that the narrator looks back at scenes of his life and sees two sets of footprints, his and those of Jesus. During the most difficult times of his life, the narrator sees only one set of footprints and assumes that Jesus had left him during those times. In the climax of the poem, Jesus responds to the narrator that he saw only one set of footprints during the most difficult times of his life because Jesus was carrying him during those times.

The poem is seen by many as overly sentimental and is thus ripe for parody of this kind. The graph mockingly illustrates various times when Jesus or the narrator left the scene, or otherwise gives various reasons why the number of footprints may have been other than two.

"Ducklings {{w|Imprinting (psychology)|imprinted}} on Jesus and followed him around" is a reference to {{w|Konrad Lorenz}}'s experiments. Three ducklings followed Jesus and the narrator.

"Jesus disappeared for an evening each time a new ''{{w|The Twilight Saga (film series)|Twilight}}'' movie came out" probably means either that Jesus went to see the movie and left the narrator alone or that the narrator went to see the movie and Jesus refused to come with.

"Got lost and followed our own footprints" may be a reference to "{{w|Winnie-the-Pooh}}" (1926), in which the titular bear and his friend try and hunt a "Woozle" by its footprints, actually following their own round and round a bush, which also seems slightly childish for Jesus as traditionally portrayed.

"Rode around with Jesus in captured {{w|Walker (Star_Wars)#All_Terrain_Scout_Transport_.28AT-ST.29|AT-ST}}" is a reference to a two-legged combat "walker" from Star Wars. The implication is that Jesus would have participated in forcibly taking a war machine, which appears somewhat out of character.

The reference at the end to Jesus drowning in a patch of quicksand, and then the narrator simply going home, again subverts the poem's earnestness. "Going home" may be a reference to dying, implying that the narrator died without Christ, or that the narrator and Christ were not traveling anymore.

The title text continues the parody by imagining that Jesus delivers the poem's climactic lines in stereotypical {{w|California English|"surfer dude"}} speak, a dialect perceived by many to be obnoxious. The reference to punching Jesus is possibly another reference to the poem's perceived excessive sentimentality. Another interpretation is that the narrator, like many people, dislikes usage of this lingo and punched Jesus as a result of this hatred.

"There's one set of foot-p's cause I was totes carrying you, bro!" can be translated into normal English as "There's one set of footprints because I was carrying you, brother!". ''Totes'' or ''totally'' here doesn't convey any special meaning.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}

A graph with time on the x-axis and numbers 1 through 5 on the y axis, labeled "Sets of footprints". A single red line runs through from left to right, showing different values at different times. Until the very end, the line always returns to the value 2, signifying two sets of footprints in the sand.

* The line starts at the value 2, then dips twice to the value 1. The two troughs are labeled, "Jesus carried me".
* The line then dips once again to the value 1. The trough is labeled, "I carried Jesus".
* The line rises to 3 briefly, and is labeled, "Who was that guy?"
* The line rises to 5 sharply, and then falls in a sharp staircase pattern, labeled "Ducklings imprinted on Jesus and followed him around".
* The line rises to 4, labeled "Got lost and followed our own footprints".
* The line dips for very short periods five times to the value 1. The troughs are labeled, "Jesus disappeared for an evening each time a new Twilight movie came out". The first dip is between "I carried Jesus" and "Who was that guy?", the second between "Who was that guy?" and "Duckings imprinted on Jesus..." and the final three are all between the "Ducklings imprinted on Jesus..." and "Got lost and followed our own footprints".
* The line dips to 1, labeled "Rode around with Jesus in captured AT-ST"
* The line dips and stays level at 1, labeled "Hit quicksand patch. Jesus didn't make it :("
* The line dips to zero at the end, and is labeled "Went home".

