explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3038: Uncanceled Units

2025-01-16T02:40:25Z

108.162.238.183:

DUDE I'M STILL IN SCHOOL RN, WHAT?
(also, the joke is that energy is power*time, so kWh is kJ/s... in an hour [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 13:27, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I guess not every comic can be a winner. Talking about an appliance using a certain amount of kWH per day is clear and normal. Power gets billed by the kWh, not the Joule. While technically not wrong, wanting "cancel" a sub-part of the commonly-used energy unit kWh and leaving it in deliberately-obscured units most people are less familiar with is the sort of insanity I'd more expect from White Hat than Cueball. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.35.171|172.70.35.171]] 13:39, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:Maybe that is a meta-joke? To frame kWh/day as something crazy by giving that line to whitehat --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 13:52, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:There's a difference between instantaneous power draw, and the total "volume"(/area, really) of power over time. Though a fridge is "always on", it is still only irregularly at full-draw. But, to the power company (or to the gas company, who will generally give a kWh measure of 'energy taken from the network'), they don't (generally) care whether you used twice as many kW over half the time or half as many over twice the time, within any given total billing period, even if it affects what you think. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.46|172.70.163.46]] 14:39, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
::Using joule as if it was an everyday unit of energy would be weird but I don't agree that watt is crazy. It's a normal unit of energy consumption that does mean something to people, e.g. 1000W microwave, 100W (incandescent) light bulb. Don't get me wrong kWh/day is also useful to translate it to your energy bill, but I do feel slightly uncomfortable every time I see that time divided by time :-) [[User:Mtcv|Mtcv]] ([[User talk:Mtcv|talk]]) 14:40, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:I don't think the complaint is that it's unclear, it's that Cueball/Randall instinctively wants units simplified - as they would be in a science context rather than a useful-for-normal-people's-everyday-needs context. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.183|108.162.238.183]] 02:40, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

This is especially funny with US units. My car needs about 5l/100km, or 0.05mm². Now I am wondering how many ft^(-2) my car does... --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 13:49, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
: You make a good point about the units (at least in one instance). Shouldn't the reduced units for fuel economy be inverse area? Effectively, it is a measure of the distance the vehicle could travel while consuming a column of fuel with a specific height and specific top (or bottom) surface area. Or, The better the fuel economy, the less the surface area that is necessary to move a specific distance. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 20:41, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
::It depends on what the original unit is. In my country (Germany) we measure it in volume/distance, which would reduce to area. North American convention is in distance/volume which would reduce to inverse area. Good thing about distance/volume is that "high number = good". However I think outside of escaping from a nuclear disaster or in a zombie apocalypse it isn't a really helpful thing to know. Because how often do you know "I got x amount of fuel. Wonder how far I can get." But you will likely be in the situation where you quickly want to see "How much fuel do I need to get to place x which is y distance from here". --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 21:57, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:: More usefully imagined as the front (or back) end of a horizontal column (or, twisting as it may, a pipeline) that traverses the journey made by the vehicle. As if (instantaneous variations excepted) you consume precisely the fuel that your vehicle passes 'through/around'. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.76.92|141.101.76.92]] 20:45, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
::: Yeah. Maybe we should express fuel consumption in terms of the speed fuel needs to be drawn through a standard fuel line. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 21:01, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

fridge [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.147|172.70.126.147]] 14:22, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

The late [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay Sir David MacKay] wrote an excellent book, [http://www.withouthotair.com/ Sustainable Energy – without the hot air] (which is available free online).
On [http://www.withouthotair.com/c2/page_24.shtml this page] he talks about the units he uses in the book: kWh for energy ("one unit") and kWh/day for power - becuase it's simple for lay-people to understand - how many units does this appliance use per day.
It's a good book if any of you are interested in sustainable energy (although it was written in 2008, so some bits might be out of date by now) {{unsigned ip|172.70.85.33|14:33, 15 January 2025}}

If anyone's curious, I found an online gallons per square foot calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/construction/gallons-per-square-foot [[Special:Contributions/172.71.223.6|172.71.223.6]] 15:54, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

