explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1246: Pale Blue Dot

2013-08-02T11:18:32Z

Crossing Rebecca: Created page with "To call this a "simple call for funding for space exploration" completely misses the point of the Ba'al theology with which it is intertwined."

To call this a "simple call for funding for space exploration" completely misses the point of the Ba'al theology with which it is intertwined.

1120: Blurring the Line

2012-10-15T15:14:35Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Explanation */ added an explanation for the title text, and expanded some on the description of masturbatory navel-gazing. --~~~~

{{comic
| number = 1120
| date = October 12, 2012
| title = Blurring the Line
| image = blurring the line.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = People into masturbatory navel-gazing have a lot to learn about masturbation.
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|metaphor}} is a comparison which may be used to emphasize, explain or embellish a point, as seen in this comic when [[Cueball]] likens himself to Michael Jordan. {{w|Michael Jordan}} is a famous {{w|basketball}} player who is well known for being one of the very best (if not the best) players at the sport.

In this comic, [[White Hat]] is analyzing a movie about movies when Cueball compares White Hat's description of the movie to masturbatory {{w|Omphaloskepsis|navel-gazing}}, a comment combining two expressions used to refer to a pointless activity or effort, but also specifically self-referential activity. "Mental masturbation" and "navel gazing" are relatively common terms to dismiss work that is regarded as self indulgent, overly introspective, and self referential. Calling navel gazing, or introspection, "masturbatory" is a metaphor speaking of it in terms of the physical act of {{w|Masturbation|masturbation}}. The title text blurs the line between metaphor and reality by dragging both metaphors in the term "masturbatory navel-gazing" into reality and pointing out that literally staring at your navel is not going to be very effective at physical sexual self arousal, which is the goal of masturbation.

White Hat then defends the movie by saying that it is about blurring the line between metaphor and reality, commenting that Cueball doesn't understand art. To this Cueball retorts by likening his ability to meld metaphor and reality by using a metaphor comparing himself to Michael Jordan. He then proceeds to actually blur the line by throwing a basketball at White Hat. This can also be understood as another reality metaphor, passing the "conversational ball" to [[White Hat]].

The last frame is also a graphic illustration of blurring the line between metaphor and reality, where a much more "real" depiction of a basketball intrudes into the colorless stick-figure world which serves as an abstraction of our shared reality.

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Cueball are walking.]
:White Hat: ...No, but see, it's a movie ''about'' movies.
:Cueball: Sounds like masturbatory navel-gazing.
:[Close-up of White Hat.]
:White Hat: No, it's about blurring the line between metaphor and reality.
:White Hat: You just don't know much about art.
:Cueball: ''Seriously?''
:[White hat and Cueball are standing.]
:Cueball: I know ''all'' about blurring the line between metaphor and reality. I'm the goddamn ''Michael Jordan'' of blurring the line between metaphor and reality.
:[White hat standing]
:White Hat: ...Huh?
:[Basketball hits White Hat in the head]
:<nowiki>*Bonk*</nowiki>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

User talk:Crossing Rebecca

2012-09-25T23:43:35Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Images */ An answer, I hope.

==Images==

Please refrain from uploading new images to the wiki. If you have an amendment you'd like to make to an image, upload a new version of an existing image. Also, try to keep images as close to the originals as possible: the science valentine image you uploaded was significantly smaller than the original on XKCD. Thanks. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]] ([[User talk:Davidy22|talk]]) 23:23, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'll stop. My reason for doing this was that what I was reading on the Community Portal, and seeing on the site showed that scaling images was not working. When I used a full-size image, not only did it become difficult to read on the page, but it messed up the headings. When I switched to smaller images, I got results that looked much better. But clearly I'm a newbie, so I'll quit doing that. I do wish I knew how to make the Create Template make the heading look right, with the previous and next buttons. Sometimes it seems to work, sometimes not. It looks to me like it works better if the comic picture is sized so that it comes close to fitting on the screen.--[[User:Crossing Rebecca|Crossing Rebecca]] ([[User talk:Crossing Rebecca|talk]]) 23:43, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

62: Valentine - Karnaugh

2012-09-25T23:31:17Z

Crossing Rebecca: Creating page.