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Animals]]

Talk:1036: Reviews

2015-09-04T18:05:48Z

108.162.216.56:

Even better is when reviewers start talking about other products that they've used in the past, and you're suddenly investigating and comparing capacity, weight and compartment placement between 20-odd messenger bags. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 10:03, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm surprised they didn't find any bobcats. Black Hat should have expanded his enterprise beyond eBay by now. Anonymous 17:57, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I do this too, but I mainly look for trends in the bad reviews (DOA, Stopped working after a few months, etc), rather then one bad review spoiling a large number of positive ones. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.66|173.245.55.66]] 16:55, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

The title text seems to refer to some horror movie. [[User:Arifsaha|Arifsaha]] ([[User talk:Arifsaha|talk]]) 19:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Before I edited it, the explanation contained "For comparison, one can get a decent lamp at IKEA for only about US$15!" We're all geeks here; I can't be the only one who read that as a factorial. (In which case, the Swiss lampmaker's lamps are cheap enough to be well worth the trip.)[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 18:05, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

1036: Reviews

2015-09-04T18:02:10Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1036
| date = March 30, 2012
| title = Reviews
| image = reviews.png
| titletext = I plugged in this lamp and my dog went rigid, spoke a sentence of perfect Akkadian, and then was hurled sideways through the picture window. Even worse, it's one of those lamps where the switch is on the cord.
}}

==Explanation==
When shopping for anything via reviews, whether it be electronics or even something as simple as lamps like the comic demonstrates, one negative review can spoil a lot of positive reviews. That hits home even more if the review is specific. This usually occurs because humans attach more weight to anecdotes and specific stories. This comic points out the absurdity of paying attention to those reviews. The 2nd frame starts out normal and then proceeds to get more and more absurd all the way to the image text.

{{w|Franc}}s are units of currency formerly used in France and currently used in Switzerland; Francs have not seen much in France use since the adoption of the euro in 1999 but {{w|Swiss franc}} is still the currency and legal tender of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Assuming Swiss francs, the price of the artisan lamp is about US$1465 (at the quoted rate as of March 2014). For comparison, US$15 can get one a decent lamp at IKEA.

In the title text, {{w|Akkadian}} is an extinct {{w|Semitic language}} that was spoken in {{w|ancient Mesopotamia}}. Even if the dog actually did speak a sentence of perfect Akkadian, the chance that the owner would be able to recognize it as such is negligible.

==Transcript==
:Shopping before online reviews:
:[Cueball and Megan stand in a store. Cueball points at a lamp on the table in front of him. There is another lamp on the table behind them.]
:Cueball: This lamp is pretty.
:Megan: And affordable.
:Cueball: Let's get it.
:Megan Ok!

:Shopping now:
:[Cueball points at a lamp on the table in front of him. Megan looks at her phone.]
:Cueball: This lamp is pretty.
:Megan: It's got 1 1/2 stars on Amazon. Reviews all say to avoid that brand.

:[Cueball and Megan are now both looking at their phones.]
:Cueball: This one has good reviews.
:Megan: Wait, one guy says when he plugged it in, he got a metallic taste in his mouth and his cats went deaf.
:Cueball: Eek. What about- ...no, review points out it resembles a uterus.

:[Cueball is still looking at his phone, Megan has hers at her side.]
:Cueball: Ok, I found a Swiss lampmaker with perfect reviews. Her lamps start at 1,300 Francs and she's only reachable by ski lift.
:Megan: You know, our room looks fine in the dark.
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

Talk:1464: Santa

2014-12-24T08:47:45Z

108.162.216.56:

Merry Christmas! --[[User:RenniePet|RenniePet]] ([[User talk:RenniePet|talk]]) 06:29, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I think I have done the transcript... [[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 06:38, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

And I did the explanation and put everything in there, I think. Looks like we're already pretty much done! [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.174|173.245.56.174]] 06:44, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

It should maybe be mentioned that this comic is a turn of the screw on the many "The physics of Santa" joke articles - The usual chain e-mail or satire web page calculations that take it seriously the logistical calculations for Santa and end up concluding that he should beat the speed of light to deliver the presents. Randall doesn't settle on calculating the logistics for reindeer performance or route planning, he goes a step further and makes the calculations for the refuse. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.49.106|173.245.49.106]] 08:31, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Well maybe all those calories are what allows him to move at the insane relativistic speeds needed to visit every house on Christmas eve. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 08:47, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

590: Papyrus

2014-03-25T23:53:01Z

108.162.216.56: /* Explanation */

<div style="font-family:papyrus">
{{comic
| number = 590
| date = May 29, 2009
| title = Papyrus
| image = papyrus.png
| titletext = I secretly, deep in my guilty heart, like Papyrus and don't care if it's overused. [Cue hate mail in beautifully-kerned Helvetica.]
}}

==Explanation==
One of the comics in the "My Hobby" series, this one touches on the fact that {{w|Papyrus (typeface)|Papyrus}} (the font) is considered to be overused by many typography geeks, including the font's own creator. Pretending that he doesn't know that, [[Cueball]] gives [[Ponytail]] a heartfelt card written in that font just to see her twitch.