The answer to Cueball's question is likely NO in the US and YES in the UK, due not just to gallon size but also fridge size (a model like that is a particularly large fridge, when I bought one 10 years ago going for the smallest available I had to modify my cabinet above the fridge as there wasn't one less than 6'8"- the fridge hole was 6' previous).[[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 16:02, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I disagree with this comic, and I think the final paragraph in the explanation about Hubble's constant best explains why. [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 15:57, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Technically, kWh should be written as kW⋅h or kW h, because it literally means "kilowatts multiplied by one hour", not "kilowatts per hour" as many people assume. However, almost nobody writes it correctly. (kW/h is sometimes also seen, but egregiously incorrect.) Also, particularly now that electric vehicles are becoming more popular, people often get confused between kW and kW h. The car can charge at a peak or average rate expressed in kW, but energy billed by a charging service provider is expressed in kWh. People frequently either add or remove the "h" incorrectly because they don't understand the difference. In some places like India, a kilowatt-hour is simply referred to as a "unit" to avoid confusion. In my opinion, it was an enormous mistake to use kWh when we could be using mJ instead, which I think is probably something close to the point Randall may have been trying to make. Anyway, I wasn't sure if there was a place for any of this random trivia in the article itself, but feel free to use it. [[User:Equites|Equites]] ([[User talk:Equites|talk]]) 17:11, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Relevant XKCD… I mean relevant YouTube video: "Cursed units" 1 and 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkfIXUjkYqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg7xe8MkJHs [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 17:31, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

: Highly relevant, in fact. The first video referred to the kilowatt-hour as "cursed", which became a highly polarizing issue in the comments, something that was addressed at the beginning of part 2. Assuming these responses weren't cherry-picked, I get the impression that there are a lot of people on both sides of this. It seems like the same kind of thing we're seeing in this very comment section. [[User:ISaveXKCDpapers|ISaveXKCDpapers]] ([[User talk:ISaveXKCDpapers|talk]]) 18:10, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I always wonder why people here prefer liter/m^2 for the amount of rain. Where the same number as mm is way easier to imagine. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.99|172.68.50.99]] 18:14, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
: At first, I was wondering if you would have rather had it in microliters/mm^2, but you meant the column height of the rain, like inches are used in the US. Along the line of L/m^2, something like mL/cm^2 might be nice considering the density of water, although the value also would be different by a factor. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 20:51, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
: That's the neat thing about the metric system, they are trivially simple to convert. 1l/m² is exactly 1mm. The fact that the meteorology uses the former just stems from the fact that that's how they measure it. The catch the rain on an area of 1m² into a beaker that contains some volume which is measured in liters. What annoys me though, is that noone seems to be talking about how terribly inefficient the fridge in the comic is. Mine only needs a tenth of the one that Whitehat tries to sell, and that's not even particularly good. --21:21, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:: UK measurements, once it gets to weather reports/forecasts, tend to be in millimetres (or centimetres, where more for the layperson who don't need mm-resulution; or occasionally recast as 'old money' inches, with ''really'' bad rain events summarised in relation to whole feet), which is implicitly the depth to which ''any'' area would be filled (in a case where large catchment + funnelling valley situation is concerned, suffering from the run-off, might be ''reported'' as "equivalent to ''N'' feet of rain", down where the bad effects get concentrated, but this is not a meteorological measure as such).
:: Not sure I've ever seen volume/area as an end-result figure (might be relevent as an intermediate for measurement/calculation, especially when discussing the funelling effects of the given local geography), but of course it's trivially relatable.
:: Density of water would only figure in from replacing litres with kilogrammes (litres are 1/1000th of metres³ and any m² is 10,000 times the cm² (or millilitre), so a factor of 10 between L/m² and mL/cm²; divide L to mL by 1000, times m² to cm² by 10,000, => 10x) but I always find it useful to know that three 2L bottles of pop are (very close to, going by the nominal water content alone) 6kg... makes me feel better about lugging the weekly shopping home, where these might be the single most significant part of the weight. More usefully than cross-converting into length-cubed measure. ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.69|141.101.98.69]] 21:42, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Isn't the point that KwH/day can be simplified to Watts (an average perhaps, but still) {{unsigned ip|162.158.41.72|21:24, 15 January 2025}}
: Yes, the joke seems pretty clearly about watts or kilowatts, not megajoules. Using megajoules doesn't result in any units being canceled; the denominator remains "/day". [[User:BatmanAoD|BatmanAoD]] ([[User talk:BatmanAoD|talk]]) 23:52, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

If the argument for kWh/day is that it's easy for the consumer to understand how it will affect their electricity bill – then kWh/month would be the right choice, because I doubt anyone receives an electricity bill every day. But the salesman prefers 3 kWh/day because it sounds like a smaller number than 90 kWh/month. And of course, if electricity bills were written in joules instead of illogical watt-hours, then MJ/month would be the easiest for the consumer. {{unsigned ip|162.158.134.90|22:31, 15 January 2025}}
:Per-month is tricky. You seem to assume month=30 days, when it can be 28-31 and is only 30 days a third of the time. Per quarter(-year) is a bit more consistent, less fractionally variant ''and'' closer to most utility bill frequencies as well, if you're looking for something not as eye-wateringly frightening as an annual estimate (which 'only' varies every 4.1237... years, on average). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.47|172.70.163.47]] 00:21, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

