explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2427: Perseverance Microphones

2021-02-22T16:26:34Z

Nyq: capitalized proper noun

{{comic
| number = 2427
| date = February 19, 2021
| title = Perseverance Microphones
| image = perseverance_microphones.png
| titletext = If the first audio they downlink is from the descent, we probably won't be able to hear anything over the sound of the rover screaming.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a MUSICAL ROVER. An explanation of the title text is missing. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is a play on dual meanings of the word "sample". The day before this comic was published, NASA successfully landed a new rover, {{w|Perseverance (rover)|''Perseverance''}}, on Mars; part of its mission is to drill and scoop Martian rock and dust from the surface, store it in tubes, and leave them on the surface for collection by a future mission which will return them to Earth. If successful, this would be the "first Mars sample return" in history.

“{{w|Sampling (music)|Samples}}” can also refer to short snippets of recorded sound used in music. ''Perseverance'' is the first Mars mission to land on Mars with microphones to, so it would be possible to use audio ''samples'' from those microphones musically, e.g. using a {{w|Loop (music)#Modern looping|looper pedal}}, which lets a musician play short samples of music and then repeats them back live as if it were another musician. Using a loop pedal would make sense if the sample includes a tune that repeats throughout the song—or that could repeat throughout the song. This is similar to [[411: Techno]].
The joke is that these audio samples, as opposed to rock samples, would be "the first Mars sample return."

The title text {{w|Anthropomorphism|anthropomorphises}} the rover, suggesting that the drop to the surface was so frightening for it that it was screaming as it descends.

The period between entry into the Martian atmosphere and touchdown on its surface has been dubbed the "Seven Minutes Of Terror", mainly for the terror felt by the mission controllers on Earth, rather than the lander, as they are unable to make any useful corrections to a craft that is hundreds of millions of miles/kilometres away. The round-trip communication delay significantly exceeds the whole of the passage through the thin atmosphere, so they have to rely on whatever pre-arranged autonomy they engineered and programmed into their craft beforehand, and hope they {{w|List_of_missions_to_Mars#Missions|anticipated all eventualities}}.

You can view the landing [https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-perseverance-rover-sends-sneak-peek-of-mars-landing/ here].

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

: [Megan is sitting at a desk, typing on her laptop, which is connected to an audio mixer on the floor.]
: Megan: Perseverance's microphones are active! Downlinking audio!
: [Cueball is standing on the other side of the box, holding an electric guitar, which is plugged into the box, and standing with one foot on a small box on the floor, which is also connected.]
: Cueball: I'm ready with the looper pedal.
: [Caption below the panel:]
: The first Mars sample return

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Mars rovers]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Puns]]

1719: Superzoom

2016-08-16T17:36:46Z

Nyq: Decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1719
| date = August 12, 2016
| title = Superzoom
| image = superzoom.png
| titletext = *click* Let him know he's got a stain on his shirt, though.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Cueball]] is showing off his new {{w|superzoom}} camera to [[White Hat]]. These are cameras with large zoom lenses, often up to 25× or higher magnification. He is very excited and starts by exclaiming how they can take detailed photos of the craters on the {{w|Moon}}, and (on better models) relatively large photos of {{w|Jupiter}} even with a resolution so individual clouds can be seen. (See examples of zoom on these objects [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwLbj0fBvXk here] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de2LjQ5F3HE here] without cloud resolution though, but with Jupiter's {{w|Galilean moons|four large moons}} and {{w|Saturn|Saturn's}} {{w|Rings of Saturn|rings}}.)

He then spots a bird (which is just a speck in the sky) and uses the superzoom for {{w|birdwatching}}, which is a popular use for these cameras. He can see that it's a {{w|peregrine falcon}} and that it has been {{w|Bird ringing|banded}} (ringed) and he can even read the number on the band. He then spots an airplane and having taken a picture of it, he can tell that it is a {{w|Boeing 787 Dreamliner|787 Dreamliner}} from {{w|Japan Airlines}}, and he can even make out the registration number. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-0X3xJf-kg All this is possible], with a {{w|Nikon Coolpix P900}}, which may not be much larger than the one Cueball stands with here, with an extremely long lens, and at the time of this comics release that type of camera could be [https://www.amazon.com/Nikon-COOLPIX-Digital-Camera-Optical/dp/B00U2W4JEY bought at Amazon] for less than $600. If that is within the limit Cueball gives of a few hundred dollars can be [[1070: Words for Small Sets|debated]]... A [http://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/powershot-sx60-hs-refurbished|Canon SX-60, refurbished] with [https://www.flickr.com/groups/2290116@N21/pool/|65x optical zoom] currently sells for $379. Its predecessor, the SX-50 sold, refurbished, for less than $200 until going out of stock.

Note that before each comment he has taken a picture, presumably zooming further in after each photo of each new object, zooming out again before beginning with the next object.

Finally, White Hat exclaims that he is sold and states that he also want a superzoom camera like Cueball's. Cueball then points the camera down the street takes a picture and tells White Hat that the shop on ''Union Road'' has these camera in stock, indicating that he can see this inside the store (or in their window). He then takes another image and is able to make out not only the worker Kevin inside, he also recognizes him and (as mentioned in the title text after taking yet a further zoomed in picure) notice a stain on Kevin's shirt. He seems to like Kevin and asks White Hat to tell Kevin about the stain when he goes there to buy a superzoom camera.

Even with the ability of these cameras, it would be difficult for Cueball to be able to make out a specific worker inside the store, but if he is standing near a window it is not impossible, and if he has a stain on his shirt, it is in the same league as spotting a band on a bird in the air. Of course he has to be in a spot where he can see straight to the front of the shop.

The last panel and title text is also a remark on how such cameras can be used to spy on people for quite a far distance, which has often been (mis)used by {{w|Paparazzi|paparazzi photographers}} taking pictures of famous people (often while almost naked or in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tANeyKZLF9s bikini] or other bathing clothes). Now everyman gets this disconcerting possibility to spy on their neighbors and others for just a few hundred dollars.

There are lenses that can do what Cueball describes about Jupiter's clouds in the comic (e.g., the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRq18WpQZC0 Canon 5200mm]), but so far not such a small consumer camera as shown in the illustration.

A couple of other factors that many people may not realize until after they've bought a consumer-level superzoom camera is that a) taking a hand-held picture at maximum zoom is typically rather blurry because the lens is magnifying all vibration and it's impossible to hold the camera steady enough (so a camera tripod would be needed), and b) that the lens' aperture at maximum zoom is typically much smaller than at normal focal lengths, with the result that the shutter time must be several times longer to get proper exposure, compounding the vibration / blurry problem. Modern superzoom cameras do have "image stabilization", which can mitigate blurriness due to vibration, but extreme telephoto photography is still more challenging than implied in the comic.

Also having zoomed so much it is very hard to actually locate a moving plane or bird in the sky while looking at the image shown on the camera. And as shown in the comic the lens is zoomed very much in. Of course this could be done by Cueball after having found the flying object with much less zoom. But still if he loses sight of the bird while fully zoomed in it will be almost impossible to find it again without zooming back out.

White Hat and Cueball have discussed photography before in [[1314: Photos]].

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Cueball are walking right. Cueball is looking down at a camera with a long lens he is holding in both hands.]
:Cueball: I love these superzoom cameras. For a few hundred dollars you can take pictures of Moon craters and Jupiter's clouds.

:[They stop, White Hat looks up in the air while Cueball does the same but through the camera he is holding up to his eye while taking pictures. The camera lens is further zoomed out and is clicking.]
:Cueball: And birds! See that speck up there?
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: Peregrine falcon!
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: It's banded, too. Want the number?

:[White Hat looks even further up as Cueball turns left and point the even further zoomed camera almost straight up while taking photos.]
:Cueball: And see that plane?
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: 787 Dreamliner
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: Japan Airlines.
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: Registration is—

:[White Hat looks back down on Cueball who has turned to the right holding the fully out-zoomed camera level to the right along the ground.]
:White Hat: OK, I'm sold—I want one.
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: They're in stock at the place on Union Road.
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: Hey, Kevin's working today! He's great.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Animals]]

1719: Superzoom

2016-08-16T17:11:06Z

Nyq: Decapitalized species vernacular name

{{comic
| number = 1719
| date = August 12, 2016
| title = Superzoom
| image = superzoom.png
| titletext = *click* Let him know he's got a stain on his shirt, though.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Cueball]] is showing off his new {{w|superzoom}} camera to [[White Hat]]. These are cameras with large zoom lenses, often up to 25× or higher magnification. He is very excited and starts by exclaiming how they can take detailed photos of the craters on the {{w|Moon}}, and (on better models) relatively large photos of {{w|Jupiter}} even with a resolution so individual clouds can be seen. (See examples of zoom on these objects [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwLbj0fBvXk here] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de2LjQ5F3HE here] without cloud resolution though, but with Jupiter's {{w|Galilean moons|four large moons}} and {{w|Saturn|Saturn's}} {{w|Rings of Saturn|rings}}.)

He then spots a bird (which is just a speck in the sky) and uses the superzoom for {{w|birdwatching}}, which is a popular use for these cameras. He can see that it's a {{w|peregrine falcon}} and that it has been {{w|Bird ringing|banded}} (ringed) and he can even read the number on the band. He then spots an airplane and having taken a picture of it, he can tell that it is a {{w|Boeing 787 Dreamliner|787 Dreamliner}} from {{w|Japan Airlines}}, and he can even make out the registration number. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-0X3xJf-kg All this is possible], with a {{w|Nikon Coolpix P900}}, which may not be much larger than the one Cueball stands with here, with an extremely long lens, and at the time of this comics release that type of camera could be [https://www.amazon.com/Nikon-COOLPIX-Digital-Camera-Optical/dp/B00U2W4JEY bought at Amazon] for less than $600. If that is within the limit Cueball gives of a few hundred dollars can be [[1070: Words for Small Sets|debated]]... A [http://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/powershot-sx60-hs-refurbished|Canon SX-60, refurbished] with [https://www.flickr.com/groups/2290116@N21/pool/|65x optical zoom] currently sells for $379. Its predecessor, the SX-50 sold, refurbished, for less than $200 until going out of stock.

Note that before each comment he has taken a picture, presumably zooming further in after each photo of each new object, zooming out again before beginning with the next object.

Finally, White Hat exclaims that he is sold and states that he also want a superzoom camera like Cueball's. Cueball then points the camera down the street takes a picture and tells White Hat that the shop on ''Union Road'' has these camera in stock, indicating that he can see this inside the store (or in their window). He then takes another image and is able to make out not only the worker Kevin inside, he also recognizes him and (as mentioned in the title text after taking yet a further zoomed in picure) notice a stain on Kevin's shirt. He seems to like Kevin and asks White Hat to tell Kevin about the stain when he goes there to buy a superzoom camera.

Even with the ability of these cameras, it would be difficult for Cueball to be able to make out a specific worker inside the store, but if he is standing near a window it is not impossible, and if he has a stain on his shirt, it is in the same league as spotting a band on a bird in the air. Of course he has to be in a spot where he can see straight to the front of the shop.

The last panel and title text is also a remark on how such cameras can be used to spy on people for quite a far distance, which has often been (mis)used by {{w|Paparazzi|paparazzi photographers}} taking pictures of famous people (often while almost naked or in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tANeyKZLF9s bikini] or other bathing clothes). Now everyman gets this disconcerting possibility to spy on their neighbors and others for just a few hundred dollars.

There are lenses that can do what Cueball describes about Jupiter's clouds in the comic (e.g., the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRq18WpQZC0 Canon 5200mm]), but so far not such a small consumer camera as shown in the illustration.

A couple of other factors that many people may not realize until after they've bought a consumer-level superzoom camera is that a) taking a hand-held picture at maximum zoom is typically rather blurry because the lens is magnifying all vibration and it's impossible to hold the camera steady enough (so a Camera Tripod would be needed), and b) that the lens' aperture at maximum zoom is typically much smaller than at normal focal lengths, with the result that the shutter time must be several times longer to get proper exposure, compounding the vibration / blurry problem. Modern superzoom cameras do have "image stabilization", which can mitigate blurriness due to vibration, but extreme telephoto photography is still more challenging than implied in the comic.

Also having zoomed so much it is very hard to actually locate a moving plane or bird in the sky while looking at the image shown on the camera. And as shown in the comic the lens is zoomed very much in. Of course this could be done by Cueball after having found the flying object with much less zoom. But still if he loses sight of the bird while fully zoomed in it will be almost impossible to find it again without zooming back out.

White Hat and Cueball have discussed photography before in [[1314: Photos]].

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Cueball are walking right. Cueball is looking down at a camera with a long lens he is holding in both hands.]
:Cueball: I love these superzoom cameras. For a few hundred dollars you can take pictures of Moon craters and Jupiter's clouds.

:[They stop, White Hat looks up in the air while Cueball does the same but through the camera he is holding up to his eye while taking pictures. The camera lens is further zoomed out and is clicking.]
:Cueball: And birds! See that speck up there?
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: Peregrine falcon!
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: It's banded, too. Want the number?

:[White Hat looks even further up as Cueball turns left and point the even further zoomed camera almost straight up while taking photos.]
:Cueball: And see that plane?
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: 787 Dreamliner
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: Japan Airlines.
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: Registration is—

:[White Hat looks back down on Cueball who has turned to the right holding the fully out-zoomed camera level to the right along the ground.]
:White Hat: OK, I'm sold—I want one.
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: They're in stock at the place on Union Road.
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:Cueball: Hey, Kevin's working today! He's great.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Animals]]

593: Voynich Manuscript

2015-03-21T16:51:34Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ grammar

{{comic
| number = 593
| date = June 5, 2009
| title = Voynich Manuscript
| image = voynich_manuscript.png
| titletext = Wait, is that the ORIGINAL voynich manuscript? Where did you GET that? Wanna try playing a round of Druids and Dicotyledons?
}}

==Explanation==
The {{w|Voynich manuscript}} is a very detailed book written in an unknown script, describing plants and recipes, most of which lack a real-world analogue. Over the past few decades, linguists and cryptographers have unsuccessfully attempted to decode the book. A cut out from the book is depicted in the first frame (real or similar).

{{w|Tabletop role-playing game|Tabletop role-playing games}} (such as {{w|Dungeons and Dragons}}) are fantasy games with extremely detailed descriptions of fantastical worlds. The invented language is probably a reference to {{w|The Lord of the Rings}} in which author {{w|J. R. R. Tolkien}} invented several languages of which the Grey-elvish or {{w|Sindarin}} language is the most famous.

After being shown the manuscript for the first time by [[Megan]], [[Cueball]] argues that it should be obvious that it's just an ancient role-playing-game rulebook, since the human tendency to invent fantastical worlds must have also existed in the past. That it is this obvious was again stated when the manuscript was referenced in [[1501: Mysteries]].

In the last panel the book is used, 500 years ago, to play a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons. They speak in a somewhat outdated English. The reference to {{w|Aconitum|Wolfsbane}} could be a reference to another invented world as it is mentioned in the first book of the {{w|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone|Harry Potter}} series.

