explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3100: Alert Sound

2025-06-10T12:17:11Z

Intara:

https://www.amazon.com/Funny-Pranks-Annoying-Noise-Maker/dp/B08KG6XHN1

The reviews are hilarious. [[Special:Contributions/47.248.235.170|47.248.235.170]] 21:35, 9 June 2025 (UTC)Pat
:Damn, someone beat me to it. If it didn't exist I was gonna make one and call it the "Randall 3100" aka "Black Hat 3100." [[Special:Contributions/70.115.234.146|70.115.234.146]] 23:14, 9 June 2025 (UTC)
:I think the original may be the Annoyatron, from Thinkgeek. I find references from 2007. [[User:Jordan Brown|Jordan Brown]] ([[User talk:Jordan Brown|talk]]) 23:35, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Most smoke alarms are approximately 3100 Hz (the comic number). I wonder if this comic is a reference to the annoying low battery chirps from smoke alarms that can be difficult to locate. [[Special:Contributions/2A09:BAC3:6227:1232:0:0:1D0:B9|2A09:BAC3:6227:1232:0:0:1D0:B9]] 00:49, 10 June 2025 (UTC)
:Smoke alarms are supposed to be a lifesaving device, so WHY the hell to they chirp at such a wide interval?! If it was once every 10 seconds at least you'd be able to tell where it was coming from. And it gets even worse if you're in a public or apartment building with over a dozen of them. [[Special:Contributions/24.177.125.170|24.177.125.170]] 06:51, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Devices like this but employing high frequency chirps have been around for at decades, notably from the specialty police and military supplier Shomer-Tec [[Special:Contributions/71.36.121.121|71.36.121.121]] 03:44, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Could a somewhat ‘living’ well dug on the ground the second best revenge in the joke? [[User:物灵|物灵]] ([[User talk:物灵|talk]]) 10:19, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

Is this a reference to a previous XKCD? This feels to me strongly like I've seen something similar before, but I can't recall where. [[Special:Contributions/2A02:5080:185D:FD9E:0:0:931:5001|2A02:5080:185D:FD9E:0:0:931:5001]] 11:19, 10 June 2025 (UTC)
:Maybe you’re thinking of [[1241: Annoying Ringtone Champion]]? [[User:Intara|Intara]] ([[User talk:Intara|talk]]) 12:17, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

3099: Neighbor-Source Heat Pump

2025-06-10T00:20:01Z

Intara: Undo revision 379110 by 70.23.3.240 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 3099
| date = June 6, 2025
| title = Neighbor-Source Heat Pump
| image = neighbor_source_heat_pump_2x.png
| imagesize = 431x284px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The installation of the pipes on the inside of the insulation can be challenging, especially when the neighbor could come home at any minute.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by A HOT-TEMPERED NEIGHBOUR. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
Using electricity to heat the home used to involve direct use of {{w|Joule heating|resistive heating}}, as an alternative to burning fuel of some sort, but more recently both this and the fuel-burning boiler have started to be replaced (or sometimes augmented) by developments in heat-pump technology which, much like the operation of a typical refrigerator, use a relatively small amount of power to move heat to where it is most needed (away from where the heat is ''not'' required). This is most commonly and conveniently done using an {{w|air source heat pump}} installed on the outside wall of the building/apartment, which can extract heat from the ambient outside air and use that to heat the inside of the household, and often also maintain its hot-water supply. Because of the varying nature of the external climate, this is less efficient (or at least more technically difficult) in colder weather, the time when the heating would be most appreciated. (The biggest problem being that trying to extract heat from air close to the freezing point of water, or below, will tend to condense out and freeze any moisture in the air, upon the external components, reducing the ability to extract heat from the air, a problem that might be solved by temporarily sending heat outwards to defrost the heatsink pipework.)

An alternate method of harvesting heat is the {{w|ground source heat pump}}. This does the same job of extracting heat energy from ''its'' surroundings (pipes sent deep into the ground, rather than just being exposed to the air by the side of the building), and benefits from the more constant temperature of the pedosphere (or deeper) which is often deeper than the [[402: 1,000 Miles North|frost-line]], always giving a ''relatively'' warm heat-source, to extract energy from, even in the depths of winter. If set up to also cool a home, in warm conditions, it also finds the same reliably small range of ground-temperatures useful in being ''cooler'' than the ambient air of summer, thus being more suited to disperse excess heat into whilst cooling the indoors environment. A further method, the water source heat pump, similarly makes use of a sufficiently large body of water's tendency to provide a near constant 4°C temperature (whatever the external conditions) in its depths.

In this comic, [[Randall]] goes further and finds a handy source of heat (in winter) and cold (in summer)… the house of a neighbor, which is itself being actively maintained (perhaps by more traditional heating and cooling technology) at a temperature which approaches his own preference for temperature. Being thermally inverted to the current seasonal conditions, it would be even more economical to tap into for heat during cold times and coolness during the warmer ones. At least it would be for Randall, not the neighbor who is now forced to effectively air-condition ''two'' buildings, instead of the one they thought they were maintaining. This is accomplished by sending the pipes (that ''might'' have been just buried in the ground) from the heat-exchange unit off into the walls of the neighbouring house to tap into the artificially-maintained temperature there.

The title text addresses some of the issues involved when trying to properly install the Neighbor-Source Heat Pump, without the neighbor realising that they are about to be leeched from in this way. It may already be quite difficult to interfere with the structure of the neighbouring house (in this case, by feeding pipes up into at least two of its wall cavities) without this being noticed once the absent neighbour returns, but to do so under the imminent risk of being observed at work by the neighbour arriving home would take [[666: Silent Hammer|even more care]] to accomplish.

While the small-scale application suggested here can thus be assumed to cause neighborly trouble, this concept has been in use on much larger scales for about the last ten years with virtually no repercussions - which is largely due to [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200908-the-buildings-warmed-by-the-human-body the tapped neighboring premises not being residential buildings]. On top of this, {{w|district heating}}, or "neighborhood heating" is a real system where a centralized heat source provides heating for multiple buildings in the neighborhood, either through a dedicated heat source (created to exploit the economies of scale) just for this purpose, or else taking waste heat from some other local amenity (e.g. a waste incinerator) that is producing sufficient quantities to spare as a side-effect of its core operation. This is humorously in contrast to to the comic where someone steals heat from one of their neighbours as one might {{w|Cable television piracy|steal Cable TV}}.

==Transcript==
:[Two houses are shown next to each other. They have almost identical facades with a base, two windows on either side of a door and a chimney to the right on the roof. But next to the left house there is a small box with two light-blue pipes going from the house to the box. From the bottom of the box two similar light-blue pipes goes a bit down under ground, the left further than the right, and then they bend to the right and goes under the neighboring house to the right. The upper pipe closest to the ground is shown to enter the wall of the right house, going almost up to the roof, and then bending sharply around going down below ground. Then it goes under ground to the other side of the house and do the same in the right wall, going up and down. Where it goes under ground, it connects to the the other pipe that has gone all the way straight under the house.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:A covertly-installed '''''Neighbor-Source Heat Pump''''' takes advantage of the fact that your neighbor keeps their house cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Physics]]

Talk:3066: Cosmic Distance Calibration

2025-03-22T00:43:17Z

Intara:

yay. [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 16:31, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

What makes such labels as real objects absurd is not the required size, but the required orientation to be readable from a single point in the universe - earth. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.9|172.71.154.9]] 19:26, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

A straightforward application of the Anthropic principle. [[Special:Contributions/104.23.187.189|104.23.187.189]] 19:35, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure I get the title text... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.162|162.158.62.162]] 20:04, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I like this part of the linked article: ''But cosmologists get only one universe to observe.'' -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:09, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I think that the crosshairs in question are markers to indicate which star is being labeled, not anything to do with video games. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.137.59|162.158.137.59]] 23:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

The crosshairs are all the same size because new red giant stars are all the same brightness. They are "TRGB" or "Tip of the Red Giant Branch" standard candles. Every star in that phase of evolution is exactly the same absolute brightness, so we can tell how far away it is by measuring the observed luminosity. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.212.132|162.158.212.132]] 00:35, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

[[2035: Dark Matter Candidates]] also hypothesizes that astronomical labels are physically there, the orbit paths in this case. Should it be added? [[User:Intara|Intara]] ([[User talk:Intara|talk]]) 00:43, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

1523: Microdrones

2025-03-09T02:00:13Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ updated to current progress

{{comic
| number = 1523
| date = May 11, 2015
| title = Microdrones
| image = microdrones.png
| titletext = Oh, weird, Amazon is out of butterfly nets.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Amazon Prime Air}} is a {{w|drone}}-based delivery system by Amazon.com currently being rolled out to cities, but at the time was still in its conceptual stage. While on one level he thinks the idea is cool, [[Cueball]] worries about living in a sci-fi dystopia, with those drones flying all around him, tracking his actions, etc. In the third panel, [[Megan]] suggests sending a message to Congress, suggesting a law for making the stealing of drones legal. This would alleviate the problem of drones flying around everywhere because if they did people would catch them to use for themselves. In the final panel Megan begins to search for {{w|butterfly nets}} so they are ready to catch the microdrones when the law to make it legal to steal the drones goes through.

This tactic may not work as well as planned; drones will likely simply fly higher or employ other security measures since there are no regulations on drone behavior.

The title text suggests one of five things:
*Amazon is out of stock of butterfly nets due to everyone purchasing them to catch drones with, implying many people had the same idea like Megan.
*Amazon doesn't want people stealing their drones, so the nets are just suspiciously "unavailable".
*Non-Amazon individuals controlling the drones have pre-emptively purchased them all.
*Amazon has put all of its nets into a private stock, in order to steal other companies' or individuals' drones.
*Amazon's drones have already become self-aware, and have altered the database in order to prevent their capture.

Amazon drones is also the subject of the title text in [[1625: Substitutions 2]] and there are two {{w|quadcopters}} over the volcano lake in [[1608: Hoverboard]]. Also, Cueball is abducted by seemly sentient drones in [[1630: Quadcopter]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing behind Megan who sits at a desk typing on her laptop.]
:Cueball: So how do we regulate all these micro drones?
:Cueball: I mean, Amazon delivery bots sound cool...

:[Cueball stands alone surrounded by three micro drones.]
:Cueball: But I worry that overnight we'll realize we're surrounded by these things, no one will know who's controlling them, and then ''bam'', sci-fi dystopia.

:[Megan turns in her chair towards Cueball.]
:Megan: If you wanna slow it down, why not just remove all regulations, but then make drone theft legal?

:[Cueball takes his hand to his chin and Megan turns back to type on the laptop.]
:Cueball: ...I ''like'' that.
:Megan: You write to congress.
:Megan: I'll stock up on butterfly nets.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Robots]]
[[Category:Butterfly net]]
[[Category:Drones]]

Talk:2958: Hatchery

2024-07-13T01:44:06Z

Intara:

Aren't hatcheries usually about breeding fish, not farming them?[[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 23:26, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Reading it, I first thought it was about Call of Duty, an fps game series. Its usual abbreviation is COD, but this might be coincidence.[[User:Intara|Intara]] ([[User talk:Intara|talk]]) 01:44, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

2958: Hatchery

2024-07-13T01:39:35Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ seems kinda dumb to explain one idiom with another one

{{comic
| number = 2958
| date = July 12, 2024
| title = Hatchery
| image = hatchery_2x.png
| imagesize = 239x336px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Anadromous fish are more vulnerable in rivers, since the lack of salt means you can quickly crack passwords using rainbow trout tables.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT EXECUTING REMOTE COD - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{w|Remote code execution}} is a type of {{w|software exploit}} that takes advantage of a bug to allow a remote user of a computer application to make it run code that it was not intended to execute. For example, a webserver with such a bug might allow a user of a web page to make it run a program that deletes system files or displays private information.

The joke arising from this comic is that if you remove the "e" from "code", you get "remote cod execution". This refers to killing ("executing") codfish remotely, using an exploit in a network application that allows you to view the hatchery.

The title text contains a pun on {{w|rainbow tables}}, referring to {{w|rainbow trout}}, one type of which ({{w|steelhead}}) is {{w|anadromous fish|anadromous}} (migrating up rivers to spawn -- {{w|salmon}} are another well known example). Rainbow tables are used when trying to crack hashed passwords; it's simply a file with many possible passwords and their corresponding hash values, which can be compared against retrieved hashed passwords. To prevent such comparisons, most modern password systems use "{{w|salt (cryptography)|salt}}", an extra random string that gets appended to the password before hashing so the same password will potentially have many different hashes, and it becomes infeasible to store all of them in a file. An additional pun is that rivers contain fresh water, so there's no salt (the chemical kind) and the fish are therefore more vulnerable.

The comic dialogue itself starts the whole chain of puns off by using the phrase "shooting fish in a barrel", which is figuratively used to mean that the task is extremely easy, but here becomes clear that he is literally {{w|Capital punishment|executing}} fish, without needing to be there in person.

{{w|Fish (Unix shell)|fish}} is also the name of a {{w|UNIX shell}}. Shells are popular targets for computer hackers as they are capable of being used to run arbitrary commands if sufficient access is gained through them.

==Transcript==
:[Black Hat is sitting at a computer desk, with Cueball standing behind him.]
:Black Hat: Shooting fish in a barrel.
:Computer: Blam!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:A new fish hatchery exploit allows remote cod execution.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Computer security]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Puns]]

Talk:2796: Real Estate Analysis

2023-07-01T05:42:58Z

Intara:

I suspect the hover text is reference to the song ‘Rocket Man’ and the lyric ‘Mars ‘ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids’ but I’m not sure it’s strong enough to include. Thoughts? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.11|172.71.242.11]] 16:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
:I don't know if that would be my first interpretation, but it's not necessarily wrong. Feel free to add it! (This wiki is supposed to include multiple interpretations if they exist.) [[User:DownGoer|DownGoer]] ([[User talk:DownGoer|talk]]) 17:32, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
:It seems like a bit of a stretch to me. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 23:33, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

He omitted Pluto, but included the Moon, which isn't any kind of planet. Furthermore, the Moon should get a much higher score on proximity to shops than all the other planets (it's only 250K miles away, versus hundreds of millions of miles). [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 18:33, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
:Massive disrespect to Pluto :( [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.110|172.70.210.110]] 18:37, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
:The Moon is okay but there's no atmosphere. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.50|162.158.158.50]] 21:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
:He also omitted Sol. More people have worshipped it than Earth, so it's even more glaring than Pluto. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.36|172.71.147.36]] 23:53, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Isn't "proximity to shops and restaurants" a significant contributor to most "walkability score[s]"? It seems weird that the x and y axes are confounded in such an obvious way, is there a deeper message? [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 21:16, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
:If I live across the street from a store, but that street’s a busy highway, I’d say I lived near a store, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to walk there. [[User:Intara|Intara]] ([[User talk:Intara|talk]]) 05:42, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

The moon and Mercury should also be pretty good in the "low noise" and "scenic" scales. Depending on whether one wants to count radio noise, and the effects of the magnetic tornadoes on Mercury. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 23:33, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Talk:62: Valentine - Karnaugh

2023-04-12T04:45:53Z

Intara:

As of 16.4.2021 the image on xkcd.com is rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise.

:Curious indeed. [[User:ISaveXKCDpapers|ISaveXKCDpapers]] ([[User talk:ISaveXKCDpapers|talk]]) 06:57, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

:It’s always been sideways for me, and I’ve been reading since around 2015. [[User:Intara|Intara]] ([[User talk:Intara|talk]]) 04:45, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

2326: Five Word Jargon

2023-03-29T01:16:54Z

Intara: /* Unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria group A */ there are a lot of eukaryotic unicellular life forms

{{comic
| number = 2326
| date = June 29, 2020
| title = Five Word Jargon
| image = five_word_jargon.png
| titletext = My other (much harder) hobby is trying to engineer situations where I have an excuse to use more than one of them in short succession.
}}

==Explanation==
This is another comic in [[Randall]]'s [[:Category:My Hobby|My Hobby series]], the first of two hobby comics released in the same week, the second being [[2328: Space Basketball]].

This hobby involves "collecting" and presumably using five-words-long technical jargon. In the comic, [[White Hat]] uses a phrases with five such words while talking to Randall (as [[Cueball]]), causing Randall to exclaim "cool" (as in what a cool sentence), and then proceed to type the phrase into his phone to add to his list of favorite Five Word Jargon.

Randall then proceeds to list his current favorites among really satisfying five word technical phrases (or jargon) as a caption below the panel, with White Hat's phrase as the last, possibly the newest. Maybe it was the one that caused Randall to consider other phrases and make this comic.

In the title text, Randall says that he has another much harder hobby, which is to engineer situations where he can use more than one of his favorite phrases. It would seem difficult to combine any of the four listed phrases in a given conversation, as they are from four separate fields (medicine, economics/statistics, biology, and physics/cosmology). However, he said "situations", which is broader term than "conversations". For example, someone could arrange for experts on these fields to deliver TED talks on these topics, so that he could introduce them by saying "today, we will learn about..." and list the phrases, but Randall cannot, because he has been [[541|banned from TED]]. At least he has succeeded in using them together in this comic.

This technique has also been used by the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell]], who uses three-word phrases to create excuses for why he won't fix someone's computer when they ask.

===Technical jargon===
====Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt placement====
: A {{w|transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt}} (TIPS) is "an artificial channel within the liver that connects the inflow portal vein and the outflow hepatic vein". It is used to treat various intestinal bleeding. This term can be found in this publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16850140/
:;transjugular
::the shunt is inserted via the jugular vein
:;intrahepatic
::within the liver
:;portosystemic
::blood is shunted from the portal vein (draining blood from the intestines to the liver) to the systemic circulation (returning blood from the liver to the heart)
:;shunt
::a tube within the body that bypasses the normal flow of something (whether a natural defect, or an artificial device)
:;placement
::the operation to insert it

====Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model====
: A {{w|Autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity|generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity}} (GARCH) model is a statistical model for economic research. An {{w|autoregressive model}} of a {{w|time series}} is one that uses previous values of the time series to predict the next value. A {{w|conditional probability}} model is one that divides data into inputs and outputs and models the relation between them using a conditional probability distribution of the outputs given the inputs. A {{w|heteroskedastic}} distribution is one in which the variance (or standard deviation) of a random variable is not the same across all values of the variable. This phrase can be found in this publication: https://www.scirp.org/html/11-1241334_99870.htm

:;Generalized
::making more general, as opposed to a specific model
:;autoregressive
::using previous values to predict future values.
:;conditional
::outputs depending on specific inputs (in the sense of, "funding is conditional on meeting targets")
:;heteroskedasticity
::the property where the variance (that is, the random difference between an expected value and its observed value) itself varies in response to some variable. From Greek, meaning "different dispersion". For example, a graph of expenditure on food against income shows higher randomness at higher income levels, because poor people always eat cheaply, while rich people sometimes do and sometimes don't.
:;model
::a set of equations that attempt to describe some property of the world for the purpose of analysis

====Unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria group A====
: A {{w|unicellular}} {{w|diazotrophic}} {{w|cyanobacterium}} is a single-celled type of bacteria that is able to convert atmospheric nitrogen into a more usable form, and also generates oxygen through photosynthesis. The term can also be found in this publication: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4303622/
:;unicellular
::Consisting of only one cell ({{w|Unicellular organism}}), such as all bacteria. The opposite is {{w|Multicellular organism|multicellular}}, which includes lifeforms like animals, plants, brown algae, etc.
:;diazotrophic
::Having the property of {{w|Nitrogen fixation|fixing}} nitrogen from the air into other chemicals.
:;cyanobacterium
::A fairly broad category of bacteria which often play an important role in various habitats, using photosynthesis to convert light energy to oxygen. "Cyano" refers to their general blue color, not cyanide.
:;group A
::the "first" group of several groups in a controlled experiment, or a scientific study; in this case, it is the first of several (B, C) groups of phylogenetically-related organisms, for which there is as yet no published scientific name, see here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308030272_The_small_unicellular_diazotrophic_symbiont_UCYN-A_is_a_key_player_in_the_marine_nitrogen_cycle.

====Anomalous electroweak sphaleron transition baryogenesis====
: This is a term from {{w|Particle physics}}/{{w|cosmology}}. {{w|Baryon}}s are subatomic particles containing an odd number of quarks; protons and neutrons are the most familiar examples. {{w|Baryogenesis}} is the hypothetical physical process that took place during the early universe that produced more matter than antimatter in the observable universe (or it could be any process that produces baryons). {{w|Sphaleron}} is a static (time-independent) solution to the {{w|electroweak}} field equations of the Standard Model of particle physics, and is involved in certain hypothetical processes that change the number of baryons or {{w|leptons}} (e.g. forming baryons and removing leptons). It is believed that the electroweak interaction is responsible for baryogenesis, but that at the temperatures involved (~1015 K), sphaleron interactions would wipe out any excess of baryons; therefore, for baryogenesis to "stick", it must have occurred at the ''transition'' out of the electroweak era...unless there were some kind of ''anomaly'' in the formation or interaction of sphalerons. Google reports no matches (other than this page) for the entire phrase in quotes, but shows about 70 results unquoted, indicating it finds only partial matches.

:;Anomalous
::Deviating from normal or expected
:;electroweak
::A theory combining {{w|electromagnetism}} and the {{w|weak interaction}}, two of the four fundamental forces (alongside the strong interaction and gravity) in the Standard Model of particle physics.
:;sphaleron
::a single, time-independent, solution to electroweak field equations, represented as a saddle point between two different low energy equilibria
:;transition
::change
:;baryogenesis
::creating baryons, which are a category subatomic particles containing an odd number of quarks, including protons and neutrons. (-genesis is a general suffix for a process which creates something; eg carcinogenesis means, creating cancer)

==Transcript==
:[White Hat, holding his palm up, is speaking to Cueball, who is typing with both hands on his smartphone. What he types is indicated with a jagged line going up from his phone.]
:White Hat: Yeah, I learned about it when I was researching anomalous electroweak sphaleron transition baryogenesis.
:Cueball: Cooool.
:Text on phone: ''A-n-o-m-''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My Hobby: Collecting really satisfying-sounding five-word technical phrases.