The title text says that Randall actually ''likes'' Papyrus, even if it ''is'' overused, and refers to {{w|Helvetica}}, another commonly-used sans-serif font.

==Transcript==
:My Hobby:
:Getting typography geeks heartfelt cards printed in "Papyrus" and watching them struggle to act grateful.
:[Ponytail is holding a card open and looking at Cueball. An angry tic is flicking on her forehead.]
:Ponytail: Thank you for the ''*twitch*'' ... lovely... ''*twitch*'' birthday card!
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:My Hobby]]
</div>

Talk:1308: Christmas Lights

2013-12-25T07:50:02Z

108.162.216.56:

If I am reading the graphs right, except for the very top there is no blue lights.
[[User:Traisjames|From the guy with his eye on the sky.]] ([[User talk:Traisjames|talk]]) 06:41, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Presumably the top is gold? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 07:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Also the spike in the near IR of the large graph is likely to be a mercury line. I think fires would have a smoother curve of a black body.
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.122|199.27.128.122]] 06:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Could someone make a coloured version?[[User:Guru-45|Guru-45]] ([[User talk:Guru-45|talk]]) 07:22, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Also the light at the top of the tree seems to be emitting in the UV range. Perhaps it’s supposed to be a fluorescent lamp? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.7|108.162.245.7]] 07:30, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm thinking it's a "white" LED. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 07:50, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

1308: Christmas Lights

2013-12-25T05:20:54Z

108.162.216.56:

{{comic
| number = 1308
| date = December 25, 2013
| title = Christmas Lights
| image = christmas_lights.png
| titletext = Merry Christmas from xkcd!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT}}
The graphs represent the amount of light emitted from each bulb vs. position in the spectrum.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1305: Undocumented Feature

2013-12-18T09:48:09Z

108.162.216.56:

This sound pretty cool... Anyone know if it's real or which tool it's in? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.222|173.245.55.222]] 05:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

its real, there are 8 other users, but must stay a secret. {{unsigned ip|108.162.231.233}}

Okay, let's be honest: how many of us, upon seeing today's comic, immediately went here to see if it was real or not? --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.4|108.162.245.4]] 07:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I honestly did just that. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.137|173.245.53.137]] 08:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I also just did that... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.206|108.162.231.206]] 08:07, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It's not about Youtube, but Facebook, which just launched AUTOPLAYING video ads. Look at the title text, it's about Facebook's real name policy. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.232|108.162.231.232]] 08:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I just searched after reading - and found this site! --

The real secret place is here!

I didn't start up my VM to test it, but I came here to see if was real >.< [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 09:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1305: Undocumented Feature

2013-12-18T09:47:44Z

108.162.216.56:

This sound pretty cool... Anyone know if it's real or which tool it's in? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.222|173.245.55.222]] 05:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

its real, there are 8 other users, but must stay a secret. {{unsigned ip|108.162.231.233}}

Okay, let's be honest: how many of us, upon seeing today's comic, immediately went here to see if it was real or not? --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.4|108.162.245.4]] 07:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I honestly did just that. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.137|173.245.53.137]] 08:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I also just did that... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.206|108.162.231.206]] 08:07, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It's not about Youtube, but Facebook, which just launched AUTOPLAYING video ads. Look at the title text, it's about Facebook's real name policy. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.232|108.162.231.232]] 08:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I just searched after reading - and found this site! --

The real secret place is here!

I didn't boot up my VM to test it, but I came here to see if was real >.< [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 09:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1301: File Extensions

2013-12-09T07:34:26Z

108.162.216.56: added comment about measured bar lengths

The title text reference of "hand-aligned data" may refer to ASCII art. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.28|108.162.215.28]] 05:36, 9 December 2013 (UTC) Alan K.