1896: Active Ingredients Only

2024-06-02T17:42:20Z

108.162.238.183:

{{comic
| number = 1896
| date = September 29, 2017
| title = Active Ingredients Only
| image = active_ingredients_only.png
| titletext = Contains the active ingredients from all competing cold medicines, plus the medicines for headaches, arthritis, insomnia, indigestion, and more, because who wants THOSE things?
}}

==Explanation==
Commercial medicine typically has one (or a few) "Active" ingredient and many "Inactive" ingredients. Active ingredients are the actual medicine, while inactive ingredients -- such as preservatives, dyes, or binders -- are added to dilute the active ingredient to a healthy level and help the body absorb the dose of active ingredient.

[[Randall]] thus presents a pack of {{w|Common cold|cold}} medicine that has "Active Ingredients Only", which is the name of the brand as can be seen since it has "™" after the name (the unregistered {{w|trademark}} symbol). It has six active ingredients and no inactive ingredients. This might be a spoof of the current trend of advertising food as containing "no additives and no preservatives".

Cold medicines are commonly packaged in blister packs, with each dose contained separately, and vegans commonly open up gelatin capsules and discard the capsule, ingesting only the contents of the pill{{actual citation needed}} (note that this may '''not be safe'''. Please consult your pharmacist or doctor before doing this). By removing the inactive ingredients of the gelatin and the requirement to open it up, the slogan ''We're not here to waste your time'', is justified. This slogan is also trademarked.

The slogan is a registered trademark (®) while the product name is a common law trademark. This means that the slogan likely stays the same, while the product name changes from time to time.

In the title text, the medicine company promises their product "Contains the active ingredients from all competing cold medicines, plus the medicines for headaches, arthritis, insomnia, indigestion, and more, because who wants THOSE things?" This may be be a follow-up (or a wish from Randall) after [[1618: Cold Medicine]], where [[Cueball]] wishes to try all possible types of cold medicine at once. The provided justification for combining all these medications is simple: These medicines cure unpleasant symptoms, so taking them all must be a good thing. What this ignores is that taking medicine intended to solve symptoms one doesn't have can be potentially harmful, and would likely be unavoidable for this product's consumers unless they are suffering from all these conditions simultaneously. Furthermore, mixing medications can often lead to unintended reactions and side effects, and is typically advised against.

Another joke is that popular cold medicines contain no antiviral ingredients at all, and treat symptoms only -- while it might make your runny nose less runny, it will do just as much to clear the rhinovirus causing your runny nose as a sugar pill. This part of the comic may be a follow-up to [[1526: Placebo Blocker]], where a sugar pill is offered to treat a headache.

A secondary joke is by claiming the active ingredients from all "competing" cold medicines, the company producing this "Active Ingredients Only" may choose whom they say they are competing against. Some cold medications treat only pain and fever, for example, and do nothing for cough, congestion, runny nose and sneezing. Doctors recommend medicines which aid for the particular symptoms of the cold one is experiencing.

==Transcript==

:[A picture of a pack of cold medicine. At the top there is a large advert in three lines. In a black line, to the right of the advert, white text states what kind of medicine is in the pack. Below to the left is a square frame listing ingredients. Most of the text inside this frame is unreadable scribbles. To the right of the frame is another advert inside a black frame. On the side of the box are also unreadable scribbles, both at the top and down next to the ingredients list. At the bottom of the box it can be seen how the pack can open up.]
:<big>Active Ingredients</big>
:<big><big>'''Only'''</big></big>TM
:We're not here to waste your time®

:Cold Medicine

:Active ingredients
:[Six lines of scribbles, with first a name, then a statement in brackets and finally a column right of this with a short line of scribbles.]

:Inactive ingredients
:None

:<big>No binders!</big>

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Medicine]]
[[Category:Biology]]

1540: Hemingway

2015-06-21T12:43:52Z

108.162.238.183: A league is three miles, the distance an average adult walks in one hour's time.

{{comic
| number = 1540
| date = June 19, 2015
| title = Hemingway
| image = hemingway.png
| titletext = Instead of bobcat, package contained chair.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a reference to the six-word short story ''{{w|For sale: baby shoes, never worn}}'', which has been commonly attributed to famous author {{w|Ernest Hemingway}}; however, [[Randall|Randall Munroe]] explicitly states that this might not be the case at all. The comic plays on the fact that the original story takes the form of a short advertisement that might have been seen in a newspaper, and for these examples uses various modern 'standards' that did not exist in Hemingway's time. In keeping with the original, each example remains six words long. The title text obeys this rule, too.

In short: It is urban legend that Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and allegedly called it his best work.