:Current favorites
:<li>Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt placement
:<li>Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model
:<li>Unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria group A
:<li>Anomalous electroweak sphaleron transition baryogenesis

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:My Hobby]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Statistics]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:Medicine]]
[[Category:Scientific research]]

Talk:2752: Salt Dome

2023-03-21T04:09:08Z

Intara:

Made a guess. [[User:No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO|By me.]] ([[User talk:No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO|talk]]) 22:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Odd that Beret Guy’s not the one doing it. We’ve seen White Hat act a normal extra character before, but having Beret Guy in a comic not doing anything strange feels wrong. [[User:Intara|Intara]] ([[User talk:Intara|talk]]) 04:09, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Talk:1179: ISO 8601

2023-02-14T03:41:52Z

Intara:

Apparently there are some mistakes in the Roman numerals in the comic, the year MMXII is 2012. Also LVII/CCLXV = 57/265, whereas February 27th is the 58th day of the year (which has 365 days). --[[User:Ulm|ulm]] ([[User talk:Ulm|talk]]) 07:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:Just guessing, but could this have something to do with the divergence of various Roman calendars, e.g. Julian vs. Gregorian? [[Special:Contributions/98.122.166.235|98.122.166.235]] 13:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:Another error: Obviously 1330300800 is intended to be Unix time, but it corresponds to 2012-02-27 00:00:00 UTC. --[[User:Ulm|ulm]] ([[User talk:Ulm|talk]]) 08:10, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:The day part "57" is not wrong: Since Feb 27 is the 58th day of the year, at the beginning of that day, 57 days have gone by since the year started. (At the end of the day, 58 days have gone by) Since we associate days with their beginning (like we do with e.g. hours and minutes), 57 is the correct number (or else Dec 31 would be 2013+365/365 = 2014, and therefore in the wrong year) -- [[User:Xorg|Xorg]] ([[User talk:Xorg|talk]]) 13:53, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::The day part is ambiguous. It could be as Xorg suggests, the fraction of the year past at the start of the day. On the other hand it could be interpreted as "day 57 or 365," as with pieces in a shipment or page numbers. In the latter case it should be 58/265. But then, that (ambiguity) is the point, isn't it? [[User:Jqavins|Jqavins]] ([[User talk:Jqavins|talk]]) 17:40, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::Meanwhile the comic was replaced, with CCLXV corrected to CCCLXV. --[[User:Ulm|ulm]] ([[User talk:Ulm|talk]]) Prima vigilia, XVI Kal. Mar. MMDCCLXVI
::I was just about to publish my theory of how "2012" in the Roman numerals in just the same vein might be intended to indeed represent the year we denote "2013", but by counting only the finished years. This would also connect with the confusion over {{w|year zero}}, another thing that ISO 8601 tried to straighten out. (They placed it before year 1.) Everything fit so well. Then there was an edit conflict, following Randalls correction to "2013". I guess you can't always be right. –[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 23:03, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone explain 01237 (last interpretation before the cat)? Thanks [[Special:Contributions/68.230.38.154|68.230.38.154]] 08:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:The small numbers above and below the larger ones show which digit is used where. For example, the 2nd and 5th digit is a 0, the 3rd digit is a 1 etc. [[Special:Contributions/82.115.151.1|82.115.151.1]] 08:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:01237 are the digits used in the date, and the numbers above and below them reflect the order in which they are written; 0 is the second and fifth digit, 1 is the third digit, 2 is the first, sixth and seventh digit, 3 is the fourth digit, and 7 is the eighth digit: 20130227 [[User:Bdemirci|Bdemirci]] ([[User talk:Bdemirci|talk]]) 08:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Someone can explain me what means: ((3+3)×(111+1)-1)×3/3-1/33? {{unsigned|95.23.147.48}}
:Read the comic explanation. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 10:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Many of these format mirror how the dates are spoken in languages. For example, Americans will say "February 27, 2013" and write "2/27/2013", whereas the French will say "27 février 2013" and write "27-02-2013". As a scientist, I was encouraged to write "27 II 2013" (which is apparently standard in Hungary, according to the explanation above) in my lab notebook to avoid ambiguity. --[[User:Prooffreader|Prooffreader]] ([[User talk:Prooffreader|talk]]) 13:16, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

A strange thing is that he forgot the form mostly used in Europe: 27.01.2013. --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 12:44, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:: That form is mostly used in Germany. Belgium and France use 27/01/2013 more, Netherlands use 27-01-2013. No idea what the UK prefers although I could imagine 01.27.2013.[[Special:Contributions/62.159.14.62|62.159.14.62]] 12:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::: The UK prefers 27/02/2013 --[[User:H|H]] ([[User talk:H|talk]]) 13:20, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::: That form (27.02.2013) is also common in all of Scandinavia. --[[User:Buggz|Buggz]] ([[User talk:Buggz|talk]]) 14:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::::It's also widely used in Poland, alongside with 27 II 2013, mentioned above, and also in the comic (though we use space as separator in this format, rather than dot) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.206|162.158.88.206]] 23:05, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

The image text has a subtle twist as "12/01/04" offers no contextual clues to it meaning at all, can be read three different ways : "December 1st 2004", "January 12, 2004" or "January 4th, 2012" (as opposed to, for example, "01/15/98" which could only be interrupted as "January 15th, 1998") [[User:JamesCurran|JamesCurran]] ([[User talk:JamesCurran|talk]]) 14:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
: Technically speaking, it could also be interpreted as April 1st 2012 or April 12th 2001, though that would be the least likely interpretation. I personally like spelling out 3 letters of the month and using an apostrophe before the year, such as 27 Feb '13. --[[User:Joehammer79|Joehammer79]] ([[User talk:Joehammer79|talk]]) 15:07, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:: And of course December, 4th 2001 Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/178.26.118.249|178.26.118.249]] 19:54, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Is there any way to convert the time-stamp placed on these comments to the YYYY-MM-DD format? --16:17, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
: If you're logged in, you can set your [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-datetime|date and time preferences]]. I doubt it will affect the timestamps on this page, though, since those appear to be saved as plain text. --[[User:Aaron of Mpls|Aaron of Mpls]] ([[User talk:Aaron of Mpls|talk]]) 23:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I feel like the cat thing is a reference to something, but I'm not sure what... is it something? A quick google image search pulls up nothing. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 17:26, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
: Seems to me that Randall missed an opportunity: Why a cat? Why not a '''bob'''cat? It still could be some other reference that I'm missing too.
:: Black cats are considered unlucky. I don't see any reference beyond that. [[User:Mattflaschen|Mattflaschen]] ([[User talk:Mattflaschen|talk]]) 17:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::: It's taking the last two digits from 2013 and emphasizing triskaidekaphobia. Doing a web image search on "Cat 13" will pull up similar artwork of hissing black cats combined with the number 13, including both flyers for Friday 13th drink specials at bars, and combat airplane noseart. Apparently combining the unlucky "13" with an unlucky black cat emphasized that they were bad luck for the enemy. [[User:Columbus Admission|Columbus Admission]] ([[User talk:Columbus Admission|talk]]) 19:20, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:::: "You're a Kitty!" http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=231
::::: The cat's "Hissss" could be a reference to timestamp formats in PHP web programming, where the desired date format is generally followed by "H:i:s", the standard 24-hour time format. That would explain the specifically lowercase "i" in the cat's hiss.[[Special:Contributions/208.87.234.180|208.87.234.180]] 13:28, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
:: It might be a reference to Industrial Workers of the World; IWW frequently used a hissing black cat as a symbol, especially in reference to sabotage and so-called "wildcat strikes," and the illustration used resembles the one seen here [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Anarchist_black_cat.svg] [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.151|172.70.214.151]] 22:08, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Cool, this is my birthday. [[User:Mattflaschen|Mattflaschen]] ([[User talk:Mattflaschen|talk]]) 17:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

"However the list then starts listing formats ranging from uncommon to absurd, such as writing the date partly in Roman numerals [...] " -
My math teacher uses a very similar format (in reverse order, d/m/yy, with m being in Roman numerals, because this is Germany (see above)), so I wouldn't call it absurd. She is the only person I know who uses it though. [[Special:Contributions/87.189.150.212|87.189.150.212]] 19:36, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The image and explanation needs to be updated for the corrections. I could do the explanation part, but I have no idea how to do the image part. And one without the other would be confusing for the readers, so I'll leave that to wiki-magic. [[Special:Contributions/76.106.251.87|76.106.251.87]] 21:09, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

: I updated the image as well as the explanation (and transcript). There is still the error on the Unix timestamp though (will this comic be fixed a third time?...). - [[User:Cos|Cos]] ([[User talk:Cos|talk]]) 21:57, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Sweden uses the ISO 8601 format. (If only food producers could understand this as well..)
[[Special:Contributions/46.59.16.141|46.59.16.141]] 21:42, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

- What can we learn from this? - I've learned that no matter the system we use today to communicate with others, it's probably seems silly for someone else. It's great to document what we do and propose it as an option to others, but it will be next to impossible to force them to adopt. When someone will develop a time reference that makes sense to everyone, it will be adopted all over the world without much effort. - e-inspired [[Special:Contributions/24.51.197.187|24.51.197.187]] 19:07, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the cat (because of the vagueness of the system) was referring to not the 27th of February 2013. but instead referring to the 13th of February in 1327 which would make it Friday the 13th. {{unsigned|66.35.1.98}}

Just so you know, Explainxkcd wiki uses the ISO certified date standard for its "All Comics" page. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 01:57, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Personally I've always preferred to use Year-Month-Day my personal stuff. I like it because the format is written the way we write any other number: Most significant to left, least significant to right. I didn't know this was a standardized method and I've always wondered why it wasn't used. Nice to know it is![[Special:Contributions/172.191.224.64|172.191.224.64]] 04:09, 28 February 2013 (UTC)ExternalMonologue

Personally, I like yyyy-mm-dd because it sorts correctly. I really hate running into a list of dates sorted by month name, or worse, day of the week. I suspect this was part of why ISO chose this format. I've never been able to remember the american vs european ordering... My only other options is: February 27, 2013. [[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 12:11, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

: I'm not sure what standard the Canadian Military officially uses, but as soldiers we were all taught to use a "7 Feb 2013" format when writing dates. Seems the most clear and concise to me. {{unsigned|24.85.225.143}}

:: Most of the dates I've seen used by the Canadian Military have been of that format but have only used 2-digit years - e.g. 27 Feb 13 (they didn't learn from Y2K!) {{unsigned|64.140.113.219}}

- What can we learn from this? - I've learned that keeping our time relative to earth rotation is outdated, we keep having to add seconds here and there just to keep time. And as an engineer don't get me started on complexity of mktime function. I personally think of time as oscillation of a flawed crystal in my circuits that I constantly need to keep accounting for through endless calibrations, and keep wishing that better time references would be cheaper (to me good is never good enough) - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 15:05, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Ha ha E-inspired you should read the "falsehoods programmers believe about times" http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time-wisdom [[Special:Contributions/75.103.23.206|75.103.23.206]] 20:14, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

:Dude, you've just made my DAY! I forgot the last time I've laughed as hard. Why didn't I know about this site before? - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 20:43, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Why is the date of this comic written as "February 27, 2013" and not "2013-02-27"? [[Special:Contributions/93.73.186.104|93.73.186.104]] 08:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The hover hint says "ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04." which must be a joke - because it is impossible to know whether these days are 6 May 1988 and 12 January 2004 or 5 June 1988 and 1 December 2004. Why make a comic about ISO 8601 then use ambiguous dates in the hint? {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.95}}
:I had always assumed that the title text was poking fun at ISO for not complying with their own standard. Looking at the ISO website today, I'm disappointed to find that this is, in fact, not the case. Perhaps three years ago it was. [[User:Zeusfaber|Zeusfaber]] ([[User talk:Zeusfaber|talk]]) 17:07, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Amateurs, you don't put periods in format with roman month number. So it's 27 II 2012 [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.209|141.101.89.209]] 12:48, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

The chief advantage of the American system is that placing the year last makes it easy to simply drop the year in casual conversation, given how slowly years change. While it might technically follow just as logically to have the day precede the month, in practice the sequence means less for the first two numbers. The 31 days or fewer between month changes are relatively frequent, while the 365.25 days between year changes can easily go "out of sight, out of mind" except when approaching a transition. In either case, placing the nigh-irrelevant year number first in the text string causes the reader to pay attention to that number first, and have to "skip ahead" to discover the month and day, when in truth the day is the most salient datapoint. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.52|173.245.54.52]] 20:58, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
: Hmm... The comic's point is about '''writing''' dates as '''numbers'''... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.215|162.158.180.215]] 09:47, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
: Don't write "America" when you mean "USA". In most of America (and most of the rest of the world) the traditional order is D/M/Y, which makes it even simpler to drop more significant parts in casual conversation. E.g. "it's the 27th of February 2013" becomes "it's the 27th of February" when the year is known and just "it's the 27th" when also the month is known. In my country we traditionally had D/M/Y but we are approaching ISO inch by inch. Personally I've used ISO and four digit year since around 1997. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country /David A [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.33|141.101.80.33]] 22:01, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Source for the claim about the Swedish date format. I have never seen it, we have been using the ISO-format since before it was defined (I started school 1980 and learned to write dates in the first year or two), not even in old books, movies or similar.

Re: [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1179:_ISO_8601&oldid=223421 undoing to a 'working' version] of the penultimate format... Undid version isn't perfect (superscripts and subscripts still prior/next characters from nominally-scripted main digits, rather than above and below), but this one doesn't work at all here. Looks like (describing, in leiu of reliable rendering)... Zero, One, Two-with-small-two-as-cap Three Seven (lower-script Three One Four, in-line) Five Six Seven Eight. ...essentially, just one off-size number is conceivably placed where it might be, and even that isn't on the right 'parent' character.

<ruby><rb>0</rb><rt>1</rt></ruby><ruby><rb>2</rb><rt>3</rt></ruby> (displays correctly on one computer, fails on another)

This clearly is not rendering properly, but not sure how without extensive fiddling that'll ''probably'' break things on the browser that currently thinks this reversion renders correctly. Perhaps yet ''another'' method of text-mangling is needed in this case? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.32|141.101.99.32]]

Usually I’m pretty apathetic about America moving to any global standard (I ''like'' imperial units, they’re a lot more usefully sized), but I really want it to switch to YYYY/MM/DD just to mess with people on the internet (Europeans mostly, from what I can tell) who absolutely insist that DD/MM/YYYY is the only format that “normal” people use. Plus then the yearless format would stay the same — both would be MM/DD. [[User:Intara|Intara]] ([[User talk:Intara|talk]]) 03:41, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

200: Bill Nye

2022-05-21T01:50:28Z

Intara: Undo revision 271480 by Explain xkcd server admin (talk)

{{comic
| number = 200
| date = December 22, 2006
| title = Bill Nye
| image = bill_nye.png
| titletext = You could at least not wear the lab coat everywhere, dude.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Bill Nye}} is an educator well known in the United States for his science-focused television show targeted to elementary school children ([http://www.billnye.com/ website]).

A mother, [[Blondie]], is sitting at a table in a restaurant with her two children, asking them a science-related question about the ice cubes in their drinks. She is hoping to prompt Bill Nye, sitting at the next table, to join the conversation and perhaps inspire her kids. Thinking he has not heard, the mother then coughs slightly and starts to repeat the question. His then immediate and abrupt dismissal of her is antithetical to his television persona, where he is consistently enthusiastic about science and keen to take any opportunity to teach the viewer.

The use of the word "tribulation" implies that being recognized and accosted in public is a cause of much suffering and misery to Mr. Nye.

The title text contains another joke. He eats a meal in public where he does not want to be recognized or harassed with questions; however, he wears a lab coat. Regardless of Bill Nye's otherwise iconic and recognizable appearance, wearing a lab coat in public will probably draw the gazes and curiosity of others, no matter who is wearing it.

Ice pops and cracks when dropped in a glass of water because of thermal contraction: the much warmer water causes the surface of the ice to shrink, resulting in audible internal fractures in the brittle structure.

==Transcript==
:[A restaurant. Blondie is with two small Cueballs at a table; Bill Nye with black hair in a white lab coat sits at the next table with his back turned towards them. Two other tables can be seen at the edge of the panel at either side. A caption is written above them:]
:The tribulations of Bill Nye:
:Blondie: Hey, kids, see how the ice cracks and pops in your water? I wonder what causes that...
:Blondie: *Ahem* I said, I wonder what—
:Bill Nye: Know what? Maybe I just wanna enjoy my goddamn meal.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

2392: Cyber Cafe

2020-12-01T18:35:45Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ add reference to previous comic

{{comic
| number = 2392
| date = November 30, 2020
| title = Cyber Cafe
| image = cyber_cafe.png
| titletext = Since we haven't really settled on a name for those online hangout/work spaces that try to recreate the experience of cafes, and I love confusion, I'm going to start calling them 'cyber cafes' or 'internet cafes.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a DATED CYBER CAFE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

A {{w|Internet cafe|cybercafe, or Internet cafe}}, is a cafe or other restaurant with good internet access. Prior to widespread ownership of personal computers and cell phones, such cafes would host computers that clients could use, and nowadays, many fast-food restaurants and cafes provide free Wi-Fi to their customers, so that people can use their computers while at the cafe. "Cyber" is a prefix meaning something relating to computers, but this comic suggests that it sounds dated, previously discussed in [[1573: Cyberintelligence]]. However, in 2020, he jokes that "cafe" actually sounds more dated. This is a result of lockdowns related to the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}} preventing people from going to cafes.

In the title text, Randall indulges his love of ambiguity by proposing that the term "cyber cafe" be re-used to refer to online hangout spaces that try to feel like cafes. This would change the meaning from "a cafe where computers are available for use by patrons" to "a setting or activity in cyberspace that feels like a cafe" (which would at least be inline with similar terms, like {{w|cyberbullying}}, {{w|cybersex}}, etc.).

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[All in a box]
:Which word in the name "cyber cafe" sounds more dated?
----
:2015 - Cyber
:2016 - Cyber
:2017 - Cyber
:2018 - Cyber
:2019 - Cyber
:2020 - Cafe

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Internet]]

1145: Sky Color

2020-01-01T21:39:00Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ added example for the mirror thing

{{comic
| number = 1145
| date = December 10, 2012
| title = Sky Color
| image = sky_color.png
| titletext = Feynman recounted another good one upperclassmen would use on freshmen physics students: When you look at words in a mirror, how come they're reversed left to right but not top to bottom? What's special about the horizontal axis?
}}

==Explanation==
The point of this comic is that often, curious children ask their parents simple questions about understanding how the world works. Often, although the question is simple, the answer is not. "Why is the sky blue?" is a common example, since most parents are not familiar with {{w|Rayleigh scattering}}, and thus are unable to answer the question.

[[Randall]]'s hobby is to make those questions even harder, so that the parents who ''are'' familiar with the subject (scientists, for example) will be stumped.

Another point of this comic is that we often think that we understand a scientific phenomenon (e.g. why is the sky blue?); however, a certain simple question (e.g. why isn't the sky violet?) can often uncover large gaps in our actual understanding.

{{W|Rayleigh scattering}} is the phenomenon that explains the color of the sky, where light of every wavelength gets scattered in the air by the inverse quartic (fourth power) of its wavelength as given in the comic. In the {{w|visible spectrum}}, blue light has a wavelength of 450–495 nm while violet has a shorter wavelength of 380–450 nm. Violet light does indeed get scattered more than blue light, however the lower portion of the spectrum for sunlight consists of blue light and eyes are much more sensitive to blue light than violet light. Furthermore, the sunlight contains more blue than violet to begin with as a result of the surface temperature of the sun. This leaves the impression of a blue sky. A good explanation, including why blue and not violet, can be found in [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html Usenet Physics FAQ :: Why is the sky blue?], but note that human color perception [http://blog.asmartbear.com/color-wheels.html is more complicated] than described there.

The title text refers to a {{w|mirror image}}, and is discussed by the famous American theoretical physicist {{w|Richard Feynman}} in a famous BBC documentary [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tuxLY94LXw], as one of the problems which he used to have fun with first years (British English for first year student or freshman).

A mirror image is a virtual image produced by the reflection of light on a mirror. In the mirror image, only front and back are switched around — like a printing press or a rubber stamp. Left and right are still left and right in an absolute reference frame — wave your left arm in front of the mirror and the "mirror person" also waves the arm on the left side. It is only when using "personal" reference frame —tied to the individual— that we can say that the "mirror person" is moving their right arm. The apparent inversion comes from the fact that the mind projects itself onto the person in the mirror.

To help understand why this effect happens, imagine that you are holding a sign which says "MIX" and facing a mirror. Initially, you face the sign towards you. The M is on the left and the X on the right. Now, you turn the sign around so that the sign faces the mirror. Now, even without paying any attention to the mirror, simply because you have turned it around, now the M is on the right and the X is on the left and if you could see through the back of the sign, it would say "XIM" from your perspective. When you look at it in the mirror, you are now able to see that orientation and it appears to read "XIM". If instead of turning the sign around horizontally to look at it in the mirror, you flipped it vertically and looked at it in the mirror, it would appear to say "WIX" in the mirror. Thus the mirror is only revealing how the text is oriented relative to your eyes. Or, to put it more succinctly: mirrors ''don't'' reverse left to right, ''turning around'' does. Mirrors reverse along whatever direction is perpendicular to the plane of the mirror. You can induce a mirror to reverse left and right only --- by standing next to it instead of in front of it, facing along the plane of the mirror itself. If you lift your right arm, you can clearly see your image's left arm raising, without having to adjust for frame of reference. Similarly, you can induce a mirror to reverse top and bottom only by holding it flat above your head or laying it flat on the ground and standing on it (or perhaps standing under a suitably equipped bedroom ceiling). See [https://youtu.be/1t4dOPxKgrY this] video for a demonstration.

Another way of thinking about it is to treat the mirror image as showing what an observer would see if they were standing in that position. For an observer, your left arm would appear to be on the right and vice versa.

==Transcript==
:[Science Girl and her mother, Megan. Megan is at a desk and facing the girl.]
:Science Girl: Mommy, why is the sky blue?
:Megan: Rayleigh scattering! Short wavelengths get scattered ''way'' more (proportional to 1/''λ''4). Blue light dominates because it's so short.
:Science Girl: Oh.
:Science Girl: So why ''isn't'' the sky violet?
:Megan: Well, because, uh... ...hmm.
:[Caption Below the panel:]
:My hobby: Teaching tricky questions to the children of my scientist friends.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Science Girl]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:My Hobby]]

684: We Get It

2019-09-08T19:10:18Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ updated avatar's grossing

{{comic
| number = 684
| date = January 4, 2010
| title = We Get It
| image = we_get_it.png
| titletext = The most brutal way I've ever seen someone handle this was 'Oh, you have a girlfriend. Are you going to get married?' 'I, uh, don't know--' 'Well, do you love her?' '...' 'Anyway, what were you saying about the movie?'
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Avatar (film)|Avatar}} is a 2009 movie that was very popular in theaters, becoming the highest-grossing at that time.

The comic illustrates how someone in a new relationship tends to be overly eager and giddy to let everyone know about it, while others tend to not be all that interested. The character on the left is so excited to let everyone know, that he goes off panel to get a ladder and a loudspeaker. The second character thinks it should be legal to murder (or at least wound) him for this annoyance if he acts like this for more than a week. The first character is so giddy that he doesn't notice what he has done and even tries to mention his girlfriend again.

The title text describes a very harsh way to respond to this annoyance. Since someone in the position of the first character is so excited about the new romantic commitment in their life, their friend brings up the much greater and more serious commitment of marriage. If they have only been dating for a week or less, it is probably much too early for them to seriously think about marriage. The friend then implies that if they aren't already excited to marry her, then he doesn't really love her. The end result is that the first character doesn't want to talk about his relationship anymore.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and a friend are talking.]
:Cueball: Avatar? Yeah, I saw it last week with...

:[Cueball walks out of the panel.]

:[Cueball returns with a ladder and megaphone.]

:[Cueball stands on top of the ladder, shouting through a megaphone.]
:Cueball: '''''...MY GIRLFRIEND.'''''

:Friend: You know, if this phase of your relationship lasts more than a week, I'm legally allowed to stab you both.
:Cueball: What phase?
:Cueball: So, did I mention I'm seeing someone?

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

1016: Valentine Dilemma

2019-02-28T21:52:07Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ deleted the repeated section

{{comic
| number = 1016
| date = February 13, 2012
| title = Valentine Dilemma
| image = valentine_dilemma.png
| 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==
Both [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are agonizing over what to get each other for Valentine's Day. Both of them seem to consider the holiday unnecessary and artificial, but worry that failure to celebrate it might upset their romantic partner. Because they're considering this separately, neither seems to realize that the other has a similar response. This results in both panicking and doing weird things.

At the heart of the way they are acting is the {{w|prisoner's dilemma}}. This is a canonical example of a game analyzed in {{w|game theory}}, which 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 members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge, but they have enough to convict both on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:

:If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves two years in prison
:If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve three years in prison (and vice versa)
:If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve one year in prison (on the lesser charge).

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 what the comic title terms the Valentine Dilemma. 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 don't go for the grand gesture.

The title text combines the two dilemma scenarios in an absurd juxtaposition, with the reader ("you") choosing from the Valentine's Day gift-no gift dilemma and the other person choosing to betray the reader in an armed-robbery case.

The Prisoner's Dilemma has been referenced before, in [[696: Strip Games]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball standing with hand on chin.]
:Cueball: Flowers seem so... trite. Something homemade? Easy to look halfhearted.

:[Megan sitting at a computer, also with hand on chin.]
:Megan: Valentine's day is a corporate construct.
:Megan: But hard to opt out of.
:Megan: I don't want to be a corporate tool ''or'' an inconsiderate jerk.

:[Cueball pacing.]
:Cueball: How do I fight cliché? I could get her a gift on a ''different'' day.
:Cueball: But what am I proving?