After concluding this, a shocked Cueball then asks in the title text how Megan got her hands on the original manuscript (which is in the Yale University's ''{{w|Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library}}''). He then unexpectedly goes on to suggests the prosaic activity of playing {{w|Druid|Druids}} and {{w|Dicotyledon|Dicotyledons}}, assuming such a game could be defined by the manuscript.

Note:
*In the third panel, [[Randall]] may have meant ''{{w|glossolalia}}'' rather than ''glossolatia''.
*The use of the pronoun "your" in the last frame is anachronistic, as in early modern English it was used as a plural pronoun, or as a singular pronoun only to a superior; the proper pronoun would be "thy": "Thy Druid doth lose two points."

==Transcript==
:[Weird root vegetables surround a strange script.]

:[Megan holding up book to Cueball.]
:Megan: This is the Voynich manuscript— a book, allegedly 500 years old, written in an unrecognized script. It's some kind of visual encyclopedia of imaginary plants and undeciphered "recipes".

:[Megan points while Cueball opens the book.]
:Megan: It could be a hoax, a lost language, a cipher, an alien text, glossolatia — no one knows.
:Cueball: No one? But it's obvious.

:[Megan continues to talk. Cueball holds the now closed book.]
:Megan: ... Obvious? Linguists and cryptographers have been stumped for decades.
:Cueball: They forget. Human nature doesn't change.

:[Close up of Megan and Cueball - the book is off panel.]
:Cueball: Just imagine someone found a book from our time, full of lists, illustrations, tables, and long, dry descriptions of nonexistent worlds written in an invented language. What have they found?
:Megan: ...Dear Lord. It ''is'' obvious.

:[Three people are standing around pawns and a die. One is holding a sheet of paper, another is holding a book, the third is holding a scythe. At the top of the panel there is a frame with the following text:]
:500 Years Earlier:
:Person #1: Forsooth! I concoct an elixir of courage.
:Person #2: Nae! The source booke sayeth that requires some wolfsbane!
:Person #3: Your druid doth lose two points.

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

1501: Mysteries

2015-03-21T16:45:23Z

Nyq: /* Table */ Decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1501
| date = March 20, 2015
| title = Mysteries
| image = mysteries.png
| titletext = At the bottom left: The mystery of why, when I know I needed to be asleep an hour ago, I decide it's a good time to read through every Wikipedia article in the categories 'Out-of-place artifacts', 'Earth mysteries', 'Anomalous weather', and 'List of people who disappeared mysteriously'.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows a graph in which several "mysteries" are mentioned and placed on the graph according to how weird they are on the x-axis and the y-axis indicates whether [[Randall]] has an explanation or not for the mystery. Each item is listed in the [[#Table|table below]].

Items near the top-right corner (such as the {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370|MH 370}} disappearance) are both mysterious and strange. Items near the bottom-left corner (such as Randall's absent-mindedness regarding ice cream) have a clear explanation and are not really strange either. Items near the top-left corner (such as the meaning of ''{{w|You're So Vain}}'') are mysterious but not really strange. Items near the bottom-right corner (such as the {{w|Dyatlov Pass incident}}) have a clear explanation but are quite strange.

The title text refers to the mystery of Randall staying up late to read Wikipedia articles, when he was already supposed to be asleep an hour ago. This is apparently not very unusual for him (see for instance [[214: The Problem with Wikipedia]]). And this mystery actually has an obvious explanation: Following up on an idea that eventually led to today's cartoon.

Some of these mysteries have already been explored in xkcd. See [[950: Mystery Solved]] where Randall "solves" Amelia Earhart, Lost Roanoke Colony, Jimmy Hoffa; [[593: Voynich Manuscript]]; and [[1400: D.B. Cooper]].

==Table==
*The X axis in the graph indicates weirdness.
**The table assumes that the item to the far left is 0% (not that weird) and the item to the far right is 100% (weird as hell).
*The Y axis indicates if Randall has an explanation.
**The table assumes that the item at the bottom is 100% (Randall has a clear explanation) and the item at the top is 0% (Randall has no explanation).

{| class="wikitable sortable"
!Entry
!Weirdness
!Explainable
!Further details
|-
|Who Carly Simon is singing about in ''You're So Vain''
|9%
|4%
|The ironically self-referential lyrics of the 1972 song include "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you." There has been {{w|You%27re_So_Vain#Subject_of_the_song|much speculation}} regarding the person or persons to whom Simon was referring.
|-
|Lindbergh baby
|17%
|25%
|The {{w|Lindbergh kidnapping}} was the kidnapping and murder of 20-month old Charles Lindbergh Jr. in 1932. Various {{w|Lindbergh kidnapping#Controversy|conspiracy theories}} surround the event.
|-
|UVB-76
|40%
|23%
|{{w|UVB-76}} is a mysterious shortwave radio station, apparently originating from Russia, that has broadcast a monotonous buzz tone since 1982 with occasional other content.
|-
|Toynbee tiles
|25%
|34%
|{{w|Toynbee tiles}} are colorful ceramic tiles with cryptic messages that have been found embedded in asphalt in the streets of various midwestern-to-eastern cities in the United States and four South American cities.
|-
|Jimmy Hoffa
|10%
|42%
|{{w|Jimmy Hoffa}} was an American labor union leader who disappeared in 1975. He is widely believed to have been murdered. (See title text of [[950: Mystery Solved]])
|-
|The WOW signal
|55%
|20%
|The {{w|Wow! signal}} was a strong and clean radio transmission near 1420 MHz received by the Big Ear Radio Observatory at Ohio State University in 1977 that appears to have originated from interstellar space [http://www.universetoday.com/93754/35-years-later-the-wow-signal-still-tantalizes/]. This is the strongest evidence to date of radio signals transmitted by extraterrestrial intelligent beings.
|-
|Mary Celeste
|70%
|43%
|The ''{{w|Mary Celeste}}'' was a sailing ship found adrift off the {{w|Azores Islands}}, mysteriously abandoned yet otherwise undisturbed, in 1872. No explanation for these events has ever been determined. Its name has become a watchword for mysteriously abandoned ships.
|-
|DB Cooper
|76%
|20%
|{{w|D. B. Cooper}} was an airplane hijacker who jumped from a plane after successfully extorting a large ransom in 1971. No trace of him was ever found. Previously referenced in [[1400: D.B. Cooper]] which compares Cooper to film director {{w|Tommy Wiseau}}. Note that this "Mysteries" comic was published shortly after [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2zdzik/tommy_wiseau_creator_of_the_room_and_the_new_tv/ Tommy Wiseau did a Reddit AMA].
|-
|Salish Sea feet
|96%
|31%
|Over a dozen dismembered human feet {{w|Salish Sea human foot discoveries|were found}} between 2007 and 2014 on the coasts of the Salish Sea in British Columbia (Canada) and Washington (United States).
|-
|Lead masks case
|99%
|12%
|In 1966 two Brazilian electricians were found dead on a hill top. No injuries. {{w|Lead Masks Case|Both were wearing lead masks}}.
|-
|MH370
|100%
|0%
|On 8 March 2014, {{w|Malaysia Airlines Flight 370}} cut off radio contact and diverted from its flight path with 227 passengers aboard, eventually heading over open ocean towards Antarctica. No trace has been found.
|-
|Voynich manuscript
|35%
|68%
|The {{w|Voynich manuscript}} is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. It came to public attention in the early 20th century and probably was written in Italy in the early 15th century. See also [[593: Voynich Manuscript]].
|-
|Why I keep putting ice cream back in the fridge instead of the freezer
|0%
|96%
|Apparently, Randall absent-mindedly puts his ice cream container into the refrigerator rather than into the freezer.
|-
|JFK
|38%
|86%
|The 1963 {{w|Assassination of John F. Kennedy|assassination of President John F. Kennedy}} has inspired many conspiracy theories, beginning almost immediately after the event. The subsequent murder of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald added fuel to the fire by encouraging speculation that he was silenced to cover up the true story. It seems Randall thinks this has been explained pretty well.
|-
|Oak Island money pit
|32%
|98%
|An indentation in the ground on {{w|Oak Island}} (off the east coast of Nova Scotia, Canada), led to over 200 years of treasure hunting, with the excavations repeatedly hampered by flooding pit collapses. A few flagstones, and periodic layers of logs are all that have been found. Rumours abound as to what it conceals: Marie Antoinnette's jewels, pirate treasure and Shakespeare's manuscripts have all been suggested. It is called The Money Pit, because of all the money that has been wasted in trying to solve the mystery.
|-
|Zodiac letters
|62%
|62%
|A set of letters were written by the so-called {{w|Zodiac Killer}}, a serial killer who was active in California in the 1960s and 1970s. The letters are available at [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer_letters Wikisource]. Some of the letters are encoded, only some of which have been deciphered. The killings remain unsolved.
|-
|Amelia Earhart
|56%
|74%
|{{w|Amelia Earhart}} and her navigator tried to circumnavigate the earth along the equator in a small airplane in 1937, but {{w|Amelia Earhart#Speculation on disappearance|disappeared}} over the Pacific Ocean without any trace. See also [[950: Mystery Solved]].
|-
|Lost colony
|74%
|83%
|The {{w|Roanoke Colony}} was the first English attempt to establish a permanent settlement in the New World. The colony of over a hundred settlers disappeared some time in the late 1580s, with no signs of violence and no definitive evidence as to what happened. However, given the hardships faced by the colonists when they were left and that the buildings in the colony were dismantled, indicating departure was not hurried, it is likely they moved and/or integrated with the local tribes. Which probably accounts for Randall's high "explainable" rating. (See title text of [[950: Mystery Solved]])
|-
|Bigfoot
|60%
|98%
|{{w|Bigfoot}} is a supposed animal or hominid that reputedly inhabits the Pacific Northwest region of North America.
|-
|Loch Ness monster
|64%
|100%
|The {{w|Loch Ness Monster}} is a supposed animal that reputedly inhabits Loch Ness, a lake in Scotland.
|-
|Kentucky meat shower
|85%
|93%
|In 1876, a number of chunks of meat {{w|Kentucky meat shower|fell from the sky}} in Kentucky; this was possibly projectile vomit from vultures [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/2014/12/01/the-great-kentucky-meat-shower-mystery-unwound-by-projectile-vulture-vomit/].
|-
|Dyatlov Pass incident
|93%
|96%
|On 2 February 1959, nine skiers in the northern Ural Mountains apparently {{w|Dyatlov Pass Incident|fled their tents without taking time to put on winter clothing}}. They were found dead, some with physical injuries. There are in fact a number of theories regarding this event, and it is not clear which one Randall regards as being obviously correct.
|}

==Transcript==
:[In a frame at the top left of the panel:]
:'''Mysteries'''

:[A chart with two crossing lines with double arrows. Each arrow is labeled:]
:X-axis left: Not that weird
:X-axis right: Weird as Hell
:Y-axis top: I have no explanation
:Y-axis bottom: Explanation seems pretty clear

:[In the chart there are 22 bullets. Each bullet is labeled. Below the labels are given from top to bottom in each of the four quadrants of the chart:]

:[Top left quadrant:]
:Who Carly Simon is singing about in You're So Vain
:UVB-76
:Lindbergh baby
:Toynbee tiles
:Jimmy Hoffa

:[Top right quadrant:]
:MH370
:Lead Masks Case
:DB Cooper
:The Wow signal
:Salish Sea feet
:Mary Celeste

:[Bottom left quadrant:]
:Voynich manuscript
:JFK
:Why I keep putting ice cream back in the fridge instead of the freezer
:Oak Island Money Pit

:[Bottom right quadrant:]
:Zodiac letters
:Amelia Earhart
:Lost Colony
:Kentucky meat shower
:Bigfoot
:Loch Ness Monster
:Dyatlov Pass incident

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

1499: Arbitrage

2015-03-17T23:12:31Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ clarified definition of arbitrage

{{comic
| number = 1499
| date = March 16, 2015
| title = Arbitrage
| image = arbitrage.png
| titletext = The invisible hand of the market never texts me back.
}}

==Explanation==

In {{w|economics}} and {{w|finance}}, {{w|arbitrage}} is the practice of buying cheaply on one market whilst immediately selling at a higher price on another market, taking advantage of the price difference to make relatively risk-free profit.

In real-world {{w|Market liquidity|liquid financial markets}}, arbitrage ensures that there is only one price for a product. Arbitrageurs are the individuals performing this act to equalize the prices in those markets and hopefully make a profit.

The place where [[Cueball]] and [[Hairy]] are eating is giving away unlimited free {{w|tortilla chip}}s. Hairy is acting as an arbitrageur by collecting the chips to later resell them. This is much to the consternation of Cueball, who is (depending on how you interpret the simple art-style) holding his hands up in front of his mouth in shock, covering the lower half of his face in shame, covering his eyes out of denial, sliding his palms down the front of his face in disgust, or eating chips. Possibly all in sequence.

In the real world an attempt this strategy would fail, as the supply would be limited. Customers leaving with bags of chips out of the restaurant would presumably be asked not to return. Similarly the lack of a {{w|secondary market}} for open, perishable and perhaps hand-soiled chips would limit selling.

In the caption below the comic, [[Randall]] suggests that society only functions because we don't take people like Hairy "out to dinner", i.e., we generally have an aversion to dealing with people with such extreme self-interest, bordering on {{w|Psychopathy#Sociopathy|sociopathic}} behavior. We see from Cueball's reaction that he is appalled by what Hairy is doing believing he can profit from the apparent generosity.

A distinguishing feature of {{w|social animals}}, rather than animals simply sharing a {{w|habitat}}, is that they perform tasks that benefit their group. All such societies rely on some situations where the individual is not working purely on short term self interest. The payoff for this is generally that co-operation makes things better for the group as a whole. Most people would find Hairy's behavior embarrassing and shameful, and thus would not socialize with people who behave like that. By rejecting such individuals, society protects itself from such people.

The title text mentions the ''{{w|invisible hand}}''. In economics this is a metaphor used by {{w|Adam Smith}} to describe unintended social benefits resulting from the individual actions of self-interested parties. In the context of arbitrage, the "invisible hand" compels all of a given fungible substance to be sold for the same price, as a result of the actions of individuals like Hairy who are only seeking personal profit.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Hairy are sitting at a table with a bowl of chips in the middle. Hairy is taking chips from the bowl on the table with one hand, and his other hand is dropping chips into a large bag behind him. Cueball is double facepalming.]
:Hairy: ''They're'' the ones giving chips away!
:Hairy: If they don't see the arbitrage potential, sucks for them.
:On the bag is written: Chips

:[Below the main frame:]
:In a deep sense, society functions only because we generally avoid taking these people out to dinner.

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

51: Malaria

2015-03-03T13:51:00Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added wikilinks

{{comic
| number = 51
| date = January 21, 2006
| title = Malaria
| image = malaria.jpg
| titletext = The malaria party was David's idea.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Malaria}} is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by {{w|protists}} (a type of microorganism) of the genus ''{{w|Plasmodium}}''. It begins with a bite from an infected female mosquito, which introduces the protists, via its saliva, into the circulatory system, and ultimately to the liver where they mature and reproduce. The disease causes symptoms that typically include fever and headache, which in severe cases can progress to coma or death.