The various drafts offered in the comic are:
*"For Sale: This gullible baby's shoes": This suggests the seller somehow tricked the baby out of its shoes. This pokes fun at the tragedy that the original story suggests. With the original (For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn), readers could infer that the baby who would have worn the shoes must have died. Randall tries to make the reader infer other, more absurd things instead.
*"Baby shoes for sale by owner": This suggests that a very intelligent baby is somehow selling its own shoes, or that someone is selling an old pair of shoes they had as a baby.
*“<strike>Actually, there’s no evidence Hemingway wrote</strike>”: A fragment of a preemptive rebuttal to the comic’s premise (or at least its title), for some reason.
*"Free shoes, provided you overpower baby": This suggests the person posting the ad doesn't in fact own the shoes, but rather is asking people to forcibly steal shoes from a baby wearing them (not a difficult task).
*"For Sale: Weird baby's toe shoes: This might be a reference to [[1065: Shoes]], where shoes with toes were considered "creepy".
*"For Sale: Baby shoes / Prime eligible": This is a reference to Amazon, which offers Prime as a paid service to expedite shipping of items ordered on its website.
*“<strike>Though popularly attributed to Hemingway, the</strike>”: Another fragment of a rebuttal, written in an encyclopedic style.
*"This weird trick covers baby feet!": This is modeled after common 'click bait' wording designed to get users to visit web pages, typically using words such as "This weird trick" or "secrets they don't want you to know" to artificially increase its apparent appeal. XKCD has previously parodied click bait in [[1283: Headlines]].
*"For Sale: Baby shoes, just hatched": This plays on the meaning of the phrase "baby shoes", reframing it to mean a newly-born shoe (similar to "baby bird"), rather than its typical meaning of footwear designed for babies.
*"Sale: Seven-league boots (expedited shipping)": {{w|Seven-league boots}} are mythical boots that allow their user to move seven leagues (21 miles) per step. The "expedited shipping" part suggests that the boots will be shipped to the customer on the feet of a walking person, thus allowing the boots to be shipped much faster than if by airplane (except, of course, if the boots had to be shipped overseas).
*"Complete this survey for free shoes": This is another reference to common internet marketing campaigns, where users are incentivized to take surveys in exchange for small compensation such as free samples or coupons.
*"''Shoes'', by Ernest Hemingway [Citation needed]": This is a reference to Wikipedia. "Citation needed" is used to mark claims that require additional evidence to justify as true. In this case, Randall is using this to question whether the short story was really written by Hemingway.
*"This is my greatest short story": This is a completely different style that could also have been used to write a short story in six words. Rather than telling a story about shoes, this is more "meta" by referencing itself and being a self-fulfilling (or self-defeating) prophecy. (The sequel was titled "Don't bother reading my other stories").
*"For Sale: Baby shoes (-1) [Cursed]": This is written like a description of a virtual item typically found in Roguelike games or MMOs. "-1" and "Cursed" are attributes of the item, which usually produce negative consequences that reduce its wearer's stats or abilities.
*"<Blink><Marquee>Baby shoes!</Marquee></Blink>": This is reminiscent of the style of HTML widely used in the 1990s. Both the <Blink> and <Marquee> tags make the text content ("Baby shoes!") appear more prominent and attention-grabbing. The normally invisible-and-rendered tag elements can be seen and are part of the six words count. This could have been due to 'sanitising' of uploaded text where HTML tags (other than any that are specifically allowed, like it appears Strikethrough formatting might be) are deliberately deactivated by the server. An interesting note: When this comic was first posted to xkcd.com, the '/' in the </Blink> tag was missing. This was fixed between the 19th and 20th of June, 2015, showing that this was, indeed, unintentional.
*"For Sale: Baby-sized saddle, bobcat": This is a reference to [[A-Minus-Minus|325: A-Minus-Minus]] in which [[Cueball]] says: 'Instead of office chair, package contained bobcat'. The 'Baby-sized saddle', a very small saddle, is an item only usable if one was to try to ride a small animal such as a bobcat, and was a baby.
*"Hemingway busted for Craigslist shoe scam": This is written like a news headline where Hemingway supposedly wrote about shoes in order to perpetrate a scam. {{w|Craigslist}} is a website where users can advertise and seek goods and services.