:[Megan leaning back with stapler in hand.]
:Megan: It's such a contrived ritual. But maybe rituals are necessary social glue.

:[Cueball panicking.]
:Cueball: Forty presents. No, ''none!'' No, give her five items and then steal two from her.
:Cueball: OK, breathe, keep it together.

:[Megan sweating, still holding the stapler.]
:Megan: And what if he gets me something and I don't reciprocate?
:Megan: Prisoners dilemma!
:Megan: AAAAAAAAAA!!

:[Cueball and Megan talking. Cueball is holding a basket and a jar of hammers. Megan's hand is stapled to her face.]
:Cueball: I got you Easter candy and a jar of hammers.
:Megan: I panicked and stapled my hand to my face.
:Cueball: We overthought this.
:Megan: Yes.

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

495: Secretary: Part 2

2019-02-09T19:22:27Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 495
| date = October 28, 2008
| title = Secretary: Part 2
| image = secretary part 2.png
| titletext = That helmet won't save him.
}}

==Explanation==
Whenever something big happens the news media likes to have at least two things: interviews with people that are the news, and on-the-scene reporters. In this case [[Blondie]] as a [[:Category:News anchor|news anchor]] is shown to begin with talking about [[Black Hat]] and she has even been out at his house. Even if those reporters are simply standing in front of a building that something happened in, they have to be on-scene. To thwart the media (and probably everyone else), Black Hat has built a {{w|moat}} around his apartment building. The second reporter is on-the-scene from the Internet, or rather, one of its darkest corners: {{w|4chan}}. In more detail, 4chan is a collection of image boards, which act somewhat like forums, where users go to share images. The different boards are named by their "folder" structure, for lack of a better term. Therefore, the name /b/ comes from its URL: 4chan.org/b/. Pronounced "slash bee" (because the second forward slash is not necessary), /b/ is the "random" board, where anything goes, where anything is the superset of all sets, as in anything. Absolutely. Anything. As in, going more than two seconds without seeing pornographic content or hateful slurs is almost unheard of. /b/ is also the one that gets the most publicity, because it has started most of the {{w|meme}}s [http://knowyourmeme.com/] on the Internet, as well as the birthplace of {{w|Anonymous (group)|Anonymous}}. The chaotic nature of the forums explains why the title text suggests that the reporter isn't safe, even though he is wearing a helmet. In fact, a goofy helmet like that is liable to get the trolls on him faster than if he didn't have it.

{{w|Ron Paul}} is a man who was a U.S. Representative for Texas at the time. At the time the comic was published, he was running, for the second time, for {{w|President of the United States}}.

A {{w|haberdasher}} is a person who sells small articles of clothing that have been or can be sewed. In modern English a haberdashery (where a haberdasher would work) is a place that sells hats.

Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign did, in fact, use a {{w|blimp}} which was named the {{w|Ron_Paul_presidential_campaign,_2008#Ron_Paul_Blimp|Ron Paul Blimp}}. However, despite their elegant appearance, blimps are not a very fast way to travel.

The images on the board behind the reporter are: The Fonz, /b/, a CD, and Epic Fail Guy, spelling out ABCDEFG.

The title text states that the second reporter (Tom)'s helmet won't help him, though from what, it is unclear as he himself stated he wasn't sure why he was wearing the helmet.

All comics in the [[:Category:Secretary|Secretary]] series:
*[[494: Secretary: Part 1]]
*495: Secretary: Part 2 (this one)
*[[496: Secretary: Part 3]]
*[[497: Secretary: Part 4]]
*[[498: Secretary: Part 5]]

This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.

It is possible that this series is a continuation of [[493: Actuarial]], in which Black Hat demonstrates great power over even Internet trolls via his sociopathic ways. This would explain why Black Hat was chosen as Internet secretary.

==Transcript==
:[Blondie as a news anchor sitting behind a desk is reading from a paper she holds in her hands. There is a picture of Black Hat on a screen behind her. There is a caption below the picture.]
:Blondie: Breaking news—the President has made a nomination to the new post of Internet Secretary. We know little about the man, shown here.
:Caption: Possibly a haberdasher?

:[Blondie keeps talking over a scene showing her standing with a microphone in front of a water filled moat that has been dug between the road and a house. A small stair up to the house is just on the other side of the moat. Behind her is Cueball with a large TV camera on his shoulder pointing towards her and the house.]
:Blondie (narrating): Attempts to reach the nominee at home were unsuccessful.
:Blondie: What the hell kind of apartment has a moat?

:[Back to Blondie behind her desk, the paper is gone and she leans one arm on the desk. There is no screen behind her.]
:Blondie: To understand the culture from which he came — and which he may soon administer — we sent a reporter to what we're told is the source of that culture.
:Blondie: Tom?

:[This panel is much larger than the three previous panels and partly hidden behind the last. Tom, looking like Cueball with a military helmet with camouflage marks strapped under his chin, holds a large microphone in front of him while standing in front of a large screen. The screen shows with a message board with four picture posts. Each picture has a text to the right but those are unreadable scribbles. The top drawing is of a man with wild hair who holds out his hands with thumbs up. The next is text. Then there is a circle with a smaller circle in the middle and at the bottom what appears to be a Cueball-like man with a fencing mask. Blondie still speaks to him from off-panel left.]
:Tom: I'm coming to you live from the 4chan /b/ board. Despite the tube cloggage, nascent memes are flying fast and furious.
:Blondie (off-panel): Why are you wearing a helmet, Tom?
:Tom: I'm not sure.
:Image with text only: /b/

:[Ponytail is sitting in front of a large control unit using the two levers coming out of it from below two buttons that are again below the lit screen. A voice comes from off-panel left. Above the top of the panels frame there is a frame with a caption:]
:Meanwhile in Ron Paul's blimp.
:Ron Paul (off-panel): Ahoy! What news of the blogs?

:[Zoom out showing Ponytail who has turned around on her office chair away from the controls towards Ron Paul drawn like Cueball but with a cane. She holds up a piece of paper with a small square insert visible at the top. Apart from that it is white.]
:Ponytail: Dr. Paul! The President's named his nominee!
:Ron Paul: It's not me?

:[Ron Paul's blimp is shown from the outside. His voice can be seen coming from the airship. There is text on the blimp, with the four letters after the first written mirrored to spell another word.]
:Ron Paul (from inside the blimp): Wait! I remember that guy from the campaign! He's a notorious troll!
:Blimp:
::Ron Paul
::RƎVO⅃UTION

:[Back inside the blimp Ron Paul points to Ponytail while his other hand is lifted to his chin. His cane leans against his legs. Ponytail looks at him from her chair, the paper now held in her lap.]
:Ron Paul: They mustn't put him in charge. Quick, call the capitol!

:[Ponytail turns around on her chair towards the controls and takes hold of one of the sticks. Ron Paul has taken the cane in his hand again.]
:Ponytail: Can't, sir. The tubes just went down completely.
:Ron Paul: Blast!

:[Ponytail now holds on to both sticks as Ron Paul lifts his cane up into the air pointing away from her up and right.]
:Ron Paul: Then we'll go ourselves. Full speed ahead!

:[A full view of the blimp hanging in the air to the left over a broad landscape. There seems to be a small lake just in front of the blimp. The horizon is shown all along this full width panel and after the lake there are five small mountain peaks, two behind the three in front. After the last of these there follows one more peak and a small mound. Features are shown on the ground. In the air in front of the blimp there are a small cloud inside the panel at the end of the lake, and a large cloud breaking the upper frame over the end of the five mountain stretching over the next peak and mound.]
:Blimp:
::Ron Paul
::RƎVO⅃UTION

:[Same image. The blimp has advanced minutely taking the tip clearly over the lake. Beat panel #1]
:Blimp:
::Ron Paul
::RƎVO⅃UTION

:[Same image. The blimp has advanced minutely again. Beat panel #2]
:Blimp:
::Ron Paul
::RƎVO⅃UTION

:[Same image but now the two speak from within the blimp. The blimp has again advanced minutely so the gondola below the blimp is now also almost at the edge of the lake..]
:Ron Paul: I said full speed!
:Ponytail: It's a blimp, sir!
:Blimp:
::Ron Paul
::RƎVO⅃UTION

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Secretary|02]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Secretary]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ron Paul]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:News anchor]]
[[Category:Airships]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Politics]]

2095: Marsiforming

2019-01-07T17:55:56Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ got rid of text box

{{comic
| number = 2095
| date = January 7, 2019
| title = Marsiforming
| image = marsiforming.png
| titletext = It has so many advantages--it preserves Martian life, requires fewer interplanetary launches, and makes it much easier to field-test Mars rovers.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a MARS ROVER. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|Terraforming}} is the (so far only suggested) process of changing a planet, usually to make it more habitable (for humans). A very common example is {{w|Mars}}, which is known to harbour water ice and believed to have previously been warm enough to have liquid water. Normally, plans for terraforming try to adjust temperatures to be compatible with liquid water, and an atmosphere containing significant amounts of oxygen but little carbon dioxide. In this comic [[Cueball]] is suggesting doing the opposite, and terraform {{w|Earth}} to be more like Mars, i.e. extremely dry, cold and with a very thin atmosphere. The word {{w|Terra}} is the latin name for Earth, so Terraforming would be "Earth Forming". The comic title combines Mars with Forming (with a linking "i") to create the new word Marsiforming.

The title text the provides examples of how this could improve things: Preserving martian life (a proposed reason to terraform Mars would be to provide a second planet to preserve Earth life at the cost of destroying any Martian organisms, so by marsiforming Earth, we would provide a second planet to preserve hypothetical Martian life, albeit at the cost of destroying any Earth life), fewer interplanetary launches (no need to leave this planet's atmosphere in order to visit itself, and Martians who might otherwise need to return to their home planet could instead settle on Earth), easier to field-test Mars rovers (field-test means to test in the environment of actual use, which is now readily available on Earth).

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[Cueball is on a stage giving a presentation, with a diagram behind him]

Cueball: Earth and Mars may look different now, but with some orbiting mirrors and atmospheric adjustments, we could change that.

[Caption below the panel:]

I'm having trouble selling people on my proposal to terraform Earth to resemble Mars.

{{comic discussion}}

1918: NEXUS

2018-12-06T00:48:45Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1918
| date = November 20, 2017
| title = NEXUS
| image = nexus.png
| titletext = You also refuse to buy Cisco products because you hate the Thong Song, O. Henry, Deep Space Nine, freshwater whitefish, teenaged Incan emperors, Brak's brother, and vegetable-based shortening.
}}

==Explanation==

[[Cueball]] is confusing {{w|NEXUS (frequent traveler program)|NEXUS}}, a [https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/nexus USA and Canada border control pre-screening program], with [http://ferngully.wikia.com/wiki/Hexxus Hexxus], the villains from the animated film ''{{w|FernGully: The Last Rainforest|FernGully}}''.

Trusted traveller programs like Nexus allow people who match certain criteria to apply for a membership and subsequently save time when boarding airplanes or crossing borders via use of expedited lanes.

FernGully is a story set in an Australian rainforest inhabited by fairies including Crysta, who accidentally shrinks a young logger named Zak to the size of a fairy. Together, they rally the fairies and the animals of the rainforest to protect their home from the loggers and a malevolent pollution entity, Hexxus.

The title text is confusing {{w|Cisco Systems|Cisco}} (a telecoms & tech brand which has a line of switches called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Nexus_switches Nexus]) with:
* The artist {{w|Sisqó}} who performed '{{w|Thong Song}}'
* {{w|The Cisco Kid}}, a character created by {{w|O. Henry}} in the short story "The Caballero's Way"
* {{w|Benjamin Sisko}}, commander of a space station in the Star Trek Universe (''{{w|Deep Space Nine}}'')
* {{w|Cisco (fish)|Ciscoes}} (freshwater whitefish)
* [http://emperorsnew.wikia.com/wiki/Kuzco Kuzco], teenaged Incan emperor in ''{{w|The Emperor's New Groove}}''
* [http://brak.wikia.com/wiki/Sisto Sisto], brother of Brak in ''{{w|The Brak Show}}''
* {{w|Crisco}} (vegetable-based shortening)

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball walking through an airport.]
:Sign: Apply for NEXUS Save time at the border
:Megan: Maybe we should sign up for this.
:Cueball: No way. I refuse to have anything to do with Nexus after what they did to FernGully.

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

1385: Throwing Rocks

2018-10-01T20:58:18Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ fixed link

{{comic
| number = 1385
| date = June 23, 2014
| title = Throwing Rocks
| image = throwing_rocks.png
| titletext = ::PLOOOOSH:: Looks like you won't be making it to Vinland today, Leaf Erikson.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Beret Guy]] is showing [[Megan]] one of his daily activities: Building a [https://rangerrick.org/crafts_activities/float-a-leaf-boat/ leaf boat] and throwing rocks at it. He acknowledges that the hobby is useless, but relaxing. In contrast, Megan contemplates one of her own daily activities: reading online comments on news articles. Realizing that it is an equally pointless, but presumably much less relaxing activity, she joins Beret Guy in throwing rocks at his leaf boat.

It is an unfortunate property of news articles that their comments become dominated by those which are [http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/some-news-sites-cracking-down-on-over-the-top-comments/2014/05/07/4bc90958-d619-11e3-95d3-3bcd77cd4e11_story.html deliberately offensive or devolve into flame wars]. An additional metaphor may compare the article to the leaf boat while comparing the thrown stones to the flaming comments, essentially taking this most likely carefully constructed, fragile and perhaps beautiful creation (article or leaf boat) and lobbing offenses (comments or thrown stones) at it until it is dragged into the abyss (Internet "graveyard" or pond).

The title text makes it clear that they hit the leaf with a stone. The rest is a pun on the name of the 11th century Viking explorer {{w|Leif Erikson}}, who is believed to have been {{w|European_colonization_of_the_Americas|the first European}} to discover and settle North America which he named "{{w|Vinland}}".

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy is throwing a rock in the water while talking to Megan who walks down to him.]
:Beret Guy: Every day I make a little leaf boat, then throw rocks until it sinks or floats away.

:[Rock lands in water, near a leaf boat.]
:Rock: '''Plunk'''
:Beret Guy: It's pointless, but at least it's relaxing.

:[Megan and Beret Guy are both holding rocks. Megan looks down at her rock.]
:Megan: Every day, I read the comments on a news article.

:[The two throw their rocks.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Language]]

2028: Complex Numbers

2018-08-03T17:47:32Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ linked to ms Lenhart's page

{{comic
| number = 2028
| date = August 3, 2018
| title = Complex Numbers
| image = complex_numbers.png
| titletext = I'm trying to prove that mathematics forms a meta-abelian group, which would finally confirm my suspicions that algebreic geometry and geometric algebra are the same thing.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a MATHEMATICIAN - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The complex numbers can be thought of as pairs <math>(a, b)\in\mathbb{R}</math> of real numbers with rules for addition and multiplication.

: <math>(a, b) + (c, d) = (a+c, b+d)</math>

: <math>(a, b) \cdot (c, d) = (ac - bd, ad + bc)</math>

As such they are two-dimensional vectors, with an interesting rule for multiplication. The justification for this rule is to consider a complex number as an expression of the form <math>a+bi</math>, where <math>i^2 = -1</math>, i.e. ''i'' is the square root of negative 1. Applying the common rules of algebra and the definition of ''i'' yields rules for addition and multiplication above.

Regular two-dimensional vectors are pairs of values, with the same rule for addition, and no rule for multiplication.

The usual way to introduce complex numbers is by starting with ''i'' and deducing the rules for addition and multiplication, but Cueball is correct to say that complex numbers are really just vectors, and can be defined without consideration of the square root of a negative number.

The teacher, [[Miss Lenhart]], counters that to ignore the natural construction of the negative numbers would hide the relevance of the fundamental theorem of algebra (Every polynomial of degree ''n'' has exactly ''n'' roots, when counted according to multiplicity) and much of complex analysis (the application of calculus to complex-valued functions), but she also agrees that mathematicians are too cool for "regular vectors."

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball (the student) is raising his hand and writing with his other hand. He is sitting down at a desk, which has a piece of paper on it]
:Cueball: Does any of this really have to do with the square root of -1? Or do mathematicians just think they're too cool for regular vectors?

:[Miss Lenhart (the teacher) is standing in front of a whiteboard, replying to Cueball's question]
:Miss Lenhart: Complex numbers aren't just vectors. They're a profound extension of real numbers, laying the foundation for the fundamental theorem of algebra and the entire field of complex analysis

:[Miss Lenhart is standing slightly to the right in a blank frame]
:Miss Lenhart: '''''And''''' we're too cool for regular vectors.
:Cueball (off-screen): I '''''knew''''' it!

{{comic discussion}}

2022: Sports Champions

2018-07-20T07:33:28Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ those are clearly shoes. Towels don't curve up a bit at the end

{{comic
| number = 2022
| date = July 20, 2018
| title = Sports Champions
| image = sports_champions.png
| titletext = For a long time, people thought maybe Usain Bolt was the one for running, until the 2090s and the incredible dominance of Derek Legs.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a CHAMPION - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In an example of {{w|nominative determinism}}, the cartoon lists people whose surname relates to their participation in various sports. It is presented as though it was created in the far future, reflecting on sports players over the decades through to the 2080s. The first three are real sportspeople, the remainder are imaginary players of the future.

The caricatures feature people participating in their sport, except for Jebediah who is standing at a {{w|podium}}.

{| class="wikitable"
!style="width:20%"|Name
!style="width:10%"|Year
!style="width:15%"|Sport
!style="width:55%"|Explanation
|-
|Margaret Court
|1960s
|Tennis
|{{w|Margaret Court}} is a retired Australian tennis player, former world number 1, who won many competitions in the 1960s and 70s. A {{w|tennis court}} is the playing arena used in that sport.
|-
|Gary Player
|1970s
|Golf
|{{w|Gary Player}} is a South African golfer who won nine major championships in the 1960s and 70s. Game contestants are often known as "players".
|-
|Lonzo Ball
|2020s
|Basketball
|{{w|Lonzo Ball}} is an American professional basketball player, currently with the Los Angeles Lakers. Of course, basketball is a {{w|ball game}}.
|-
|Jake Halfpipe
|2030s
|Skateboarding
|A {{w|half-pipe}} is a structure used in gravity extreme sports such as snowboarding.
|-
|Sarah Goggles
|2030s
|Swimming
|{{w|Goggles}} are protective eyewear used in many sports, such as swimming or skiing.
|-
|Kevin Slurve
|2050s
|Baseball
|A {{w|slurve}} is a baseball throwing technique, a portmanteau of '''sl'''ider and c'''urve'''.
|-
|Julia Chairlift
|2050s
|Skiing
|A {{w|chairlift}} is an aerial machine often used to transport winter sportsmen and women up mountains.
|-
|Dwight Shuttlecock
|2060s
|Badminton
|A {{w|shuttlecock}} is a projectile used in the sport of badminton.
|-
|Brandon Sponsorship
|2060s
|Unclear
|Sporting professionals are often {{w|Sponsor (commercial)|sponsored}} by corporations. Brandon seems to be holding a branded sponsorship item, possibly shoes.
|-
|Kate Dopingscandal
|2070s
|Cycling
|There have been many {{w|Doping in sport|doping}} scandals in the world of sport, notably cyclist {{w|Lance Armstrong}}, and {{w|Doping in Russia|many Russian competitors}} in the Olympics
|-
|Jebediah Disasterous Postgame PressConference
|2080s
|Unspecified
|At the end of sporting events - ie post-game - there is often a {{w|News conference|press conference}} where the competitors discuss the result. Sometimes, these live interviews are a disaster. Randall has chosen to spell their name as "Disasterous", rather than the more conventional "Disastrous".
|-
|(in title text)
Usain Bolt and Derek Legs
|2090s
|Sprinting
|From the title text, {{w|Usain Bolt}} is the (now retired) world record holder for the 100 meter dash and 4x100 meter relay events in {{w|Track & Field}}. Thus Randall considers him a solid contender for this list since he can ''bolt'' down the track. However the fictional Derek Legs ends up being an even faster sprinter and replaces Bolt on the list.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Fun fact: Every sport eventually produces a champion competitor named after a common element of the game.
{{comic discussion}}

354: Startling

2018-06-02T02:22:22Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ fixed the date

{{comic
| number = 354
| date = December 7, 2007
| title = Startling
| image = startling.png
| titletext = We actually reached the future about three years ago.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is startled every few months when he, again, realizes that he now lives in the 21st century. When he grew up as a child the year 2000 seemed very far away — it was the future, but he now exists in that timeframe with the rest of society.

The title text states that "the future" was reached in 2004... Three years before the comic was published. This is possibly a joke on how time works, as "the future" is always, was always, and will always be ahead of the time you're at. There may, however, be a reference to some movie set in the future year 2004...

The 21st century, even the year 2004 was futuristic for people growing up in, for instance, the eighties. This view just belongs to the perspective of people — for people growing up in the 70s the novel {{w|Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984}} was even futuristic.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits silently front of his computer.]
:I still do this every few months.

:[He continues to sit for two more panels.]

:Cueball: Holy crap, it's the 21st century.

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

1991: Research Areas by Size and Countedness

2018-05-22T16:50:35Z

Intara: /* Upper right quadrant */ added some sizes

{{comic
| number = 1991
| date = May 9, 2018
| title = Research Areas by Size and Countedness
| image = research_areas_by_size_and_countedness.png
| titletext = Mathematicians give a third answer on the vertical axis, "That question is poorly defined, but we have a sub-field devoted to every plausible version of it."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|The tables needs to be filled in. And I think the title text has been explained already... Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is a [[:Category:Scatter plots|scatter plot]] that ranks different research fields according to the precision of the knowledge of the number of the studied object (vertical axis) vs. how large (the size of) the studied object is on the horizontal axis.

For instance the number of United States presidents is well known, so the study of their history is at the top of the Y-axis. This study is placed close to the Y-axis as the size of a president is about midway in size between the two extremes of the X-axis, elementary particles to the left (small) and the entire cosmos (cosmology) to the right (big).

On the X-axis Presidents are close to the middle. Both presidents and other larger life forms (as a research area) including extinct animals (paleontology) and exobiology are all close to the the same central position just right of the Y-axis, with smaller animals like birds and insects just to the left of the Y-axis. But where the number of presidents is well known, then the number of exoplanet life forms (exobiology) is completely unknown and thus it will be found at the very bottom of the Y-axis, since we have no idea if there are life elsewhere and if so how many places will it be and how varied.

The 19 research areas are listed and explained in the [[#Tables of research areas|tables]] below.

In the title text mathematicians may give a third answer that the concept of counting the things being studied is not reasonable, because the things are abstract or otherwise not discrete. There are many different types of math that blend into each other, and many have turned into separate sub-disciplines based on different interpretations of fundamental rules. As a specific example in geometry, different interpretations of how many lines you may draw parallel to another line through a given point has lead to hyperbolic (infinite parallel lines) and spherical (0 parallel lines) geometric systems that are just as valid (and valuable, in some contexts) as the more commonly known Cartesian (1 parallel line) geometry. As a specific example of the blending, number theory and set theory and topology all interrelate and it is difficult to concretely say whether many theorems belong to one branch of math or another.

==Tables of research areas==
*For a table with the coordinates given in percentage for each research field, see the [[#Table with coordinates|table]] in the trivia section

===Upper left quadrant===
*This is the section with the small items with count known.

