explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:971: Alternative Literature

2024-11-17T12:31:55Z

172.70.86.142:

I would totally buy a blank book. I could hollow them out to make boxes, or wire up the insides to build a revolving door, or hire an artist to draw wonderful images in them to put on display for anyone who comes over to my home. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|purple|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 08:21, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Interestingly, this is exactly the argument used to explain why reading books is better than watching TV: TV gives too much of the ready context, while a book allows the reader to fill in the blanks with his own imagination. The empty books just go one step further. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.11|108.162.246.11]] 22:15, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
:I dunno, I mean, there's plenty of space in TV to work in stuff, exercise your imagination. In my view a book is for having stuff in it. A story in a book gives you a structure to build on, a framework that lets you build higher than you would go on your own. -Pennpenn [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.162|108.162.250.162]] 04:19, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

I write short stories all the time but nobody reads them.
Maybe I should get a printer?

"Telling someone who trusts you that you're giving them medicine, when you know you're not, because you want their money, isn't just lying--it's like an example you'd make up if you had to illustrate for a child why lying is wrong."

I think it is worse when vets do it to cattle and sheep. You never get to hear the farmer saying "Bah!"
though. Odd, that.[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 19:10, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Anybody else reminded of "The Library of Babel" by Borges? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.113|108.162.238.113]] 16:32, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Going way back to the 2013 comment (writing in 2021): there are excellent reasons to buy blank books. As you say, writing in them is a really good reason. Buying them to ''read'' is not, for my non-hallucinatory self, a good reason. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 13:44, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Everybody here going on about the benefits of buying blank books to write and draw stuff. You guys know those are called notebooks, right? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.254.27|172.70.254.27]] 19:06, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I was simply reminded of John Cage's blank music piece. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 11:05, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
:That's {{w|4′33″}}, though of course that's deliberately "everything but the music", compared to "we put something in that's (apparently) related to the problem, but then diluted it out so you don't get any side-effects (but somehow still the effects that we imagine)". The Cage piece is more an honest "here, have an elaborate drink of water" than homeopathy's "you ''will'' hear whatever other symphony you desire, in your head!"... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.142|172.70.86.142]] 12:31, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

2567: Language Development

2024-11-10T13:02:35Z

172.70.86.142: /* Explanation */ Me wants explain more. Do me say good?

{{comic
| number = 2567
| date = January 12, 2022
| title = Language Development
| image = language_development.png
| titletext = The worst is the Terrible Twos, when they're always throwing things and shrieking, "forsooth, to bed thou shalt not take me, cur!"
}}

==Explanation==
[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are having what could appear to be a typical conversation about her child's ability to learn languages really fast. But for the joke, the comic mixes up two possible meaning of "language development:" the development of an individual person {{w|language acquisition|learning a language}}, and the development of languages themselves over time.

The conventional meaning of {{w|language development}} is the process by which infants begin to talk, that is to understand and produce intelligible speech. The field of {{w|language acquisition}} (sometimes called... language development) seeks to understand how baby humans are able to rapidly comprehend, internalize, and begin producing a new language.

Instead of starting with {{w|babbling}}, the first stage of normal language development, this baby's form of "language development" seems to be the linguistic form: going through all of the theoretical stages of the evolution of the English language, from Proto-Indo-European to Germanic to Old English.

In {{w|comparative linguistics}} and {{w|historical linguistics}}, {{w|Proto-Indo-European_language|Proto-Indo-European}} is a theorized common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. {{w|Proto-Germanic_language|Proto-Germanic}} is a reconstructed language formerly spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. It developed out of Proto-Indo-European and is the proposed common ancestor for all {{w|Germanic languages}}. {{w|Old English}} would have developed out of Proto-Germanic. Modern English developed out of Old English with many additions from French (which comes from a different branch of the Indo-European language family).

This parody of language development parallels the discredited {{w|theory of recapitulation}} in embryo development, sometimes expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", in which a developing animal embryo (ontogeny) was once thought to go through stages resembling successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). It also plays off of misconceptions about language evolution. Many people assume that ancient languages are more "pure" and "primitive" and that modern languages are more "complex" and "advanced". The comic takes this idea to its logical conclusion by joking that children should successively graduate between historic languages while learning to speak, which is more obviously absurd — it would take years to acquire any of the languages involved.