The title text continues the reference to [[A-Minus-Minus|325: A-Minus-Minus]], but inverts the situation. Rather than unexpectedly receiving a bobcat by package, this time the package contains a regular item instead of the expected bobcat.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above comic]
:Hemingway's Rough Drafts

:[A list of rough draft stories]
:For sale: This Gullible Baby's Shoes
:Baby Shoes For Sale By Owner
:<strike>Actually, there's no evidence Hemingway wrote</strike>
:Free Shoes, Provided You Overpower Baby
:For Sale: Weird Baby's Toe Shoes
:For Sale: Baby Shoes ✓ Prime eligible
:<strike>Though popularly attributed to Hemingway, the</strike>
:This Weird Trick Covers Baby Feet!
:For Sale: Baby Shoes, Just Hatched
:Sale: Seven-League Boots (Expedited Shipping)
:Complete this survey for free shoes!
:''Shoes'', by Ernest Hemingway [citation needed]
:This is my greatest short story.
:For sale: Baby shoes (-1) [cursed]
:<blink><marquee>Baby Shoes!</marquee></blink>
:For Sale: Baby-sized Saddle, Bobcat
:Hemingway Busted for Craigslist Shoe Scam

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics|Color]]

Talk:1529: Bracket

2015-05-25T07:51:29Z

108.162.238.183:

Pretty sure Doctor Who is covered by "The Doctor". He doesn't go by "Who" in the show. He's just the Doctor.

I think the missing doctor is House.

----

Dr. Pepper, maybe? Does "staring" or "forgotten" have to do with it?

----
Whatagainnow?
----
Dr. Oz? Dr. Phil? Dr. Watson? Dr. Kavorkian? Dr. Seuss? Wasn't there a famous literary work, The Lost Island of Dr. Moreau? I agree that Dr. House and/or house calls could be a missing candidate for the bracket. But then, there are a ton of 'Sirs' that didn't make the list. GAKDragon 06:43, 25 May 2015 (UTC)GAKDragon
----
Or is "The Doctor" http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doctor?
----
It's Doctor House - definitely and finally!
----
What's the connection between Rip Torn and Natalie Imbruglia?

Talk:1527: Humans

2015-05-21T01:31:59Z

108.162.238.183:

Yes! Preach it, Randall! [[Special:Contributions/188.114.106.23|188.114.106.23]] 08:23, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
:Everyone knows they're more akin to big cows, anyway. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.143|141.101.106.143]] 09:33, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
::Big ''spherical'' cows. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 10:22, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
:::[http://what-if.xkcd.com/120/ Although most remaining "cows" are actually closer to oblate spheroids ...] [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.252|108.162.210.252]] 19:56, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Robots complaining about science is like humans complaining about evolution. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.60|108.162.231.60]] 09:49, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
:Great line :) --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.118|108.162.215.118]] 10:51, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Given the title text, the reference to movie humans makes this cartoon likely an oblique commentary on the upcoming film ''Jurassic World'' where the dinosaurs remain featherless. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.162|108.162.237.162]] 10:54, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't really want to see a sequel criticized for maintaining continuity. Think of what it would be like if someone made a 2001 movie where instead of travelling to Jupiter, Hal orchestrated the invasion of Iraq. Wait a second, that would make for an awesome movie.--Dave[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.183|108.162.237.183]] 13:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
* LOL! :) [[User:KieferSkunk|KieferSkunk]] ([[User talk:KieferSkunk|talk]]) 23:22, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I wouldn't like being chased with Aepyornis either, and noone ever doubted Aepyornis had feathers. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 11:45, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I wonder which movie Robot #2 is referring to. Something with a crowned monarch and lots of (almost) naked warriors. ''300'' perhaps? [[User:Smperron|Smperron]] ([[User talk:Smperron|talk]]) 12:47, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
:I'm pretty sure their talking about future films, we make films about prehistoric dinosaurs, so the robots make films about prehistoric humans(pre robot history) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.24|141.101.99.24]] 13:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
:: except for the use of "their", I'm in complete agreement. I'm gonna make a few tweaks, accordingly - [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 14:18, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
:Robot 2 isn't referring to a current movie, I think this is set roughly 65million years in the future. So i've removed the part about Troy and other sword and sandal films {{unsigned|Zeimusu}}
:::I assume it's more that skeletons and metal are much more likely to survive than clothes. Perhaps, they often see the crowns nearby the skulls in digs and assume that they were attached in life. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.100|108.162.219.100]] 19:24, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Dinosaurs with feathers. Yawn. The idea is already tired. Dinosaurs with feathers cool? I just picture the T-Rex in Jurassic Park chasing the car to the tune of the Chicken Dance and it doesn't take me long to realise how cool feathered dinosaurs really are. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.161|108.162.249.161]] 21:49, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

"covered with colorful fabric" - "big pillows" - Am I the only person who thinks the robots have discovered, and are taking as authoritative, a furniture store ad for king and queen size beds?