{| class = "wikitable"
! Research field
! Size of the thing
! Knowledge of #
! Explanation
|-
|{{w|Elementary particle physics}}
| The smallest subjects that we have actually detected are the {{w|elementary particles}}. In the {{w|Standard Model}} of particle physics, they are considered point masses (i.e. to have zero width). They may be made of smaller {{w|String theory|strings}} but if so these have still not been detected.
| We think we have a fairly good estimate of how many elementary particles that are known. There could be some uncertainty though, so it is not at the very top.
|Elementary particle physics is concerned with the study of subatomic particles (the smallest things that we know of), of which there are 17. Most notably, until recently it was uncertain whether the {{w|Higgs boson}} was one of the elementary particles, but scientists have a "pretty good estimate" because the mathematical models don't predict the existence of many other particles
|-
|{{w|Dentistry}}
|Several mm to several centimeters
|Most teeth are visible to the naked eye, and dentists have x-ray technology to see what's not visible, so counting them is pretty straightforward.
|Dentistry is the study of teeth (pretty small, both in size as well as in quantity). Humans adults grow 32 teeth, which is a "pretty good estimate" since it is very rare for {{w|Hyperdontia|more than 32 teeth to grow}} and it is rather common for {{w|wisdom teeth}} to be surgically extracted or in some cases never to develop. Children may only have 20 teeth before they start falling out, but each tooth that falls out is because another tooth is growing underneath, so a child might have as many as 52 teeth, counting the child teeth that haven't fallen out yet plus the adult teeth that are starting to form. So while a dentist will usually have a good idea how many teeth will be in a patient's mouth, they won't know for sure until they look or consult dental records.
|-
|{{w|Shakespeare}} studies
|Most are the size of typical book. In printed form, they would be in the range of tens of centimeters in height and width and ~1 centimeter in depth. Although, if stored in digial form, they could be much smaller than a tooth, so it seems to refer to print or handwritten originals.
|Generally, 36 plays are attributed to him, but between 1 and 3 additional plays are considered "lost" (i.e. at some point between being first published or performed and scholars seriously studying Shakespeare, all known copies, references, and fragments were destroyed, making it impossible to determine whether Shakespeare actually wrote them or whether they actually existed as separate plays), and {{w|Shakespeare apocrypha|some 20 more}} are believed to have been written by him, but not signed. To make matters worse, some plays that ''were'' published or performed under Shakespeare's name are believed to have been written as collaborations (not fully by him) or mis-attributed (we don't know who wrote them but, everyone says it was him).
|Shakespeare studies is concerned with the works of William Shakespeare.
|-
|{{w|Ornithology}}
|Birds tend to be small, with most species able to be held comfortably in hand; even the largest known flying bird, the {{w|Condor}}, stands smaller than the average human, with a handful of non-flying avians such as the {{w|ostrich}} being larger, but still weighing less than 2-3 humans.
|The number of known bird species is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird#Diversification_of_modern_birds estimated at about 10,000], though [https://www.amnh.org/about-the-museum/press-center/new-study-doubles-the-estimate-of-bird-species-in-the-world a 2016 research result] suggested a near-doubling of this figure. As for the number of individual birds, a paper aptly titled [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018341530497 "How many birds are there?"] examines a number of ways of counting them; the results are "surprisingly consistent", with counts of approximately 200-400 billion individual birds.
|We do have a "pretty good estimate", to within perhaps a factor of two.
|-
|Ancient {{w|literature}}
|As above, with Shakespeare plays, original or print reproductions would be the size of a book, typically. Although ancient {{w|scrolls}} may have different dimensions with similar total volume.
|Because of the high number of {{w|lost work}}, it is hard to have a solid estimate of the number, although rough lists have been made (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_literature#List_of_ancient_texts).
|While it is fairly straightforward to look up how many books [http://www.proquest.com/products-services/Books-in-Print.html are currently in print], or how many books [https://mashable.com/2010/08/05/number-of-books-in-the-world/ all currently printed information would fit into if bound into equal-length volumes], and then limiting those estimates to those that date before a specific year, counting how many books from the period of interest haven't survived to the present day (books that were "{{w|lost work|lost}}" either by deliberate discontinuation, or accidental destruction such as in the {{w|Destruction of the Library of Alexandria|Library of Alexandria}}) is a bit more difficult. However, because we know the work existed (it is mentioned by name in some other text), we have "pretty good estimate" that the number of lost works is "only" in the tens of thousands, as is the number of surviving works.
|}

===Upper right quadrant===
*This is the section with the big items with count known.

{| class = "wikitable"
! Research field
! Size
! Knowledge of #
! Explanation
|-
|{{w|Marine mammal|Marine}} {{w|Mammalogy|Mammology}}
|They range in size from {{w|Marine Otter|about a meter}} to {{w|Blue Whale|up to 30 meters}}
|
|Marine mammals are the largest extant animals. The US Government [http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/ recognizes] 119 marine mammals. However, what constitutes each species is [https://www.marinemammalscience.org/species-information/list-marine-mammal-species-subspecies/ constantly being revised], with new studies indicating either that what used to be considered a subspecies is actually a separate species, or that what used to be considered a separate species is actually a subspecies. As the depths of the ocean are further explored, species that were outright unknown are spotted and need to be classified. However, since marine mammals breathe air, they have to come to the surface where we can see them, so we're pretty sure that we've spotted all species. Note that RAndall has misspelled Mammalogy with o instead of a in the middle.
|-
|{{w|List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States|Presidential History}}
|All presidents are human-sized, with the tallest being {{w|Abraham Lincoln}} at 6 ft 4 in and the shortest being {{w|James Madison}} at 5 ft 10 in.
|
|Presidents are generally considered "big" men in history. Therefore, each one is fairly well known and documented. There is, however, some discussion on how many presidents there have been in the history of the United States, since prior to the {{w|Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|25th amendment}}, it was unspecified whether vice presidents counted as presidents during the President's absence. Most notably, this ambiguity is the reason {{w|David Rice Atchison}}'s tombstone is inscribed with the words "President of the United States for one day" (he was not eligible and did not accept the duties even if he was).
|-
|{{w|Railway engineering}}
|
|
|A railway can span anywhere from a few hundred feet, to thousands of miles, so they're pretty big. The type of a railway is generally given by its {{w|track gauge}}, which is defined as "standard" (the usual gauge for a region or country), "narrow" (rails closer together than that standard) and "broad" (rails farther apart than that standard). Since what is standard varies from country to country, and indeed from line to line, how many kinds of "narrow" gauge and "broad" gauge exist depend on who you ask. However, whereas every region has ''a'' standard gauge, "standard-gauge rail" has a specific meaning used by rail technicians and enthusiasts worldwide, of a track with rails 1435mm (4 ft 8.5 in) apart. Anything narrower than that is often described as a narrow-gauge line, even if it is the standard gauge for a particular rail network.
|-
|{{w|Geology}}
|The {{w|Earth}} is larger, by far, than everything else on the chart except the universe (Cosmology), Black Holes, and God (at least under some conceptions, see "Theology" below).
|There is only one Earth (at least if you set aside the possibility of multiverses, see below in Cosmology).
|Geology is generally considered the study of rocks (small rocks being considered fragments of mountain layers, so what counts as a "rock" for a geologist can be pretty big). There is no universally agreed upon number to how many {{w|List of rock types|types of rock}} there are, but all geologists agree they can be grouped into igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock. Alternatively, geology can be construed as the study of the planet Earth's composition ( *geo*- meaning "Earth" ), and geologists are confident that the planet Earth is big and there is only one of it.
|-
|{{w|Cosmology}}
| As this encompasses (at least) all of the visible parts of the {{w|universe}} we live in, there can be no other "items" to study that would be larger.
| There is only one visible universe, but there could be multiverses/parallel universes, and also an infinite universe beyond the borders of our own part of this universe's event horizon. So it depends on who you ask if they say there is one of and infinite number of universes to study, thus it is placed close to the middle of the two extremes,
|Cosmology is the study of the universe. There is an asterisk with the note "Depends on who you ask", relating to the estimate of how many universes there are. While it might seem obvious that there is only one universe, some branches of physics believe that our universe is part of a {{w|multiverse}}, and this remains an open and contested subject in the field.
|}

===Lower left quadrant===
*This is the section with the small items with count unknown.

{| class = "wikitable"
! Research field
! Size
! Knowledge of #
! Explanation
|-
|{{w|Mycology}}
| microscopic to a few miles
|
|Mycology is the study of fungi (since fungi tend to grow flat -- excepting for mushrooms, which are their sexual organs, and do not exceed a foot in height (see [http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/5740/20130729/giant-fungus-china-mushroom-world-s-largest-size.htm World's Largest mushrooms] -- mushrooms are generally considered small). Many fungi are microscopic, but some get to be a few miles in diameter.[http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/nature/the-worlds-largest-living-organism.aspx The World's largest living organism.] It is a lot harder to discern which species a fungus is, and therefore classify it, so we "have no idea" how many kinds of fungi there are. Studies [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21613136 vary wildly] between about 70,000 to over 5,000,000. There is a comic named after this study: [[1664: Mycology]].
|-
|[[1012: Wrong Superhero|Entymology]]
|
|
|It is unclear whether [[Randall]] means {{w|entomology}} or {{w|etymology}} (probably neither; it's likely that this wasn't a mistake and it is possibly a direct reference to [[1012: Wrong Superhero]]). In either case, [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28938083 estimates for insects] (entomology) vary from less than 1,000,000 to 30,000,000; and [https://www.quora.com/How-many-root-words-are-there-in-the-English-language estimates for root words] (etymology) reaching hundreds of thousands. Entomology was mentioned in the title text of [[1610: Fire Ants]].
|-
|-
|{{w|Microbiology}}
|
|
|Microbiology studies microscopic (too small to see) organisms, of which some 1,400 are known and "estimates for the total number of microbial species vary wildly, from as low as 120,000 to tens of millions and higher", according to [https://www.quora.com/How-many-root-words-are-there-in-the-English-language Nature magazine].
|-
|{{w|Pharmacology}}
|{{w|Drugs}}, including {{w|medications}} and {{w|recreational drug use|illegal and recreational drugs}} are molecules which are sub-microscopic (in the range of nanometers).
|Although it is possible to tally all the known drugs, this is at the extreme low end of the pile because the number of possible organic compounds is nearly infinite and the fraction of those are bioactive is completely unknown.
|The number of drugs (pharmaceuticals) discovered and synthesized is not tallied, according to [https://www.raps.org/regulatory-focus%E2%84%A2/news-articles/2014/10/how-many-drugs-has-fda-approved-in-its-entire-history-new-paper-explains recent studies], but an estimate can be obtained by seeing how many have passed through the {{w|Food and Drug Administration|U.S. FDA}} (1,453). Many home remedies, which might technically qualify as drugs, have not been approved because {{w|Novelty (patent)|"everybody knows that"}}, as well as many solely recreational drugs since regulation might result in outlawing. Because of this, "we have no idea" how many drugs truly exist. Since drugs are extremely powerful molecules that are only administered in choice amounts, they are generally perceived as small.
|}

===Lower right quadrant===
*This is the section with the big items with count unknown.

{| class = "wikitable"
! Research field
! Size
! Knowledge of #
! Explanation
|-
|{{w|Botany}}
|
|
|Botany studies plants, which can reach {{w|List of superlative trees|hundreds of feet by any measure}}. Some {{w|Pando (tree)|clonal colonies of trees}} spread for miles. However, plant tend to clump together in forests and jungles, which makes it hard to get to them and document them. Every year, thousands of new plants are discovered, with the best estimate being that there are [https://news.mongabay.com/2016/05/many-plants-world-scientists-may-now-answer/ nearly 400,000 vascular plants] and an additional [https://www.britannica.com/topic-browse/Plants/Nonvascular-Plants 12,000 non-vascular plants]. However, the rate of discovery doesn't appear to be slowing down significantly, so we truly "have no idea."
|-
|{{w|Paleontology}}
|Paleontologists study fossils, which range in size from very small to very large. When most people think of paleontologists though, they tend to think of them as studying large animals such as dinosaurs.
|
|Paleontology studies fossils, particularly those of extinct animals, which can reach {{w|Largest prehistoric animals|huge sizes}}. However, since fossils form under very special circumstances, if the animal did not die under those special circumstances, there will be no record of their existence. Therefore, the number of extinct animals can never truly be known, but we've found [http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2010/01/12/how-do-we-know-that-most-of-th/ around 250,000]
|-
|{{w|Black Hole}} {{w|Astronomy}}
|Compared to most astronomical objects, black holes are fairly small. However, most of them (that we are able to detect) are still larger than the Earth, so they would still fall on the "big" end of this chart. Alternatively, Randall may be referring to their mass, which is on the scale of stars.
|It has been estimated that the number of black holes in the {{w|Milky Way}} is around 100 million ([http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/encyc_mod3_q7.html]), although there is uncertainty in that estimate and the total number in the universe depends on the size of the universe (see "cosmology", above).
|"Most stellar black holes [...] are impossible to detect. Judging from the number of stars large enough to produce such black holes, however, scientists estimate that there are as many as ten million to a billion such black holes in the Milky Way alone." ([https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/black-holes NASA Black Hole information page])
|-
|{{w|Exobiology}}
|The comic puts this in the size range of paleontology, which can include many sizes (see above), and also marine mammalogy, which tends to have individuals that are in the range of tens of centimeters to several tens of meters. However, {{w|life|life as we know it}} is dominated in numbers by {{w|microbes}}, and {{w|Evolutionary history of life|life on Earth}} began {{w|Abiogenesis|microscopic}}, leading most {{w|Astrobiology|Astrobiologists}} to hypothesize that life on other planets would necessarily include microbes and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#No_other_intelligent_species_have_arisen only possibly include macroscopic life].
|The estimate of {{w|List of potentially habitable exoplanets|how many planets with life there are}} varies from 16 to 40,000,000,000; additionally, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_natural_satellites#In_the_Solar_System multiple moons] are believed to be potentially habitable for some forms of life in our own solar system. However, the number of bodies apart from Earth confirmed to have life is currently zero. Even more uncertain than the number of potentially habitable exoplanets is the {{w|Rare Earth Hypothesis|huge uncertainty}} in the likelihood of life arising on a habitable planet.
|Exobiology refers to the study of life outside Earth, which requires {{w|SETI|scanning the entire universe for life}}. Currently, exobiology seeks to find a planet or similar body with life (and, {{w|definition of planet|to qualify as a planet}}, bodies capable of sustaining life are big). The uncertainty about how many planets have life in the Milky Way relates to the {{w|Fermi Paradox}}. For life, of the type we know, to exist outside of the Solar system there need to be planets around other stars. Such planets are called Exoplanets, and they have been a [[:Category:Exoplanets|recurrent subject]] on xkcd.
|-
|{{w|Theology}}
|It is placed at a scale as large as the universe (cosmology) as it should encompass the entire creation. For those not believing in gods it could also be seen as studying something as small as the human brain that has created all the gods. But Randall has chosen to place it in the big section.
|Some religions have one (or {{w|athiesm|zero}}) god. Other religions have hundreds of gods. It is also conceivable to have a religion with an infinite number of gods. Thus, the possible number is completely unknown (ranging from 0 to infinity).
|Theology is concerned with the study of God(s), which, by some definitions, is a hypothetical being greater than the universe itself. In particular, theologists study the question of whether {{w|theism|a god could exist}} (there is ≥1 god), {{w|astheism|or not}} (there are 0 gods) and, in the former case, whether there could be {{w|polytheism|multiple gods}} (there are ''n''>1 gods) or {{w|monotheism|just one}} (there is exactly 1 god) or indeed whether there is {{w|animism|one god for each living thing}} (''n''≫1 gods). In other words, the very definition of the field is the fact that "we have no idea" how many there are. This quantitative uncertainty is also mentioned in [[900: Religions]].
|}

==Transcript==
:[An X-Y scatter plot of research areas, written in gray font, where both axes have arrows in both ends. At the end of each arrow is a label. Above the left part of the X-axis there is a line which goes to a text about the meaning of the X-axis. Similarly there is a line to from the top of the Y-axis to a questions “asked” to those that study the given subject, their answers being somewhere between the two labels on the Y axis.]

:[The X-axis from left to right, text first and then labels:]
:Size of the thing you study
:Small
:Big

:[The Y-axis from top to bottom, question first and then labels:]
:"That thing you study - how many of them are there?"
:"We have a pretty good estimate."
:"We have no idea"

:[The research areas names are listed here below by sorting them into the four quadrants from top left to bottom right. In each quadrant the areas are listed after most left first, and then top to bottom for those at the same x position.]

:[Upper left quadrant (Small & count known):]
:Elementary particle physics
:Dentistry
:Shakespeare studies
:Ornithology
:Ancient Literature

:[Upper right quadrant (Big & count known):]
:Presidential History
:Marine Mammology
:Railway Engineering
:Geology
:Cosmology*
:(*Depends who you ask)

:[Lower left quadrant (Small & count unknown):]
:Pharmacology
:Microbiology
:Entymology
:Mycology

:[Upper right quadrant (Big & count unknown):]
:Botany
:Paleontology
:Exobiology
:Black Hole Astronomy
:Theology

==Trivia==
===Table with coordinates===
*Here is a sortable table with the coordinates in percentage given.
**They have been taken from the discussion where "Zetfr" states that
***I have determined the exact position of each science on both axes.
***I computed the center of the smallest rectangle that encloses each name.
***Here they are, expressed as percentages, assuming 0% and 100% correspond to the arrow tips on each axis.
****It could be argued that cosmology size should be at 100% and Theology knowledge 0 %, etc. but that is just semantics.
****The interesting here is what order Randall seems to have put the different fields and object sizes.
**To begin with they are sorted after the size of the ting the research are studies, with the smallest first.
{|class="wikitable sortable"
! Research area
! Size (%)
! Estimate (%)
|-
|Elementary Particle Physics ||7 ||72
|-
|Pharmacology ||12 ||6
|-
|Microbiology ||15 ||13
|-
|Dentistry ||21 ||84
|-
|Entymology ||24 ||25
|-
|Mycology ||29 ||38
|-
|Ornithology ||34 ||62
|-
|Shakespeare Studies ||37 ||88
|-
|Ancient Literature ||38 ||53
|-
|Botany ||60 ||40
|-
|Presidential History ||62 ||89
|-
|Marine Mammology ||66 ||68
|-
|Paleontology ||68 ||31
|-
|Exobiology ||68 ||5
|-
|Railway Engineering ||79 ||81
|-
|Geology ||90 ||90
|-
|Theology ||91 ||5
|-
|Black Hole Astronomy ||92 ||26
|-
|Cosmology ||94 ||62
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Scatter plots]]
[[Category:Rankings]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Math]] 
[[Category:Fiction]] 
[[Category:Religion]] 
[[Category:Animals]] 
[[Category:Exoplanets]] 
[[Category:Politics]]

1961: Interaction

2018-05-20T21:44:17Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ linkifyed the unlink

{{comic
| number = 1961
| date = February 28, 2018
| title = Interaction
| image = interaction.png
| titletext = [They do not move.]
}}

==Explanation==

[[Cueball]] and [[White Hat]] are making small talk. White Hat begins the conversation with a typical greeting, asking, "How are you doing?" Normally this is a habitualized greeting pattern, where the person being greeted would respond with a generic positive like, "Good," "Okay," "Can't complain," etc. Instead, Cueball answers with a very open and honest statement about the {{w|social anxiety}} he thinks he is successfully dealing with. White Hat then admits that he is experiencing the same thing, and the two congratulate each other for having a "normal" conversation with another human. After that, there is an awkward silence where neither knows what to talk about next. Finally, White Hat makes note of the awkwardness and Cueball suggests they stop before it gets worse.

The scene is ironic because their dialogue mirrors the common pattern of typical minor daily interactions, but also differs greatly from anything "normal." White Hat & Cuteball are being really weird here, specifically because their dialogue is inappropriately open & honest. The literal semantic content of their dialogue is probably more accurate & meaningful than the usual pleasantries people exchange, but the effect is very different.

So basically they have not managed to behave like regular human beings, and thus have nothing to congratulate each other for. Except for White Hat's opening line nothing in the conversation has in any way resembled normal behavior. Due to their serious issues with small talking and interacting with other people, even this simple '''interaction''' fails completely, hence the title of the comic.

The title text states that, after saying goodbye, they don't move away, keeping up the uncomfortable silence, continuing to display their problems. Neither of them wish to be the first to turn away, or one or both are locked in the situation and has no clue how to finish it, even though they are both obviously aware of their problems and what makes them anxious. This may be a reference to the final stage direction "''They do not move.''" in {{w|Samuel Beckett|Samuel Beckett's}} play ''{{w|Waiting for Godot}}'', where the protagonists frequently discuss leaving, but do not move.

[[Randall]] has previously made [[:Category:Social interactions|several comics]] with a similar theme, showing Cueball's (or his own) problems with several social situations / interactions / small talk, especially the comic [[222: Small Talk]] which is very similar to this one. He made three of those type of comics in a span of about a month more than two yeas ago finishing with [[1650: Baby]].

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Cueball have just met and begins an interaction.]
:White Hat: How are you doing?
:Cueball: Really excited to be confidently handling this extremely basic social interaction!

:[White Hat holds is arms slightly out.]
:White Hat: Same here!
:Cueball: Hey, congrats!
:White Hat: You too!
:Cueball: Thanks!

:[In a frame-less beat panel, they just stand still.]

:[Same setting as in the first panel.]
:White Hat: And now it's falling apart before my eyes.
:Cueball: I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead.
:White Hat: Same.
:Cueball: See you later!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

1778: Interest Timescales

2018-05-14T17:22:51Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ grammar and speed

{{comic
| number = 1778
| date = December 28, 2016
| title = Interest Timescales
| image = interest_timescales.png
| titletext = Sometimes, parts of a slowly-rising mountain suddenly rise REALLY fast, which is extra interesting.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Randall]]'s sharing a bit about himself and the things that interest him, in one of his strange but still funny graphs.

The caption reads: "Most of my interests fall under 'things rising up from the ground, hanging in the air, and then drifting away on the breeze,' just on very different timescales." The four examples fit this as follows:

In the case of a fireworks display, the fireworks fire up into the air, explode, and then the glowing embers drift away on the breeze in the course of a few seconds. This comic was the last released before this years New Year comic [[1779: 2017]], so this may explain the thoughts of fireworks.

In the case of a rocket launch, the rocket launches from the ground into space, leaving a large plume of smoke that slowly dissipates over many minutes. The rocket remains in space for a time, and then later it re-enters the atmosphere and reaches the ground—in the case of a typical parachute-descent system, it literally drifts through the air. A typical timespan for such an event is several days or weeks.

In the case of a tree, it grows from the ground upwards, remains there until autumn comes, then drops its leaves, which drift on the breeze. This process takes months.
Entire trees like the one shown typically last several decades or even centuries before they die - if not felled by humans, most are eventually toppled by the wind as well. The breeze needed for that can be measured on the {{w|Beaufort scale}}, likely above 5.

Finally, in the case of a mountain, a mountain rises slowly from the ground due to movement of {{w|tectonic plates}} which result in mountains either via volcanic activity or by simply pressing the ground up through the process of subduction (see [[1388: Subduction License]]). The mountains are then very slowly broken down by natural erosion forces, and the stone particles disperse on the wind. These events are much slower than the others, typically taking tens of millions of years to completely erode away a mountain.

Additionally, some humor stems from the fact that, while on the tree and mountain, although it takes thousands or millions of years for any change to be made noticeable to humans, Cueball acts like it is a {{w|roller coaster}}.

The title text refers to the dramatic event in which a mountain suddenly explodes due to a violent volcanic eruption. Such events are rare and potentially deadly to living things. Calling it [https://youtu.be/ZhvkITCGqK4?t=25s "extra interesting"] is an understatement.

==Transcript==
:[At the bottom of this chart there is a long double arrow pointing at two words:]
:Fast
:Slow

:[Above the line there are four drawings going from left to right:]

:[Cueball watches a fireworks display to the left of him, two firework rockets are going up and another one is exploding even higher.]
:Cueball: ''Ooooh!''

:[A tine Cueball is watching a space rockets launch to the left of him while he is holding his arms in the air. The main rocket rises on a hughe plume of smoke.]
:Cueball: ''Wow!''

:[Cueball climbs a tree, holding on to the left of the two main branches going out from the trunk beneath the treetop.]
:Cueball: Zoom!

:[A person, presumably Cueball, is standing at the tip of the highest mountain in a mountain range. The largest mountain in the background has three peaks, with Cueball on top of the tallest central peak. Four other much smaller (or distant) peaks are shown behind the big mountain, two on either side. All five mountains have a line beneath the tip that most likely indicate snow. On the big mountain the two tallest peaks are above this line, but not the third.]
:Cueball: ''Wheeeee!''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Most of my interests fall under "things rising up from the ground, hanging in the air, and then drifting away on the breeze," just on very different timescales.