{{comic
| number = 62
| date = February 19, 2006
| title = Valentine - Karnaugh
| image = valentine_karnaugh.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = Love and circuit analysis, hand in hand at last.
}}

==Explanation==
:A {{w|Karnaugh map}} is a Boolean algebra tool which is used to simplify expressions.
:The final picture, the one that looks like a crossword puzzle, is similar to the way that a Karnaugh map is used on a Boolean truth table, to identify areas that can be simplified.
:[http://www.utdallas.edu/~dodge/EE2310/lec5.pdf This picture] shows how the process is used to simplify logic circuits.
:The lament of the valentine is that feelings don't yield themselves to the same kind of analysis.

==Transcript==
:[squiggly heart design]
:You make me feel so
:much it all runs together
:I wish I could tell you
:[crisscrossing heart design]
:So few words
:for so many feelings
:crisscrossing my heart
:[heart matrix design]
:A matrix of desire
:Tangled relations
:I can't simplify
:[Karnaugh map of hearts]
:I wish I could find
:the Karnaugh map
:for love.
{{Love and circuit analysis, hand in hand at last.}}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Valentines]]
[[Category: Comics with color]]

File:valentine karnaugh.png

2012-09-25T23:11:53Z

Crossing Rebecca: making a picture that will fit the screen.

== Summary ==
making a picture that will fit the screen.
== Licensing ==
{{XKCD file derived}}

63: Valentine - Heart

2012-09-25T23:04:03Z

Crossing Rebecca: Add page. Wow! This one came up with the heading having both navigational buttons. How on earth did it do that, when I did nothing different?

{{comic
| number = 63
| date = February 13, 2006
| title = Valentine - Heart
| image = valentine heart1.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = Just pretend you're kidding.
}}

==Explanation==
:There's not much to say, except that the title text implies that this is being offered as a valentine that someone might give and then "pretend" that they were kidding. Which seems to imply that they would not, in fact, be kidding, that this represents their real feelings. And there may be an implication that this valentine would be more honest than most.

==Transcript==
:I want to wish you a happy Valentine's Day but unless this card is going to finally get you naked, I have to admit my heart's not really in it.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Valentines]]
[[Category: Comics with color]]

701: Science Valentine

2012-09-25T22:44:38Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Transcript */ got the category name right.

{{comic
| number = 701
| date = February 12, 2010
| title = Science Valentine
| image = Science_Valentine1.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
}}

==Explanation==
:Well, there's a downer for ya.
:[[Cueball]] is trying to make a science valentine.
: His attempts to analyze his feelings with charts and graphs reveal to him that his happiness and romance with the recipient are declining.
:Which presents him with a choice: Will he be a scientist and accept data that he doesn't like and publish it, or will he be romantic, and just make a cute card.
: He decides that he is a scientist, resulting in a sort of anti-valentine.
==Transcript==
:I wanted to make you a science valentine
with charts and graphs of my feelings for you.
:[A graph shows romance and happiness. Romance cuts off,
indicating a breakup before the meeting of the narrator and his current SO, and happiness dips accordingly. A line indicates where the couple first met; romance is jagged thereafter, initially upwards but later down. Happiness climbs slightly more steadily and then dips again. More lines indicate a period of dating and then one of engagement.]
:and the happiness you've brought me.

:But the more I analyzed
[The narrator works at a computer]
r_0 = 0.20
r_1 = -0.61
r_2 = -0.83
:the harder it became to defend my hypothesis.

:In science, you can't publish results you know are wrong
and you can't withhold them because they're not the ones you wanted.

:So I was left with a question: do I make graphs because they're cute and funny,
[The narrator sits, looking at a sheet of paper.]
:or am I a *scientist*?

:Enclosed are my results.
:I hope you can find somebody else
[A jagged, declining graph is superimposed over a red heart.]
:to be your valentine.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Valentines]]
[[Category: Comics with color]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]

701: Science Valentine

2012-09-25T22:42:32Z

Crossing Rebecca: Added page.

543: Sierpinski Valentine

2012-09-25T22:01:12Z

Crossing Rebecca: Putting the page I painstakingly created on numbers (following instructions that I guess were outdated) here so that it comes up properly. I hope.