1470: Kix

2015-01-08T04:13:14Z

108.162.238.183: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1470
| date = January 7, 2015
| title = Kix
| image = kix.png
| titletext = My parents sent me to several years of intensive Kix test prep.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a play on the multiple possible replacements of the word approved in the phrase "Kid tested, mother approved," the slogan for {{w|Kix (cereal)|Kix}}, a children's breakfast cereal. This slogan is meant to imply that kids enjoy the cereal, and it is healthy to eat, as a mother would be concerned about her kids' health. This comic may be a commentary about brainstorming sessions.

The comic shows a brainstorming session designed to determine the most effective way to complete the slogan. Several words (ranging from the not-so-appealing to potentially {{w|Not safe for work|NSFW}}) have already been deemed inappropriate for the slogan, which is evident from the fact that they are {{w|Strikethrough|stricken out}}.

# '''Selected''', uses the definition of approved found in the real slogan. That the mother has determined that Kix is fit to eat, and therefore healthy. There also seems to be an attempt at near rhyme with "tested", something not evident in the real slogan.
# '''Perfected''', was likely inspired by the first option, selected. As selected and perfected rhyme and do not change the meaning of the slogan, the first option likely triggered a person in the brainstorming session to find a similarly positive word. This slogan implies that one or more mothers were involved in the cereals formulation and/or development, and therefore it is healthy.
# '''Not notified''' relates to the world of experimental research and clinical trials, and suggests that the people getting the kids to test the cereal did not obtain {{w|informed assent}}, pediatric assent or pediatric consent, which would generally involve notifying and getting permission from both parents.
# '''Watching helplessly''' suggests that the mother was forced to watch helplessly during the test, which we might assume she not only doesn't approve of, but considers dangerous, e.g. due to fears of {{w|sugar addiction}}.
# '''Infected''' suggests that there was some infectious agent in the Kix, and the kid acquired it and passed their infection to their mother; or that the mother was the one who put the infectious agent in there. This may be inspired by option one and two as infected rhymes with both selected and perfected, and by the third option as the slogan shares the same meaning as the third. This may be intended to show the group dynamic of the brainstorming session, or that one person keeps insisting on rhyming.
# '''Consumed''' could mean that the kid tested the product and didn't want to eat it, but the mother also tasted it and finished it off. It could also mean that the mother was consumed, by either the child or the cereal.
# '''Fucker''' modifies the meaning of mother by creating the compound word motherfucker. The slogan is now in the {{w|vocative case}}, as in: "[this has been] Kid Tested, motherfucker!". This last option appears to be a so called "elephant" - a ponderous ending of a joke that contrasts with rather refined and mild humor of the former options.

The title text conflates the "Kix test" with college entrance exams like the {{w|SAT (test)|SAT}}'s or the {{w|ACT (test)|ACT}}'s. This is yet another definition of "Kid tested" as in "The kid has been tested on a given subject."

To avoid such ambiguity, the authors of the actual slogan could have used a hyphen between the words, i.e. "kid-tested", but this was not done.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail, Megan, and Cueball are standing around a whiteboard. The whiteboard on easel reads:]
:'''Kix'''
:Slogan ideas
:Kid Tested, Mother...

:<strike>Selected</strike>
:<strike>Perfected</strike>
:<strike>Not notified</strike>
:<strike>Watching helplessly</strike>
:<strike>Infected</strike>
:<strike>Consumed</strike>
:<strike>Fucker</strike>

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

1470: Kix

2015-01-08T04:12:51Z

108.162.238.183: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1470
| date = January 7, 2015
| title = Kix
| image = kix.png
| titletext = My parents sent me to several years of intensive Kix test prep.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a play on the multiple possible replacements of the word approved in the phrase "Kid tested, mother approved", the slogan for {{w|Kix (cereal)|Kix}}, a children's breakfast cereal. This slogan is meant to imply that kids enjoy the cereal, and it is healthy to eat, as a mother would be concerned about her kids' health. This comic may be a commentary about brainstorming sessions.

The comic shows a brainstorming session designed to determine the most effective way to complete the slogan. Several words (ranging from the not-so-appealing to potentially {{w|Not safe for work|NSFW}}) have already been deemed inappropriate for the slogan, which is evident from the fact that they are {{w|Strikethrough|stricken out}}.