It plays on the idea of a {{w|pox party}} where adults bring their children to deliberately expose them to a virus to promote immunity. This is commonly done for childhood diseases like {{w|measles}} and {{w|chickenpox}} and have mainly been replaced by vaccines. Some of these illnesses are more serious for adults than children. After contracting chickenpox once, the immune system has developed antibodies for it and so is not vulnerable to the virus anymore (except in the case of {{w|shingles}}). However, malaria does not work this way, but instead once one has suffered from malaria, it can recur on its own even after apparent healing from symptoms. So having a malaria party would not promote immunity, but only make people sick and further vulnerable in the future.

Like in [[42: Geico]] and [[100: Family Circus]] [[Randall]] attributes this idea to the unknown friend David.

==Transcript==
:[People wearing party hats, a discarded balloon to the side.]
:We had a malaria party, but it turned out not to be very much fun.

==Trivia==
*This is the forty-ninth comic originally posted to livejournal. The previous comic was [[54: Science]], the next is [[52: Secret Worlds]].

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics posted on livejournal]]

540: Base System

2015-02-28T22:21:45Z

Nyq: Decapitalized more common nouns

{{comic
| number = 540
| date = February 6, 2009
| title = Base System
| image = base system.png
| titletext = I once got to second base with a basketball player. She was so confused.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a pun on the {{w|Baseball metaphors for sex|baseball metaphor}} used to describe how far a date went regarding erotic actions. Many different versions of the baseball metaphor exist, with varying degrees of complexity.

The comic comes in two parts. In the first one, the strip along the top, [[Ponytail]] and [[Cueball]] discuss how Cueball's date went. When Cueball answers Ponytail's question with "second base", Ponytail asks what that means exactly. They fumble around with the definition in panel two, then Ponytail brings two more, very different, sports into the metaphor: {{w|American football}} (50 yard line) and {{w|bowling}} (ten-pin). What this could mean is up for debate, but it certainly sounds tricky, as Cueball says. Ponytail then brings up a ''third'' sport in her elaboration; her reference to "red flag" could mean anything, as {{w|Flag#In sports|many sports use flags}}, some of them red, for a variety of things.

However, if we were to try an translate Ponytails comment it could go along these lines:
::You should try crossing the '''pitcher's mound'''. Then down the '''50-yard line''', and right past her '''ten-pin'''.
::You should try crossing her '''{{w|Mons pubis|pubic mound}}''', then down the '''{{w|Bikini_waxing#The_Landing_Strip|landing strip}}''', and right past her '''{{w|clitoris}}'''.
:::Last time I tried it, '''I got a red flag'''.
:::Last time I tried it, '''she had her {{w|Menstruation|period}}'''.
This would mean that Ponytail was about to {{w|Cunnilingus|go down}} on another girl, while this girl had her menstruation. Many people would find this disgusting, explaining her reaction to Cueball's ''Sounds tricky'' reply.

The second part, the diagram, depicts a much more complex version of the baseball metaphor, where baseball terms and jargon are used to describe the many and varied things human beings like to do in the bedroom. Explanations have been separated by position. In order to understand the terms used, one may want to consult this picture:

[[File:540baseballdiamond.jpg|The baseball diamond and surrounding areas]]

===Out of play===

Outside the foul line extending from either side of the diamond, the area is "out of play". Anyone who takes the ball out of this area has committed a foul, and as such breached one of the acceptable rules of sexual conduct in the metaphor.

*Anal sex is a pun on the term "foul ball", as the anus is where fecal matter collects. The position is placed just outside the foul line.
*Downloading Star Trek fanfiction and replacing Riker's name with your crush is a reference to {{w|Star Trek: The Next Generation}}. Riker, the First Officer of the Enterprise-D, is often a subject of sexual desire among the fandom, and so taking a piece of fanfiction (fan-written, noncanon stories written about a piece of fiction) and replacing Riker's name with that of your crush is an ultra-nerdy way of indicating that they are attractive - so ultra-nerdy, it's creepy.
*The binary (i.e. base 2) numbers are an {{w|ASCII}} representation of the characters "base 2". The base of a number system is the number of unique digits required to represent numbers in that system. Binary is therefore a "base 2" system. This seems to be a little nerd sniping: wasting the time of anyone familiar enough with computing to know how to decode it.
*"Your base" is a reference to the original "base" metaphor mixed with a reference to the Zero Wing {{w|All Your Base}} meme. It's possible that this being here is a stealth insult towards the reader - the reader's own base (himself) is "out of play" and thus undesirable.

===Outfield===

The "outfield" is a group of players who are there to catch the ball if it goes away from the main play area (anything outside the upper curving line) and return it to play in a manner advantageous to their team. As they separated away from the main play area, the things in the outfield are often references to sexual behaviors that are "kinky" and "out there".

*2outfielders1glove is a reference to the infamous {{w|2girls1cup}} scatological site and associated meme.
*The [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=retrograde%20wheelbarrow Retrograde Wheelbarrow] is a sex position, one referenced previously in [[300: Facebook]], making this a callback.
*Eye contact from {{w|Janeane Garofalo}} is a tie-in to the "eye contact" entry positioned near home base. It's possible that this is placed in the outfield because fantasizing about celebrities like Janeane Garofalo is a behavior that is often considered unusual, even though many people do it.

===Infield===

The infield is a series of catchers stationed immediately outside or just within the diamond, with the goal of receiving the ball from the outfield (or catching it themselves) and using it to tag any running opposing teammates to foil their attempts at moving to the next base on the diamond. Players within the diamond, such as the shortstop, will also be doing this as well - they often receive the ball from the infield. As such, the infield is still "out there", away from the "usual" sexual interactions in the diamond, but they are things you might pass upon the way.

*Napoleon's Forces is a cartography joke, one making a comment that all of this complicated positioning makes the image look like a map depicting military maneuvers - or possibly simply a visual gag meant to evoke the image of Napoleon's army marching through a land of sexual behaviors.
*Fursuits are anthropmorphic animal costumes worn by some members of the {{w|Furry Fandom}}, people who are fans of anthropomorphized (human-like) animals. Fursuiters are a small fraction of the entire fandom, but are sometimes used in sexual play.
*Fursuits (crotchless) are fursuits with no fabric or covering on the groin (crotch) of the wearer, and as such are specifically intended for sexual play. They are placed slightly further "out there" on the field due to this being more unusual, and across the orgasm line.
*Standing anywhere near Peaches is referring to the musician {{w|Peaches (musician)|Peaches}} who is known for her heavy use of sexual imagery.

===The diamond===

The "diamond" is the geometric pattern formed by the four bases - first, second, third, and home plate. After the ball is hit by the batter, and is in the air, players have a chance to move to the next base in line, from first, to second, to third, and finally to home plate (scoring only if they make it to home plate), only being removed from play if they are touched by a player carrying the ball in an attempt to move between bases. Thus there is a "progression" from one base to the next of sexual activity in the metaphor, until climax is achieved (getting to 'home plate' and 'scoring a point')

The entries in this section are ordered roughly from home plate to first, to second, to third, and then to home plate again, in the counterclockwise direction that the players move.

*Eye contact is placed just alongside the initial stage where the 'player' has just stepped off the home plate and is starting to move towards first. This is a deliberate setup for the 'thigh contact' pun later just before home plate (eye contact first, and then thigh contact later, when sex has begun).
*Passing notes refers to a common method of communication in the classroom in school, often used by students as a form of courtship. It is placed halfway between the start and first base - the point at which communication has begun.
*First base is kissing. This is one of the most common assigned meanings for what the 'first base' is in the baseball metaphor - as in, "getting to first base".
*The boring zone is the point between kissing and sexual teasing or activity - the point where intimacy has become normal but sexual behaviors have not been okayed yet. This is boring for many (stereotypical) males especially. It can also be the point at which a workup is attempted from kissing to gentle stroking and finally to the overt sexual teasing that is found by the time you have gotten to second base.
*Second base is licking or hands under the shirt. Overt sexual teasing, in an attempt to get the other person aroused.
*'Hands on the pants' and 'hands in the pants' are two activities that happen in a very short distance of each other during an average sexual encounter. They are also separated by the 'orgasm line', indicating that teasing has stopped and actual sexual activity has begun.
*Third base is oral sex. Oral sex is often used to prepare or arouse another person in preparation for intercourse, although it can be performed until one or both climax. In older versions of the baseball metaphor, third base was "hands in the pants" instead, which has been moved to earlier on the line in this new, "modern" version - or at least, Randall's conception of it.
*The Virginity line, which is also named, in brackets, after the {{w|Maginot Line}}, a series of French fortifications that were thought to be impenetrable during the leadup to {{w|World War II}}. This line provides a direct "barrier" to the path between third base and a home run. The Maginot Line was thought to be completely impenetrable until it was bypassed by the German army during WW2 through the Ardennes forest, whereupon it was encircled and destroyed. Virginity is often seen as an impenetrable barrier, or an unwillingness, up until arousal and desire conspire to make it go away rapidly.
*Teens, naturally, having a propensity for hormone-driven sex, bypass the Virginity line with ease.
*Sharing root PWs (passwords) is placed very close to home plate. As a system administrator, the one thing you never, ever do is give anyone the root (core) password to a file system, because anyone with the password is able to get unlimited access to the system to do whatever they please. Sharing a root password with another person is a nerdy way of saying that you trust them on an intimate, deep level. In other words, it requires more trust than oral sex.
*Finally, there is home plate. In this diagram, it is unlabelled, but in all versions of the baseball metaphor, the home plate signifies sexual intercourse and climax. Scoring a "home run" with a sexual partner means you "took it all the way" and "scored a point".

===Within the diamond and the orgasm line===
Inside the diamond, at the center of the mound, is the pitcher. Several odd positions are placed here in Randall's diagram.

*Dry humping is the activity of humping (thrusting against) a partner without one or both of them removing their clothes, in order to arouse or gain sexual satisfaction. The location is probably a combination of the fact that it lies somewhere between hands on/in the pants, is definitely not an activity that is considered "out there" (in the outfield), hasn't quite made it to 3rd base, but is still pretty close to home and crossing the virginity line.
*Using the scroll thingy on that one Apple mouse is presumably here because the small, rounded scroll button can be imagined to be a clitorus. See also [[243]]
*The Orgasm Line, which passes through almost every other play field, seems to be a divider that runs throughout the entire map that separates teasing and arousing behavior from overt sexual behavior intended to pleasure others. Fursuits (arousing, to some) become crotchless fursuits (overtly a sexual tool) when they cross the orgasm line. Hands on the pants and hands in the pants are two related but different activities - hands on the pants is arousing, and hands in the pants is intended to pleasure others.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Ponytail are talking; Ponytail is sitting on the back of a chair with her feet on the seat, and Cueball is sitting on the floor facing her.]
:Ponytail: So how far did you get with her?
:Cueball: Second base?

:Ponytail: Wait, which one is that? Below the waist, but... not under the clothes?
:Cueball: I think that's... shortstop?

:Ponytail: You should try crossing the pitcher's mound. Then down the 50-yard line, and right past her ten-pin.
:Cueball: Sounds tricky.

:Ponytail: Yeah. Last time I tried it, I got a red flag. If you know what I mean.
:Cueball: I really don't.

:[A diagram of a baseball diamond.]
:The "Base" Metaphor Explained
:[Bases and x points are marked, as well as dashed lines covering the field.]
:[Along the first base line is "Your Base".]
:[Slightly right of that is a binary base:
::0110 0010 0110 0001
::0111 0011 0110 0101
::0010 0000 0011 0010] ("base 2" in ASCII)
:[First base: Kissing.]
:[Second base: Hands under the shirt and/or licking.]
:[Third base: Oral sex (formerly "hands in the pants").]
:[The following are x marks:
::Slightly right of home plate: Eye contact.
::Along the first base line: Passing notes.
::Slightly before first base: Downloading Star Trek fanfiction and replacing Riker's name with your Crush's.
::Right field: Eye contact from Janeane Garofalo.
::Between the pitcher and second base: Using the scroll thingy on that one Apple mouse.
::Near the shortstop: Dry humping.
::Left of second base: Fursuits.
::Farther left: Fursuits (crotchless).
::Just before home plate: Thigh contact.
::Beyond 3rd base, along the 3rd base line: Standing anywhere near Peaches.
::Foul of the third base line: Anal sex (fill in your own "Foul Ball" pun here.)
::Left outfield: 2outfielders1glove.
::Left outfield: Retrograde wheelbarrow.]
:[The following are dashed lines:
::A region along the line from first to second base: The Boring Zone.
::A line traveling across the second to third baseline, and towards home plate: The orgasm line. (Dry humping is on the "orgasm" side.)
::Between third base and home: "Virginity" (Maginot) line.]
:[Arrows pointing out various other features:
::An arrow crossing the "Virginity" line: Teens.
::An arrow nearer to home plate: Sharing root PWs.
::An arrow crossing the orgasm line in the outfield: Napoleon's forces.]

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

540: Base System

2015-02-28T22:15:49Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decapitalized common noun

{{comic
| number = 540
| date = February 6, 2009
| title = Base System
| image = base system.png
| titletext = I once got to second base with a basketball player. She was so confused.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a pun on the {{w|Baseball metaphors for sex|baseball metaphor}} used to describe how far a date went regarding erotic actions. Many different versions of the Baseball metaphor exist, with varying degrees of complexity.

The comic comes in two parts. In the first one, the strip along the top, [[Ponytail]] and [[Cueball]] discuss how Cueball's date went. When Cueball answers Ponytail's question with "second base", Ponytail asks what that means exactly. They fumble around with the definition in panel two, then Ponytail brings two more, very different, sports into the metaphor: {{w|American football}} (50 Yard line) and {{w|bowling}} (ten-pin). What this could mean is up for debate, but it certainly sounds tricky, as Cueball says. Ponytail then brings up a ''third'' sport in her elaboration; her reference to "red flag" could mean anything, as {{w|Flag#In sports|many sports use flags}}, some of them red, for a variety of things.

However, if we were to try an translate Ponytails comment it could go along these lines:
::You should try crossing the '''pitcher's mound'''. Then down the '''50-yard line''', and right past her '''ten-pin'''.
::You should try crossing her '''{{w|Mons pubis|pubic mound}}''', then down the '''{{w|Bikini_waxing#The_Landing_Strip|landing strip}}''', and right past her '''{{w|clitoris}}'''.
:::Last time I tried it, '''I got a red flag'''.
:::Last time I tried it, '''she had her {{w|Menstruation|period}}'''.
This would mean that Ponytail was about to {{w|Cunnilingus|go down}} on another girl, while this girl had her menstruation. Many people would find this disgusting, explaining her reaction to Cueball's ''Sounds tricky'' reply.

The second part, the diagram, depicts a much more complex version of the baseball metaphor, where baseball terms and jargon are used to describe the many and varied things human beings like to do in the bedroom. Explanations have been separated by position. In order to understand the terms used, one may want to consult this picture:

[[File:540baseballdiamond.jpg|The baseball diamond and surrounding areas]]

===Out of Play===

Outside the foul line extending from either side of the diamond, the area is "out of play". Anyone who takes the ball out of this area has committed a foul, and as such breached one of the acceptable rules of sexual conduct in the metaphor.