{{comic
| number = 543
| date = February 13, 2009
| title = SIERPINSKI VALENTINE
| image = sierpinski_valentine1.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = Especially you mouseover text readers. You're the best <3
}}

==Explanation==
:The {{w|Sierpinski Triangle}} is a fractal pattern made of triangles, covering a space.
:<3 in the title text is an {{w|emoticon}} for a heart.
:Another relevant comic is [[95:The Sierpinski Penis Game]]

==Transcript==
:[shows an adaptation of the sierpinski triangle fractal, using hearts instead of triangles]
:center: Happy valentine's day
:Bottom right: -xkcd
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Valentines]]
[[Category:Comics with Color]]

543

2012-09-25T21:55:47Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Transcript */ changing category link so that it works.

543

2012-09-25T21:53:21Z

Crossing Rebecca: Created page with "{{comic | number = 543 | date = February 13, 2009 | title = SIERPINSKI VALENTINE | image = sierpinski_valentine1.png | imagesize = | titletext = Especially yo..."

223: Valentine's Day

2012-09-25T14:03:58Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Explanation */ Just adding another line.

{{comic
|number = 223
| date = February 14, 2006
| title = Valentine's Day
| image = valentines_day.jpg
| imagesize =
| titletext = One of these days me and Joey Comeau will get around to subverting the hetero-normative paradigm and fixing all this.
}}

==Explanation==
Love is already pretty complicated. Valentine's day makes it more complicated by introducing all kinds of questions. Is our relationship such that it should be acknowledged on Valentine's Day? If so, how? If by a card, what kind of card would be best? If by something more than a card, what? Candy? Flowers? A Date? What does the Valentine I received really mean? Friendship? Love? A covert request for sex? As an example of the kinds of dilemmas that can arise, see [[1016: Valentine Dilemma]].

{{w|Joey Comeau}} is the author of the webcomic [http://www.asofterworld.com/ A Softer World]. He is a queer comic whose work also discusses love in various forms, so between them Randall Munroe and he are a good team to consider working on "subverting the hetero-normative paradigm". {{w|Heteronormativity}} is the body of lifestyle norms holding that people fall into two distinct genders with natural and complementary roles in life. Whether or not anything that cartoons can do would fix the Valentine's day problem is another issue. Among other things, ditching the hetero-normative paradigm presumably complicates things in terms of potential love relationships, which now include more possibilities than male-female. All of these might face the Valentine's day issues in various ways.

==Transcript==
:Valentine's Day
:[There is a large, shaded, red heart.]
:Because love isn't quite complicated enough as it is.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Valentines]]

223: Valentine's Day

2012-09-25T13:15:04Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Explanation */ added an explanation for heteronormative

{{comic
|number = 223
| date = February 14, 2006
| title = Valentine's Day
| image = valentines_day.jpg
| imagesize =
| titletext = One of these days me and Joey Comeau will get around to subverting the hetero-normative paradigm and fixing all this.
}}

==Explanation==
Love is already pretty complicated. Valentine's day makes it more complicated by introducing all kinds of questions. Is our relationship such that it should be acknowledged on Valentine's Day? If so, how? If by a card, what kind of card would be best? If by something more than a card, what? Candy? Flowers? A Date? What does the Valentine I received really mean? Friendship? Love? A covert request for sex? As an example of the kinds of dilemmas that can arise, see [[1016: Valentine Dilemma]].

{{w|Joey Comeau}} is the author of the webcomic [http://www.asofterworld.com/ A Softer World]. He is a queer comic whose work also discusses love in various forms, so between them Randall Munroe and he are a good team to consider working on "subverting the hetero-normative paradigm". {{w|Heteronormativity}} is the body of lifestyle norms holding that people fall into two distinct genders with natural and complementary roles in life. Whether or not anything that cartoons can do would fix the Valentine's day problem is another issue.

==Transcript==
:Valentine's Day
:[There is a large, shaded, red heart.]
:Because love isn't quite complicated enough as it is.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Valentines]]

223: Valentine's Day

2012-09-25T12:54:26Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Explanation */ tried to explain the title text more completely.