==Trivia==
*The original title text contained a grammatical error in subject‐verb agreement, where 'parts...suddenly rises' should have been 'parts...suddenly rise' - Randall has later corrected this error.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Charts]]

1743: Coffee

2018-05-11T17:12:56Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ removed redundant sentence

{{comic
| number = 1743
| date = October 7, 2016
| title = Coffee
| image = coffee.png
| titletext = Remind me to order another pack of coffee filters from Dyson. Man, these things are EXPENSIVE.
}}

==Explanation==

In this comic [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are anticipating guests. Offering {{w|coffee}} to house guests is a commonly-accepted courtesy in the United States (and most of the western world). However, they seem to be unaware of the basics of {{w|Coffee_preparation|coffee making}}. Cueball is concerned that this lack of knowledge is an indication of their mutual immaturity (thinking of himself as a "fake adult"),

This comic thus follows a frequently used theme of people growing up but finding themselves unable or unwilling to accept traditional adult roles (see [[150: Grownups]], [[441: Babies]], [[616: Lease]], [[905: Homeownership]] and [[1674: Adult]]). While there are cultures where coffee is served to children, it is generally seen in the United States (and western world) as an adult beverage—like {{w|beer}} which has also served as the subject in the comic [[1534: Beer]].

Megan is, however, confident that the necessary steps can be determined. The steps she follows however are quite unorthodox...

She attempts to make coffee by pouring the ingredients on the ground (misinterpreting the meaning of "ground coffee"), sucking it up with a {{w|Dyson (company)|Dyson}} {{w|vacuum cleaner}} (misinterpreting the meaning of "{{w|Vacuum coffee maker|vacuum brewing}}"), then boiling the mixture by placing the vacuum cleaner's removable plastic canister over a hot stove, and pouring the resulting sludge through the vacuum-cleaner filter (instead of a standard {{w|coffee filter}}).

Megan says she is a regular "Starbuck" after pouring the batch of coffee, believing the name of the cafe chain {{w|Starbucks}} to be synonymous with the actual job title "{{w|barista}}", further indicating a general lack of knowledge regarding the subject of coffee. The Starbucks coffee chain was loosely {{w|Starbucks#Founding|named after}} the fictional character {{w|List_of_Moby-Dick_characters#Mates|Starbuck}} from the book {{w|Moby Dick}}, she could be referring to this, although Starbuck had nothing to do with coffee brewing! See more [[#Trivia|trivia about Starbuck]] below.

This method of making coffee would be very expensive as it would most likely destroy the vacuum-cleaner canister and filter. If the vacuum cleaner had ever been used, then it would not be very hygienic either, although if it had not been used then the floor would probably also be very unhygienic anyway. Since the plastic from the canister has probably also gone into contact with the sludge after being heated over open fire, there is a high risk that this "coffee" is actually poisonous for more than one reason.

The title text refers to the expense of replacing the "filter", as vacuum-cleaner filters are considerably more costly than single-use coffee filters.

This was the first of two comics in a row about food, the next being [[1744: Metabolism]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are talking.]
:Cueball: We should make coffee for our guests.
:Megan: Crap. I know nothing about coffee.
:Cueball: We're basically fake adults.
:Megan: Don't panic. We can figure this out.

:[Megan shakes a can of coffee grounds out on the floor as Cueball watches.]
:Megan: We just pour the coffee grounds...

:[Pan to only Megan who pours a pail of water over the grounds now lying in a pile on the floor.]
:Megan: ...Add water...

:[Cueball watches as Megan vacuums up the mixture on the floor with a bag-less vacuum cleaner, the wire going off panel right behind her.]
:Vacuum cleaner: ''Vrrrr''

:[Megan is holding the dirt canister from the vacuum cleaner over two lit gas burners on a stove. The canister free vacuum cleaner is standing behind her and Cueball is behind this watching her.]
:Megan: Now we just hold it over the burners...
:Burners: ''Hissss''

:[Megan is holding the dirt canister over one shoulder while pouring the hot content into a small mug, as Cueball watches. Three wiggly lines above the liquid indicates that it is hot.]
:Megan: Annnd... serve.
:Cueball: Nice!
:Megan: I'm a regular Starbuck!

==Trivia==
*In fiction, "Starbuck" is also the name of
**A male character in the {{w|Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series)|original Battlestar Galactica television show}}.
**A female character in the {{w|Battlestar Galactica (miniseries)|reboot of Battlestar Galactica}}.
*In real life, {{w|Starbuck Island}} is an island in the Pacific Ocean.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Food]]

1343: Manuals

2018-04-23T01:53:38Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1343
| date = March 17, 2014
| title = Manuals
| image = manuals.png
| titletext = The most ridiculous offender of all is the sudoers man page, which for 15 years has started with a 'quick guide' to EBNF, a system for defining the grammar of a language. 'Don't despair', it says, 'the definitions below are annotated.'
}}

==Explanation==
The chart shows the quality of tools regarding their manual:
*If you don't even need a manual to use a certain tool, that tool tends to help solve problems effectively.
*If you do need a manual, the tool will probably solve the problems but you have to understand that manual before you can use this tool effectively.
*Much less helpful are the tools where you need a manual but it doesn't exist — these tools tend to create more problems than they solve.
*But the worst tools are where the manuals start with a description of the manual itself — which implies both that the tool is very complex and the manual is very hard to understand.

The title text refers to ''sudoers'', a config file for the unix command ''{{w|sudo}}''. ''sudo'' allows users to run a program with elevated permissions, as referenced in [[149: Sandwich]]. Man pages are collections of manuals for different tools, commands, files, and functions on Unix-like systems which can be viewed with the tool ''man''. You can type <code>man man</code> in a terminal to get the manpage for the manual program. See for instance also the comic [[912: Manual Override]].

The sudoers file specifies which users have sudo access, and which commands they are allowed to run as other users (typically root). The syntax of the file is very complex, and the manpage uses the {{w|Extended Backus–Naur Form}} (or EBNF) to describe the syntax. The sudoers man page starts off with an explanation of EBNF's grammar, which they reference throughout the rest of the man page in describing the syntax of the sudoers file. The [http://linux.die.net/man/5/sudoers sudoers man page] is very long, clocking in at 1504 lines. In contrast, the [http://linux.die.net/man/1/man manpages man page] only has 566 lines. The number of lines may differ between some distributions and versions.

The title text also notes that the manual's assurance, "don't despair" because "the definitions below are annotated", fails to be reassuring, and instead merely emphasizes the length and complexity of the document to read.

==Transcript==
:[A horizontal line has four points labeled on it, with the second point from the left marked with a dashed vertical line dividing the horizontal line into two parts.]
:[An arrow labeled "Solve problems" points left from the vertical line.]
:[An arrow labeled "Create problems" points right from the vertical line.]
:[The points are labeled, from left to right, "Tools that don't need a manual", "Tools that need a manual", "Tools that need a manual but don't have one", and "Tools whose manual starts with 'how to read this manual'".]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Man pages]]

1079: United Shapes

2018-04-10T02:09:57Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ explained horcruxes

{{comic
| number = 1079
| date = July 9, 2012
| title = United Shapes
| image = united_shapes.png
| imagesize = 800px
| titletext = That eggplant is in something of a flaccid state.
}}
The large version is here: [http://xkcd.com/1079/large/ http://xkcd.com/1079/large/]
==Explanation==
In this comic, each state of the United States of America has been filled-in with an object of similar shape. Due to the size range of the states, some states are too small to clearly make-out in the normal size image. Click [http://xkcd.com/1079/large/ here] to see the large version, which makes every state perfectly clear. Several years later Randall made a new map of the US mainland [[1653: United States Map]], where he shuffled the positions of the states but filled out the outline. Also in this map Michigan has been split into two separate parts. (Here it is the glove and the eagle).

Very few, if any, of the shapes used are stereotypes of the state; they are merely objects that look like the state. Some of the objects are those which the states are widely known to resemble. For example, Michigan is represented by a glove and an Eagle, and a pot with handle takes the place of Oklahoma (with the panhandle region of the state filled with a literal handle). Others, however, are more creative. Few would have likely pictured Texas as a dog or Alaska as a bear with a jet pack and laser gun. There are several incredibly simple objects filling some states. Kentucky is filled by a cloud, which conceivably could have been used for any state, and Wyoming, one of the nearly rectangular states, is simply an envelope. There are three pairs of states that are related. Georgia and Missouri each contain an image of the other, drawing attention to their similar shapes, North and South Dakota are the top and bottom halves of an amp, and Alabama and Mississippi are {{w|moai}} facing in opposite directions.)

Colorado contains what looks like a Wikipedia article. A close-up of the fake article is provided [http://xkcd.com/1079/colorado/]. The following references are made in the Colorado article:

*The pronunciation is not that for Colorado, but for {{w|Eyjafjallajökull}}, a volcano in Iceland that erupted in April 2010.
*The way it has a demilitarized zone towards Wyoming resembles {{W|North Korea}} and {{W|South Korea}}.
*Eleven dimensions refers to {{w|string theory}}.
*A {{w|wormhole}} is a theoretical relative of the {{w|black hole}}. This is a reference to the television series {{w|Stargate SG-1}} where a device capable of creating wormholes is located in the {{w|Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker}} in Colorado.
*A {{w|Horcrux}} is a type of magical object in the world of {{W|Harry Potter}}, which prevents the creator of it from dying.
*The radiation zones around Longmont are caused by {{w|Radioactive contamination from the Rocky Flats Plant|radioactive contamination from the Rocky Flats Plant}}.
*The fake motto ''Si parare possis, vivere septem'' can be roughly translated as "With preparation, survival is possible for over a week."

New Mexico according to Randall's transcript is "A liquid container labeled for something of unusual and silly danger". The labeling is upside down and it refers to the nuclear testing facility White Sands Missile Range located in New Mexico for the nuclear bomb.
:This end up
:Property of White Sands Missile Range
:??? [Followed by a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFPA_704 NFPA 704] Diamond with all divisions at severe risk, and a radiation symbol in the special notice division]
:Contains White Sand
:FLAMMABLE
:Warning:
:This product contains chemicals known
:only to the state of Nevada.
:Contents under pressure from parents
:If swallowed, induce labor
:56 fluid ounces
:and 14 other ounces

The title text makes fun of Florida which is sometimes called "The penis of America". Obviously, this penis is somewhat flaccid (not erect). The use of the word "state" is a pun, as it means some particular condition (flaccid state) as well as a political entity (The State of Florida).

==Chart==
{|class=wikitable
!State!!Contained Picture!!Comments
|-
|Alabama ||A moai head facing east.||{{w|Moai}} are Easter Island stone statues
|-
|Alaska ||A teddy bear with a jet pack and a ray gun||The ray gun and {{w|jet pack}} are fixtures of science fiction during the Cold War era, and the Russian Bear is an often-used personification of the country Russia in political cartoonage; the "teddy bear" image may be related to Alaska's former Russian heritage. The USA acquired Alaska from Russia in the Alaska Purchase of 1867 and it became a state in 1959, during the Cold War. The Cold War often featured worries of a potential Russian invasion of Alaska due to their geographical proximity across the Bering Sea and Bering Strait, which persisted through the 1980s; Alaska was the location of a large number of interceptor missiles as part of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars Defense Initiative" intended to shoot down missiles that might be launched from the USSR. The ray gun is pointed across the Bering Strait at Russia, consistent with Alaska's often being described as the "first line of defense" against Russian aggression. The teddy bear is similar in appearance to {{w|Winnie the Pooh}}.||
|-
|Arizona ||A refrigerated shelf containing milk, bread, and pastries.||
|-
|Arkansas ||A measuring cup.||
|-
|California ||A vacuum.||An old-fashioned upright vacuum cleaner (lying down to the right), green with a yellow bag.
|-
|Colorado ||The Wikipedia article on Colorado.||A fake Wikipedia article on Colorado. Below the text as seen in the provided close up:
:[web address:]
::en.wikipedia.org/wiki/colorado
:[Headers]
::Wikipedia
::Article Talk
::Colorado
:[Main article {note that Randall forgot the closing parentheses ')' after the pronunciation}]
::Colorado (Pronounced [ˈeːijaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl̥] is a US State encompassing portions of the Rocky
::Mountains and the Great Plains. The region has been inhabited since at least 11,000 BCE, and
::some archaeological evidence suggest the state – with roughly its current borders – has literally
::always existed. Colorado is separated from Wyoming by a 28-mile demilitarized zone, and
::has at times exercised substantial regional
::power via the installation of puppet governments
::in neighboring states
::Geographically, Colorado is eleven-dimensional,
::though seven of those dimensions are tightly
::compacted and difficult to detect in most areas
::of the state. Colorado is home to the nation's
::oldest continually-operated wormhole and two
::of President Lincoln's horcruxes.
::The wildlife in Colorado is commonly characterized
::as "erratic", particularly in the radiation zones
::around Longmont. The State's timber wolf
::population is largely bipedal; the Park Service
::has expressed "concern" at their attempts to enroll in
:[Fact box with correct (though black instead of blue) State flag and emblem and fake motto:]
::State of Colorado
::Motto:
::"Si parare possis, vivere septem."
::(With preparation, survival is
::possible for over a week.)
|-
|Connecticut ||A train conductor's hat.||
|-
|Delaware ||A meerkat.||
|-
|Florida ||An eggplant.||The title text mentions the eggplant being in a flaccid state, which might be a reference to the sexual use of the eggplant emoji.
|-
|Georgia ||Missouri.||The outline of the state of Missouri, with the {{w|Gateway Arch}} in St. Louis.
|-
|Hawaii ||The island of Hawaii is a snowball. The smaller islands are small bits of snow.||
|-
|Idaho ||A garden gnome, sitting down.||
|-
|Illinois ||A gangster with a guitar case, upside down.||
|-
|Indiana ||The brush of a paintbrush.||
|-
|Iowa ||A tomato, lettuce, cold cut and cheese sandwich.||
|-
|Kansas ||A stand-up piano.||
|-
|Kentucky ||A cloud.||
|-
|Louisiana ||A boot with some gum stuck to the bottom of it.||
|-
|Maine ||A Vulcan salute.||Maine's camp sunshine has had Star Trek related events in the past, including the opportunity to appear in a film.
|-
|Maryland ||A wolf howling to the moon, upside down.||
|-
|Massachusetts ||An elephant, being ridden by a man, carrying tea.||Might be a reference to the Boston Tea Party, which occurred in Massachusetts, and the Republican political party. The man seems to be wearing a tricorn hat.
|-
|Michigan ||A mitten for the lower portion, an eagle for the {{w|Upper Peninsula of Michigan}}.||
|-
|Minnesota ||$160 in $20 USD bills. It is tied together.||
|-
|Mississippi ||A moai head facing west.||
|-
|Missouri ||Georgia.||The outline of the state of Georgia, with a pair of {{w|Georgia Peach|Georgia peaches}}.
|-
|Montana ||One half of a muffin, sideways.||
|-
|Nebraska ||A blue VW type 2 with mattresses sticking out the back.||
|-
|Nevada ||A clothes iron.||
|-
|New Hampshire ||A tall brick factory building.||
|-
|New Jersey ||A bent-over old person. He is carrying a cane.||
|-
|New Mexico ||A liquid container labeled for something of unusual and silly danger.||A yellow liquid container with upside-down labeling.
::This end up!!
::Property of White Sands Missile Range
::Contains White Sand
:[Written inside a hazardous-materials diamond with the ? very large, and the three '4' in the three top part of a diamond shape divided in four these three sections being blue, red, yellow. The lower part has a radioactive sign on the same grey background as the large rectangle.]
::??? 4 4 4
::Flammable
::Warning
::This product contains chemicals known
::Only to the State of Nevada.
::Contents under pressure from parents
::If swallowed, induce labor
::56 fluid ounces
::and 14 other ounces
|-
|New York ||A hybrid transmission with standard manual-style gears and a torque converter sliced in half.||
|-
|North Carolina ||A bouquet of flowers. They appear similar to {w|Galium Palustre|marsh bedstraws}.||
|-
|North Dakota ||The top half of an amp.||
|-
|Ohio ||Underwear (Briefs).||
|-
|Oklahoma ||A covered pot, dripping with boil-over.||
|-
|Oregon ||A locomotive.||
|-
|Pennsylvania ||A very thick book with a bookmark.||
|-
|Rhode Island ||The bow half of a boat's hull.||
|-
|South Carolina ||A slice of pizza.||
|-
|South Dakota ||The bottom half of an amp.||
|-
|Tennessee ||A number of children's books, placed in a slightly askew pile.|| Possibly a reference to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. The books are {{w|Where's Waldo?}}, {{w|The Wreck of the Zephyr}}, {{w|The Way Things Work}}, Free Fall, {{w|Paddle-to-the-Sea}}, What It Feels Like to Be a Building, and {{w|The Crab with the Golden Claws}}.
|-
|Texas ||A dog sitting in a bowl.||
|-
|Utah ||An oven.||
|-
|Vermont ||A microscope, upside down.||
|-
|Virginia ||A {{w|stegosaurus}}.||
|-
|Washington ||A whale.|| The Puget Sound is well known for whale watching
|-
|Washington DC ||A star.||On most maps, capitals are shown as stars. Washington DC is the capital of the United States.
|-
|West Virginia ||A {{w|frog}}.||
|-
|Wisconsin ||A skull.||
|-
|Wyoming ||An envelope.||The back side of a white envelope, sealed with red wax, with a black heart next to a signature (lower left corner).
|}

==Transcript==
:The '''United Shapes'''
:A map of things states are shaped like
:[Each state has some item wedged to stay inside its borders]

{|class=wikitable
!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text!!State!!Official Transcript!!Text
|-
|WA||whale||
|MT||half muffin||
|ND and SD||top and bottom halves of an amp||
|MN||$160 in $20 USD bills||
|WI||skull||
|MI||mitten for the lower portion, eagle for the {{w|Upper Peninsula of Michigan}}||
|NY||hybrid transmission with standard manual-style gears and a torque converter sliced in half||
|VT||microscope, upside down||
|NH||tall brick factory building||
|ME||Vulcan salute||
|MA||elephant, being ridden by a man, carrying tea||
|CT||train conductor's hat||
|RI||bow half of a boat's hull||
|-
|OR||locomotive||
|ID||garden gnome, sitting down||
|WY||envelope.||The envelope is marked with a signature, possibly Randal's
|NE||blue VW type 2 with mattresses sticking out the back||
|IA||tomato, lettuce, cold cut and cheese sandwich||
|IL||gangster with a guitar case, upside down||
|IN||brush of a paintbrush||
|OH||underwear (Briefs)||
|PA||very thick book with a bookmark||
|NJ||bent-over old person||
|-
|NV||clothes iron||
|UT||oven||
|CO||Wikipedia article on Colorado||See Link Above
|KS||stand-up piano||
|MO||Georgia||Georgia
|KY||cloud||
|WV||{{w|frog}}||
|VA||{{w|stegosaurus}}||
|DC||star.||
|MD||wolf howling to the moon, upside down||
|DE||meerkat||
|-
|CA||vacuum cleaner||
|AZ||refrigerated shelf containing milk, bread, and pastries||
|NM||liquid container with warning label||
:This end up!!
:
:Property of White Sands Missile Range
:Contains White Sand
:
:???
:
:FLAMMABLE
:
:Warning: This product contains chemicals known
:Only to the state of Nevada.
:Contents under pressure from parents.
:If swallowed, induce labor.
:
:56 Fluid Ounces
:and 14 other ounces.
|OK||covered pot, dripping with boil-over||
|AR||measuring cup||
|TN||children's books, placed in a slightly askew pile||
:Handford / WHERE'S WALDO / or wally
:The Wreck of the Zephyr / Chris Van Allsburg
:The Way Things Work / DAVID MACAULRY
:Weisner / FREE FALL
:PADDLE-TO-THE-SEA / HCH(?)
:WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE A BUILDING / Wilson
:TINTIN / The Crab with the Golden Claws / Hergé
|NC||flower bouquet||
|-
|AK||teddy bear with a jet pack and a ray gun||
|HI||snowball||
|TX||dog sitting in a bowl||
|LA||boot with some gum stuck to the bottom||
|MS||moai head facing west||
|AL||moai head facing east||
|GA||Missouri.||Missouri
|SC||pizza slice||
|FL||eggplant||
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Maps]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Dinosaurs]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Star Trek]]

1074: Moon Landing

2018-04-10T02:02:09Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{Comic
| number = 1074
| date = June 27, 2012
| title = Moon Landing
| image = moon_landing.png
| titletext = Ok, so Spirit and Opportunity are pretty awesome. And Kepler. And New Horizons, Cassini, Curiosity, TiME, and Project M. But c'mon, if the Earth were a basketball, in 40 years no human's been more than half an inch from the surface.
}}

==Explanation==
The comment to which [[Cueball]] is referring is [https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/73388356461019136 a tweet] by {{w|Neil deGrasse Tyson}}, an American astrophysicist and science communicator. As of this comic, Tyson is the "Frederick P. Rose Director" (a special honorary title) of the {{w|Hayden Planetarium}}. He has appeared on many different shows, ranging from The Discovery Channel to The Big Bang Theory.

There are a number of {{w|moon landing conspiracy theories|conspiracy theories}} claiming that the moon landing was a hoax. Tyson offers a pretty compelling argument against them, but [[Megan]] presents an even more convincing refutation, snarkily implying that NASA really hasn't done anything spectacular since 1969.

And Cueball responds with a pun on the word "burn". Burn can mean a particularly effective insult, or it can mean the consumption of fuel for propulsion. In this case, the "burn" was so effective it pushed the spaceship out of orbit (which usually takes a very large amount of burning, depending on the gravity of the planet or moon).

In the title text [[Randall]] mentions many successful {{w|NASA}} unmanned missions:
*The {{w|Mars Exploration Rover|Mars rovers}} Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004. Opportunity has been working for over ten years on the surface of Mars; Spirit got stuck in 2009 and shut down for good in 2010. See this comic: [[695: Spirit]].
*{{w|Kepler (spacecraft)|Kepler}} found many {{w|exoplanets}}.
*{{w|New Horizons}} is a mission to the dwarf planet {{w|Pluto}} and beyond. It did a flyby of Pluto in July 2015 and is on its way out of the solar system.
*{{w|Cassini–Huygens|Cassini}} was a probe orbiting {{w|Saturn}} from 2004 until {{w|Cassini_retirement|its controlled entry into Saturn}} in 2017.
*{{w|Curiosity (rover)|Curiosity}} is another, larger Mars rover, exploring the Martian surface since August 2012.
*{{w|Titan Mare Explorer|TiME}} is a proposed mission to explore the oceans of Saturn's moon Titan.
*{{w|Project M (NASA)|Project M}} is an idea to send human-like robots to the Moon.
The final sentence of title text notes that all manned missions since the Moon landings have taken place in low-earth orbit, which is barely far off of the Earth's surface. If the Earth were scaled to the size of a regulation basketball, approximately 24 cm (9¼ inches) in diameter, those manned missions would have all taken place within 1.25 cm (½ inch) of the ball's surface. At this scale the Moon would be at a distance of 7.7 m (25.3 ft). Unmanned missions, such as those named above or the {{w|Voyager program|Voyager}} and {{w|Mariner program|Mariner}} probes of the 1960s and 1970s, have travelled much further.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting at a table with a laptop open. His hands are on the keys.]
:Cueball: Hah- Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a great reply to people who doubt astronauts went to the moon.
:Voice off-screen: Oh?
:Cueball: "Atop 3,000 tons of rocket fuel, where ''else'' do you think they were headed?"

:[The voice off screen turns out to be Megan. She is depicted, and now Cueball is off-screen.]
:Megan: Cute. But it overlooks an even simpler argument.
:Cueball: Which is?