*Anal sex is a pun on the term "foul ball", as the anus is where fecal matter collects. The position is placed just outside the foul line.
*Downloading Star Trek fanfiction and replacing Riker's name with your crush is a reference to {{w|Star Trek: The Next Generation}}. Riker, the First Officer of the Enterprise-D, is often a subject of sexual desire among the fandom, and so taking a piece of fanfiction (fan-written, noncanon stories written about a piece of fiction) and replacing Riker's name with that of your crush is an ultra-nerdy way of indicating that they are attractive - so ultra-nerdy, it's creepy.
*The binary (i.e. base 2) numbers are an {{w|ASCII}} representation of the characters "base 2". The base of a number system is the number of unique digits required to represent numbers in that system. Binary is therefore a "base 2" system. This seems to be a little nerd sniping: wasting the time of anyone familiar enough with computing to know how to decode it.
*"Your base" is a reference to the original "base" metaphor mixed with a reference to the Zero Wing {{w|All Your Base}} meme. It's possible that this being here is a stealth insult towards the reader - the reader's own base (himself) is "out of play" and thus undesirable.

===Outfield===

The "outfield" is a group of players who are there to catch the ball if it goes away from the main play area (anything outside the upper curving line) and return it to play in a manner advantageous to their team. As they separated away from the main play area, the things in the outfield are often references to sexual behaviors that are "kinky" and "out there".

*2outfielders1glove is a reference to the infamous {{w|2girls1cup}} scatological site and associated meme.
*The [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=retrograde%20wheelbarrow Retrograde Wheelbarrow] is a sex position, one referenced previously in [[300: Facebook]], making this a callback.
*Eye contact from {{w|Janeane Garofalo}} is a tie-in to the "eye contact" entry positioned near home base. It's possible that this is placed in the outfield because fantasizing about celebrities like Janeane Garofalo is a behavior that is often considered unusual, even though many people do it.

===Infield===

The infield is a series of catchers stationed immediately outside or just within the diamond, with the goal of receiving the ball from the outfield (or catching it themselves) and using it to tag any running opposing teammates to foil their attempts at moving to the next base on the diamond. Players within the diamond, such as the shortstop, will also be doing this as well - they often receive the ball from the infield. As such, the infield is still "out there", away from the "usual" sexual interactions in the diamond, but they are things you might pass upon the way.

*Napoleon's Forces is a cartography joke, one making a comment that all of this complicated positioning makes the image look like a map depicting military maneuvers - or possibly simply a visual gag meant to evoke the image of Napoleon's army marching through a land of sexual behaviors.
*Fursuits are anthropmorphic animal costumes worn by some members of the {{w|Furry Fandom}}, people who are fans of anthropomorphized (human-like) animals. Fursuiters are a small fraction of the entire fandom, but are sometimes used in sexual play.
*Fursuits (crotchless) are fursuits with no fabric or covering on the groin (crotch) of the wearer, and as such are specifically intended for sexual play. They are placed slightly further "out there" on the field due to this being more unusual, and across the orgasm line.
*Standing anywhere near Peaches is referring to the musician {{w|Peaches (musician)|Peaches}} who is known for her heavy use of sexual imagery.

===The Diamond===

The "diamond" is the geometric pattern formed by the four bases - first, second, third, and home plate. After the ball is hit by the batter, and is in the air, players have a chance to move to the next base in line, from first, to second, to third, and finally to home plate (scoring only if they make it to home plate), only being removed from play if they are touched by a player carrying the ball in an attempt to move between bases. Thus there is a "progression" from one base to the next of sexual activity in the metaphor, until climax is achieved (getting to 'home plate' and 'scoring a point')

The entries in this section are ordered roughly from home plate to first, to second, to third, and then to home plate again, in the counterclockwise direction that the players move.

*Eye contact is placed just alongside the initial stage where the 'player' has just stepped off the home plate and is starting to move towards first. This is a deliberate setup for the 'thigh contact' pun later just before home plate (eye contact first, and then thigh contact later, when sex has begun).
*Passing notes refers to a common method of communication in the classroom in school, often used by students as a form of courtship. It is placed halfway between the start and first base - the point at which communication has begun.
*First base is kissing. This is one of the most common assigned meanings for what the 'first base' is in the baseball metaphor - as in, "getting to first base".
*The boring zone is the point between kissing and sexual teasing or activity - the point where intimacy has become normal but sexual behaviors have not been okayed yet. This is boring for many (stereotypical) males especially. It can also be the point at which a workup is attempted from kissing to gentle stroking and finally to the overt sexual teasing that is found by the time you have gotten to second base.
*Second base is licking or hands under the shirt. Overt sexual teasing, in an attempt to get the other person aroused.
*'Hands on the pants' and 'hands in the pants' are two activities that happen in a very short distance of each other during an average sexual encounter. They are also separated by the 'orgasm line', indicating that teasing has stopped and actual sexual activity has begun.
*Third base is oral sex. Oral sex is often used to prepare or arouse another person in preparation for intercourse, although it can be performed until one or both climax. In older versions of the baseball metaphor, third base was "hands in the pants" instead, which has been moved to earlier on the line in this new, "modern" version - or at least, Randall's conception of it.
*The Virginity line, which is also named, in brackets, after the {{w|Maginot Line}}, a series of French fortifications that were thought to be impenetrable during the leadup to {{w|World War II}}. This line provides a direct "barrier" to the path between third base and a home run. The Maginot Line was thought to be completely impenetrable until it was bypassed by the German army during WW2 through the Ardennes forest, whereupon it was encircled and destroyed. Virginity is often seen as an impenetrable barrier, or an unwillingness, up until arousal and desire conspire to make it go away rapidly.
*Teens, naturally, having a propensity for hormone-driven sex, bypass the Virginity line with ease.
*Sharing root PWs (passwords) is placed very close to home plate. As a system administrator, the one thing you never, ever do is give anyone the root (core) password to a file system, because anyone with the password is able to get unlimited access to the system to do whatever they please. Sharing a root password with another person is a nerdy way of saying that you trust them on an intimate, deep level. In other words, it requires more trust than oral sex.
*Finally, there is home plate. In this diagram, it is unlabelled, but in all versions of the baseball metaphor, the home plate signifies sexual intercourse and climax. Scoring a "home run" with a sexual partner means you "took it all the way" and "scored a point".

===Within the Diamond and the Orgasm Line===
Inside the diamond, at the center of the mound, is the pitcher. Several odd positions are placed here in Randall's diagram.

*Dry humping is the activity of humping (thrusting against) a partner without one or both of them removing their clothes, in order to arouse or gain sexual satisfaction. The location is probably a combination of the fact that it lies somewhere between hands on/in the pants, is definitely not an activity that is considered "out there" (in the outfield), hasn't quite made it to 3rd base, but is still pretty close to home and crossing the virginity line.
*Using the scroll thingy on that one Apple mouse is presumably here because the small, rounded scroll button can be imagined to be a clitorus. See also [[243]]
*The Orgasm Line, which passes through almost every other play field, seems to be a divider that runs throughout the entire map that separates teasing and arousing behavior from overt sexual behavior intended to pleasure others. Fursuits (arousing, to some) become crotchless fursuits (overtly a sexual tool) when they cross the orgasm line. Hands on the pants and hands in the pants are two related but different activities - hands on the pants is arousing, and hands in the pants is intended to pleasure others.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Ponytail are talking; Ponytail is sitting on the back of a chair with her feet on the seat, and Cueball is sitting on the floor facing her.]
:Ponytail: So how far did you get with her?
:Cueball: Second base?

:Ponytail: Wait, which one is that? Below the waist, but... not under the clothes?
:Cueball: I think that's... shortstop?

:Ponytail: You should try crossing the pitcher's mound. Then down the 50-yard line, and right past her ten-pin.
:Cueball: Sounds tricky.

:Ponytail: Yeah. Last time I tried it, I got a red flag. If you know what I mean.
:Cueball: I really don't.

:[A diagram of a baseball diamond.]
:The "Base" Metaphor Explained
:[Bases and x points are marked, as well as dashed lines covering the field.]
:[Along the first base line is "Your Base".]
:[Slightly right of that is a binary base:
::0110 0010 0110 0001
::0111 0011 0110 0101
::0010 0000 0011 0010] ("base 2" in ASCII)
:[First base: Kissing.]
:[Second base: Hands under the shirt and/or licking.]
:[Third base: Oral sex (formerly "hands in the pants").]
:[The following are x marks:
::Slightly right of home plate: Eye contact.
::Along the first base line: Passing notes.
::Slightly before first base: Downloading Star Trek fanfiction and replacing Riker's name with your Crush's.
::Right field: Eye contact from Janeane Garofalo.
::Between the pitcher and second base: Using the scroll thingy on that one Apple mouse.
::Near the shortstop: Dry humping.
::Left of second base: Fursuits.
::Farther left: Fursuits (crotchless).
::Just before home plate: Thigh contact.
::Beyond 3rd base, along the 3rd base line: Standing anywhere near Peaches.
::Foul of the third base line: Anal sex (fill in your own "Foul Ball" pun here.)
::Left outfield: 2outfielders1glove.
::Left outfield: Retrograde wheelbarrow.]
:[The following are dashed lines:
::A region along the line from first to second base: The Boring Zone.
::A line traveling across the second to third baseline, and towards home plate: The orgasm line. (Dry humping is on the "orgasm" side.)
::Between third base and home: "Virginity" (Maginot) line.]
:[Arrows pointing out various other features:
::An arrow crossing the "Virginity" line: Teens.
::An arrow nearer to home plate: Sharing root PWs.
::An arrow crossing the orgasm line in the outfield: Napoleon's forces.]

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

1032: Networking

2015-02-27T19:24:28Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1032
| date = March 21, 2012
| title = Networking
| image = networking.png
| titletext = Our company is agile and lean with a focus on the long tail. Ok, our company is actually a polecat I found in my backyard.
}}

==Explanation==
Obviously, [[Beret Guy]]'s [[1021|business plan]] worked.

Networking, in business, is the act of expanding your group of contacts in order to help your career down the line. Here, in this comic, [[Beret Guy]] meets Chief Technology Officer (CTO, an executive level position overseeing development of new technologies) Connr Clark (perhaps a typo for "Connor" or perhaps a reference to common "Web 2.0" names like the businesses {{w|Flickr}}, {{w|Tumblr}}, etc.) and Beret Guy is as strange as he usually is: Although he is a business professional he has just photocopied a burrito... He also has a business card, usually this would contain contact information, but his only says "This is my business card". He calls his briefcase, or suitcase, a "handlebox", and it is full of a quarter of a million dollars in cash. Then Beret Guy proceeds to eat Connr's business card. All of these things are not common behavior.{{Citation needed}}

"Networking" is often an over-hyped, empty affair. There are zillions of networking meetings of every description going on every day everywhere, and mostly people trade cards and continue to not make money. So that's the joke – Beret Guy does the networking {{w|schtick}}, badly, and yet is somehow making huge amounts of money at it.

The comic is also likely a joke on the idea that many people are excited about becoming a "business professional" who carries a briefcase, hands out business cards, and makes tons of money, without having an adequate plan for how to make those things happen, or possibly even knowing what their actual job would be. Beret Guy never says what he does, simply introducing himself as a "business professional," and explains his piles of cash with "I am a business grown-up who makes business profits!" In this world —and in people's dreams— when you "grow up" and start a business, money magically appears. Obviously, that's not how it works.

The title text is a pun on three common business buzzwords: agile, lean and long-tail. An agile business is one that can change course quickly based on customer demands and the business environment. A lean business is an efficient one that can provide results for customers without any wasted time, energy or money. Long-tail describes the retailing strategy of selling a large number of unique items with relatively small quantities sold of each – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities. An example for long-tail is Netflix, because they have (almost) every movie imaginable, including rare ones that only a few people would be interested in. Well, they ''pretend'' to; in reality, your movie may be marked Saved for years until they actually manage to get a copy, if they ever do.

And of course, the pun here is one animal that is agile and lean with a long tail is a {{w|polecat}}.

Furthermore, although "agile" and "lean" do mean a quick, nimble, and efficient business, they also refer to specific practices, as in {{w|agile software development}}, {{w|lean manufacturing}} and {{w|lean Six Sigma}}. Many people think these terms have devolved to overused jargon. While agile development is supposed to be a highly structured method to get programmers to produce more working code quickly, when someone from the marketing department says "''agile''" it often means "''We don't know what we're supposed to be producing, so we'll just chuck some stuff together, and keep those bits that the customer says he likes. We'll then do it all over again until we've got something that he'll pay for.''" "''Lean''" is supposed to mean that a business keeps its costs as low as possible, employing one person to do marketing and PR, not really having a Human Resources department, etc. But, in practice it often becomes "''Keep as little stock as possible so that we don't have a lot of money tied up in it, and don't need a big warehouse; make stuff just before it is supposed to ship so that we don't have to store it either; make frequent prayers and virgin sacrifices to whatever gods we can find to ensure that nothing slips up anywhere along the line that our lawyers can't get us out of.''"

See also [[1117: My Sky]].

==Transcript==
:[A man approaches Beret Guy at a party and they extend arms to shake hands. Beret Guy is holding a metal briefcase. There is a waitress in the background, carrying a tray with a wine glass on it.]
:Man: I'm Connr Clark, CTO at Eusocial Media Ventures.
:Beret Guy: I'm a business professional! Earlier I photocopied a burrito!

:[The man hands Beret Guy a business card. Beret Guy takes it and hands the man another business card. Beret Guy has put his suitcase on the floor.]
:Man: You should check us out! Here's my card.
:Beret Guy: Here's mine! Networking!

:[The man takes a closer look at the card, and Beret Guy holds up his case.]
:Man: ...this just says "This is my business card!"
:Beret Guy: Do you like it? I have more in my handlebox.

:[Beret Guy puts his case on a table and opens it to reveal it is full of cash. The man looks on in shock.]
:Man: Uh, that's ok, I think I'll—
:Beret Guy: Here, have ten of them!
:Man: —holy shit that thing is full of ''cash!''

:[The man raises his arms in excitement. Beret Guy turns to face him and chews on the man's business card.]
:Man: Where did you ''get'' that?
:Beret Guy: I am a business grown-up who makes business profits!
:Man: That's like a quarter of a million dollars!
:Beret Guy: Yay! Business is fun! Do you have more of your cards? They're ''delicious!''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]

1491: Stories of the Past and Future

2015-02-25T20:48:18Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ adjusted wikilink

{{comic
| number = 1491
| date = February 25, 2015
| title = Stories of the Past and Future
| image = stories_of_the_past_and_future.png
| titletext = Little-known fact: The 'Dawn of Man' opening sequence in 2001 cuts away seconds before the Flinstones theme becomes recognizable.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}
''A larger version of the image is available [http://xkcd.com/1491/large/ here].''

X-axis: Date of publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the future": Number of years the story's events take place, after the story's publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the past": Number of years the story's events take place, before the story's publication.

For example, "Water Margin" was published in the 14th century (x ~= 1300) and relates events from the 12th century, about 200 years before its publication (y ~= 200 in the past).

Another example: The film ''{{w|The Bridge on the River Kwai}}'' was released in 1957 and it was set around 14 years before (~1942-43).