# '''Selected''', uses the definition of approved found in the real slogan. That the mother has determined that Kix is fit to eat, and therefore healthy. There also seems to be an attempt at near rhyme with "tested", something not evident in the real slogan.
# '''Perfected''', was likely inspired by the first option, selected. As selected and perfected rhyme and do not change the meaning of the slogan, the first option likely triggered a person in the brainstorming session to find a similarly positive word. This slogan implies that one or more mothers were involved in the cereals formulation and/or development, and therefore it is healthy.
# '''Not notified''' relates to the world of experimental research and clinical trials, and suggests that the people getting the kids to test the cereal did not obtain {{w|informed assent}}, pediatric assent or pediatric consent, which would generally involve notifying and getting permission from both parents.
# '''Watching helplessly''' suggests that the mother was forced to watch helplessly during the test, which we might assume she not only doesn't approve of, but considers dangerous, e.g. due to fears of {{w|sugar addiction}}.
# '''Infected''' suggests that there was some infectious agent in the Kix, and the kid acquired it and passed their infection to their mother; or that the mother was the one who put the infectious agent in there. This may be inspired by option one and two as infected rhymes with both selected and perfected, and by the third option as the slogan shares the same meaning as the third. This may be intended to show the group dynamic of the brainstorming session, or that one person keeps insisting on rhyming.
# '''Consumed''' could mean that the kid tested the product and didn't want to eat it, but the mother also tasted it and finished it off. It could also mean that the mother was consumed, by either the child or the cereal.
# '''Fucker''' modifies the meaning of mother by creating the compound word motherfucker. The slogan is now in the {{w|vocative case}}, as in: "[this has been] Kid Tested, motherfucker!". This last option appears to be a so called "elephant" - a ponderous ending of a joke that contrasts with rather refined and mild humor of the former options.

The title text conflates the "Kix test" with college entrance exams like the {{w|SAT (test)|SAT}}'s or the {{w|ACT (test)|ACT}}'s. This is yet another definition of "Kid tested" as in "The kid has been tested on a given subject."

To avoid such ambiguity, the authors of the actual slogan could have used a hyphen between the words, i.e. "kid-tested", but this was not done.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail, Megan, and Cueball are standing around a whiteboard. The whiteboard on easel reads:]
:'''Kix'''
:Slogan ideas
:Kid Tested, Mother...

:<strike>Selected</strike>
:<strike>Perfected</strike>
:<strike>Not notified</strike>
:<strike>Watching helplessly</strike>
:<strike>Infected</strike>
:<strike>Consumed</strike>
:<strike>Fucker</strike>

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

1425: Tasks

2014-09-25T02:55:50Z

108.162.238.183: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1425
| date = September 24, 2014
| title = Tasks
| image = tasks.png
| titletext = In the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] appears to be asking [[Ponytail]] to write an app that determines if a given picture is (1) taken in a national park, and (2) a picture of a bird. The first question is generally harder for a human to answer, but easy for an app that has access to location information and a {{w|geographic information system}} (GIS). The second one is easy for a human but much harder for a computer. This illustrates {{w|Moravec's paradox}} in a modern context. It turns out to be relatively easy to teach computers impressive skills like {{w|trajectory optimization}}, but hard to "give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception", as Steven Pinker wrote.

In order to determine whether the user is in a national park, Ponytail plans to determine the user's location using the mobile device. This location will then be cross checked with a {{w|geographic information system}} (GIS) which will be able to determine whether the coordinates lie within a national park boundary.

Determining whether an image is of a given kind of natural object is far more difficult. This task falls into the area of {{w|computer vision}}. One of the goals in computer vision is to detect and classify objects within an image. This is a very challenging task for a number of reasons.

:Firstly, humans use size, edge-assignment, movement, and stereoscopic vision when looking at a scene (not a picture of a thing, but of the thing itself) to discern individual objects and then categorize them as foreground or background.<ref>{{w|Figure-ground_(perception)}}</ref> A photograph, however, is a static, monoscopic image that can only provide size and edge-assignment clues. Humans are only able to discern objects from background in photographs by comparing the photo against all of the things they've seen and everything they've learned about those things over the course of their life and identifying matching patterns.<ref>{{w|Visual_perception}}</ref> Presumably, today's computers do not have nearly the processing power or wealth of data available as the human mind.

:Secondly, the quality of the photograph will have an impact on a computer's ability to match patterns. For example, the object in the photograph might be partially visible or occluded. In the case of a living bird, additional complications arise from the variations among individual birds of the same species and differences in pose (flying, perching in a tree, etc.). Differentiating between visually similar objects can result in false positives. For example, is it a photo of a bird in flight or a plane (or superman!)? Ponytail's estimate of 5 years may be overly optimistic (see [[678: Researcher Translation]]).

Today's state-of-the-art algorithms for solving this kind of task mostly use local features (e.g. {{w|Scale-invariant feature transform|SIFT}} or {{w|SURF}} in combination with a {{w|support vector machine}} or {{w|convolutional neural network}}).

The subtitle refers to "CS", which is a common acronym for "Computer Science", of which artificial intelligence and computer vision are sub-disciplines.