:[Both Megan and Cueball are now visible. Cueball has turned his chair around to face her.]
:Megan: If NASA were willing to fake great accomplishments, they'd have a second one by now.
:Cueball: ''Ouch.''
:Megan: ...Too mean?
:Cueball: That burn was so harsh I think you deorbited.

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

1069: Alphabet

2018-04-10T01:50:15Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1069
| date = June 15, 2012
| title = Alphabet
| image = alphabet.png
| titletext = Do I get to remove letters entirely? Or just rearrange them? Because the 'k/c' situation is ridiculous. Look, we can make out whenever. This is *immortality*!}}

==Explanation==
This comic is mainly a joke on the traditional {{w|pick-up line}} that goes: "Baby, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put 'U' and 'I' together", i.e. "you and I", or "the letter U and the letter I".

However, in typical [[xkcd]] fashion, rather than continuing with that tired pickup line, [[Cueball]] jumps at his hypothetical chance to rearrange the alphabet and fix the {{w|English orthography}}. An {{w|orthography}} is a standardized system for using a particular writing system (script) to write a particular language, including rules of spelling. The English orthography happens to be one of the deepest (that is, most irregular) ones around, since almost every sound can be spelled in several ways, and most spellings and all letters can be pronounced in more than one way, and often in many different ways.

So faced with this opportunity, the hooking up could wait. Restructuring the alphabet and creating a sensibly regular English spelling is the chance of a lifetime, and would make history, making Cueball immortal in the sense of living on forever in memory, as the alphabet-fixer.

"The 'k/c' situation" is about the use of the letter 'c'. It doesn't have a unique sound, and most often make a {{w|Voiceless velar stop|'k'-sound}} or an {{w|Voiceless alveolar sibilant|'s'-sound}}. Combined with an 'h' it usually makes the {{w|Voiceless palato-alveolar affricate|'ch'-sound}} in ''chair'', but also they often sound like 'k' (''character''), and in not too few cases they even make the {{w|Voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant|'sh'-sound}}(like "champagne")[http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Words_with_the_letters_ch_that_sound_like_sh]. So a reasonable change Cueball might make is to replace 'c' by 'k' or 's', and keep 'c' only followed by 'h' (or even giving 'c' the current sound of 'ch' as in ''chair)''.

Orthography was again the subject in [[1562: I in Team]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball walks up to a girl sitting at a bar.]
:Cueball: Baby, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd forget about you in a ''heartbeat''. I'm not gonna waste my one chance to help the mess that is English orthography.

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

1069: Alphabet

2018-04-10T01:48:04Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ added example

{{comic
| number = 1069
| date = June 15, 2012
| title = Alphabet
| image = alphabet.png
| titletext = Do I get to remove letters entirely? Or just rearrange them? Because the 'k/c' situation is ridiculous. Look, we can make out whenever. This is *immortality*!}}

==Explanation==
This comic is mainly a joke on the traditional {{w|pick-up line}} that goes: "Baby, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put 'U' and 'I' together", i.e. "you and I", or "the letter U and the letter I".

However, in typical [[xkcd]] fashion, rather than continuing with that tired pickup line, [[Cueball]] jumps at his hypothetical chance to rearrange the alphabet and fix the {{w|English orthography}}. An {{w|orthography}} is a standardized system for using a particular writing system (script) to write a particular language, including rules of spelling. The English orthography happens to be one of the deepest (that is, most irregular) ones around, since almost every sound can be spelled in several ways, and most spellings and all letters can be pronounced in more than one way, and often in many different ways.

So faced with this opportunity, the hooking up could wait. Restructuring the alphabet and creating a sensibly regular English spelling is the chance of a lifetime, and would make history, making Cueball immortal in the sense of living on forever in memory, as the alphabet-fixer.

"The 'k/c' situation" is about the use of the letter 'c'. It doesn't have a unique sound, and most often make a {{w|Voiceless velar stop|'k'-sound}} or an {{w|Voiceless alveolar sibilant|'s'-sound}}. Combined with an 'h' it usually makes the {{w|Voiceless palato-alveolar affricate|'ch'-sound}} in ''chair'', but also they often sound like 'k' (''character''), and in not too few cases they even make the {{w|Voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant|'sh'-sound}}(like "champagne").[http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Words_with_the_letters_ch_that_sound_like_sh]. So a reasonable change Cueball might make is to replace 'c' by 'k' or 's', and keep 'c' only followed by 'h' (or even giving 'c' the current sound of 'ch' as in ''chair)''.

Orthography was again the subject in [[1562: I in Team]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball walks up to a girl sitting at a bar.]
:Cueball: Baby, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd forget about you in a ''heartbeat''. I'm not gonna waste my one chance to help the mess that is English orthography.

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

1058: Old-Timers

2018-04-10T01:23:07Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1058
| date = May 21, 2012
| title = Old-Timers
| image = old_timers.png
| titletext = You were on the internet before I was born? Well, so was I.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic the man with the beard thinks he is {{w|Leet}} and tries to show this to his conversations partner by calling her {{w|Newbie|noob}} (see also {{w|Leet#n00b|n00b}}). He claims that he has been on the internet since the BBS days, and thus long before his conversation partner was even born.

A {{w|Bulletin Board System}}, or BBS, is an online service based on microcomputers running appropriate software. They were the precursors to modern day online forums. So no one could have been on-line longer than him.

However, he is up against [[Science Girl]] who tells him he is wrong. She explains that her parents took samples of their sperm and egg and {{w|Genome#Sequencing_and_mapping|sequenced}} the {{w|DNA}}. The resulting {{w|genome}} was then e-mailed to the {{w|J. Craig Venter Institute|Venter Institute}} where they synthesized the genome and used this to create the egg and sperm that became Science Girl.

The J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) is a non-profit genomics research institute founded by {{w|J. Craig Venter}}, Ph.D. in October 2006. Although what Science Girl is describing may be possible this comic must take place in the future as this has not yet been used to create human beings.

Her point though is, that the man is wrong when he says that he has been on the internet. When you are "on-line" you are really just looking on the screen where the results found "on" the internet is displayed. So he has been '''looking''' at the internet. The girl's genome (which is basically the closest you can come to the data a computer would need to create you) has been send on-line in an e-mail. So in her words, she has actually '''been''' there.

Objectively, the Science Girl is just as bad as her adult conversational partner; simply being the most significant advancement in test tube babies in over two decades doesn't prove anything about your personal knowledge or experience. ''Subjectively'', however, her reputation alone is more than enough to stun and thus "defeat" anyone who actually understands her special heritage, as well as of course her pun and correction regarding being and looking on the internet.

The title text is another common retort from "old timers" that they have been doing X since before the younger person was born. In this case, Science Girl accepts that the old timer was "on the Internet" before she was born, but so was she... At least in the form of her genetic information.

==Transcript==
:[A man with black hair and a neck beard types away at his computer screen.]
:Man (typing): Whatever, noob. I've been on the internet since the BBS days.
:Screen (reply from the noob): ''Wrong.''
: ''type type''

:[The noob turns out to be Science Girl, with two hair buns, who kneels on her chair, typing at a laptop on a table in this frame-less panel.]
:Science Girl (typing): Before I was born, a lab took egg and sperm samples from my parents and sequenced the DNA.
:''type type''

:[The man sits at his desk, reading his screen.]
:Screen (Science Girls writing): They emailed the genome to the Venter Institute, where they synthesized the genome and implanted it into sperm and eggs which became me.

:[Science Girl still typing on the laptop.]
:Science Girl (typing): So, no.
:Science Girl (typing): You've '''''looked''''' at the internet.
:Science Girl (typing): I've '''''been''''' there.
:''type type''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Science Girl]]
[[Category:Internet]]

1057: Klout

2018-04-10T01:21:13Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ .

{{comic
| number = 1057
| date = May 18, 2012
| title = Klout
| image = klout.png
| titletext = Though please do confirm that it's actually *me* on Klout first, and not one of my friends trying to get me punched. The great thing about this douchebag deadman switch is that I will never dare trigger it.
}}
==Explanation==
{{w|Klout}} is a site that seeks to measure your "influence" on social media networks. They sometimes give away "perks" to the users with the highest Klout scores, as a means of advertising the products of their sponsors. Generally, the information provided by Klout is not held in high esteem. The type of person who takes most interest in their score is typically not well-liked.

There are multiple ways that Klout measures your influence. An example of increasing influence is having been given a +K (a recommendation for a higher score) for knowledge about "Pitbull" (The Bud Light promoter and producer/rapper/musician, etc., not the type of dog). Another could be having an inspiring tweet that generated 2000 retweets. Klout supports many social networks, and ranks people based primarily on how much reaction they garner from the public. For example, if Selena Gomez tweeted that she simply loved a certain blog, she would probably get more people to visit that blog, and thus get a bigger Klout score, than if the mayor of Anchorage, Alaska tweeted that he liked that blog. Or xkcd publishing a comic about Klout would lead to an all time high in [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=klout Google searches] for it. However, their "about us" page does claim that a small, active group of followers is considered more influential than a large, passive group of followers.

The gist of the comic is that [[Cueball]] (here representing [[Randall]]) does not feel that Klout agrees with his core values, probably as he prefers self-assurance to having an outside authority tell him of his importance to society. He uses this comic to give himself incentive to stay away from Klout. He is very clear that he is dead serious about anyone meeting him after he has (been proven to have) used Klout should punch him in the face. He even makes sure that he cannot later retract this statement, if he for instance becomes interested in Klout (something he would never wish for). Because his last statement is that people should ignore anything he says to retract this statement later.

Randall will now have a problem though because since he also posted the [[706: Freedom]] comic earlier, he will never knows if people that hit him does because they believe he has used Klout or just to exercise their free will.

In the title text a "dead man's switch" is any mechanism which is designed to activate if the user does not take any action. This is generally used to create a failsafe in case the user is incapacitated . For example, many exercise treadmills include a tether meant to connect the runner to the machine's base station. If the runner gets too far from the base station, the tether pulls a pin and the machine stops immediately. This way, if the runner has fallen or is struggling to keep up, the machine does not exacerbate an already unsafe situation. Randall's "douchebag deadman switch" is a variation that would trigger if he ever became enough of an asshole to use Klout. This would lead to him being constantly punched in the face, so he doesn't dare become that type of person.

Shortly after this comic was posted, [https://klout.com/#/irandallmunroe a Klout user] was created claiming to be Randall. This was a fake, so if you ever meet Randall in real life, please don't punch him.

==Transcript==
:[Randall has drawn himself as Cueball in a slim panel:]
:Randall: I'd like to ask a favor.
:Randall: If someday, in the future, we meet in person,

:[Zoom out of Randall talking.]
:Randall: And if, as of that day, I've interacted with Klout in ''any'' way except to opt out,
:Randall: I want you to punch me in the face without warning.

:[Zoom in on Randall's head.]
:Randall: This may sound like a joke, so let me be clear:
:Randall: I am ''dead serious''.
:Randall: Ignore anything I say retracting this.
:Randall: Thank you.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Social networking]]

1040: Lakes and Oceans

2018-04-08T17:34:31Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1040
| date = April 9, 2012
| title = Lakes and Oceans
| image = lakes and oceans.png
| titletext = James Cameron has said that he didn't know its song would be so beautiful. He didn't close the door in time. He's sorry.
}}

==Explanation==
[http://xkcd.com/1040/large Full size image (2.5MB — 2592×1728)]

This comic is a scale representation of our lakes and oceans, with an emphasis on how little we know about our oceans. It shows the depths and lengths to in relative scale. The ''{{w|Edmund Fitzgerald}}'' was a {{w|Great Lakes}} freighter which sank in 1975. The {{w|Russian submarine Kursk (K-141)|''Kursk'' (K-141)}} was a {{w|Russian}} nuclear submarine which sank in 2000 after an explosion. The {{w|RMS Lusitania|RMS ''Lusitania''}} was a {{w|British}} ocean liner which was famously sunk in 1915, eventually prompting the {{w|United States}} to enter {{w|World War I}}. All three of these ships were sunk in water that was shallower than they were long. The shortest was the ''Kursk'', which was 154 metres long, and sunk in water only 100 metres deep.

Also on the diagram is the {{w|RMS Titanic|RMS ''Titanic''}}, which famously sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, and the ''{{w|Seawise Giant}}'', which is the largest ship ever built, at 485 metres. It was scrapped in 2010. The {{w|Deepwater Horizon}} is an offshore oil well which made headlines after an explosion in 2010 caused the {{w|Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill|world's largest oil spill}}. The skyscraper the {{w|Burj Khalifa}} is also shown. The Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest manmade structure, and is located in the city of {{w|Dubai}}, in the {{w|United Arab Emirates}}. The {{w|Chilean}} mine showed on the far right is the {{w|San José Mine}}, which suffered a {{w|2010 Copiapó mining accident|collapse}} in 2010, trapping 33 men 700 metres underground for 69 days. The {{w|Kola Superdeep Borehole}} also shown on the right was a {{w|Soviet}} (and later Russian) research project attempting to drill as deep into the {{w|Crust (geology)|Earth's crust}} as possible. It was abandoned in 2005, after reaching a record of 12,262 metres deep.

Also shown are several notable bodies of water. There are the Great Lakes: {{w|Lake Superior}}, {{w|Lake Michigan}}, {{w|Lake Huron}}, {{w|Lake Erie}}, and {{w|Lake Ontario}}. {{w|Death Valley}} is a large, desert valley in {{w|California}}, named because the deadly climate and dry environment support very few life forms. {{w|Great Slave Lake}} is the deepest lake in {{w|North America}}, and is located in the {{w|North West Territories}}, in {{w|Canada}}. {{w|Crater Lake}} is located in {{w|Oregon}}, and is the deepest lake in the United States. {{w|Loch Ness}} is the {{w|Scotland|Scottish}} lake which is the location of the alleged "{{w|Loch Ness Monster}}". {{w|Lake Baikal}} is located in {{w|Russia}} and {{w|Mongolia}}, and is the world's deepest lake. On the far right side of the image is the {{w|Dead Sea}}, a lake near {{w|Jordan}} and {{w|Israel}} which is characterized for having such high salt levels that the waters are toxic to much marine life (hence a "dead" sea), although it does support a bacterial and algal ecosystem that is tolerant to high salt and magnesium concentrations.

In the water, the ''{{w|Andrea Gail}}'' was a ship that sunk in a {{w|1991 Perfect Storm|storm}} in 1991, and was later eulogized with a {{w|The_Perfect_Storm_(book)|book}} and {{w|The_Perfect_Storm_(film)|film}}. Several depth limits are shown, including the {{w|free-diving}} record (273 metres), the {{w|scuba diving}} record (330 metres), the depth bike tires go flat (approximately 100 metres), the depth at which water rushes in through a hole in a scuba tank instead of air rushing out (approximately 2000 metres), the pressure that would push a cork into a bottle (approximately 250 metres), the depth that would push water up a faucet (approximately 75 metres), the depth an {{w|emperor penguin}} can dive (535 metres), the depth limit of an {{w|Ohio-class submarine|''Ohio''-class submarine}} (240 metres), the depth limit of a {{w|Typhoon-class submarine|''Typhoon''-class submarine}} (400 metres), the depth limit of a {{w|blue whale}} (500 metres), and the depth a {{w|leatherback sea turtle}} can dive (1280 metres).

The small unlabeled mark under the "cork into a bottle" text is around {{w|leet|1 337}} metres deep.

The comic also illustrates how {{w|sperm whales}} can dive as deep as 3000 metres (though don't frequently go deeper than 400 metres). It is presumed that they dive so deep to feed on {{w|giant squid}}, which can be found as deep as 3000 metres but, to our knowledge, are more commonly found in depths of 300 to 1000 metres. The fact that sperm whales can dive so deep and come up battered emphasizes Randall's point that we know so little about our oceans. Also shown are the depth limit of the {{w|DSV Alvin|DSV ''Alvin''}}, a deep-sea vessel, the {{w|mid-ocean ridge}}, an underwater mountain range which could be considered to be the largest mountain range in the world, the {{w|Puerto Rico Trench}} (and the included {{w|Milwaukee Deep}}), which is the deepest part of the {{w|Atlantic Ocean}}, at 8648 metres, and the {{w|Mariana Trench|Marianas Trench}}, the deepest point of the {{w|Pacific Ocean}} at 10,944 metres. At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, pressure is as high as 1086 {{w|bar (unit)|bars}} and {{w|Xenophyophore|life forms}} have been found at depths as low as 10,641 metres.

The marked {{w|abyssal plains}} are a deep-sea plain believed to hold a very diverse array of life forms, but are largely unexplored. The stick figures of {{w|David Bowie}} and {{w|Freddie Mercury}} are a reference to Bowie's and Queen's songs "{{w|Under Pressure}}". The label "the abyss" with its sublabel of "it's rude to stare" is a reference to the {{w|Friedrich Nietzsche}} quote, "when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back". There's also a movie from 1989 called {{w|The Abyss}}.

The door at the bottom of the {{w|Marianas Trench}} is fictional, and is a reference to {{w|James Cameron}}'s attempt to reach the bottom of the trench in his ''{{w|Deepsea Challenger}}'' vessel, which he filmed with 3D cameras in 2012. Randall is implying Cameron went so deep specifically to reach this door, rather than just for the sake of going.

The title text implies that James Cameron has encountered some otherworldly, Lovecraftian being behind the door at the bottom of Challenger Deep; he thought he could access it briefly, however did not count on its hypnotic or entrancing song, which led to him leaving the door open long enough for it to enter the world and possibly precipitate some horrible calamity. This song is a reference to the {{w|Siren_(mythology)|sirens of Greek mythology}} whose singing was irresistible to sailors, who would sail toward them and crash into rock, wrecking their ships, until Odysseus survived by having his sailors plug their ears and tie him to the mast. The concept is also a reference to the sort of horror fiction popularised by {{w|H. P. Lovecraft}}, often called "[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CosmicHorrorStory cosmic horror]", whose stories often contain godlike alien beings that are locked away or hidden in remote places, such as {{w|Cthulhu}} and {{w|Azathoth}}. There is no specific story with a door at the bottom of the ocean containing an entity that sings entrancingly, Randall is making a clever reference to the concepts popularised by this genre as whole. {{w|Pacific Rim (film)| Pacific Rim}}, a movie depict the Earth under the attack of gigantic alien monsters (called Kaiju) emerging from an inter-dimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, was released in 2013.

==Transcript==
:[A Map of lakes and oceans showing the depths of various lakes and ocean attributes.]

:Lakes and Oceans Depths and animal/ship/boat lengths are to scale; horizontal distance is not.

:Fun Fact: The ''Edmund Fitzgerald'', The Kursk, and The Lusitania all sank in water shallower than they were long.
{| class="wikitable"
| Edmund Fitzgerald
|-
| Lake Superior
|-
| Lake Michigan
|-
| Lake Huron
|-
| Lake Erie
|-
| Lake Ontario
|-
| Death Valley
|-
| Great Slave Lake Crater
|-
| Lake Loch Ness
|-
| Lake Baikal
|-
| Burj Khalifa
|-
| Kursk
|-
| Lusitania
|-
| Titanic
|-
| Seawise Giant (largest ship ever)
|-
| Free-diving depth record Andrea Gail (probably)
|-
| Scuba record
|-
| Bike tires go flat Pressure at this depth would force water up a household faucet
|-
| Emperor penguin
|-
| Ohio-class nuclear sub depth limit
|-
| Typhoon-class nuclear sub depth limit
|-
| Blue whale
|-
| Leatherback turtle
|-
| Deepwater horizion
|-
| Dead sea
|-
| Kola borehole aiolo| Soviet project to try to drill through the Earth's crust to the mantle just to see what would happen. Russians are awesome.
|-
| Chilean mine collapse
|-
| miner refuge Sperm whales dive this deep (they come up covered in wounds and sucker marks, so presumably there are big squid down here? ... man, we know nothing about the ocean.)
|-
| Mid-ocean ridge
|-
| Titanic (sunk bow & stern)
|-
| Abyssal plain
|-
| Alvin depth limit
|-
| David Bowie & Freddie Mercury
|-
| Puerto Rico
|-
| Trench Milwaukee
|-
| Deep Marianas
|-
| Trench Challenger
|-
| Deep Mysterious door which James Cameron built his sub to reach and open. He will not say what he found within.
|-
| Mauna Kea, Hawaii (accurate horizontal scale)
|-
| Marianas trench
|-
| Oil
|}
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Fun fact]]

968: Everything

2018-04-04T01:35:17Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ grammar

{{comic
| number = 968
| date = October 24, 2011
| title = Everything
| image = everything.png
| titletext = I wanna hold your hand so I don't fall out of your gyrocopter.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is gathering a lot of different sorts of random things, including a {{w|parasol}}, a miniature {{w|Eiffel Tower}}, what appears to be a small round bomb with a short fuse and the bust of a {{w|mannequin}}. He adds these to an already immense pile of weird things including balloons and a cage with a bird.

While this happens Cueball narrates in short sentences. The first three are statements that at first seems similar to what you would find on a birthday or anniversary card from one person in a relationship to another, but in this case, all the statements ends up being negative, or at least neutral.
*Normal sentence: You are the light of my life.
*Cueball's sentence: You are '''not''' the light of my life.
*Normal sentence: Making you happy is my greatest dream.
*Cueball's sentence: Making you happy is'''n't''' my greatest dream.
*Normal sentence: Your smile is all I live for.
*Cueball's sentence: Your smile is '''not''' all I live for.

The negative continues in the fourth statement, but then it turns around and ends up kind of positive.
*Negative fourth sentence: I've got my own stuff going on.
*Positive fifth sentence: But you're strange and fascinating and I've never met anyone like you.

It turns out to be [[Megan]] he is talking about who is shown applying a hammer to the front of a large and strange vehicle while standing on one of its huge wheels. She seems to have built this giant super tank/machine from anything Cueball supplies her with, having several huge pigged wheels, a mounted gun, satellite dish, a crane and smoke coming out of an exhaust pipe at the top, implying it is already running it seems quite a disturbing tank she is creating. But Cueball is very fascinated by her strangeness.

Cueball's final statement is also positive: ''I want to give you everything'' (hence the title), which could have been on a card as it is. But the reason is unusual (and written at the bottom right at the very end as his final statement). The reason he wishes to give her '''everything''' is because what she does is so ''strange and fascinating'' so he does this ''Just to see what you would do with it'', referring to whatever it is [[Megan]] is building now (or later).

Some of the objects in the piles in the second panel can easily be determined, like the two balloons. But most others are more difficult to recognize. To the left there is what appears to be a cage with an animal inside, could be a bird. To the right there appears to be the hilt of a sword (maybe stuck in a stone, see [[1521: Sword in the Stone]]). Finally the tall thin thing sticking out of the top left of the right pile could be the stuffed giraffe from [[604: Qwertial Aphasia]]. There are other distinct things, like the tall "cylinder" and the three "cannonballs" in a pyramid pile to the left, and something with a peculiar shape between the "giraffe" and the sword hilt. But it seems impossible to determine what they are.

The title text similarly starts with the conventional Beatles love song "{{w|I Want to Hold Your Hand}}" but for an unconventional reason to not fall out of a gyrocopter. A {{w|gyrocopter}} is a flying machine that has a rotor like a {{w|helicopter}}, but the rotor is not powered by a motor. Rather, the motor of the gyrocopter drives a propeller that accelerates the machine forward, while the air rushing past the rotor drives the rotor like a helicopter during {{w|autorotation}}.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball drags a small wagon and a bag full of various items.]
:Cueball: You are not the light of my life. Making you happy isn't my greatest dream.

:[Cueball places the items in an even bigger pile of even more random items.]
:Cueball: Your smile is not all I live for. I've got my own stuff going on. But you're strange and fascinating and I've never met anyone like you.

:[Cueball stares in awe as Megan assembles the items into a gargantuan, intoxicatingly complex machine.]
:Cueball: I want to give you everything just to see what you would ''do'' with it.

