explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

365: Slides

2021-02-08T01:14:21Z

108.162.238.37: /* Explanation */ Noted the employment of "show, don't tell" in the title text

{{comic
| number = 365
| date = January 2, 2008
| title = Slides
| image = slides.png
| titletext = Did you know they can actually physically throw you out of SIGGRAPH?
}}

==Explanation==
In the context shown, the expression "bear with me for a moment" usually implies that two seemingly unrelated topics are in fact connected, and the connection is to be explained later. This is not the case in the comic: [[Cueball]] is in fact simply showing random slides that have no connection to each other. By using the phrase liberally and never actually explaining the links, it is suggested that a presenter can simply continue to show random slides for an extended period before anyone actually realizes what is going on.

The title text refers to {{w|SIGGRAPH}}, an annual computer graphics conference held since 1974. In [[541: TED Talk]], it is said that [[Randall]] has been banned from SIGGRAPH, and we can infer from this comic that he was physically thrown out of it. Another (very implausible) possibility is that Randall is making the joke that people who attend computer graphics conferences are stereotypically not very athletic, and therefore unlikely to be able to physically throw someone. Randall's particular choice of the title text follows the literary guideline of "show, don't tell", which states that the author, in this case Randall, should convey to the reader the point that he wants to express through demonstration or other methods instead of explicitly telling it to them, as the former prompts the reader to visualize the picture, while the latter comes across as boring. Telling the reader that the conference that Randall did this at was SIGGRAPH would have been boring to the reader because it is telling instead of showing. Telling the reader that Randall was thrown out of SIGGRAPH would have been a marginally better way to convey to the reader that the conference that Randall did this at was SIGGRAPH because the fact that Randall was at SIGGRAPH is now merely an implication of the title text instead of being stated directly, but it still simply tells the reader a fact without painting a picture in the reader's mind and is therefore suboptimal. The actual title text correctly follows the principle of "show, don't tell". First, through using the adverb "physically", Randall paints a more vivid picture of the occurrence in the reader's mind. In addition, phrasing the title text as a "Did you know" question and putting the last word in all-caps (While SIGGRAPH is the proper way to format the name of the conference, Randall likely intentionally chose a conference name that was in all-caps for this purpose of conveying shock.) convey Randall's surprise that the attendees were allowed to and physically able to literally throw Randall out. This presents the title text not as a monotonous narration but instead in a more entertaining way, preventing the reader from getting bored.

In addition, the fact that Cueball was attending SIGGRAPH is another joke: Neither the Quantum Hall effect, a concept in quantum mechanics, nor rainfall in the Amazon forest, have anything to do with SIGGRAPH's focus of computer graphics.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing on a stage, pointing at a line graph using a pointer.]
:Cueball: That chart explained the quantum hall effect. Now, if you'll bear with me a moment, this next graph shows rainfall over the amazon basin...
:[Caption below the panel:]
:If you keep saying "bear with me for a moment" people will take a while to figure out that you're just showing them random slides.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]
[[Category:Banned from conferences]]

2381: The True Name of the Bear

2021-02-08T00:55:06Z

108.162.238.37: Clarified why locking up food woudl prompt bear raids and typed a paragraph about the title text

{{comic
| number = 2381
| date = November 4, 2020
| title = The True Name of the Bear
| image = the_true_name_of_the_bear.png
| titletext = Thank you to Gretchen McCulloch for fielding this question, and sorry that as a result the world's foremost internet linguist has been devoured by the brown one. She will be missed.
}}

==Explanation==
The Canadian Internet linguist {{w|Gretchen McCulloch}} [https://twitter.com/gretchenamcc/status/1113195661275611137 tweeted] about [https://www.charlierussellbears.com/LinguisticArchaeology.html the theory] that the word for bear became taboo in some branches of Indo-European languages - notably the Germanic one - and it was replaced by euphemisms. In the Germanic branch, the euphemism may have been "the brown one," and thus the modern word "bear" (derived from Germanic "beran") would more literally translate into the color "brown" rather than the animal.

The Indoeuropean root for bear is *rkto-, which has been inferred from modern languages that still use a word derived from it. In the comic, McCulloch applies {{w|Sound change|sound shifting}} laws to it to guess how it would have evolved in English had it not been superceded, but saying it seems to actually summon a bear, showing that abandoning that word was a fairly wise move for the Germanic language family.

Interestingly enough, the hypothesized word “arth” is the same as the Welsh and Cornish for the word “bear.” Welsh belongs to the Celtic language family, which is one of the Indo-European branches that still uses a word derived from *rkto-, as do the Italic (Romance), Greek and Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) branches, while Germanic, Slavic and Baltic branches abandoned it for different euphemisms. Another Indo-European language where the word for bear is very close to this extrapolation is Armenian, where it's written [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/արջ արջ] and pronounced “artch”.