I think it's also a notable point, that the better rated document formats are more data centric while the low rated formats mix text informations with design elements and finally become pure graphic formats, which often is an indication, that the author didn't use the accurate file type for (mostly) pure text informations.
Something I don't understand is the gap between jpg and jpeg. The first suffix is AFAIK only an abbreviation used by older DOS/MS Systems to fullfill the 8.3 limitation for filenames. The note about hand alignment might concern the fact, that hand alignment is more time expensive which might increase the amount of the the author spend in overthink the content before layouting. Also often automated layouting as supported by many modern writing application might lead to unexpected and sometimes wrong results, because the automatism has no semantical knowledge about the authors intention, which might lead to post processed errors
Sorry for my bad english, I'm not a natural writer
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.239|108.162.231.239]] 05:45, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I find it interesting that .jpg and .jpeg are at different levels. Aren't those the same thing? --[[User:Mralext20|Mralext20]] ([[User talk:Mralext20|talk]]) 05:48, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

:That JPG/JPEG thing indeed seems strange. The more important distinction is between JPEGs that are photographs (fine) and those that are not (stupid). Also, pre-PNG, non-photograph GIFs could be just fine. And with all the accounting scandals we've seen, why would those spreadsheet formats get any credibility? -- [[User:Dfeuer|Dfeuer]] ([[User talk:Dfeuer|talk]]) 06:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I measured the bars in photoshop to +/- 2pixels. If we scale .tex to a value of 100 like the transcript says, these are the values I get for the bar lengths (rounded to one decimal place)
.tex 100
.pdf 89.4
.csv 84.9
.txt 66.5
.svg 64.8
.xls 48.6
.doc 21.2
.png 15.1
.ppt 14.5
.jpg 3.4
.jpeg -8.4
.gif -35.8

Dunno if it is helpful - or even trusted given I'm a first time commenter - but there it is. Closer values than just estimating, though the eyeballed estimates aren't bad. Not going to adjust the actual transcript because I feel that's overstepping my bounds.

530: I'm An Idiot

2013-11-20T17:05:21Z

108.162.216.56: /* Further explanation */

{{comic
| number = 530
| date = January 14, 2009
| title = I'm an Idiot
| image = im an idiot.png
| titletext = Sadly, this is a true story. At least I learned about the OS X 'say' command.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|1253: Exoplanet Names}}

[[Cueball]], locked out of his dorm/apartment, is trying to get his roommate's attention so that she'll unlock the door. He tries various ways of contacting her: calling her cell phone, {{w|IRC}}, the window, and SSH'ing into their downstairs Mac computer to make it shout at her. [[Ponytail]] informs him of the most obvious solution — the doorbell, which prompts a moment of realization. The content of this realization–"I'm An Idiot"–is stated in the title of the comic. The humor of the comic derives from the rhythm of the panels [a long buildup followed by a short quip, then a pause for the implied moment of realization].

The humor of this comic also derives from the reader's familiarity with the behavior shown in the comic, since most every person who likes solving problems has experienced a moment of realization similar to Cueball's at one point or another. They, like Cueball, get distracted by solving an interesting problem [[356: Nerd Sniping |''because solving problems are fun'']], and fail to notice that the problem has an easier solution that they haven't noticed. This same issue of getting lost in a sub-problem [in this case, the-sub problem of how to remotely control text-to-speech in OS X] at the expense of overall problem-solving ability is further covered in [[761: DFS]].

The alt-text of the comic mentions that, although missing an obvious solution can be humiliating, one often learns a lot from trying new solutions, which would explain why the behavior persists.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail approaches Cueball, who is sitting on porch steps, laptop in lap and backpack open.]
:Ponytail: Should I ask?
:Cueball: I'm locked out, and I'm trying to get my roommate to let me in.

:[Unplugged cell phone on table.]
:Cueball: First I tried her cell phone, but it's off.

:[Cueball sitting on steps, laptop in lap and gesturing.]
:Cueball: Then I tried IRC, but she's not online.