In linguistics, reconstructed words from proto-languages are commonly marked with an asterisk (*) to show that the word forms are not attested by any historical sources but created as a proposed ancestor word. The baby says the Proto-Indo-European roots that the words "milk" and "please" are derived from. Obviously, the speakers of Proto-Indo-European did not speak in roots, but used words made from the roots, so the way the baby talks does not reflect an obvious stage of the proto-language's fully formed use (although it ''may'' happen to reflect some historic protolinguistically-raised infant's personal linguistic step on the way to eventually attaining a full protolinguistic fluency).

Some sounds babies make are hard to interpret.{{citation needed}} However, humans have a tendency to recognize known things and patterns. They see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Thus, a parent familiar with Proto-Indo-European may falsely hear their baby speak Proto-Indo-European by misinterpreting unintelligible sounds.

Perhaps this is an alternate universe where every baby has to gradually develop their language skills along a historical path rather than a child-developmental one, until they reach the ultimately developed modern language of their parents (in this case Modern English).

There have been alleged {{w|language deprivation experiments}} where newborn infants were not exposed to any spoken language in order to find the "natural human language", in the days before ethics review boards would have forbidden such cruel treatments. Such experiments are known today to be a source for psychological problems at least. Alleged outcomes in the apocryphal sources range from the deprived children imitating other sounds in their environment, to them dying.

In the title text, Randall describes a 2-year-old child as speaking in {{w|iambic pentameter}} and in Elizabethan English, a meter and dialect of modern English used by {{w|Shakespeare}} more than 400 years ago. The [https://www.verywellfamily.com/terrible-twos-and-your-toddler-2634394 Terrible Twos] are a colloquialism referring to the developmental tendency of two-year-olds to have more temperamental behavior, as the child's developing assertion of autonomy and self-identity clash with other expectations of behaviour, before hopefully acceptably balancing their assertiveness with social normatism. The toddler's quote of "forsooth, to bed thou shalt not take me, cur!" would roughly be equivalent to "Indeed, you shall not take me to bed, you dog!" in less archaic English.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are looking to the left at a baby with dark hair. The baby sits on the left side of a table in an elevated baby chair.]
:Megan: He's only 1, so he still mostly speaks proto-Indo-European.
:Megan: But we've heard a few Germanic words already, so Old English can't be far off.
:Baby: *Melg- *Pl(e)hk-
:Cueball: They progress so fast!

==Trivia==
This was the second comic to come out after the [[Countdown in header text]] started.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with babies]]

2818: Circuit Symbols

2023-08-24T17:12:58Z

172.70.86.142: Undo revision 321977 by 172.71.98.212 (talk) Needs a rethink. *Raising* a drawbridge impedes traffic. Lowering it makes passage possible. (The rest is standard hyperbole...)

{{comic
| number = 2818
| date = August 21, 2023
| title = Circuit Symbols
| image = circuit_symbols_2x.png
| imagesize = 438x362px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = A circle with an A in it means that the circuit has committed a sin and has been marked as punishment.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a LOT of trolley problems in between overpasses built on top of pogo sticks, experiencing a couple of earthquakes. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic contains several symbols used in circuit diagrams. Each is labeled with a larger object that the symbol looks like a drawing of, rather than the electrical component it actually represents. Randall has previously depicted distorted uses, depictions, and labelling of the standard US-form {{w|electronic symbol}}s in comics such as [[730: Circuit Diagram]].