Grey area in the "Years in the future" part: Stories set in the future (from their publication's date), whose the story's events' date is already past (from now).

Grey area in the "Years in the past" part: Stories set in the past (from their publication's date), published closer to their setting than to today.

Taking the "years in the past" on the y-axis to be read as negatives like in most graphs one can write:

Dates on the lower line satisfy: y = x-2015. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015+y and are set in the year x+y = 2015+2y.

Dates on the upper line satisfy: y = 2015-x. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015-y and are set in the year x+y = 2015.

Thus it's clear that the definitions of the lines are consistent with each other as they follow similar but inverted functions.

In the top portion of the graph, the two sides of the line are defined as "still possible" and "obsolete" (gray area). The gray area (obsolete) expands over time, the prediction (or science fiction work) that are not confirmed by reality are doomed to be obsolete. The author mark the line of the stories set in 2015; they are the expectation for our present in different past times.

In the bottom graph, the line indicates the limit in which the publishing time is nearer to the time treated in the work than to the present. The work in the gray area could be perceived as written by contemporary writers while in most cases they refer to a further past. This is expressed in the warning: "Modern audiences may not recognize which part were supposed to sound old". This is a recurrent theme in the author's work, being already formulated in [[Period_Speech|Period Speech]] comic.

The bottom of the chart has the Star Wars films, which are set "A long time ago".

===Works listed===

{| {{table}}
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Publication'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Description'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year written'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year difference'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year set in'''
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Memoirs of the Twentieth Century|Memoirs of the Twentieth Century]]|| book written by Samuel Madden||1733||264||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Golf in the Year 2000|Golf in the Year 2000]]|| novel written by J. McCullough||1892||108||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Looking Backward|Looking Backward]]|| novel written by Edward Bellamy||1888||112||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Enoch Soames|Enoch Soames]]|| short story by Max Beerbohm||1897||100||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Time Machine|The Time Machine]]|| novel written by H.G. Wells||1895||800,806||802,701
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]||novel written by George Orwell||1949||35||1984
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd|A Week in the Wales of the Future]]||novel written by Islwyn Ffowc Elis||1957||76||2033
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Jetsons|The Jetsons]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1962 *||100||2062 †
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek !TOS!]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1966 *||298||2264
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968||33||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Space: 1999|Space: 1999]]||TV series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson||1975 *||24||1999
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2010: Odyssey Two|2010: Odyssey Two]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1982||28||2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek: The Next Generation]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1987 *||377||2364
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2061: Odyssey Three|2061: Odyssey Three]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1987||74||2061
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Zero Wing|Zero Wing]]||arcade/computer game||1989||112||2101 (previously referenced in [[887: Future Timeline]])
|-
| [[Wikipedia:3001: The Final Odyssey|3001: The Final Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1997||1004||3001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]||TV series||2001 *||150||2151
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Back to the Future Part II|Back to the Future Part II]]||film directed by Robert Zemeckis||1989||26||2015
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Transformers (TV series)|Transformers (TV Series)]]||TV series||1984 *||~ 20||< 2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Terminator 2: Judgment Day|Terminator 2 (1995 Portion)]]||film directed by James Cameron||1991||4||1995
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]||film directed by Michael Curtiz||1942||< 1||1941
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Pillow Book|The Pillow Book]]||book written by Sei Shōnagon||1002||6||996
|-
| [[Wikipedia:History of the Peloponnesian War|History of the Peloponnesian War]]||history written by Thucydides||~400 BCE||~10||431-411 BCE
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Moby-Dick|Moby-Dick]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Gospels|Gospels]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Epic of Gilgamesh|Epic of Gilgamesh]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Iliad|Iliad]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Ashokavadana|Ashokavadana]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Book of Genesis|Book of Genesis]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Water Margin|Water Margin]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:King John (play)|King John]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||~400||~1200-1216
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry IV (play)|Henry IV]]||plays by William Shakespeare||1598*||185-196||1402-1413
|-
| [[wikipedia:Richard III (play)|Richard III]]||play by William Shakespeare||1597||112-119||1478-1485
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||90-102||1521-1533
|-
| [[wikipedia:Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||1667-1670||45-2 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:King Lear|King Lear]]||play by William Shakespeare||1608||2400|| 8th century B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court|A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]||novel by Mark Twain||1889||1200||6th Century
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lest Darkness Fall|Lest Darkness Fall]]||alternate history SF novel by L. Sprague de Camp||1939||1404||535
|-
|[[wikipedia:Asterix|Asterix]]||French comic by Goscinny and Uderzo||1959*||-2009||50 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|The Ten Commandments]]||film by Cecil B. DeMille||1956||->3000||[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Flintstones|The Flintstones]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1960*||->2,5 million||[[wikipedia:Stone Age|Stone Age]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey|2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968|||-3 million||3 million years B.C. (4 in the movie)
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Original trilogy|Star Wars (IV - VI)]]||original film trilogy ||1977-1983|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Prequel trilogy|Star Wars (I - III)]]||prequel film trilogy||1999-2005|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Raptor Red|Raptor Red]]||novel by Robert Bakker||1995||->65 million||Cretaceous Period
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars sequel trilogy|Star Wars (VII - IX)]]||sequel film trilogy||2015-2021|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Ice Age (film series)|Ice Age]]||animated films by Blue Sky Studios||2002*||->12,000||[[wikipedia:Last glacial period| Paleolithic-Mesolithic]]
|-
|[[wikipedia:10,000 BC (film)|10,000 BC]]||film by Roland Emmerich||2008||-11,992||10,000 BC
|-
| [[wikipedia:300 (film)|300]]||film by Zack Snyder||2007||-2487||[[wikipedia:Battle of Thermopylae|480 BC]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:Year One (film)|Year One]]||film by Harold Ramis||2009||-2008||1 AD
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Prince of Egypt|The Prince of Egypt]]||animated film by DreamWorks||1998||->3400|[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:Downton Abbey|Downtown Abbey]]||TV series||2010*||->90||1912-1923
|-
| [[wikipedia:Pearl Harbor (film)|Pearl Harbour]]||film by Michael Bay||2001||-60||1941
|-
| [[wikipedia:Saving Private Ryan|Saving Private Ryan]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1998||-54||1944
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chariots of Fire|Chariots of Fire]]||film by Hugh Hudson||1981||-57||1924
|-
| [[wikipedia:Blazing Saddles|Blazing Saddles]]||film by Mel Brooks||1974||-100||1874
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future Part III|Back to the Future Part III]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1990||-105||1885
|-
| [[wikipedia:Roots (miniseries)|Roots]]||TV series, adapted from eponymous novel||1977||->113||1750-1861
|-
| [[wikipedia:Treasure Island|Treasure Island]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Last of the Mohicans|The Last of the Mohicans]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Tale of Two Cities|A Tale of Two Cities]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gone With The Wind|Gone With The Wind]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gunsmoke|Gunsmoke]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Rip Van Winkle|Rip Van Winkel [sic]]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Les Misérables|Les Miserábles [sic]]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Oklahoma!|Oklahoma!]]||Broadway musical||1943||-37||1906
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lawrence of Arabia|Lawrence of Arabia]]||film by David Lean||1962||->44||1916-8
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Music Man|The Music Man]]||Broadway musical||1957||-45||1912
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (musical)|Annie (play)]]||Broadway musical||1977||-44||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (1982 film)|Annie (movie)]]||film adaptation of the above by John Huston||1982||-49||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Schindler's List|Schindler's List]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1993||->48||1939-1945
|-
| [[wikipedia:Mad Men|Mad Men]]||TV series||2007*||->47||1960-1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:Evita (1996 film)|Evita]]||film by Alan Parker||1996||-44||1952
|-
| [[wikipedia:Bonnie and Clyde(film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]||film by Arthur Penn||1967||->33||1932-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chinatown (1974 film)|Chinatown]]||film by Roman Polanski||1974||-37||1937
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gandhi (film)|Gandhi]]||film by Robert Attenborough||1982||->34||1893-1948
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Sandlot|The Sandlot]]||film by David Mickey Evans||1993||-31||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future|Back to the Future]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1985||-30||1955
|-
| [[wikipedia:Patton (film)|Patton]]||film by Franklin J. Schaffner||1970||->25||1943-5
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22 (film)|Catch-22 (Movie)]]||film by Mike Nichols||1970||->26||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Great Escape (film)|The Great Escape]]||film by John Sturges||1963||-20||1943-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22|Catch-22 (Book)]]||novel by Joseph Heller||1961||->17||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:MASH (film)|M*A*S*H]]||film by Robert Altman||1970||-19||1951
|-
| [[wikipedia:Grease (film)|Grease]]||film by Randall Kleiser||1978||-20||1958
|-
| [[wikipedia:Happy Days|Happy Days]]||TV series||1974-84||-19||1955-1965
|-
| [[wikipedia:Platoon (film)|Platoon]]||film by Oliver Stone||1986||-21||1967
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wonder Years|The Wonder Years]]||TV series||1988-93||-20||1968-73
|-
| [[wikipedia:Dirty Dancing|Dirty Dancing]]||film by Emile Ardolino||1987||-24||1963
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Right Stuff (film)|The Right Stuff]]||film by Philip Kaufman||1983||->20||1947-63
|-
| [[wikipedia:JFK (film)|JFK]]||film by Oliver Stone||1991||->22||1963-9
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apollo 13 (film)|Apollo 13]]||film by Ron Howard||1995||-25||1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:That '70s Show|That '70s Show]]||TV series||1998-2006||->22|||1976-1979
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wolf of Wall Street|The Wolf of Wall Street]]||film by Martin Scorsese||2013||->18||1987-1995
|-
| [[wikipedia:Freaks and Geeks|Freaks and Geeks]]||TV series||1999-2000||-19||1980-1
|-
| [[wikipedia:I Love the '80s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '80s]]||TV miniseries by VH1||2002||-22||1980
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Bridge on the River Kwai|The Bridge on the River Kwai]]||film by David Lean||1952||-9\10||1942-3
|-
| [[wikipedia:American Graffiti|American Graffiti]]||film by George Lucas||1973||-11||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apocalypse Now|Apocalypse Now]]||film by Francis Ford Coppola||1979||-10||1969
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Big Lebowski|The Big Lebowski]]||film by the Coen Brothers||1998||-7||1991
|-
| [[Wikipedia:United 93 (film)|United 93]]|| film directed by Paul Greengrass||2006||-5||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the '90s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '90s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2004||-14||1990
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Hotel Rwanda|Hotel Rwanda]]|| film directed by Terry George||2004||-10||1994
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the 2000s|I Love the 2000s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2014||-14||2000
|-
|
|}

* = first episode aired. † = conjectured year set in.

==Trivia==
There is a hypercorrection in ''{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}'' as ''Rip van Winkel''. Washington Irving may have misspelled ''van {{w|nl:Winkel|Winkel}}''.

It's ''{{w|Les Misérables}}'' not ''Les Miserábles''. Note that French doesn't have "á".

{{w|Lest Darkness Fall}} takes place about 1400 years in the past, but is places around the -500 years line on the graph.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:'''Date of publication'''
:[A logarithmic scale running horizontally, from 3000 BCE to past 2015 CE]
:'''Years in the future'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 1 billion down to 0]
:'''Stories set in the future''' (science fiction, prediction)
::Stories set in 2015
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled "still possible"; the lower side is labelled "obsolete".]
:[from left to right...]
::Memoirs of the Twentieth Century [1733, 265 years in the future]
::Looking Backward [1888, 112 years in the future]
::Golf in the Year 2000 [1892, 108 years in the future]
::The Time Machine [1895, 800 thousand to 30 million years in the future]
::Enoch Soames [1916, ''circa'' 60 years in the future]
::1984 [1949, 35 years in the future]
::A Week in the Wales of the Future [1957, 76 years in the future]
::The Jetsons [1962-63, 100 years in the future]
::Star Trek [1966-69, 300 years in the future]
::2001: A Space Odyssey [1968, 33 years in the future]
::Space: 1999 [1975-77, 24 years in the future]
::2010: Odyssey Two [1982, 28 years in the future]
::Transformers (TV series) [1984-87, 20 years in the future]
::2061: Odyssey Three [1987, 74 years in the future]
::Star Trek: The Next Generation [1987-94, ''circa'' 500 years in the future]
::Back to the Future Part II [1989, 26 years in the future]
::Zero Wing [1989, 112 years in the future]
::Terminator 2 (1995 portion) [1991, 4 years in the future]
::3001: The Final Odyssey [1997, 1004 years in the future]
::Enterprise [2001-2005, 150 years in the future]
::This chart [2015, 0 years in the future]
:'''Years in the Past'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 0 down past 1 billion to "Big Bang"]
:'''Stories Set in the Past''' (History, Period Fiction)
::Stories written X years ago and set 2X years ago
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled as follows.]
::'''Former Period Pieces'''
::Stories set in the past, but created long enough ago that they were published closer to their setting than to today.
::Modern audiences may not recognize which parts were ''supposed'' to sound old.
:[from left to right...]
::The Epic of Gilgamesh [''circa'' 2100 BCE, 600 years in the past]
::The Iliad [''circa''' 800 BCE, 450 years in the past]
::History of the Peloponnesian War [''circa'' 390 BCE, 10 years in the past]
::Book of Genesis [''circa'' 500 BCE, 4000 years in the past]
::Ashokavadana [''circa'' 100 BCE, 300 years in the past]
::Gospels (various estimates) [''circa'' 250 CE, 24 to 75 years in the past]
::The Pillow Book [1000 CE, 5 years in the past]
::Water Margin [''circa'' 1300, 195 years in the past]
::Richard III [''circa'' 1590, 115 years in the past]
::Julius Caesar [1599, 1650 years in the past]
::King John [''circa'' 1600, 500 years in the past]
::Henry IV [''circa'' 1600, 190 years in the past]
::King Lear [''circa'' 1606, 3000 years in the past]
::Henry VIII [''circa'' 1612, 105 years in the past]
::The Last of the Mohicans [1826, 69 years in the past]
::Rip Van Winkel [1819, 31-51 years in the past]
::A Tale of Two Cities [1859, 60 years in the past]
::Moby-Dick [1851, around 10 years ago]
:::"Some years ago--never mind how long precisely..."
::Les Miserábles [1862, 30 years in the past]
::A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
::Treasure Island
::Gone With the Wind
::Lest Darkness Fall
::Casablanca
::Oklahoma!
::The Ten Commandments
::The Bridge on the River Kwai
::Gunsmoke
::Catch-22 (book)
::The Flintstones
::The Great Escape
::Asterix
::Lawrence of Arabia
::The Music Man
::Bonnie and Clyde
::2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)
::American Graffiti
::Patton
::Catch-22 (movie)
::Chinatown
::Blazing Saddles
::Apocalypse Now
::Happy Days
::Grease
::M*A*S*H
::Annie (play)
::Roots
::Chariots of Fire
::Star Wars (IV-VI)
::Annie (movie)
::The Right Stuff
::Back to the Future
::Gandhi
::Platoon
::Dirty Dancing
::Back to the Future Part III
::The Wonder Years
::JFK
::The Sandlot
::Schindler's List
::Raptor Red
::Apollo 13
::Star Wars (I-III)
::The Big Lebowski
::Evita
::Saving Private Ryan
::The Prince of Egypt
::Freaks and Geeks
::Hotel Rwanda
::I Love the '80s
::That '70s Show
::Pearl Harbor
::Ice Age
::I Love the '90s
::United 93
::300
::10,000 BC
::Year One
::The Wolf of Wall Street
::I Love the 2000s
::Mad Men
::Downton Abbey
::Star Wars (VII-IX)

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]

1491: Stories of the Past and Future

2015-02-25T20:38:48Z

Nyq: /* Transcript */ decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1491
| date = February 25, 2015
| title = Stories of the Past and Future
| image = stories_of_the_past_and_future.png
| titletext = Little-known fact: The 'Dawn of Man' opening sequence in 2001 cuts away seconds before the Flinstones theme becomes recognizable.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}
''A larger version of the image is available [http://xkcd.com/1491/large/ here].''