:[Cueball standing in front of house and looking up at window.]
:Cueball: I couldn't find anything to throw at her window,

:[Living room with couch easy chair and computer set up.]
:Cueball: So I SSH'd into the Mac Mini in the living room and got the speech synth to yell at her for me.
:Computer: Hey I'm locked out downstairs

:[Megan sitting at table with laptop open.]
:Cueball: But I think I left the volume way down, so I'm reading the OS X docs to learn to set the volume via command line.

:[Ponytail facing Cueball, who is still sitting on the porch with his laptop.]
:Ponytail: Ah.
:Ponytail: I take it the doorbell doesn't work?

:[Ponytail remains in place, Cueball tilts head back slightly, as if staring in realization.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Computers]]

469: Improvised

2013-11-15T17:31:20Z

108.162.216.56: /* Fleshed out some explanation for why each line is unexpected and added the original line in a few cases for context. Also included a note about the mis-spelling of wookiee–should that be left out? */

{{comic
| number = 469
| date = August 29, 2008
| title = Improvised
| image = improvised.png
| titletext = Oh, your brother is Luke. Sorry, should've mentioned that first.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete}}
In the film "{{w|Star Wars}} Episode V: {{w|The Empire Strikes Back}}", just before {{w|Han Solo}}, portrayed by {{w|Harrison Ford}}, is frozen in carbonite, the following conversation occurs:
:Leia: I love you.
:Han: I know.

The original script had Han Solo respond with "I love you, too", but Harrison Ford felt that the character would not give such a cliched response, even in the face of likely death and ad-libbed the "I know" line that was actually used in the finished film. The ad-libbed line is generally thought to be better than the original would have been.

The comic presents several alternative ad-libs that Ford could have made in that conversation as well as at various points throughout the trilogy.

; Well, duh
:Here, Han ruins the mood [a dramatic confession] with a flippant statement.
; Han Solo in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.
:Another example of an out-of-tone ad-lib. The original line is "never tell me the odds", a nod to Solo's daredevil persona. In this ad-lib, however, he is hesitant to try anything dangerous.
; Oh! Hey, that explains the kissing earlier.
:Another absurd, out-of-character answer to a serious remark, this time with Solo acting romantically oblivious [rather than forward, as he is usually].
; I'm nailing your brother.
: So far Leia doesn't know she has a brother. Also, since ''to nail'' means to penetrate, it should be a shock for her to know that Han is either gay or bisexual. This panel is referenced in the alt-text.
; Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for scissors, though they do beat paper and rock.
: The original line is "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid", a reference to Luke's force training and lightsaber use. In this ad-lib, Han turns a discussion about weapons into a [unusually formal] discussion about the game {{w|Rock-paper-scissors}}.

;Cool. Listen, this thing is really, REALLY cold.
:Han is in a freezing chamber in this scene. This remark is more of an exaggeration of Han's character than anything–he doesn't care at all about Leia's confession, he's only worried about his own comfort.
; Wowzers
:''Wowzers'' is an expression used by {{w|Inspector Gadget}}; another amusingly out-of-character ad-lib.
; General Solo, is your strike team assembled?
:The original response here is "Uh, my team's ready. I don't have a command crew for the shuttle." In this ad-lib, Han responds to a serious situation [preparations for an important mission to bring down the Galactic Empire] with an unserious response.
;I'd just as soon kiss a wookiee.
:In the original film, Leia's remark "I'd just as soon kiss a wookiee" is meant as an insult to Han, implying that he's less attractive than a great hairy monster. In this ad-lib, though, Han takes her statement literally, and suggests that he is also interested in kissing a wookiee. Chewbacca is Han's wookiee copilot and fellow smuggler. Han's suggestion that he's interested in kissing Chewbacca is unexpected on many levels: firstly, Han's shown interest in Leia, secondly, Chewbacca is an entirely different species, and thirdly, Chewbacca is also male, and Han Solo is presumed by Leia to be straight.

Note: although it's spelled "wookie" in the comic, the canonical spelling of Chewbacca's species is "{{w|Wookiee}}".

;Title text
It refers to the plot twist that {{w|Luke Skywalker}} is princess {{w|Princess Leia|Leia's}} brother, which would not be revealed until the next film in the series. How Han Solo knows this twist at this point in the story is unknown, but he must at least know that Leia has a brother in the center left panel.