{| class="wikitable"
! Symbol !! Randall's Description !! Explanation
|-
| {{w|Switch}}
| {{w|Drawbridge}}
| The symbol represents a physical on/off {{w|switch}} in a circuit, but also resembles a {{w|drawbridge}}. A switch functions the exact same as a drawbridge, impeding electrons' flow when it is open.
|-
| {{w|Capacitor}}
| {{w|Overpass}}
| A {{w|capacitor}} is a component that can be used to hold electric charge, but also looks a bit like a map depiction for a highway {{w|overpass}} of a main road passing over a more minor track. This may actually be referred to more as an {{w|Tunnel#Underpass|underpass}}, from the perspective of the lesser route, being not usually as obvious a feature when using the upper highway.
|-
| {{w|Ground (electricity)|Ground}}
| {{w|Pogo Stick}}
| This symbol represents a connection to "{{w|Ground (electricity)|ground}}" or "earth", the common baseline voltage ''or'' safe current sink for various circuits (e.g. against which an aerial signal can be compared). If the horizontal lines are taken as motion lines or a spring, it might looks like a stylised {{w|pogo stick}}.
|-
| {{w|Resistor}} (ANSI)
| {{w|Earthquake}}
| A {{w|resistor}} is a component that reduces current flow in a circuit. There are two main symbols used: an IEC-style 'box' or, like here, the ANSI zig-zagged line. In this case, it also looks somewhat like the marks an earthquake makes on a seismograph and/or the 'rucks' of the ground (especially asphalt roads) that might result from underlying tectonic movements.
|-
| {{w|Inductor}}
| {{w|Sheep}}
| {{w|Inductor}}s create a magnetic field when current passes through them, and generally consist of a coil of wire, which the symbol reflects. The symbol seems in this case to be interpreted like the fluffy wool of a sheep.
|-
| {{w|Transformer}}
| Two sheep in love, trapped on opposite side of a fence.
| A {{w|transformer}} consists of two (or more) induction coils, for input and output(s), and a common core to mediate the transfer of power across the gap. The curly loop symbols of the symbol have already been claimed to resemble sheep, and the straight line (which is the core) now represents a fence separating two sheep who nonetheless wish to be together.
|-
| {{w|Electric battery|Battery}}
| Battery
| Not a joke, this is a typical symbol for a {{w|Electric battery|battery}}, or other form of {{w|voltaic pile}}.
|-
| Battery (sorted)
| Baertty
| Randall may have mapped the characters "tt" to the first short line and "er" to the following long line in the original symbol, having had "ba" and "y" assigned to the long and short "T" shapes that form the connections to the rest of the circuit. Rearranging the symbolic verticals as long-long-short-short, as he has done in this (fictional) symbol, thus puts "er" in front of "tt".
|-
| Battery, with far too many short lines
| Battttttttttttery
| The only other fictional symbol. Which, by the same established naming rules, means that the name is spelled with six "tt"s instead of just the single pair.
|-
| {{w|Photodiode}}
| Check out this really cool diode
| A {{w|photodiode}} generates, or allows to pass, a current in response to light. The symbol is related to the standard {{w|diode}} with the arrows pointing at it representing the light which activates its behaviour. In this case, Randall instead pretends that the arrows are pointing at it to draw attention to it because it's "really cool".
|-
| {{w|Electronic oscillator|Oscillator}}
| {{w|Wave Pool}}
| An {{w|Electronic oscillator|oscillator}} generates signals that oscillate at a given frequencies, for use in other circuitry, and one symbol used for one (in reality, built from a number of components in their own right) is this symbol. Waves in water are a type of oscillation that may be more familiar to most people than waves of electricity. A {{w|wave pool}} is in fact the ''result'' of a type of (mechanical) oscillator, and rarely has electricity running through it.{{Citation needed}}
|-
| {{w|Transistor}}
| Trolley Problem
| A {{w|transistor}} will switch on current flow across one pair of connections, depending upon the input from an input one. Thus, it switches electricity similar to the way that the {{w|trolley problem}} switches a trolley track. The symbol also somewhat resembles the usual pictorial depiction of the problem.
|-
| {{w|Ammeter|A circle with an A}} [In the title text]
| The circuit has committed a sin and has been marked as punishment
| Circles with letters are usually some special components, as also with the oscillator's glyph. In this case the "A" stands for ammeter, a device used to measure {{w|electric current}} (an "{{w|ampere}} meter"). This is conflated with the practice of branding the 'guilty', or requiring them to display their crime for a period of penance. For example, in ''{{w|The Scarlet Letter}}'', a historical novel by {{w|Nathaniel Hawthorne}}, the protagonist must wear an ''A'' to mark her as an adulteress.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A chart of various circuit symbols and their (mostly) fictitious meanings based off of their drawings, captioned:] Circuit Symbols
:[Symbol for a switch, labelled:] Drawbridge
:[Symbol for a capacitor, labelled:] Overpass
:[Symbol for a connection to ground, labelled:] Pogo Stick
:[Symbol for a resistor, labelled:] Earthquake
:[Symbol for an inductor, labelled:] Sheep
:[Symbol for a transformer, labelled:] Two Sheep in Love, Trapped on Opposite Sides of a Fence
:[Symbol for a battery, labelled:] Battery
:[Symbol for a battery, sorted, labelled:] Baertty
:[Symbol for a battery, with far too many short lines, labelled:] Battttttttttttery
:[Symbol for a photodiode, labelled:] Check Out This Really Cool Diode
:[Symbol for an oscillator, labelled:] Wave Pool
:[Symbol for a transistor, labelled:] Trolley Problem

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Engineering]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Animals]]