X-axis: Date of publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the future": Number of years the story's events take place, after the story's publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the past": Number of years the story's events take place, before the story's publication.

For example, "Water Margin" was published in the 14th century (x ~= 1300) and relates events from the 12th century, about 200 years before its publication (y ~= 200 in the past).

Another example: The film ''{{w|The Bridge on the River Kwai}}'' was released in 1957 and it was set around 14 years before (~1942-43).

Grey area in the "Years in the future" part: Stories set in the future (from their publication's date), whose the story's events' date is already past (from now).

Grey area in the "Years in the past" part: Stories set in the past (from their publication's date), published closer to their setting than to today.

Taking the "years in the past" on the y-axis to be read as negatives like in most graphs one can write:

Dates on the lower line satisfy: y = x-2015. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015+y and are set in the year x+y = 2015+2y.

Dates on the upper line satisfy: y = 2015-x. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015-y and are set in the year x+y = 2015.

Thus it's clear that the definitions of the lines are consistent with each other as they follow similar but inverted functions.

In the top portion of the graph, the two sides of the line are defined as "still possible" and "obsolete" (gray area). The gray area (obsolete) expands over time, the prediction (or science fiction work) that are not confirmed by reality are doomed to be obsolete. The author mark the line of the stories set in 2015; they are the expectation for our present in different past times.

In the bottom graph, the line indicates the limit in which the publishing time is nearer to the time treated in the work than to the present. The work in the gray area could be perceived as written by contemporary writers while in most cases they refer to a further past. This is expressed in the warning: "Modern audiences may not recognize which part were supposed to sound old". This is a recurrent theme in the author's work, being already formulated in [[Period_Speech]].

The bottom of the chart has the Star Wars films, which are set "A long time ago".

===Works listed===

{| {{table}}
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Publication'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Description'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year written'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year difference'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year set in'''
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Memoirs of the Twentieth Century|Memoirs of the Twentieth Century]]|| book written by Samuel Madden||1733||264||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Golf in the Year 2000|Golf in the Year 2000]]|| novel written by J. McCullough||1892||108||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Looking Backward|Looking Backward]]|| novel written by Edward Bellamy||1888||112||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Enoch Soames|Enoch Soames]]|| short story by Max Beerbohm||1897||100||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Time Machine|The Time Machine]]|| novel written by H.G. Wells||1895||800,806||802,701
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]||novel written by George Orwell||1949||35||1984
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd|A Week in the Wales of the Future]]||novel written by Islwyn Ffowc Elis||1957||76||2033
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Jetsons|The Jetsons]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1962 *||100||2062 †
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek !TOS!]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1966 *||298||2264
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968||33||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Space: 1999|Space: 1999]]||TV series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson||1975 *||24||1999
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2010: Odyssey Two|2010: Odyssey Two]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1982||28||2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek: The Next Generation]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1987 *||377||2364
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2061: Odyssey Three|2061: Odyssey Three]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1987||74||2061
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Zero Wing|Zero Wing]]||arcade/computer game||1989||112||2101 (previously referenced in [[887: Future Timeline]])
|-
| [[Wikipedia:3001: The Final Odyssey|3001: The Final Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1997||1004||3001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]||TV series||2001 *||150||2151
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Back to the Future Part II|Back to the Future Part II]]||film directed by Robert Zemeckis||1989||26||2015
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Transformers (TV series)|Transformers (TV Series)]]||TV series||1984 *||~ 20||< 2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Terminator 2: Judgment Day|Terminator 2 (1995 Portion)]]||film directed by James Cameron||1991||4||1995
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]||film directed by Michael Curtiz||1942||< 1||1941
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Pillow Book|The Pillow Book]]||book written by Sei Shōnagon||1002||6||996
|-
| [[Wikipedia:History of the Peloponnesian War|History of the Peloponnesian War]]||history written by Thucydides||~400 BCE||~10||431-411 BCE
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Moby-Dick|Moby-Dick]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Gospels|Gospels]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Epic of Gilgamesh|Epic of Gilgamesh]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Iliad|Iliad]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Ashokavadana|Ashokavadana]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Book of Genesis|Book of Genesis]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Water Margin|Water Margin]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:King John (play)|King John]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||~400||~1200-1216
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry IV (play)|Henry IV]]||plays by William Shakespeare||1598*||185-196||1402-1413
|-
| [[wikipedia:Richard III (play)|Richard III]]||play by William Shakespeare||1597||112-119||1478-1485
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||90-102||1521-1533
|-
| [[wikipedia:Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||1667-1670||45-2 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:King Lear|King Lear]]||play by William Shakespeare||1608||2400|| 8th century B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court|A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]||novel by Mark Twain||1889||1200||6th Century
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lest Darkness Fall|Lest Darkness Fall]]||alternate history SF novel by L. Sprague de Camp||1939||1404||535
|-
|[[wikipedia:Asterix|Asterix]]||French comic by Goscinny and Uderzo||1959*||-2009||50 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|The Ten Commandments]]||film by Cecil B. DeMille||1956||->3000||[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Flintstones|The Flintstones]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1960*||->2,5 million||[[wikipedia:Stone Age|Stone Age]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey|2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968|||-3 million||3 million years B.C. (4 in the movie)
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Original trilogy|Star Wars (IV - VI)]]||original film trilogy ||1977-1983|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Prequel trilogy|Star Wars (I - III)]]||prequel film trilogy||1999-2005|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Raptor Red|Raptor Red]]||novel by Robert Bakker||1995||->65 million||Cretaceous Period
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars sequel trilogy|Star Wars (VII - IX)]]||sequel film trilogy||2015-2021|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Ice Age (film series)|Ice Age]]||animated films by Blue Sky Studios||2002*||->12,000||[[wikipedia:Last glacial period| Paleolithic-Mesolithic]]
|-
|[[wikipedia:10,000 BC (film)|10,000 BC]]||film by Roland Emmerich||2008||-11,992||10,000 BC
|-
| [[wikipedia:300 (film)|300]]||film by Zack Snyder||2007||-2487||[[wikipedia:Battle of Thermopylae|480 BC]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:Year One (film)|Year One]]||film by Harold Ramis||2009||-2008||1 AD
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Prince of Egypt|The Prince of Egypt]]||animated film by DreamWorks||1998||->3400|[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:Downton Abbey|Downtown Abbey]]||TV series||2010*||->90||1912-1923
|-
| [[wikipedia:Pearl Harbor (film)|Pearl Harbour]]||film by Michael Bay||2001||-60||1941
|-
| [[wikipedia:Saving Private Ryan|Saving Private Ryan]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1998||-54||1944
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chariots of Fire|Chariots of Fire]]||film by Hugh Hudson||1981||-57||1924
|-
| [[wikipedia:Blazing Saddles|Blazing Saddles]]||film by Mel Brooks||1974||-100||1874
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future Part III|Back to the Future Part III]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1990||-105||1885
|-
| [[wikipedia:Roots (miniseries)|Roots]]||TV series, adapted from eponymous novel||1977||->113||1750-1861
|-
| [[wikipedia:Treasure Island|Treasure Island]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Last of the Mohicans|The Last of the Mohicans]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Tale of Two Cities|A Tale of Two Cities]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gone With The Wind|Gone With The Wind]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gunsmoke|Gunsmoke]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Rip Van Winkle|Rip Van Winkel [sic]]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Les Misérables|Les Miserábles [sic]]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Oklahoma!|Oklahoma!]]||Broadway musical||1943||-37||1906
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lawrence of Arabia|Lawrence of Arabia]]||film by David Lean||1962||->44||1916-8
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Music Man|The Music Man]]||Broadway musical||1957||-45||1912
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (musical)|Annie (play)]]||Broadway musical||1977||-44||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (1982 film)|Annie (movie)]]||film adaptation of the above by John Huston||1982||-49||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Schindler's List|Schindler's List]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1993||->48||1939-1945
|-
| [[wikipedia:Mad Men|Mad Men]]||TV series||2007*||->47||1960-1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:Evita (1996 film)|Evita]]||film by Alan Parker||1996||-44||1952
|-
| [[wikipedia:Bonnie and Clyde(film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]||film by Arthur Penn||1967||->33||1932-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chinatown (1974 film)|Chinatown]]||film by Roman Polanski||1974||-37||1937
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gandhi (film)|Gandhi]]||film by Robert Attenborough||1982||->34||1893-1948
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Sandlot|The Sandlot]]||film by David Mickey Evans||1993||-31||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future|Back to the Future]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1985||-30||1955
|-
| [[wikipedia:Patton (film)|Patton]]||film by Franklin J. Schaffner||1970||->25||1943-5
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22 (film)|Catch-22 (Movie)]]||film by Mike Nichols||1970||->26||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Great Escape (film)|The Great Escape]]||film by John Sturges||1963||-20||1943-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22|Catch-22 (Book)]]||novel by Joseph Heller||1961||->17||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:MASH (film)|M*A*S*H]]||film by Robert Altman||1970||-19||1951
|-
| [[wikipedia:Grease (film)|Grease]]||film by Randall Kleiser||1978||-20||1958
|-
| [[wikipedia:Happy Days|Happy Days]]||TV series||1974-84||-19||1955-1965
|-
| [[wikipedia:Platoon (film)|Platoon]]||film by Oliver Stone||1986||-21||1967
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wonder Years|The Wonder Years]]||TV series||1988-93||-20||1968-73
|-
| [[wikipedia:Dirty Dancing|Dirty Dancing]]||film by Emile Ardolino||1987||-24||1963
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Right Stuff (film)|The Right Stuff]]||film by Philip Kaufman||1983||->20||1947-63
|-
| [[wikipedia:JFK (film)|JFK]]||film by Oliver Stone||1991||->22||1963-9
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apollo 13 (film)|Apollo 13]]||film by Ron Howard||1995||-25||1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:That '70s Show|That '70s Show]]||TV series||1998-2006||->22|||1976-1979
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wolf of Wall Street|The Wolf of Wall Street]]||film by Martin Scorsese||2013||->18||1987-1995
|-
| [[wikipedia:Freaks and Geeks|Freaks and Geeks]]||TV series||1999-2000||-19||1980-1
|-
| [[wikipedia:I Love the '80s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '80s]]||TV miniseries by VH1||2002||-22||1980
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Bridge on the River Kwai|The Bridge on the River Kwai]]||film by David Lean||1952||-9\10||1942-3
|-
| [[wikipedia:American Graffiti|American Graffiti]]||film by George Lucas||1973||-11||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apocalypse Now|Apocalypse Now]]||film by Francis Ford Coppola||1979||-10||1969
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Big Lebowski|The Big Lebowski]]||film by the Coen Brothers||1998||-7||1991
|-
| [[Wikipedia:United 93 (film)|United 93]]|| film directed by Paul Greengrass||2006||-5||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the '90s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '90s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2004||-14||1990
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Hotel Rwanda|Hotel Rwanda]]|| film directed by Terry George||2004||-10||1994
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the 2000s|I Love the 2000s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2014||-14||2000
|-
|
|}

* = first episode aired. † = conjectured year set in.

==Trivia==
There is a hypercorrection in ''{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}'' as ''Rip van Winkel''. Washington Irving may have misspelled ''van {{w|nl:Winkel|Winkel}}''.

It's ''{{w|Les Misérables}}'' not ''Les Miserábles''. Note that French doesn't have "á".

{{w|Lest Darkness Fall}} takes place about 1400 years in the past, but is places around the -500 years line on the graph.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:'''Date of publication'''
:[A logarithmic scale running horizontally, from 3000 BCE to past 2015 CE]
:'''Years in the future'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 1 billion down to 0]
:'''Stories set in the future''' (science fiction, prediction)
::Stories set in 2015
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled "still possible"; the lower side is labelled "obsolete".]
:[from left to right...]
::Memoirs of the Twentieth Century [1733, 265 years in the future]
::Looking Backward [1888, 112 years in the future]
::Golf in the Year 2000 [1892, 108 years in the future]
::The Time Machine [1895, 800 thousand to 30 million years in the future]
::Enoch Soames [1916, ''circa'' 60 years in the future]
::1984 [1949, 35 years in the future]
::A Week in the Wales of the Future [1957, 76 years in the future]
::The Jetsons [1962-63, 100 years in the future]
::Star Trek [1966-69, 300 years in the future]
::2001: A Space Odyssey [1968, 33 years in the future]
::Space: 1999 [1975-77, 24 years in the future]
::2010: Odyssey Two [1982, 28 years in the future]
::Transformers (TV series) [1984-87, 20 years in the future]
::2061: Odyssey Three [1987, 74 years in the future]
::Star Trek: The Next Generation [1987-94, ''circa'' 500 years in the future]
::Back to the Future Part II [1989, 26 years in the future]
::Zero Wing [1989, 112 years in the future]
::Terminator 2 (1995 portion) [1991, 4 years in the future]
::3001: The Final Odyssey [1997, 1004 years in the future]
::Enterprise [2001-2005, 150 years in the future]
::This chart [2015, 0 years in the future]
:'''Years in the Past'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 0 down past 1 billion to "Big Bang"]
:'''Stories Set in the Past''' (History, Period Fiction)
::Stories written X years ago and set 2X years ago
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled as follows.]
::'''Former Period Pieces'''
::Stories set in the past, but created long enough ago that they were published closer to their setting than to today.
::Modern audiences may not recognize which parts were ''supposed'' to sound old.
:[from left to right...]
::The Epic of Gilgamesh [''circa'' 2100 BCE, 600 years in the past]
::The Iliad [''circa''' 800 BCE, 450 years in the past]
::History of the Peloponnesian War [''circa'' 390 BCE, 10 years in the past]
::Book of Genesis [''circa'' 500 BCE, 4000 years in the past]
::Ashokavadana [''circa'' 100 BCE, 300 years in the past]
::Gospels (various estimates) [''circa'' 250 CE, 24 to 75 years in the past]
::The Pillow Book [1000 CE, 5 years in the past]
::Water Margin [''circa'' 1300, 195 years in the past]
::Richard III [''circa'' 1590, 115 years in the past]
::Julius Caesar [1599, 1650 years in the past]
::King John [''circa'' 1600, 500 years in the past]
::Henry IV [''circa'' 1600, 190 years in the past]
::King Lear [''circa'' 1606, 3000 years in the past]
::Henry VIII [''circa'' 1612, 105 years in the past]
::The Last of the Mohicans [1826, 69 years in the past]
::Rip Van Winkel [1819, 31-51 years in the past]
::A Tale of Two Cities [1859, 60 years in the past]
::Moby-Dick [1851, around 10 years ago]
:::"Some years ago--never mind how long precisely..."
::Les Miserábles [1862, 30 years in the past]
::A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
::Treasure Island
::Gone With the Wind
::Lest Darkness Fall
::Casablanca
::Oklahoma!
::The Ten Commandments
::The Bridge on the River Kwai
::Gunsmoke
::Catch-22 (book)
::The Flintstones
::The Great Escape
::Asterix
::Lawrence of Arabia
::The Music Man
::Bonnie and Clyde
::2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)
::American Graffiti
::Patton
::Catch-22 (movie)
::Chinatown
::Blazing Saddles
::Apocalypse Now
::Happy Days
::Grease
::M*A*S*H
::Annie (play)
::Roots
::Chariots of Fire
::Star Wars (IV-VI)
::Annie (movie)
::The Right Stuff
::Back to the Future
::Gandhi
::Platoon
::Dirty Dancing
::Back to the Future Part III
::The Wonder Years
::JFK
::The Sandlot
::Schindler's List
::Raptor Red
::Apollo 13
::Star Wars (I-III)
::The Big Lebowski
::Evita
::Saving Private Ryan
::The Prince of Egypt
::Freaks and Geeks
::Hotel Rwanda
::I Love the '80s
::That '70s Show
::Pearl Harbor
::Ice Age
::I Love the '90s
::United 93
::300
::10,000 BC
::Year One
::The Wolf of Wall Street
::I Love the 2000s
::Mad Men
::Downton Abbey
::Star Wars (VII-IX)