Depending on how one takes the concept of "saying a true name", {{tvtropes|FridgeLogic|fridge logic}} issues arise with this comic, adding to the absurdity of the situation depicted. If saying the "true" name (or any name derived from that name) summons the bear, how do Celtic and Romance language speakers (e.g. Italians saying Orso, Spaniards saying Oso, etc) get away with saying it without running into the same issue? Perhaps the bears only respond to certain languages, but that seems unlikely unless the words mutated specifically into some special sound bears responded to, since the languages that the bears would be prompted by would have developed thousands of years apart in time. An arcane form of {{w|geofencing}}, and/or a {{w|geas}} firmly tied to some prior mystically-established meta-contextualising, might limit such otherworldly 'magic' and explain why more mundane science and logic is usually unworried by these kinds of phenomena being inadvertently triggered.{{Citation needed}}

Joking aside, there can be actual good reason to avoid saying bear. For example, maybe when someone had a good harvest bears would have a tendency to come into town to investigate or raid their food store. After some time, people might have developed a tendency to discuss bears and lock up their food store after a good harvest, and so if people overheard discussion of bears from their neighbors, they might have all locked down their food stores, and bears could have learned to key in on the behavior of everyone locking their food stores to actually come into the city and raid them more in response{{Citation needed}} because they would have learned that people only lock up their food when they have a lot of it. Thus in a roundabout way, mentioning bears does summon bears.

Another possibility is that the "true name" of a bear is actually in a language the bear understands: possibly involving smells, body language, territorial or ecological interspecies behavior, and would actually reliably summon a bear because the person using it knew exactly what they were doing. Hunter-gatherers and very experienced trackers are known to interact with wildlife in such ways.{{Citation needed}} 

Use of true names appears to be [[1013: Wake Up Sheeple|highly effective in the xkcd universe, rather like a fairy tale]], and it is also {{tvtropes|IKnowYourTrueName|a common trope}} elsewhere. Some say a true name contains clear meaning of who someone or something really is. In a competitive culture like ours, this could give others power over you, "profiling" you to be able to predict you and what you do.

Internet Linguist Gretchen McCulloch (or her ghost) certainly found it effective, but [https://twitter.com/GretchenAMcC/status/1324044826145378304 may reflect her extreme susceptibility to internet leakage]. After inexplicably leaving the bear, she reappears in [[2421: Tower of Babel]].

The title text states that the bear that Gretchen summoned ate her, which means that Ponytail's attempt to stop Gretchen from summoning the bear was justified. However, the title text uses the phrase "brown one" instead of the word "bear". While saying the true name of the bear apparently does prompt a bear attack, as discussed in the comic, bear is not actually this true name, so it could be said safely without prompting a bear attack, as the characters did in the first few panels, so Randall could have used the word bear in the title text without being killed by a bear. In addition, while ''saying'' the true name of the bear apparently summons one, ''typing'' it probably does not (unless a bear is already close enough to be able to read the computer screen, in which case one already has to worry about a bear), so Randall could have typed "arth" without causing danger to himself. However, maybe Randall choose to avoid typing "arth" in the title text out of concern for the safety of people who cannot see or are hard of sight who would use screen-readers to say the title text out loud.

== Trivia ==
The last comic strip that ended with the words "Oh no" was [[2314: Carcinization]], which also featured an unfortunate occurrence involving an animal as its punchline when Cueball spontaneously transformed into a crab.

==Transcript==
:[Megan walks in front the left, looking down at her phone. Cueball and Ponytail are standing next to each other.]
:Megan: Wow - according to the internet, we don't know the true name of the bear.
:Cueball: What?

:[Gretchen, drawn with short, curly hair, comes on-panel from the right.]
:Megan: Apparently there was a superstition that saying its name would summon it. "Bear" and "bruin" mean "the brown one." Its actual name has been lost.
:Cueball: Wow.
:Ponytail: Gretchen, is this for real?

:[Zoom-in on Gretchen.]
:Gretchen: Well, sort of
:Gretchen: The Proto-Indo-European root was *rkto-
:Gretchen: It was lost in the Germanic languages like English, but survived elsewhere, e.g. Greek "arktos" and Latin "ursus"

:[Back to the second panel, with Megan holding her phone down, Ponytail with her hands in the air, and Gretchen with her hand on her chin.]
:Megan: So could we figure out what the word would have been in English?
:Gretchen: Hmm. I mean, we'll never know, but given Germanic sound shifts, a reasonable guess might be "arth"?
:Ponytail: ''No!!''

:[The panel zooms in again to Gretchen.]
:Ponytail (off-panel): ''Stop! AAAAA!''
:Gretchen: What??
:Ponytail (off-panel): Don't ''say'' it!

:[Ponytail is holding her palms out. Megan is no longer in the panel.]
:Ponytail: What have you ''done''?
:Off-panel noise: <big>'''''ROAR'''''</big>
:Gretchen: Oh
:Gretchen: Oh no

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Animals]]

Talk:2340: Cosmologist Genres

2020-07-31T11:08:53Z

108.162.238.37: re sleepitude

An ultra-early comic, after the prior quite-early one. Is Randall (suddenly now) getting enough sleep? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.71|162.158.154.71]] 08:31, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
:Perhaps his sleep schedule has become completely hopeless instead. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.37|108.162.238.37]] 11:08, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Is the 'pop' not considered a metal possibly referring to the 'pop test' for Hydrogen gas that I had to do hundreds of times in high school? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.230|162.158.2.230]] 10:13, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Talk:1752: Interplanetary Experience

2016-10-28T15:16:02Z

108.162.238.37:

The Mars at sunset might also be reference to "alpenglow." A simple Google of "alpenglow" should suffice as explanation



The explanation starts out saying that this list includes all the other planets in our system as well as a couple moons, however uranus is clearly left off the list. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.37|108.162.238.37]] 15:16, 28 October 2016 (UTC)