A larger version can be found here:
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed leftAlign" style="width:100%">
 
:[Cueball is walking right while carrying a huge bag, full to the brim, over his shoulder and he is also dragging a small wagon behind him. On top of the wagon are six visible items: the bust of a mannequin with a foot to stand on which stands on the next object, a square white box, a miniature Eiffel Tower which is partly hidden behind the first two objects and the next, a deck umbrella which is leaning on the next item, a box wrapped like a present and on top of this box is what appears to be a small round bomb with a short fuse.]
:Cueball (narrating): You are not the light of my life.
:Cueball (narrating): Making you happy isn't my greatest dream.

:[The next two panels only shows silhouettes and are both zoomed far out. In the middle of this panel sits the wagon with the items still in place and as visible as they can be in silhouette. The lever that Cueball held on to has been lifted up so it rests near the present. Cueball stands to the right of the wagon and lifts the the bag up on top of a large pile of items taking up the rest of the right part of this panel. Only a few items in this pile are visible as they stick out of the top. There is a stick with a head to the left, then three things protruding from the middle and finally to the right what may appear as the hilt of a sword. To the left of the wagon is a smaller pile with many other objects, but here some of them can be recognized. To the far left of the foot of the pile is what appears to be a cage which may contain an animal, possibly a bird. Above the cage to the right is a tall structure, like a pipe, with a wider section at the top. The central part of the pile looks like the tip of a pyramid, and two helium balloons are tied to strings at this tip, so they float above the pile. At the base of the pyramid tip there is a ledge on which lies three round objects in their own 1, 2 pyramid shape. Below this ledge the pile falls straight down to a low layer going from there to just where the wagon stands.]
:Cueball (narrating): Your smile is not all I live for.
:Cueball (narrating): I've got my own stuff going on.
:Cueball (narrating): But you're strange and fascinating and I've never met anyone like you.

:[Cueball stands to the left leaning back and looking up at Megan and the giant vehicle/tank she is assembling. Megan is standing to the left of the three visible huge pigged wheels (almost two times higher than Cueball). She seems to be hammering something onto the top of the front of the tank. She obviously used the items Cueball delivers to build some sort of super tank with huge wheels, a mounted gun (above her head), satellite dish at the rear and a crane in the middle. It appears to be running as there is smoke coming out of the top exhaust pipe of the tank and there is also a smaller pipe with a rounded top next to this high exhaust.]
:Cueball (narrating): I want to give you everything
:Cueball (narrating): Just to see what you would ''do'' with it.
</div>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

867: Herpetology

2018-03-30T02:06:34Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 867
| date = March 2, 2011
| title = Herpetology
| image = herpetology.png
| titletext = Birds are Aves, which is part of the clade Theropoda, which is in Saurischia, which is in Dinosauria. Those birds outside our windows are dinosaurs. We can clear out the rest of our brains because we now have the best fact.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Herpetology}} is the branch of {{w|zoology}} that studies {{w|reptiles}} and {{w|amphibians}}. {{w|Ornithology}} is the branch of zoology that studies {{w|birds}}.

At an ornithology conference, [[Ponytail]] is using the {{w|Cladistics}} method by showing a {{w|Cladogram}} to argue that the combining of amphibians and reptiles into a single field of study is misguided. In terms of their {{w|Evolutionary history of life|evolutionary history}}, reptiles are more closely related to birds (and even to mammals) than to amphibians. She states, in a patronizing way, that the study of reptiles should more properly be combined into her own field.

Herpetologists would rightly see this view as a threat to their territory, their budgets and even their existence.

The claim made by the ornithologist is fundamentally correct; the evolutionary history of those groups did actually diverge in that way. So, instead of arguing the science, [[Megan]], the presenter at the herpetology conference resort to a personal attack on the profession of ornithology. At their own conference, they retaliate with a chart that purports to demonstrate that ''douchebags'' and ''ornithologists'' are more closely related to each other than either are to ''nice people'', and they can therefore be grouped into an encompassing ''asshole'' classification.

Since the intent of the earlier presentation was presumably to rile herpetologists rather than achieve any particular scientific goal, this response seems appropriate.

In the title text, birds are class {{w|Aves}} which is a subset of the suborder {{w|Theropoda}} which is a subset of the order {{w|Saurischia}} and the superorder {{w|Dinosauria}}. Under the normal rules of classification, this means that all birds are technically dinosaurs.

This was also shown in more detail later in [[1211: Birds and Dinosaurs]].

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is standing on a podium looking right while pointing behind her with a pointer stick on a sketch showing a Cladogram, i.e. a large tree split that split up several time. Starting with one line at the bottom, this splits left and right and then both continues up. The left does not split again. The right splits again in a similar way, with the right not splitting anymore. The left, now in the middle splits a final time. All four ends are at the same hight and have labels above them written at 45 degree angle. A small frame sits over the top of the panels frame. Inside there is a caption:]
:Ornithology conference:
:Ponytail: As you can see, herpetology is a silly field; reptiles are actually more closely related to birds and mammals than to amphibians.
:Ponytail: It should really be broken up, with lizards folded into ornithology.
:Labels:
::Amphibians
::Reptiles
::Birds
::Mammals

:[Megan is standing on a podium looking left while pointing behind her with a pointer stick on a sketch similar to the previous panel. Starting with one line at the bottom, this splits left and right and then both continues up. The left does not split again. The right splits again in a similar way. All three ends are at the same hight and have labels above them written at 45 degree angle. The top of the right part that split in two, including the labels has been encompassed by a dotted line which also has a label written over this line at the top left. A small frame sits over the top of the panels frame. Inside there is a caption:]
:Herpetology conference:
:Megan: As you can see, ornithologists are actually assholes.
:Labels:
::Nice people
::Ornithologists
::Douchebags
:Dotted-line:
::Assholes

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Dinosaurs]]

864: Flying Cars

2018-03-30T02:00:50Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 864
| date = February 23, 2011
| title = Flying Cars
| image = flying_cars.png
| titletext = It's hard to fit in the backseat of my flying car with my android Realdoll when we're both wearing jetpacks.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is complaining to [[Megan]], by calling her on his {{w|smartphone}}, about the lack of {{w|Flying car (aircraft)|flying cars}} even though it is the year 2011. This is a reference to the joke {{w|Flying_car_(aircraft)#Where.27s_my_flying_car.3F|Where's my flying car?}}

Megan counters that phone technology has taken off. For example in many science fiction movies it was predicted that by now we would have flying cars, but in the same movies the computer technology was pretty much similar to what they had achieved at the time of the movies release (see for instance {{w|Blade Runner}} set in 2019; even back in 2011 very few believed that flying cars would roam the streets by then.) The flying car is still not perfected (although there are some {{w|Flying_car_(aircraft)#Modern_developments|prototypes}} flying today). But almost any computer technology shown in old movies pales in comparison to the current state of smartphones and other computers.

Megan resorts to call Cueball ''Dude'', because he chooses to be resentful about the lack of flying cars while calling her from a phone on which he can buy and read books. He should instead be amazed at the current state of computers and communication technology. She continues to say that she even interrupted him in playing a {{w|3D computer graphics|3D}} {{w|shooter game}} on his phone, when she called him. And the call could have been a {{w|video call}}, had it not been because Megan chose not to do so, since she is currently shirtless.

Typically Cueball keeps fixating on the flying car (he wants everything) instead of the important part here: '''{{tvtropes|MsFanservice|Megan is}} {{w|Toplessness|topless}}!''' (i.e. NSFW. This may be the only time in xkcd it is certain that she is depicted like this). But like many people, Cueball is missing the forest while looking for a particular tree. And Megan assumes that if he ever had a flying car he would crash it while using his smartphone to text or play {{w|Angry Birds}} (a game released in 2009, two years before this comic). Given that many car accidents happens because people {{w|Mobile phones and driving safety|use their phones while driving}}, this seems a realistic assumption.

The title text references {{w|RealDoll}}, known as "the world's finest lovedoll", but specifically an {{w|android (robot)|android}} version, which the world has yet to see. This is a direct callback to the [[:Category:Android|android series]]. It also refers to {{w|jet pack|jet packs}}, another invention that many people were expecting to have by this point in time. Cueball complain on in the title text that there is not enough space on the backseat of his flying car to have sex with his android girlfriend when they are both wearing their jet packs. (Maybe they would wear those for safety purposes when flying in a car while having sex... Even if it is a {{w|Autonomous car|self-driving}} flying car...)

This strip is quoted at the top of the TV Tropes article {{tvtropes|IWantMyJetpack|I Want My Jet Pack}}, having a similar theme to the strip.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball, looking right, is talking on his phone held up to his left cheek. The reply from Megan is shown to come from the phone with a zigzag line.]
:Cueball: It's 2011. I want my flying car.
:Megan (over the phone): Dude.

:[In a frame-less panel Megan, looking left, is talking with Cueball over her phone, which she holds up to her left cheek.]
:Megan: You're complaining to me using a phone on which you buy and read books,

:[Zoom in on topless Megan as she takes the phone down in front of her looking at it and talking to it.]
:Megan: And which you were using to play a 3D shooter until I interrupted you with what would be a video call if I were wearing a shirt.

:[Cueball is now also looking down at his phone held in front of him, talking to it. Again the reply from Megan is shown to come from the phone with a zigzag line.]
:Cueball: Can't I have a flying car, too?
:Megan (over the phone): You'd crash it while texting and playing Angry Birds.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Sex]] 
[[Category:Robots]] 
[[Category:Smartphones]]

855: 1999

2018-03-30T01:45:08Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 855
| date = February 2, 2011
| title = 1999
| image = 1999.png
| titletext = 'Whoa, twenty-two in two hours!' 'Your site got twenty-two hundred hits in two hours?' 'No. Twenty-two. But still, that's like half the people on the internet!'
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a parody of the movie ''{{w|The Social Network}}'', a movie about the founding of the popular social network site Facebook. Here, scenes from the movie are reimagined to feature {{w|Zombo.com}} instead. Zombo.com, also known as Zombocom, is a website that was created in 1999 and using only {{w|Flash animations}}. [[Randall]], like many others more, doesn't like this technique at all. The animation consists of a circle of quickly pulsating dots and a friendly deep male voice repeatedly welcoming the visitor to "Zombocom" and explaining that there was no limit to what could be done at the site, or rather, no limit except yourself. The message repeats while, ironically, there is absolutely nothing that can be done at the site until the message completes, at which point a link saying "Sign up for our newZletter" appears, linking to a page saying that the selected option is not available yet. If the link is not clicked, the Flash player will reset. Thus, you can still do nothing on the site.
The humor of the parody comes in substituting Facebook, a useful and popular website, for Zombo.com, a novelty site which gained attention for its complete uselessness.

Turn on your speakers and check [http://zombo.com zombo.com] for yourself. (If you can't run/don't have flash an an HTML5 version is available at [http://www.html5zombo.com html5zombo.com].)

The last four panels are all direct parodies of specific scenes from ''The Social Network''. The second panel is a takeoff of the scene where Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg comes up with the idea for the site, saying that people like checking up on their friends and acquaintances, so why not build a site that lets them do that? Because Zombo.com has no actual function, in this version the founder can't specify what he wants the site to do.

The third panel is taken from a scene where Zuckerberg is seen intensely focused on his work programming the site, his headphones insulating him from the outside world. His assistant describes his state as "wired in" and demands that he not be disturbed. In the comic, as Zombo.com is a very simple site which does not need much coding, the assistant offers the possibility that the founder is stoned as a reason for his focus. Indeed, it's one of the few conceivable reasons that one would be this focused on such a boring and pointless website.

The fourth panel is taken from a scene where co-founder Eduardo Saverin tries to push for monetization of Facebook, while investor and consultant Sean Parker argues against. The actual dialogue is "You don't even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A billion dollars." Here, instead of a billion dollars, the Parker character argues "Circles," playing off Zombo.com's un-lucrative nature and the silliness of the design.

The final panel is taken from a scene where Parker advises Zuckerberg to change the name of the site from TheFacebook to just Facebook, calling it "cleaner." Here, he advises to change the name of Zombo.com to just Zombocom. Why the website is pronounced "Zombocom" rather than the more expected Zombo ''Dot'' Com is a mystery known only to its creators; perhaps, like in the movie, they also considered it cleaner.

The title text is a reference to a quote from the movie, specifically a conversation between Zuckerberg and Delpy (Zuckerberg is the first quote). In the actual film, Zuckerberg answers "twenty-two thousand" rather than just "twenty-two". This is a joke to the effect that, back in 1999, there weren't really that many people on the internet, and very few of them would have gone to Zombo.com.

==Transcript==
:It's easy to forget, as we heap awards on ''The Social Network'',
:That before there was Facebook, MySpace, or even Friendster...
:One website dreamed bigger than them all.

:[Cueball and another are talking.]
:Cueball: People like doing stuff. So why not build a website that offers that?
:Another: Offers what? What would I do there?
:Cueball: Anything! The only limit is yourself!

:[Another scene. Hacker, wearing headphones and oblivious, working at computer. Cueball runs in to interrupt; Another holds him back.]
:Cueball: Hey, we need more—
:Another: Don't–he's wired in.
:Hacker: ''The infinite is possible.''
:Another: Or baked. It's hard to tell.

:[Cueball and another at table in bar.]
:Cueball: It's time to monetize. We could make millions!
:Another: No way. A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?
:Cueball: A billio–
:Another: ''Circles.''

:[Long shot in bar. Drinks on table in foreground; dim figures in doorway in background; Cueball, alone, shouting into the distance.]
:Cueball: Hey–a tip: drop the dot.
:Cueball: Just "Zombocom".
:Cueball: It's cleaner.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Social networking]]

755: Interdisciplinary

2018-03-21T02:05:46Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 755
| date = June 18, 2010
| title = Interdisciplinary
| image = interdisciplinary.png
| titletext = Replace the pendulums with history students and you'll qualify for a grant!
}}

==Explanation==
An "interdisciplinary program" is a program at a school or university that involves students from multiple disciplines, or fields of study. Here, this comics lampoons the concept by envisioning an oddball exercise involving physics students and psychology students. Strictly speaking, this could be categorized as an interdisciplinary program. Further, the study of pendulums is common in physics courses, and the concept of fear arises in psychology, thus the joint effort can be supposedly said to unify both subjects.

The intersection of physics and psychology suggests the classic demonstration in which someone holds a heavy pendulum up against his face and releases it. Basic physics shows that the pendulum will, at most, harmlessly touch the person's face on the backswing (provided that he released it with no initial push and does not lean forward); however, it may take some force of will to refrain from flinching as the pendulum approaches. This experiment (with Black Hat's twisted take) is referenced in [[1670: Laws of Physics]].

In another example where the two concepts meet, the pendulum-like motion of objects (such as a gold pocketwatch on a chain) is stereotypically used in portals of psychology as a device for hypnotism.

The ripping of Psychology, History, and English majors is a common theme in various xkcd comics.

The image text suggests that replacing the pendulums with history students would guarantee funding of a grant, perhaps because of the increased number of disciplines involved. In reality it of course serves to increase injuries among students in majors that the author does not approve of. Interestingly, this is apparently being said by the grant funders rather than the professor.

==Transcript==
:[In the foreground, 2 men and 1 woman are standing.]
:Cueball: This is an interdisciplinary program in which Physics students try to hit Psychology students with pendulums.
:Megan: Promising!
:[In the background, a woman stands on a platform and releases a pendulum hanging from the ceiling that swings toward a man who is running away.]
:Psychology student: AAAAAAA!

:My professors had an ongoing competition to get the weirdest thing taken seriously under the label "interdisciplinary program".

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

742: Campfire

2018-03-21T01:50:58Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ that sentence didn't go anywhere, plus the subject was already discussed

{{comic
| number = 742
| date = May 19, 2010
| title = Campfire
| image = campfire.png
| titletext = 100 years later, this story remains terrifying--not because it's the local network block, but because the killer is on IPv4.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is telling a scary story to kids by the campfire about a killer. It seems as if the main character was able to trace the killer's computer to a local address (most likely one in her own house). 192.168/16 refers to the subnet the computer is on. The 192.168/16 subnet is reserved for private networks and traffic to or from addresses on that subnet and will not be routed by most internet-facing routers. Most home networks that are behind a router usually have addresses such as 192.168.0.xx or 192.168.1.xx and use {{w|Network Address Translation|NAT}} to present different addresses to the rest of the internet. Thus, the killer must have been extremely close, likely inside the house, using the victim's own computer network.

This is a modern update of a similar actual scary story, where the victim attempts to find the source of threatening phone calls only to find that they are coming from inside the house. Variations of this story made its way into several movies, including ''{{w|When a Stranger Calls (1979 film)|When a Stranger Calls}}'' (released in 1979, and {{w|When a Stranger Calls (2006 film)|re-made in 2006}}) or another version of the {{w|The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs|legend the movie was based on}}. All have a similar basic plot: the killer calls the victim at home; when traced, [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCallsAreComingFromInsideTheHouse the call is coming from a phone inside the victim's home].

The title text claims that this is scary as the killer is on {{w|IPv4}}. Currently the number of available IPv4 addresses are dwindling. There are plans to replace the addresses with IPv6, which will largely increase the number of available addresses. In 100 years it would be very (technologically) scary for someone to still be using IPv4. This would be analogous to receiving a message by telegram today, rather than as an email or text.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and three children are around a campfire at night. Cueball is standing up, with a flashlight under his face.]
:Cueball: But when she traced the killer's IP address... it was in the 192.168/16 block!
:Children: ''Gasp!''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]

728: iPad

2018-03-19T21:22:36Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ added a bit of context

{{comic
| number = 728
| date = April 16, 2010
| title = iPad
| image = ipad.png
| titletext = Maybe we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in *really cool ways*.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Cueball]] is entertained by his {{w|iPad}}(which came out a few days prior) because messing around with it is so fun and feels futuristic. [[Megan]] tries to bring perspective to him by telling him that his fun is really not so fun because so many exciting and much more impressive things are to come. Cueball still objects, because that makes him feel that he's too easily impressed by trivial things, and says that Megan is spoiling his fun by trying to make his source of entertainment seem less cool.

The title text is showing how Cueball is, instead of being horrified by all the new ways to die technology could present, is, like a scientist, enthralled by the many newer ways that death could occur.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting in an armchair, playing with an iPad. Megan is looking over his shoulder.]
:Cueball: Navigating Google Maps on the iPad is fun. It feels so futuristic.
:Cueball: Swoosh! Zoom!

:Megan: There are, right now, monkeys controlling robotic arms via neural implants.

:Megan: A huge and alien future is barreling toward us. And I can't WAIT.

:Megan: But no, your iPad is cool, too.
:Cueball: Stop spoiling my future with your slightly more distant one.

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

673: The Sun

2018-03-18T18:01:59Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 673
| date = December 9, 2009
| title = The Sun
| image = the_sun.png
| titletext = Obligatory bad guy: This operation is sheer foolishness, and it's not happening on my watch! Mainly because I can't figure out how to adjust the time.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic makes fun of {{w|science fiction}} {{w|disaster movies}}, especially the 2003 film "{{w|The Core}}" in which a group of scientists travel through the Earth's mantle to place a series of nuclear devices in order to speed up the slowing rotation of the Earth's core and prevent a complete collapse of Earth's magnetic field.

This comic presents the next film from the makers of The Core. In this case an astronomer [[Ponytail]] discovers the Sun's fusion is failing. The two [[Cueball]]-like guys behind her are not impressed, one is disbelieving and the other is not interested (''Whatever''). But then Ponytail rally them by threatening them with impeding doom for Earth, and they call {{w|NASA}}. A group of astronauts has taken the call at NASA and the leader a(another Cueball-like guy) describes what could happen in trailer like fashion:
*The earth bathed in eternal darkness?
*A night without a dawn? Not on my watch!
And then he tells his team of astronauts, a fourth Cueball-like guy, [[Megan]] and another Ponytail to ''Saddle up'', and the comic finished with showing the poster (a copy of the one for The Core with the Sun in place of the Earth mantle) of this new movie called '''The Sun''' (hence the title of the comic) with two taglines:
*It's Daylight saving time.
*Never fall back.

The movie described by this comic shows a scenario where the "sun's fusion is failing". This is in fact the exact plot of the British science fiction film "{{w|Sunshine (2007 film)|Sunshine}}" from 2007, released two years before this comic, which was about a group of astronauts sent on a mission to the reignite a dying {{w|Sun}} with a battery of nuclear bombs.

The {{w|sun}}'s energy comes from {{w|nuclear fusion}} reactions among the extremely hot dense hydrogen plasma in its core. The idea of the sun's fusion failing is rather ridiculous from a scientific perspective, because the fusion reactions are well understood and the sun has enough hydrogen to fuel it for about 5 billion more years. Even if the sun's hydrogen was getting low it would {{w|Star#Post–main sequence|start fusing helium}} and begin expanding into a {{w|red giant}}. This will then make the Earth uninhabitable. Even in the nearly impossible event of the sun's fusion is {{w|Supernova#Core collapse|failing in the traditional sense}}, the sun would {{w|Star#Collapse|collapse}} causing a {{w|supernova}}. In other words, if the sun stopped fusing we wouldn't have to worry about less sunlight, we would have to worry about more.

In any case, it appears to be failing and the solution is to send a team of astronauts to the sun to restart the fusion (which is analogous to sending an ant to the US Senate to break a budget deadlock). The team leader is motivated by concern that if the sun's fusion stops, there will be no more light, and so the earth will be in perpetual darkness.

The poster in the final panel gives the movies two taglines. {{w|Daylight saving time}} (DST) refers both to the policy of changing clocks, which is intended to "save" daylight for a more useful part of the day; and the scenario in this movie in which it is time for the team to literally save the sun's daylight from being extinguished. "Never fall back" is an additional word play on the {{w|mnemonic}} used (in the States at least) to remember the direction to change clocks. The mnemonic goes, {{w|Spring forward, fall back#Terminology|"spring forward, fall back"}} to indicate that in the spring season, clocks get set ahead by an hour, while in the fall the clocks are set backwards an hour. The phrase "fall back", however, can also mean to retreat from a battle.

[[Randall]] seems to believe that DST makes little sense today and he has made it clear in [[:Category:Daylight saving time|several comics]] that he is not a fan. As DST is the main joke of the comic (and the title of the next movie), it seems obvious that the comment from the astronaut about this not happening on "my watch" may be a pun relating to his wristwatch. He would not wish to have DST on his watch! This meaning is the made clear in the title text see below. Also this indicates that Randall never wish to apply DST as he never falls back, the last tagline.

The comic makes fun of these disaster movies in a couple of ways. The characters in the first panel acknowledge that the scenario doesn't make sense scientifically, but are prepared to sacrifice scientific value for the plot. Also, in the second panel the team is to be composed of {{w|NASA}}'s "hottest astronauts", which makes fun of the fact that the characters in movies are much more attractive than average, and the fact that they will be much hotter when they reach the sun. The team leader expresses his concern with a few buzz phrases often used in such films.

The title text continues the lunacy (solacy?) of the situation with the cliche of the "obligatory bad guy" — a person in the plot who acts antagonistic, often for the flimsiest of reasons. There is also the common complaint, especially among the technologically inept, that he can't figure out how to change the time, punning again on DST.

Note that while four different Cueballs in a comic is [[:Category:Multiple Cueballs|not uncommon]] it is rare that two different Ponytails are shown in one comic.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the first panel, which is lower than the rest:]
:Coming this March from the makers of ''The Core''...
:[Ponytail is standing on a raised platform looking through a huge telescope (exiting the panel to the left) in an observatory. To her right is a large station with three screens and two Cueball-like guys are standing on the floor to the of that right. Behind them is another station with a large panel showing two circles with an arrow pointing from the top left to the bottom right.]
:Ponytail: The sun's fusion is failing!
:Man 1: Does that make sense?
:Man 2: Whatever.

:[Zoom in on the scene where Ponytail throws up her arms as she turns towards the two Cueball, still standing on the platform, but the rest of the background is white. The first Cueball turns around and points to the other Cueball who has also turned around and has taken a phone of the hook, the curled cord disappearing at the panels right edge.]
:Ponytail: If we don't send a ship to restart it, it could go out completely!
:Man 1: Call NASA!
:Man 2 (into the phone): Assemble our hottest astronauts.