{{comic
|number = 223
| date = February 14, 2006
| title = Valentine's Day
| image = valentines_day.jpg
| imagesize =
| titletext = One of these days me and Joey Comeau will get around to subverting the hetero-normative paradigm and fixing all this.
}}

==Explanation==
Love is already pretty complicated. Valentine's day makes it more complicated by introducing all kinds of questions. Is our relationship such that it should be acknowledged on Valentine's Day? If so, how? If by a card, what kind of card would be best? If by something more than a card, what? Candy? Flowers? A Date? What does the Valentine I received really mean? Friendship? Love? A covert request for sex? As an example of the kinds of dilemmas that can arise, see [[1016: Valentine Dilemma]].

{{w|Joey Comeau}} is the author of the webcomic [http://www.asofterworld.com/ A Softer World]. He is a queer comic whose work also discusses love in various forms, so between them Randall Munroe and he are a good team to consider working on "subverting the hetero-normal paradigm". Whether or not anything that cartoons can do would fix the Valentine's day problem is another issue.

==Transcript==
:Valentine's Day
:[There is a large, shaded, red heart.]
:Because love isn't quite complicated enough as it is.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Valentines]]

223: Valentine's Day

2012-09-25T12:47:04Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Explanation */ To change Joey Comeau to wikilink and add link to another relevant xkcd.

1016: Valentine Dilemma

2012-09-25T12:12:01Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Explanation */ To add category

{{comic
| number = 1016
| date = February 13, 2012
| title = Valentine Dilemma
| image = valentine_dilemma.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = The worst resolution to the Valentine Prisoner's Dilemma when YOU decide not to give your partner a present but your PARTNER decides to testify against you in the armed robbery case.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic brings to everyone's attention that {{w|Valentine's Day}} is tomorrow! Don't forget to get your cards/flowers/dinner reservations for that special someone. On to the comic. Both [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are agonizing over what to get each other for Valentine's Day. Both panic and do weird things.

At the heart of the way they are acting is the {{w|prisoner's dilemma}}, which [[696|has been referenced before]] in xkcd.

The prisoner's dilemma is a canonical example of a game analyzed in {{w|game theory}} that shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so. Wikipedia has a great example of prisoner's dilemma, which illustrates it very well:

:Two men are arrested, but the police do not possess enough information for a conviction. Following the separation of the two men, the police offer both a similar deal—if one testifies against his partner (defects/betrays), and the other remains silent (cooperates/assists), the betrayer goes free and the cooperator receives the full one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail for a minor charge. If each 'rats out' the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose either to betray or remain silent; the decision of each is kept quiet. What should they do?

In this way, both Cueball and Megan are kept separate, each not knowing what the other is going to do for Valentine's Day in the Valentine Dilemma as it is named in the title of this comic. And both do weird things for Valentine's Day, which ends up being the perfect result to the Valentine Dilemma as both end up with the same level of weirdness and one doesn't go for the grand gesture, while the other does something small.

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

Category:Valentines

2012-09-25T12:06:34Z

Crossing Rebecca: Starting a new category

Comics related to Valentine's Day and giving Valentines.

223: Valentine's Day

2012-09-25T12:04:19Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Transcript */ Adding category and changing transcript to standard format.

223: Valentine's Day

2012-09-25T11:16:35Z

Crossing Rebecca: /* Transcript */ I fixed the transcript to be xkcd's transcript after figuring out where that was. I'm new to this.

223: Valentine's Day

2012-09-25T04:28:13Z

Crossing Rebecca: Created page with "{{comic |number = 223 | date = February 14, 2006 | title = Valentine's Day | image = valentines_day.jpg | imagesize = | titletext = One of these days me an..."

{{comic
|number = 223
| date = February 14, 2006
| title = Valentine's Day
| image = valentines_day.jpg
| imagesize =
| titletext = One of these days me and Joey Comeau will get around to subverting the hetero-normative paradigm and fixing all this.
}}

==Explanation==
:Love is already pretty complicated. Valentine's day makes it more complicated by introducing all kinds of questions. Is our relationship such that it should be acknowledged on Valentine's Day? If so, how? If by a card, what kind of card would be best? If by something more than a card, what? Candy? Flowers? A Date? What does the Valentine I received really mean? Friendship? Love? A covert request for sex?
:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Comeau Joey Comeau]is the author of the webcomic [http://www.asofterworld.com/ A Softer World].

==Transcript==
Valentine's Day!
:Because Love isn't quite complicated enough as it is.


{{comic discussion}}