==Transcript==
:Harrison Ford Famously Improvised His "I know" Line in E.S.B. (The Empire Strikes Back). Here are a few of his less-successful ad-libs:
:[Han Solo stands in front of Princess Leia on the Cloud City Carbon Freezing Chamber.]
:Leia: I Love You.
:Han: Well, Duh
:[Han Solo in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.]
:C-3P0: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3720 to 1!
:Han: Seriously? ...Christ
:[Han Solo stands in front of Princess Leia on the Cloud City Carbon Freezing Chamber.]
:Leia: I Love You.
:Han: Oh! Hey, that explains the kissing earlier.
:[Han Solo stands in front of Princess Leia on the Cloud City Carbon Freezing Chamber.]
:Leia: I Love You.
:Han: I'm Nailing Your Brother.
:[Han Solo standing in front of Luke Skywalker, who is holding the blast shield helmet. The training droid hovers between them.]
:Han: Hokey Religions and ancient weapons are no match for scissors, though they do beat paper and rock.
:[Han Solo stands in front of Princess Leia on the Cloud City Carbon Freezing Chamber.]
:Leia: I Love You.
:Han: Cool. Listen, this thing is really, REALLY cold.
:[Han Solo stands in front of Princess Leia on the Cloud City Carbon Freezing Chamber.]
:Leia: I Love You.
:Han: Wowzers.
:[Han Solo sits with two others. General Madine approaches.]
:Madine: General Solo, is your strike team assembled?
:Han: Barely.
:Han: They're pretty drunk.
:[Han Solo and Princess Leia stand in an Ice Tunnel of Hoth.]
:Leia: I'd just as soon kiss a wookie.
:Han: Man, me too, but chewie never seems interested.
:Han: Maybe I should Grow My hair out.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Star Wars]]

807: Connected

2013-11-15T16:25:38Z

108.162.216.56: /* Rewrote. The previous explanation was focused on defining music [something that could be done with a wiktionary link] and didn't provide much insight into the comic. I've done my best to offer an improved explanation.*/

{{comic
| number = 807
| date = October 18, 2010
| title = Connected
| image = connected.png
| titletext = Or love in general, for that matter. It just leads to the idea that either your love is pure, perfect, and eternal, and you are storybook-compatible in every way with no problems, or you're LYING when you say 'I love you'.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete}}
This comic points out the absurdity of our ideals about "Young Love" through an exaggerated snippet of a conversation between [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]]. Randall suggests in this comic that most idealized versions of romance are unrealistic, and that expecting these ideals [as young lovers often do] can damage real relationships.

'''Background:'''

"True Love" and "Love at First Sight" are common tropes in western books, plays, and movies. These tropes present love as occurring passionately, spontaneously, and immediately, between two previously unacquainted people who are "destined" to be together in a story-book romance. The more these people learn about each other, the more they realize how perfectly they are suited for each other, and their relationship never experiences any serious internal conflict thanks to their perfect compatibility. Think of Romeo and Juliet, Titanic, or [nearly] every Disney Princess movie. This version of love is idealized in popular culture.

The realities of developing a relationship are a lot more complicated, of course. Relationships depend far more on each partner's ability to adapt to each other than they do on being a "perfect match" to begin with. Relationships grow more substantial with age as people get to know and work with each other better. And people who enter into a relationship expecting a story-book version of events, where they don't have to change and neither does their partner, often find themselves feeling confused or disappointed. Young lovers who get all of their knowledge about romance from popular culture are much more likely to expect a story-book "true love" style relationship than people with more experience.

'''The Comic:'''

This comic shows a young [[Megan]] discovering that she and [her boyfriend] [[Cueball]] share an interest in a particular song. The ridiculous conclusion she draws from this coincidence ["I bet no two people in the history of the world have ever been so connected!"] suggests that she naively imagines herself to be in "true love" style storybook romance. The evidence for her conclusion is laughable, of course, since any given person likes dozens or even hundreds of different songs, and there is inevitable overlap between the musical tastes of any two given people [even moreso when both people are in the same culture, region, and age-group]. Furthermore, liking a single song, or even an entire genre of music, has almost no bearing on romantic compatibility–it's the sort of ridiculous thing one finds in a storybook, not in real life. The conversation in the comic is representative of a lot of the flaws with young love.