:[Another Cueball-like guy has taken the call, and still stands with the phone in hand, the cord attached to the phone hook on the panels left edge. He stands with the helmet of a space suit under his other arm, obviously being an astronaut. Behind him is a fourth Cueball-like guy, Megan and another Ponytail.]
:Astronaut: The earth bathed in eternal darkness? A night without a dawn? Not on my watch!
:Astronaut: Saddle up.

:[The same four characters are shown in silhouette on gray background (still only one with helmet under arm), casting huge shadows towards the bottom of the panel from the dim sun in the top center of the panel. Above the sun is written a tagline (for the movie) and at the bottom of the panels with shadows falling over it is a second smaller tagline:]
:It's
:<big>'''''Daylight saving time.'''''</big>
:Never fall back.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Daylight saving time]]
[[Category:Telescopes]]

665: Prudence

2018-03-18T17:48:27Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 665
| date = November 20, 2009
| title = Prudence
| image = prudence.png
| titletext = Moments later, the White Witch rolls up and, confused, tries to tempt the probe with a firmware upgrade.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic references the fantasy novel series "{{w|The Chronicles of Narnia}}" by {{w|C. S. Lewis}}. In the first book, {{w|The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe}}, Lucy discovers the fictional world of Narnia which can be accessed through a wardrobe, and she walks into it without ever considering the risks. Her three older siblings do not believe her, so she travels back alone again. But this second time her brother Edmund follows her, and he is seduced by the White Witch in order for her to be able to kill him and his three siblings (see title text explanation below). Thus proving that it was a rather dangerous move to just walk into the wardrobe.

The comic mocks the imprudent behavior shown by the protagonists Lucy of the novel, who enter the world of Narnia without knowing anything about its dangers. In the comic, [[Megan]] discovers the magical wardrobe while playing {{w|hide-and-seek}}, like in the book. Unlike Lucy in the original book, Megan does not precipitately set foot into Narnia. Instead, she fetches her technical equipment and sends a remote-controlled probe through the wardrobe door in order to sound the situation first.

The probe is clearly modeled after Mars rovers like Spirit and Opportunity, which [[Randall]] depicted for the first time only a few comics later in [[681: Gravity Wells]] and then in [[695: Spirit]]. The probe looks even more like the one in [[1504: Opportunity]]. This also explains the title of the comic, as it is the name of Megan's probe. The naming scheme is similar to the two probes mentioned above that were already on Mars at the time of this comics release. And even more so like the upcoming {{w|Curiosity_(rover)|Curiosity rover}} which was first launched two years after this comic, but had {{w|Curiosity_(rover)#The_name:_Curiosity|been named}} earlier in the year this comic was released. Lucy was ''curious'' in the first Narnia book, Megan is ''[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prudent prudent]'' in this comic..

The probe encounters {{w|Mr. Tumnus}} the faun with his umbrella at a lamppost in a snowy wood on the last panel. This picture is the first impression of Narnia in the novels and was apparently Lewis' original idea for the series.

The {{w|White Witch}} mentioned in the title text is the main antagonist in the novel. She originally lures Edmund with a hot drink and magical {{w|Turkish delight}} after her sleigh passes right by him. In the scenario mentioned in the title text, she is confused when she rolls up to the rover and then tries to tempt the probe with a firmware update accordingly.

The procedure of sending a probe first through a portal has also been used in the early Stargate episodes. This draws a parallel between the wardrobe in Narnia and the Stargate, both connecting two distant worlds. The stargate probe can be seen at [http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Mobile_Analytic_Laboratory_Probe here].

Megan takes a scientific approach to Narnia again in [[821: Five-Minute Comics: Part 3|a later comic]]. In that comic she uses the different passage of time in Narnia to her advantage (it usually runs much faster than on Earth). That effect would have been a problem with controlling the rover...

==Transcript==
:[Megan is running towards a closed wardrobe.]
:Voice (off-panel): Everyone hide! 99... 98... 97...

:[Megan opens one of the two doors on the wardrobe.]
:Wardrobe: click

:[Megan is looking inside the wardrobe through the fully opened door.]
:Megan: !!!

:[Megan puts a hand to her chin.]

:[Megan walks away.]

:[Megan returns with an armful of electronics including lots of wires and a rover with wheels.]

:[Megan is kneeling, typing on a laptop, which has a cord extending into the wardrobe.]

:[In a forest with many tall leafless trees the Mars rover is approaching a lamppost with a lit candle. Behind it stands a faun with horns, goatee beard and hooves holding an umbrella.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan‏‎]]
[[Category:Mars rovers]]
[[Category:Fiction]]

617: Understocked

2018-03-17T02:17:20Z

Intara: Stuck the link on correctly

{{comic
| number =617
| date =July 31, 2009
| title =Understocked
| image =understocked.png
| titletext =My biology grad student friends tell me that different types of alcohol don't actually have different effects. I trust their expertise, not because of the 'biology' part, but because of the 'grad student'.
}}

==Explanation==
On July 16, 2009, Harvard University professor {{w|Henry Louis Gates}} was {{w|Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy|arrested at his home}} in Cambridge, Massachusetts by police officer Sgt. James Crowley, after the police department received a call that Gates and another man were breaking and entering into the residence. Returning home from a visit to China, Gates had found his front door jammed, and tried to force it open with the help of his driver.

Arriving at the scene and finding the front door forced open, Crowley (a Caucasian) asked the African-American Gates to show his ID or other proof that he lived there. Gates, feeling persecuted, responded with belligerence. He presented identification, but continued to talk back to the officers. Sgt. Crowley arrested Dr. Gates and charged him with disorderly conduct. The charges were dropped on July 21, but the incident sparked a national debate about ''racial profiling.''

On July 22, U.S. President {{w|Barack Obama}} criticized the arrest, saying that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof he was in his own home." He also commented on the racial undertones of the incident, saying that "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."

The president's remarks were furiously criticized by the law-enforcement community, and President Obama apologized two days later, saying that he could have chosen his words better, and it wasn't his intention to malign the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley. He also invited Gates and Crowley to discuss the situation over beers to air out their differences and come to an understanding about the situation.

This comic explores a hypothetical situation in which President Obama found he was all out of beer, and chooses to share {{w|tequila}} with Gates and Crowley instead. In pop culture, tequila is frequently represented as the "let's-get-trashed" alcohol of choice, and so in the comic, President Obama, Professor Gates and Sgt. Crowley all get trashed on tequila, take a White House limo on a joyride, and end up behind bars.

The title text goes back on the suggestion that drinking tequila rather than beer would cause this kind of behavior. It also jokingly implies that biology grad students are authorities on the effects of alcohol because they drink a lot, not because they understand how the human body works.

==Transcript==
:[A bald bearded man with glasses standing in his open doorway outside his house and a police man wearing a black peaked cap with white emblem standing on the stoop at the top of the stairs leading down from the house are swearing at each other]
:Both: *$@#!

:[The bearded man is in prison sitting on a bench behind bars.]

:[Cueball, as the president of the United States, is standing behind a lectern with the Presidential Seal (eagle and all) on its front.]
:President: To defuse this misunderstanding, I've invited both men to have a beer with me at the White House.

:[A policeman is standing left and looking left while the bearded man is walking towards the president both with their hands stretched out towards each other. They are in the oval room in the White House with a couch and an oval carpet and two large windows.]

:[The president has opened cabinet on top of another cabinet. He is looking into it with a hand on his chin.]
:President: Actually, it seems we're out of beer.
:Voice (off-panel): Is there anything else?

:[Zoom in on the back of the president's head viewing the shelve in the cabinet with a single labeled bottle:]
:Tequila

:[The black Presidential Limo, with grayed out windows in the rear is being driven at high speed by the president who can be seen through the regular windows in the front of the car. The bearded man has his arms up and the policeman is waving his hat and holding the bottle of tequila are standing up looking out of the sunroof.]
:All: ''WOOOOOOOOOOOO''

:[The policeman, the bearded man, and the president are sitting on a bench behind bars in the same prison from panel two.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring politicians]]
[[Category:Politics]]

604: Qwertial Aphasia

2018-03-17T01:58:56Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 604
| date = July 1, 2009
| title = Qwertial Aphasia
| image = qwertial_aphasia.png
| titletext = If this were SMBC, the alt-text drawing thingy would be a giraffe hooker fluttering her eyelashes.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Randall]] has invented the name '''Qwertial Aphasia''', to describe the common experience of having a word, from a spoken conversation, accidentally spill over into something one is typing, often with humorous results.

The description "Qwertial" refers to the position of the top row of letters in the most common keyboard arrangement, the {{w|QWERTY}} keyboard layout, as this is only something that afflicts you while typing. {{w|Aphasia}} is a class of medical conditions which affect the production and understanding of language.

In this case [[Cueball]] is in the process of replying on the computer to his friend who just asked if they should go out to eat some food later. Cueball is about to explain why he should not, when [[Megan]] walks in and disturbs him with her stuffed toy {{w|giraffe}} which makes him say the word giraffe.

The joke set up in the comic comes from the substitution of the word 'giraffe' for the word 'frequently', which changes the whole meaning of Cueball's last sentence. The original sentence would have been ''I can't afford to keep eating out this '''frequently'''.'' The unintentional replacement makes 'giraffe' the object of the sentence, and implies that Cueball is ''[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Eating+out+%28sexuality%29 eating out]'' (slang for {{w|cunnilingus}}) a giraffe. He tries to correct himself by writing that he meant ''frequently'' but the damage is done and he will be the laughing stock with his friends for a while.

The title text continues the image of a giraffe as a sexual object - in particular, one which {{w|Prostitution|costs money}}. SMBC refers to the comic {{w|Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal}}, a whimsical joke-a-day comic which comes with a second illustration, which can be seen by clicking on a button known as the "votey". This additional panel often serves as a second punchline in the same way as the title text does in {{xkcd}}. {{w|Zach Weiner}} of SMBC responded to this title text in the votey on [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=1565 July 2, 2009], the day after this comic was released.

==Transcript==
:[Caption in a frame partly above the main panels, but which breaks the top border of the two first panels frames:]
:I hate how when I'm talking while I type, sometimes I accidentally type a word I'm saying.

:[Cueball is sitting at a computer chatting with a friend. The friends message "comes" out of the computer.]
:Friend (from computer): Wanna go get food later?

:[Megan walks in to the frame, holding a small stuffed giraffe in front of her. Cueball is in the middle of typing his reply, which "comes" from the keyboard.]
:Megan: Check out what I found in the closet!
:Cueball (from keyboard): Sorry, I really shouldn't.
:Keyboard: ''Type type''

:[Megan has stopped and Cueball turns to look at her and the giraffe, while continuing to type.]
:Cueball: Aww, what an adorable stuffed giraffe!
:Cueball (from keyboard): I can't afford to keep eating out this giraffe.
:Keyboard: ''Type type''

:[Caption below the last panel in a frame which breaks the bottom border of the above panel:]
:''Frequently!'' I meant ''"frequently"''!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Giraffes]]
[[Category:Sex]]

587: Crime Scene

2018-03-16T02:56:08Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ if 2 people were talking there would be quotes around the separate lines of dialogue

{{comic
| number = 587
| date = May 22, 2009
| title = Crime Scene
| image = crime_scene.png
| titletext = I think I see a Mandelbrot set! No, that's just blood spatters. Golly.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Mathnet}} was a segment on the children's television show "Square One Television", where police mathematicians solved crimes and other mysteries by math. This comic plays on that by implying that Mathnet was a real department of the {{w|Los Angeles Police Department}} (LAPD), and, when the show was cancelled, the department was shut down, forcing the mathematicians to become regular detectives.

Here, George Frankly, one of the two lead detectives on the show, tries to glean some sort of mathematical meaning out of the murders scene looking for mathematical patterns. His fellow officer, knowing him, tries to tell him off by saying that it is just '''two''' dead bodies. But this only makes George state that "two" is the third {{w|Fibonacci number}}. These are a set of numbers where the generators are the two first ones and, after that each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8... (making 2 the third number). Since most of the small numbers are in the Fibonacci sequence, the fact that the number of bodies is one of these numbers is not the least interesting. Again his fellow officer tries to shut him down, and not continue this unhelpful line of thought.

The title text shows that this did not help since George now thinks he can see a {{w|Mandelbrot set}}. But he quickly realizes that it was just blood splatters. The Mandelbrot set is a formula used to create certain kinds of fractals that you might imagine seeing in the something like blood spatters. The last word ''[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/golly Golly]'' is in response to George realizing he is seeing blood spatters - something he probably never did before on the children show. Golly also is an application for simulating Conway's Game of Life and other cellular automata.

The second comic [[586: Mission to Culture|in a row]] (and [[572: Together|third]] in 16 comics) where a man is drawn with hair only on the sides of his head.

==Transcript==
:[A crime scene is surrounded by tape wound around several pins four of which are inside this panel. A large black pool is on the ground, with splashes around it, and a hammer lying in one of these splashes. Two people are standing outside the tape; a police officer with a peaked cap with a white emblem is standing closest and to his left is a man with male pattern baldness, who we learn is called George.]
:Policeman: Looks like a murder-suicide.
:George: Any interesting mathematical patterns?
:Policeman: No, George, just two dead bodies and a lot of blood.
:George: Two... That's the third Fibonacci number!
:Policeman: Not now, George.

:[Caption below the frame:]
:When Mathnet shut down, the officers had trouble reintegrating into the regular L.A.P.D.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Fiction]]

574: Swine Flu

2018-03-12T18:48:02Z

Intara: /* Explanation */ grammar fix

{{comic
| number = 574
| date = April 27, 2009
| title = Swine Flu
| image = swine flu.png
| titletext = Bad flu epidemics can hit young adults hardest because they provoke their powerful immune systems into overreaction, so to stay healthy spend the next few weeks drunk and sleep-deprived to keep yours suppressed.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Swine influenza|Swine flu}} is a strain of the flu which can be transmitted from pigs to humans. In 2009, it was the origin of the {{w|Pandemic H1N1/09 virus}}, which most news stations called either "H1N1" (the subtype name) or "swine flu". Because of the ambiguous name given to it and the somewhat hazy description of the transmittal process and dangers to humans, many people were concerned about the virus in ways that weren't going to be threats. This comic pokes a bit of fun at the overreaction by users on {{w|Twitter}}.

[[Randall]] (or someone else) seems to have created Twitter accounts for all referenced handles (that may not have already existed). Some of the handles continue their interactions with each other in later tweets.

[https://twitter.com/SKEEVE37 Skeeve37] is a self-described {{w|Hypochondriasis|hypochondriac}}. The tweet exemplifies the general populace's over-concern with the "animal themed" pandemics. Similarly after the {{w|Avian influenza|bird flu}} scare, people avoided eating chicken.

[https://twitter.com/hanneloreEC Hanneloreec] is a self-described "young lady who is concerned about many things". She is a reoccurring character in the webcomic {{w|Questionable Content}} by Jeph Jacques, who also manages her twitter handle.

[https://twitter.com/PAULYSHOREFAN Paulyshorefan]'s tweet is a reference to the flash game "[http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Pandemic-2.html Pandemic 2]", in which players try to create a disease that infects the whole world. {{w|Madagascar}} is the most difficult country to infect, as it only has 1 port and often closes it at the slightest hint of an infection. The difficulty of infecting Madagascar has caused it to become a [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything meme]. The user's Twitter handle is a reference to {{w|Pauly Shore}}, a comedian who was briefly popular in the 1990s before quickly becoming out of favor and derided as unfunny.

[https://twitter.com/CrackMonkey74 CrackMonkey74]'s tweet is a parody of viral Christian(?) messages that say that current tragedies are God's punishment, [http://bible.cc/mark/13-7.htm despite the fact that the Bible says that the end is not yet to come.] More specifically, Crackmonkey74 blames the {{w|American Civil Liberties Union|ACLU}}, {{w|Lesbian|lesbians}} (a reference to the current culture wars that give big press towards proponents of {{w|Same-sex marriage|same-sex marriage}} against fundamentalist Christians), {{w|September 11 attacks|9/11}} (the day when the {{w|World Trade Center (1973–2001)|Twin Towers}} fell, causing controversy on whether {{w|Muslim}} terrorists crashed their planes on the towers or whether the government {{w|9/11 conspiracy theories|staged}} this by purposefully demolishing the towers) and {{w|Nanorobotics|nanobots}} (possibly a reference towards the highly promising but still relatively not understood field of nanotechnology, plus another reference towards the phrase "playing God").

[https://twitter.com/Twilight7531 Twilight7531]'s tweet implies that she got a {{w|Bone fracture#Orthopedic|bone fracture}} which ended up protruding from her arm. However, she seems to lack medical knowledge (or intelligence in general, given that her name carries both something that may be a reference toward the infamous {{w|Twilight (series)|Twilight books}} and a "gimmicky" naming scheme (7531 has the numerals of every odd number that is less than 9)), so she is worried that her fracture is actually swine flu (though how she can be typing with a broken arm is confusing).

[https://twitter.com/Wigu Wigu]'s tweet is a reply towards [https://twitter.com/Untoward Untoward]'s. Given the context, Untoward seems to have "gotten intimate" with a pig (since {{w|syphilis}} is a venereal disease). Given the fact that Untoward got sick because of a pig, Untoward seems to have concluded that he got swine flu.

The last comment by [https://twitter.com/2011SENIORSRULE 2011Seniorsrule] references a medical paper published by the journal {{w|The Lancet}}, in which it is proposed that {{w|Autism|autism}} is caused by {{w|Vaccine|vaccination}}. Since then, the paper was partially retracted in 2004, and fully retracted in 2010 because of conflicts of interest. The entire incident has been defined as the {{w|MMR vaccine controversy}}. This stance has still been seen since the retraction of the paper, and still holds some popularity. The most famous figure in support of it is {{w|Jenny McCarthy}}. This Twitter user is not only using a debunked study about a completely different set of vaccines, they have also confused cause and effect (i.e. even if vaccines caused autism, that doesn't mean that autistic people carry flu vaccines). Also, licking vaccinated people isn't how vaccines are administered. On top of that, fear of germs is common among autistic people, so "licking an autistic kid" may be a difficult and possibly painful experience for the lickee.

The title text refers to the common notion that young adults are hard-drinking individuals who get little sleep.

==Transcript==
:[Caption:]
:Twitter is great for watching
:uninformed panics unfold live.

:[The comic shows a twitter search results page with "Swine flu" in the search box and a gray search button.]
:twitter [Swine flu] (search)

:[The results is displayed in a frame below the search panel:]
:Realtime results for '''Swine flu''' 0.05

:[This next line is highlighted in yellow. Most text here and below is written in normal black font, but the underlined links in the main text is in blue. Below each tweet is a line with info and reply links etc. all in gray font. Between the yellow line and the first tweet and between each tweet is a dotted line.]
:1,918 more results since you started searching. Refresh to see.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
:Skeeve37: Oh god I ate pork yesterday before I knew about swine flu!
 
:Less than 10 seconds ago from web ∙ reply ∙ view tweet
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
:Hanneloreec: Without duct tape I can't seal the door to keep out swine flu but I can't get duct tape without going outside! Help!
:Less than 10 seconds ago from web ∙ reply ∙ view tweet
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
:Paulyshorefan: How long until the swine flu reaches me here in Madagascar?
:Less than 10 seconds ago from web ∙ reply ∙ view tweet
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
:CrackMonkey74: Swine flu is God's punishment for the ACLU and lesbians and 9/11 and nanobots!
:Less than 10 seconds ago from web ∙ reply ∙ view tweet
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
:Twilight7531: I fell down the stairs and there was a crack and a jagged white thing is sticking out of my arm guys is this swine flu?
:Less than 10 seconds ago from twitterific ∙ reply ∙ view tweet
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
:Wigu: @Untoward: No, that sounds like syphilis, not swine flu. What did you say you did with a pig?
:Less than 10 seconds ago from tweetdeck ∙ reply ∙ view tweet
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
:2011Seniursrule: My Dad said flu vaccines are linked to autism, so to be safe from swine flu I'm trying to lick an autistic kid.
:Less than 10 seconds ago from web ∙ reply ∙ view tweet
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

==Trivia==

CrackMonkey74 has appeared in two earlier comics: [[202: YouTube]] and [[406: Venting]].

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Social networking]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Religion]]

562: Parking

2018-03-11T21:20:41Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 562
| date = March 30, 2009
| title = Parking
| image = parking.png
| titletext = Police reported three dozen cheerful bystanders, yet no one claims to have seen who did it.
}}

==Explanation==
There are few things so annoying as finding, when a parking lot is full, that someone has parked so carelessly as to take up two spaces. Even worse, it may have been intentional; they decided to exchange the risk of someone accidentally scratching their car for the risk of someone doing it on purpose, see [[1030: Keyed]]. However, there are also non-violent ways to tackle the problem; [http://www.threadless.com/product/187/I_Park_Like_an_Idiot politely leave a note], or (if possible) just move their car (whether to its proper alignment or to an impound lot).

Of course, [[Black Hat]] takes the less-traveled path, apparently involving a {{w|cutting torch}} and what looks to be a {{w|circular saw}}. The offending portion of the parked car is sliced off (entirely without surgical precision) and neatly slotted into the remainder of the space. It is now legally parked, but will never become a functional car again. But at least Black Hat finally has space for his own car!

Admittedly, he's done this kind of thing before - see [[496: Secretary: Part 3]].

The title text indicates that a large crowd watched Black Hat at work but refused to identify him, presumably because they feel that the car owner got what he deserved, and possibly because they didn't want to incur Black Hat's wrath.

==Transcript==
:[Black Hat is in a car driving around a parking lot.]

:[Black Hat's car pulls up next to a red car, that's parked over a line at an angle that block two spaces.]

:[Black Hat gets out of his car.]
:''SLAM''

:[Black Hat is now holding a blow torch and a rotary saw, He's also wearing goggles and fuel tanks on his back. The blow torch is lit.]
:''Fwoosh''

:[The badly parked car has been cut in half along a diagonal, and the half of the car that was in the second slot has been moved into the same slot as the rest of the car. Black Hat's car occupies the newly freed space.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

538: Security

2018-03-10T22:18:25Z

Intara: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 538
| date = February 2, 2009
| title = Security
| image = security.png
| titletext = Actual actual reality: nobody cares about his secrets. (Also, I would be hard-pressed to find that wrench for $5.)
}}

==Explanation==
The "crypto nerd" would be concerned with strongly encrypting data on their personal machine. This would conceivably come in handy when "villains" attempt to steal information on his computer. The crypto nerd imagines that due to his advanced encryption, the crackers will be ultimately defeated. [[Randall]] suggests that in the real world, people with the desire to access this information would simply {{w|Rubber-hose cryptanalysis|use torture}} to coerce the nerd to give them the password. Both panels also reference the amount of money used to access the data. In the first the villain is willing to use millions of dollars to construct a {{w|TWIRL|super computer}}, while in the second, he simply uses a $5 wrench. The comic effectively states, completely accurately, that the weakest part of computer security is usually not the computer, but the user.

{{w|RSA (algorithm)|RSA}} is a commonly used public key encryption method. Current standards typically use 1024, 2048, and (more recently) 4096 {{w|Key size|bit keys}}. These encryption methods are not yet (feasibly) breakable. A 4096-bit key will remain unbreakable for the foreseeable future.

The title text pokes fun at typical users, who do not have data that would be worth anything to anyone but themselves. Therefore, it is unlikely that the above situation would ever occur. Additionally, the wrench used in the second panel is large, and presumably more than the $5 referenced by the thug.

==Transcript==
:A Crypto nerd's imagination:
:[Cueball is holding a laptop, and his friend is examining it.]
:Cueball: His laptop's encrypted. Let's build a million-dollar cluster to crack it.
:Friend: No good! It's 4096-bit RSA!
:Cueball: Blast! Our evil plan is foiled!

:What would actually happen:
:[Cueball is holding a piece of paper and giving his friend a wrench.]
:Cueball: His laptop's encrypted. Drug him and hit him with this $5 wrench until he tells us the password.
:Friend : Got it.

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