The title text mentions [http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6125/AIM-100.pdf The Summer Vision Project] and {{w|Marvin Minsky}} of MIT. In the summer of 1966, he asked his undergraduate student {{w|Gerald Jay Sussman}} to "spend the summer linking a camera to a computer and getting the computer to describe what it saw" ([http://szeliski.org/Book/]). {{w|Seymour Papert}} drafted the plan, and it seems that Sussman was joined by {{w|Bill Gosper}}, {{w|Richard Greenblatt (programmer)|Richard Greenblatt}}, {{w|Leslie Lamport}}, Adolfo Guzman, Michael Speciner, John White, Benjamin, and Henneman. The project schedule allocated one summer for the completion of this task. The required time was obviously significantly underestimated, since dozens of research groups around the world are still working on this topic today.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail sitting at a computer with Cueball standing behind her]
:Cueball: When a user takes a photo, the app should check whether they're in a national park...
:Ponytail: Sure, easy GIS lookup. Gimme a few hours.
:Cueball: ...and check whether the photo is of a bird.
:Ponytail: I'll need a research team and five years.
:In CS, it can be hard to explain the difference between the easy and the virtually impossible.

==References==
<references/>

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

1425: Tasks

2014-09-25T02:52:19Z

108.162.238.183: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1425
| date = September 24, 2014
| title = Tasks
| image = tasks.png
| titletext = In the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] appears to be asking [[Ponytail]] to write an app that determines if a given picture is (1) taken in a national park, and (2) a picture of a bird. The first question is generally harder for a human to answer, but easy for an app that has access to location information and a {{w|geographic information system}} (GIS). The second one is easy for a human but much harder for a computer. This illustrates {{w|Moravec's paradox}} in a modern context. It turns out to be relatively easy to teach computers impressive skills like {{w|trajectory optimization}}, but hard to "give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception", as Steven Pinker wrote.

In order to determine whether the user is in a national park, Ponytail plans to determine the user's location using the mobile device. This location will then be cross checked with a {{w|geographic information system}} (GIS) which will be able to determine whether the coordinates lie within a national park boundary.

Determining whether an image is of a given kind of natural object is far more difficult. This task falls into the area of {{w|computer vision}}. One of the goals in computer vision is to detect and classify objects within an image. This is a very challenging task for a number of reasons.

:Firstly, humans use size, edge-assignment, movement, and stereoscopic vision when looking at a scene (not a picture of a thing, but of the thing itself) to discern individual objects and then categorize them as foreground or background.<ref>{{w|Figure-ground_(perception)}}</ref> A photograph, however, is a static, monoscopic image that can only provide size and edge-assignment clues. Humans are only able to discern objects from background in photographs by comparing the photo against all of the things they've seen and everything they've learned about those things over the course of their life and identifying matching patterns.<ref>{{w|Visual_perception}}</ref> Presumably, today's computers do not have nearly the processing power or wealth of data available as the human mind.

:Secondly, the quality of the photograph will have an impact on a computer's ability to match patterns. For example, the object in the photograph might be partially visible or occluded. In the case of a living bird, additional complications arise from the variations among individual birds of the same species and differences in pose (flying, perching in a tree, etc.). Differentiating between visually similar objects can result in false positives. For example, is it a photo of a bird in flight or a plane (or superman!). Ponytail's estimate of 5 years may be overly optimistic (see [[678: Researcher Translation]]).

Today's state-of-the-art algorithms for solving this kind of task mostly use local features (e.g. {{w|Scale-invariant feature transform|SIFT}} or {{w|SURF}} in combination with a {{w|support vector machine}} or {{w|convolutional neural network}}).

The subtitle refers to "CS", which is a common acronym for "Computer Science", of which artificial intelligence and computer vision are sub-disciplines.

The title text mentions [http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6125/AIM-100.pdf The Summer Vision Project] and {{w|Marvin Minsky}} of MIT. In the summer of 1966, he asked his undergraduate student {{w|Gerald Jay Sussman}} to "spend the summer linking a camera to a computer and getting the computer to describe what it saw" ([http://szeliski.org/Book/]). {{w|Seymour Papert}} drafted the plan, and it seems that Sussman was joined by {{w|Bill Gosper}}, {{w|Richard Greenblatt (programmer)|Richard Greenblatt}}, {{w|Leslie Lamport}}, Adolfo Guzman, Michael Speciner, John White, Benjamin, and Henneman. The project schedule allocated one summer for the completion of this task. The required time was obviously significantly underestimated, since dozens of research groups around the world are still working on this topic today.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail sitting at a computer with Cueball standing behind her]
:Cueball: When a user takes a photo, the app should check whether they're in a national park...
:Ponytail: Sure, easy GIS lookup. Gimme a few hours.
:Cueball: ...and check whether the photo is of a bird.
:Ponytail: I'll need a research team and five years.
:In CS, it can be hard to explain the difference between the easy and the virtually impossible.

==References==
<references/>

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