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]

1491: Stories of the Past and Future

2015-02-25T20:36:40Z

Nyq: /* Works listed */ decaitalized common nouns in "Description column" to achieve consistency in all rows

{{comic
| number = 1491
| date = February 25, 2015
| title = Stories of the Past and Future
| image = stories_of_the_past_and_future.png
| titletext = Little-known fact: The 'Dawn of Man' opening sequence in 2001 cuts away seconds before the Flinstones theme becomes recognizable.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}
''A larger version of the image is available [http://xkcd.com/1491/large/ here].''

X-axis: Date of publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the future": Number of years the story's events take place, after the story's publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the past": Number of years the story's events take place, before the story's publication.

For example, "Water Margin" was published in the 14th century (x ~= 1300) and relates events from the 12th century, about 200 years before its publication (y ~= 200 in the past).

Another example: The film ''{{w|The Bridge on the River Kwai}}'' was released in 1957 and it was set around 14 years before (~1942-43).

Grey area in the "Years in the future" part: Stories set in the future (from their publication's date), whose the story's events' date is already past (from now).

Grey area in the "Years in the past" part: Stories set in the past (from their publication's date), published closer to their setting than to today.

Taking the "years in the past" on the y-axis to be read as negatives like in most graphs one can write:

Dates on the lower line satisfy: y = x-2015. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015+y and are set in the year x+y = 2015+2y.

Dates on the upper line satisfy: y = 2015-x. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015-y and are set in the year x+y = 2015.

Thus it's clear that the definitions of the lines are consistent with each other as they follow similar but inverted functions.

In the top portion of the graph, the two sides of the line are defined as "still possible" and "obsolete" (gray area). The gray area (obsolete) expands over time, the prediction (or science fiction work) that are not confirmed by reality are doomed to be obsolete. The author mark the line of the stories set in 2015; they are the expectation for our present in different past times.

In the bottom graph, the line indicates the limit in which the publishing time is nearer to the time treated in the work than to the present. The work in the gray area could be perceived as written by contemporary writers while in most cases they refer to a further past. This is expressed in the warning: "Modern audiences may not recognize which part were supposed to sound old". This is a recurrent theme in the author's work, being already formulated in [[Period_Speech]].

The bottom of the chart has the Star Wars films, which are set "A long time ago".

===Works listed===

{| {{table}}
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Publication'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Description'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year written'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year difference'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year set in'''
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Memoirs of the Twentieth Century|Memoirs of the Twentieth Century]]|| book written by Samuel Madden||1733||264||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Golf in the Year 2000|Golf in the Year 2000]]|| novel written by J. McCullough||1892||108||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Looking Backward|Looking Backward]]|| novel written by Edward Bellamy||1888||112||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Enoch Soames|Enoch Soames]]|| short story by Max Beerbohm||1897||100||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Time Machine|The Time Machine]]|| novel written by H.G. Wells||1895||800,806||802,701
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]||novel written by George Orwell||1949||35||1984
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd|A Week in the Wales of the Future]]||novel written by Islwyn Ffowc Elis||1957||76||2033
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Jetsons|The Jetsons]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1962 *||100||2062 †
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek !TOS!]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1966 *||298||2264
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968||33||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Space: 1999|Space: 1999]]||TV series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson||1975 *||24||1999
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2010: Odyssey Two|2010: Odyssey Two]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1982||28||2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek: The Next Generation]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1987 *||377||2364
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2061: Odyssey Three|2061: Odyssey Three]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1987||74||2061
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Zero Wing|Zero Wing]]||arcade/computer game||1989||112||2101 (previously referenced in [[887: Future Timeline]])
|-
| [[Wikipedia:3001: The Final Odyssey|3001: The Final Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1997||1004||3001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]||TV series||2001 *||150||2151
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Back to the Future Part II|Back to the Future Part II]]||film directed by Robert Zemeckis||1989||26||2015
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Transformers (TV series)|Transformers (TV Series)]]||TV series||1984 *||~ 20||< 2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Terminator 2: Judgment Day|Terminator 2 (1995 Portion)]]||film directed by James Cameron||1991||4||1995
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]||film directed by Michael Curtiz||1942||< 1||1941
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Pillow Book|The Pillow Book]]||book written by Sei Shōnagon||1002||6||996
|-
| [[Wikipedia:History of the Peloponnesian War|History of the Peloponnesian War]]||history written by Thucydides||~400 BCE||~10||431-411 BCE
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Moby-Dick|Moby-Dick]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Gospels|Gospels]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Epic of Gilgamesh|Epic of Gilgamesh]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Iliad|Iliad]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Ashokavadana|Ashokavadana]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Book of Genesis|Book of Genesis]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Water Margin|Water Margin]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:King John (play)|King John]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||~400||~1200-1216
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry IV (play)|Henry IV]]||plays by William Shakespeare||1598*||185-196||1402-1413
|-
| [[wikipedia:Richard III (play)|Richard III]]||play by William Shakespeare||1597||112-119||1478-1485
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||90-102||1521-1533
|-
| [[wikipedia:Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]||play by William Shakespeare||1623||1667-1670||45-2 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:King Lear|King Lear]]||play by William Shakespeare||1608||2400|| 8th century B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court|A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]||novel by Mark Twain||1889||1200||6th Century
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lest Darkness Fall|Lest Darkness Fall]]||alternate history SF novel by L. Sprague de Camp||1939||1404||535
|-
|[[wikipedia:Asterix|Asterix]]||French comic by Goscinny and Uderzo||1959*||-2009||50 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|The Ten Commandments]]||film by Cecil B. DeMille||1956||->3000||[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Flintstones|The Flintstones]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1960*||->2,5 million||[[wikipedia:Stone Age|Stone Age]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey|2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968|||-3 million||3 million years B.C. (4 in the movie)
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Original trilogy|Star Wars (IV - VI)]]||original film trilogy ||1977-1983|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Prequel trilogy|Star Wars (I - III)]]||prequel film trilogy||1999-2005|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Raptor Red|Raptor Red]]||novel by Robert Bakker||1995||->65 million||Cretaceous Period
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars sequel trilogy|Star Wars (VII - IX)]]||sequel film trilogy||2015-2021|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Ice Age (film series)|Ice Age]]||animated films by Blue Sky Studios||2002*||->12,000||[[wikipedia:Last glacial period| Paleolithic-Mesolithic]]
|-
|[[wikipedia:10,000 BC (film)|10,000 BC]]||film by Roland Emmerich||2008||-11,992||10,000 BC
|-
| [[wikipedia:300 (film)|300]]||film by Zack Snyder||2007||-2487||[[wikipedia:Battle of Thermopylae|480 BC]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:Year One (film)|Year One]]||film by Harold Ramis||2009||-2008||1 AD
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Prince of Egypt|The Prince of Egypt]]||animated film by DreamWorks||1998||->3400|[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:Downton Abbey|Downtown Abbey]]||TV series||2010*||->90||1912-1923
|-
| [[wikipedia:Pearl Harbor (film)|Pearl Harbour]]||film by Michael Bay||2001||-60||1941
|-
| [[wikipedia:Saving Private Ryan|Saving Private Ryan]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1998||-54||1944
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chariots of Fire|Chariots of Fire]]||film by Hugh Hudson||1981||-57||1924
|-
| [[wikipedia:Blazing Saddles|Blazing Saddles]]||film by Mel Brooks||1974||-100||1874
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future Part III|Back to the Future Part III]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1990||-105||1885
|-
| [[wikipedia:Roots (miniseries)|Roots]]||TV series, adapted from eponymous novel||1977||->113||1750-1861
|-
| [[wikipedia:Treasure Island|Treasure Island]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Last of the Mohicans|The Last of the Mohicans]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Tale of Two Cities|A Tale of Two Cities]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gone With The Wind|Gone With The Wind]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gunsmoke|Gunsmoke]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Rip Van Winkle|Rip Van Winkel [sic]]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Les Misérables|Les Miserábles [sic]]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Oklahoma!|Oklahoma!]]||Broadway musical||1943||-37||1906
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lawrence of Arabia|Lawrence of Arabia]]||film by David Lean||1962||->44||1916-8
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Music Man|The Music Man]]||Broadway musical||1957||-45||1912
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (musical)|Annie (play)]]||Broadway musical||1977||-44||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (1982 film)|Annie (movie)]]||film adaptation of the above by John Huston||1982||-49||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Schindler's List|Schindler's List]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1993||->48||1939-1945
|-
| [[wikipedia:Mad Men|Mad Men]]||TV series||2007*||->47||1960-1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:Evita (1996 film)|Evita]]||film by Alan Parker||1996||-44||1952
|-
| [[wikipedia:Bonnie and Clyde(film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]||film by Arthur Penn||1967||->33||1932-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chinatown (1974 film)|Chinatown]]||film by Roman Polanski||1974||-37||1937
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gandhi (film)|Gandhi]]||film by Robert Attenborough||1982||->34||1893-1948
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Sandlot|The Sandlot]]||film by David Mickey Evans||1993||-31||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future|Back to the Future]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1985||-30||1955
|-
| [[wikipedia:Patton (film)|Patton]]||film by Franklin J. Schaffner||1970||->25||1943-5
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22 (film)|Catch-22 (Movie)]]||film by Mike Nichols||1970||->26||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Great Escape (film)|The Great Escape]]||film by John Sturges||1963||-20||1943-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22|Catch-22 (Book)]]||novel by Joseph Heller||1961||->17||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:MASH (film)|M*A*S*H]]||film by Robert Altman||1970||-19||1951
|-
| [[wikipedia:Grease (film)|Grease]]||film by Randall Kleiser||1978||-20||1958
|-
| [[wikipedia:Happy Days|Happy Days]]||TV series||1974-84||-19||1955-1965
|-
| [[wikipedia:Platoon (film)|Platoon]]||film by Oliver Stone||1986||-21||1967
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wonder Years|The Wonder Years]]||TV series||1988-93||-20||1968-73
|-
| [[wikipedia:Dirty Dancing|Dirty Dancing]]||film by Emile Ardolino||1987||-24||1963
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Right Stuff (film)|The Right Stuff]]||film by Philip Kaufman||1983||->20||1947-63
|-
| [[wikipedia:JFK (film)|JFK]]||film by Oliver Stone||1991||->22||1963-9
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apollo 13 (film)|Apollo 13]]||film by Ron Howard||1995||-25||1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:That '70s Show|That '70s Show]]||TV series||1998-2006||->22|||1976-1979
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wolf of Wall Street|The Wolf of Wall Street]]||film by Martin Scorsese||2013||->18||1987-1995
|-
| [[wikipedia:Freaks and Geeks|Freaks and Geeks]]||TV series||1999-2000||-19||1980-1
|-
| [[wikipedia:I Love the '80s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '80s]]||TV miniseries by VH1||2002||-22||1980
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Bridge on the River Kwai|The Bridge on the River Kwai]]||film by David Lean||1952||-9\10||1942-3
|-
| [[wikipedia:American Graffiti|American Graffiti]]||film by George Lucas||1973||-11||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apocalypse Now|Apocalypse Now]]||film by Francis Ford Coppola||1979||-10||1969
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Big Lebowski|The Big Lebowski]]||film by the Coen Brothers||1998||-7||1991
|-
| [[Wikipedia:United 93 (film)|United 93]]|| film directed by Paul Greengrass||2006||-5||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the '90s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '90s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2004||-14||1990
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Hotel Rwanda|Hotel Rwanda]]|| film directed by Terry George||2004||-10||1994
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the 2000s|I Love the 2000s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2014||-14||2000
|-
|
|}

* = first episode aired. † = conjectured year set in.

==Trivia==
There is a hypercorrection in ''{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}'' as ''Rip van Winkel''. Washington Irving may have misspelled ''van {{w|nl:Winkel|Winkel}}''.

It's ''{{w|Les Misérables}}'' not ''Les Miserábles''. Note that French doesn't have "á".