The caption for the comic questions why anyone would romanticize young love, given how many young lovers behave like Megan does here, making exaggerated claims about how "connected" they are based on terrible evidence while failing to show any real compatibility with their partner. The implication of this question is that we *shouldn't* idealize young love, because most of the "perfect connection" young lovers often profess comes from self-delusion [as in the comic] rather than actual depth.

The alt-text broadens this criticism to apply all forms of idealized romance, stating that idealizing love "just leads to the idea that either your love is pure, perfect, and eternal, and you are storybook-compatible in every way with no problems, or you're LYING when you say 'I love you'." In other words, expecting your relationship to be perfect at the outset is absurd, and it leads to dissatisfaction when reality fails to match up. Love is something that should grow from time spent together and effort invested, rather than springing out fully formed the moment two people meet.

The comic is funny because it highlights the absurdity of the "young love" and uses an exaggerated conversation to point out the flaws in our popular narrative of romance. It also makes a thoughtful argument against idealizing love in general.

==Transcript==
:Megan: Seriously? ''I like that song too!''
:Megan: I bet no two people in the history of the world have ever been so connected!

:I'm not sure why we romanticize "young love."

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Romance]]

Talk:1291: Shoot for the Moon

2013-11-15T06:33:24Z

108.162.216.56: Who is this?

Danish, not Megan, right?!
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 06:33, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Talk:386: Duty Calls

2013-11-14T17:47:01Z

108.162.216.56:

Doesn't look like anyone's touched this during its spotlight as the Incomplete Article of the Day. But really, what else can we say? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.66|199.27.128.66]] 03:06, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe how deeply compelling the "need" to fix something wrong on the Internet is? It's not just a plain correction.... it gnaws at you...[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.8|108.162.219.8]] 03:17, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Tried to flesh out/improve the analysis. Still needs some editing for clarity [I'm not sure how formal the tone of this wiki is supposed to be?] but hopefully it's an improvement on the previous edit. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 17:47, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

386: Duty Calls

2013-11-14T17:44:02Z

108.162.216.56: /* Made the analysis more thorough and [hopefully] more clear */

{{comic
| number = 386
| date = February 20, 2008
| title = Duty Calls
| image = duty calls.png
| titletext = What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete}}
[[Cueball]], and many Internet {{w|nerd}}s, feel an {{Wiktionary|irrepressible}} urge to correct people on the Internet, and often get intensely invested in arguments over mundane or insignificant topics. In this comic, Cueball is presented as an exaggerated example of one such arguer. His statement that "This is important" shows his excessive investment in whatever [unnamed] topic he is arguing about. Additionally, Cueball's interpretation of the argument as "someone is wrong, I need to correct them" rather than "someone disagrees with me, I should learn from them" parodies internet arguers' insistence in the obvious, objective superiority of their viewpoint.

The title and alt text reinforce this satire. The phrase "Duty Calls" used in the title is traditionally used in much more dramatic contexts [say, by a police officer, firefighter, doctor, etc. when talking about their job], so applying it to the job of arguing on the internet is a humorous mismatch that puts Cueball's disproportionate investment into perspective. Cueball's exasperated, all-or-nothing retort "What do you want me to do? LEAVE?" in the alt text further highlights the absurd nature of his emotional investment in this argument. His reasoning that "they'll keep being wrong!" if he leaves suggests that the only solution he sees is to continue to argue until everyone on the internet has agreed with him on all issues–a ridiculously impossible plan. By taking this satire to its logical conclusion–an eternity of arguing on the internet with no time for pleasure in real life–Randall reminds the reader that getting emotionally involved in internet arguments at the expense of real life is a terrible, terrible idea.

In [[955: Neutrinos]] another incarnation of Cueball is cured of a similar disease.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is behind a computer.]
:Voice outside frame: Are you coming to bed?
:Cueball: I can't. This is important.
:Voice: What?
:Cueball: Someone is WRONG on the internet.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Internet]]