{{w|Lest Darkness Fall}} takes place about 1400 years in the past, but is places around the -500 years line on the graph.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:'''Date of Publication'''
:[A logarithmic scale running horizontally, from 3000 BCE to past 2015 CE]
:'''Years in the Future'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 1 billion down to 0]
:'''Stories Set in the Future''' (Science Fiction, Prediction)
::Stories set in 2015
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled "Still Possible"; the lower side is labelled "Obsolete".]
:[from left to right...]
::Memoirs of the Twentieth Century [1733, 265 years in the future]
::Looking Backward [1888, 112 years in the future]
::Golf in the Year 2000 [1892, 108 years in the future]
::The Time Machine [1895, 800 thousand to 30 million years in the future]
::Enoch Soames [1916, ''circa'' 60 years in the future]
::1984 [1949, 35 years in the future]
::A Week in the Wales of the Future [1957, 76 years in the future]
::The Jetsons [1962-63, 100 years in the future]
::Star Trek [1966-69, 300 years in the future]
::2001: A Space Odyssey [1968, 33 years in the future]
::Space: 1999 [1975-77, 24 years in the future]
::2010: Odyssey Two [1982, 28 years in the future]
::Transformers (TV series) [1984-87, 20 years in the future]
::2061: Odyssey Three [1987, 74 years in the future]
::Star Trek: The Next Generation [1987-94, ''circa'' 500 years in the future]
::Back to the Future Part II [1989, 26 years in the future]
::Zero Wing [1989, 112 years in the future]
::Terminator 2 (1995 portion) [1991, 4 years in the future]
::3001: The Final Odyssey [1997, 1004 years in the future]
::Enterprise [2001-2005, 150 years in the future]
::This chart [2015, 0 years in the future]
:'''Years in the Past'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 0 down past 1 billion to "Big Bang"]
:'''Stories Set in the Past''' (History, Period Fiction)
::Stories written X years ago and set 2X years ago
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled as follows.]
::'''Former Period Pieces'''
::Stories set in the past, but created long enough ago that they were published closer to their setting than to today.
::Modern audiences may not recognize which parts were ''supposed'' to sound old.
:[from left to right...]
::The Epic of Gilgamesh [''circa'' 2100 BCE, 600 years in the past]
::The Iliad [''circa''' 800 BCE, 450 years in the past]
::History of the Peloponnesian War [''circa'' 390 BCE, 10 years in the past]
::Book of Genesis [''circa'' 500 BCE, 4000 years in the past]
::Ashokavadana [''circa'' 100 BCE, 300 years in the past]
::Gospels (various estimates) [''circa'' 250 CE, 24 to 75 years in the past]
::The Pillow Book [1000 CE, 5 years in the past]
::Water Margin [''circa'' 1300, 195 years in the past]
::Richard III [''circa'' 1590, 115 years in the past]
::Julius Caesar [1599, 1650 years in the past]
::King John [''circa'' 1600, 500 years in the past]
::Henry IV [''circa'' 1600, 190 years in the past]
::King Lear [''circa'' 1606, 3000 years in the past]
::Henry VIII [''circa'' 1612, 105 years in the past]
::The Last of the Mohicans [1826, 69 years in the past]
::Rip Van Winkel [1819, 31-51 years in the past]
::A Tale of Two Cities [1859, 60 years in the past]
::Moby-Dick [1851, around 10 years ago]
:::"Some years ago--never mind how long precisely..."
::Les Miserábles [1862, 30 years in the past]
::A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
::Treasure Island
::Gone With the Wind
::Lest Darkness Fall
::Casablanca
::Oklahoma!
::The Ten Commandments
::The Bridge on the River Kwai
::Gunsmoke
::Catch-22 (book)
::The Flintstones
::The Great Escape
::Asterix
::Lawrence of Arabia
::The Music Man
::Bonnie and Clyde
::2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)
::American Graffiti
::Patton
::Catch-22 (movie)
::Chinatown
::Blazing Saddles
::Apocalypse Now
::Happy Days
::Grease
::M*A*S*H
::Annie (play)
::Roots
::Chariots of Fire
::Star Wars (IV-VI)
::Annie (movie)
::The Right Stuff
::Back to the Future
::Gandhi
::Platoon
::Dirty Dancing
::Back to the Future Part III
::The Wonder Years
::JFK
::The Sandlot
::Schindler's List
::Raptor Red
::Apollo 13
::Star Wars (I-III)
::The Big Lebowski
::Evita
::Saving Private Ryan
::The Prince of Egypt
::Freaks and Geeks
::Hotel Rwanda
::I Love the '80s
::That '70s Show
::Pearl Harbor
::Ice Age
::I Love the '90s
::United 93
::300
::10,000 BC
::Year One
::The Wolf of Wall Street
::I Love the 2000s
::Mad Men
::Downton Abbey
::Star Wars (VII-IX)

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]

1491: Stories of the Past and Future

2015-02-25T20:33:58Z

Nyq: /* Works listed */ added wikilinks

{{comic
| number = 1491
| date = February 25, 2015
| title = Stories of the Past and Future
| image = stories_of_the_past_and_future.png
| titletext = Little-known fact: The 'Dawn of Man' opening sequence in 2001 cuts away seconds before the Flinstones theme becomes recognizable.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}
''A larger version of the image is available [http://xkcd.com/1491/large/ here].''

X-axis: Date of publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the future": Number of years the story's events take place, after the story's publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the past": Number of years the story's events take place, before the story's publication.

For example, "Water Margin" was published in the 14th century (x ~= 1300) and relates events from the 12th century, about 200 years before its publication (y ~= 200 in the past).

Another example: The film ''{{w|The Bridge on the River Kwai}}'' was released in 1957 and it was set around 14 years before (~1942-43).

Grey area in the "Years in the future" part: Stories set in the future (from their publication's date), whose the story's events' date is already past (from now).

Grey area in the "Years in the past" part: Stories set in the past (from their publication's date), published closer to their setting than to today.

Taking the "years in the past" on the y-axis to be read as negatives like in most graphs one can write:

Dates on the lower line satisfy: y = x-2015. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015+y and are set in the year x+y = 2015+2y.

Dates on the upper line satisfy: y = 2015-x. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015-y and are set in the year x+y = 2015.

Thus it's clear that the definitions of the lines are consistent with each other as they follow similar but inverted functions.

In the top portion of the graph, the two sides of the line are defined as "still possible" and "obsolete" (gray area). The gray area (obsolete) expands over time, the prediction (or science fiction work) that are not confirmed by reality are doomed to be obsolete. The author mark the line of the stories set in 2015; they are the expectation for our present in different past times.

In the bottom graph, the line indicates the limit in which the publishing time is nearer to the time treated in the work than to the present. The work in the gray area could be perceived as written by contemporary writers while in most cases they refer to a further past. This is expressed in the warning: "Modern audiences may not recognize which part were supposed to sound old". This is a recurrent theme in the author's work, being already formulated in [[Period_Speech]].

The bottom of the chart has the Star Wars films, which are set "A long time ago".

===Works listed===

{| {{table}}
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Publication'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Description'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year written'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year difference'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year set in'''
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Memoirs of the Twentieth Century|Memoirs of the Twentieth Century]]|| book written by Samuel Madden||1733||264||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Golf in the Year 2000|Golf in the Year 2000]]|| novel written by J. McCullough||1892||108||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Looking Backward|Looking Backward]]|| novel written by Edward Bellamy||1888||112||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Enoch Soames|Enoch Soames]]|| short story by Max Beerbohm||1897||100||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Time Machine|The Time Machine]]|| novel written by H.G. Wells||1895||800,806||802,701
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]||novel written by George Orwell||1949||35||1984
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd|A Week in the Wales of the Future]]||novel written by Islwyn Ffowc Elis||1957||76||2033
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Jetsons|The Jetsons]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1962 *||100||2062 †
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek !TOS!]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1966 *||298||2264
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968||33||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Space: 1999|Space: 1999]]||TV series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson||1975 *||24||1999
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2010: Odyssey Two|2010: Odyssey Two]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1982||28||2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek: The Next Generation]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1987 *||377||2364
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2061: Odyssey Three|2061: Odyssey Three]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1987||74||2061
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Zero Wing|Zero Wing]]||arcade/computer game||1989||112||2101 (previously referenced in [[887: Future Timeline]])
|-
| [[Wikipedia:3001: The Final Odyssey|3001: The Final Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1997||1004||3001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]||TV series||2001 *||150||2151
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Back to the Future Part II|Back to the Future Part II]]||film directed by Robert Zemeckis||1989||26||2015
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Transformers (TV series)|Transformers (TV Series)]]||TV series||1984 *||~ 20||< 2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Terminator 2: Judgment Day|Terminator 2 (1995 Portion)]]||film directed by James Cameron||1991||4||1995
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]||film directed by Michael Curtiz||1942||< 1||1941
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Pillow Book|The Pillow Book]]||book written by Sei Shōnagon||1002||6||996
|-
| [[Wikipedia:History of the Peloponnesian War|History of the Peloponnesian War]]||history written by Thucydides||~400 BCE||~10||431-411 BCE
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Moby-Dick|Moby-Dick]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Gospels|Gospels]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Epic of Gilgamesh|Epic of Gilgamesh]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Iliad|Iliad]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Ashokavadana|Ashokavadana]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Book of Genesis|Book of Genesis]]||||||||
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Water Margin|Water Margin]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:King John (play)|King John]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1623||~400||~1200-1216
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry IV (play)|Henry IV]]||Plays by William Shakespeare||1598*||185-196||1402-1413
|-
| [[wikipedia:Richard III (play)|Richard III]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1597||112-119||1478-1485
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1623||90-102||1521-1533
|-
| [[wikipedia:Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1623||1667-1670||45-2 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:King Lear|King Lear]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1608||2400|| 8th century B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court|A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]||novel by Mark Twain||1889||1200||6th Century
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lest Darkness Fall|Lest Darkness Fall]]||alternate history SF novel by L. Sprague de Camp||1939||1404||535
|-
|[[wikipedia:Asterix|Asterix]]||French comic by Goscinny and Uderzo||1959*||-2009||50 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|The Ten Commandments]]||film by Cecil B. DeMille||1956||->3000||[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Flintstones|The Flintstones]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1960*||->2,5 million||[[wikipedia:Stone Age|Stone Age]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey|2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968|||-3 million||3 million years B.C. (4 in the movie)
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Original trilogy|Star Wars (IV - VI)]]||original film trilogy ||1977-1983|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Prequel trilogy|Star Wars (I - III)]]||prequel film trilogy||1999-2005|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Raptor Red|Raptor Red]]||novel by Robert Bakker||1995||->65 million||Cretaceous Period
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars sequel trilogy|Star Wars (VII - IX)]]||sequel film trilogy||2015-2021|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Ice Age (film series)|Ice Age]]||animated films by Blue Sky Studios||2002*||->12,000||[[wikipedia:Last glacial period| Paleolithic-Mesolithic]]
|-
|[[wikipedia:10,000 BC (film)|10,000 BC]]||film by Roland Emmerich||2008||-11,992||10,000 BC
|-
| [[wikipedia:300 (film)|300]]||film by Zack Snyder||2007||-2487||[[wikipedia:Battle of Thermopylae|480 BC]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:Year One (film)|Year One]]||film by Harold Ramis||2009||-2008||1 AD
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Prince of Egypt|The Prince of Egypt]]||animated film by DreamWorks||1998||->3400|[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:Downton Abbey|Downtown Abbey]]||TV series||2010*||->90||1912-1923
|-
| [[wikipedia:Pearl Harbor (film)|Pearl Harbour]]||film by Michael Bay||2001||-60||1941
|-
| [[wikipedia:Saving Private Ryan|Saving Private Ryan]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1998||-54||1944
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chariots of Fire|Chariots of Fire]]||film by Hugh Hudson||1981||-57||1924
|-
| [[wikipedia:Blazing Saddles|Blazing Saddles]]||film by Mel Brooks||1974||-100||1874
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future Part III|Back to the Future Part III]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1990||-105||1885
|-
| [[wikipedia:Roots (miniseries)|Roots]]||TV series, adapted from eponymous novel||1977||->113||1750-1861
|-
| [[wikipedia:Treasure Island|Treasure Island]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Last of the Mohicans|The Last of the Mohicans]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Tale of Two Cities|A Tale of Two Cities]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gone With The Wind|Gone With The Wind]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gunsmoke|Gunsmoke]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Rip Van Winkle|Rip Van Winkel [sic]]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Les Misérables|Les Miserábles [sic]]]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Oklahoma!|Oklahoma!]]||Broadway musical||1943||-37||1906
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lawrence of Arabia|Lawrence of Arabia]]||film by David Lean||1962||->44||1916-8
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Music Man|The Music Man]]||Broadway musical||1957||-45||1912
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (musical)|Annie (Play)]]||Broadway musical||1977||-44||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (1982 film)|Annie (Movie)]]||film adaptation of the above by John Huston||1982||-49||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Schindler's List|Schindler's List]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1993||->48||1939-1945
|-
| [[wikipedia:Mad Men|Mad Men]]||TV series||2007*||->47||1960-1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:Evita (1996 film)|Evita]]||film by Alan Parker||1996||-44||1952
|-
| [[wikipedia:Bonnie and Clyde(film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]||film by Arthur Penn||1967||->33||1932-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chinatown (1974 film)|Chinatown]]||film by Roman Polanski||1974||-37||1937
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gandhi (film)|Gandhi]]||film by Robert Attenborough||1982||->34||1893-1948
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Sandlot|The Sandlot]]||film by David Mickey Evans||1993||-31||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future|Back to the Future]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1985||-30||1955
|-
| [[wikipedia:Patton (film)|Patton]]||film by Franklin J. Schaffner||1970||->25||1943-5
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22 (film)|Catch-22 (Movie)]]||film by Mike Nichols||1970||->26||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Great Escape (film)|The Great Escape]]||film by John Sturges||1963||-20||1943-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22|Catch-22 (Book)]]||novel by Joseph Heller||1961||->17||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:MASH (film)|M*A*S*H]]||film by Robert Altman||1970||-19||1951
|-
| [[wikipedia:Grease (film)|Grease]]||film by Randall Kleiser||1978||-20||1958
|-
| [[wikipedia:Happy Days|Happy Days]]||TV series||1974-84||-19||1955-1965
|-
| [[wikipedia:Platoon (film)|Platoon]]||film by Oliver Stone||1986||-21||1967
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wonder Years|The Wonder Years]]||TV series||1988-93||-20||1968-73
|-
| [[wikipedia:Dirty Dancing|Dirty Dancing]]||film by Emile Ardolino||1987||-24||1963
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Right Stuff (film)|The Right Stuff]]||film by Philip Kaufman||1983||->20||1947-63
|-
| [[wikipedia:JFK (film)|JFK]]||film by Oliver Stone||1991||->22||1963-9
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apollo 13 (film)|Apollo 13]]||film by Ron Howard||1995||-25||1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:That '70s Show|That '70s Show]]||TV series||1998-2006||->22|||1976-1979
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wolf of Wall Street|The Wolf of Wall Street]]||film by Martin Scorsese||2013||->18||1987-1995
|-
| [[wikipedia:Freaks and Geeks|Freaks and Geeks]]||TV series||1999-2000||-19||1980-1
|-
| [[wikipedia:I Love the '80s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '80s]]||TV miniseries by VH1||2002||-22||1980
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Bridge on the River Kwai|The Bridge on the River Kwai]]||film by David Lean||1952||-9\10||1942-3
|-
| [[wikipedia:American Graffiti|American Graffiti]]||film by George Lucas||1973||-11||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apocalypse Now|Apocalypse Now]]||film by Francis Ford Coppola||1979||-10||1969
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Big Lebowski|The Big Lebowski]]||film by the Coen Brothers||1998||-7||1991
|-
| [[Wikipedia:United 93 (film)|United 93]]|| film directed by Paul Greengrass||2006||-5||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the '90s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '90s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2004||-14||1990
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Hotel Rwanda|Hotel Rwanda]]|| film directed by Terry George||2004||-10||1994
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the 2000s|I Love the 2000s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2014||-14||2000
|-
|
|}

* = first episode aired. † = conjectured year set in.

==Trivia==
There is a hypercorrection in ''{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}'' as ''Rip van Winkel''. Washington Irving may have misspelled ''van {{w|nl:Winkel|Winkel}}''.

It's ''{{w|Les Misérables}}'' not ''Les Miserábles''. Note that French doesn't have "á".

{{w|Lest Darkness Fall}} takes place about 1400 years in the past, but is places around the -500 years line on the graph.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:'''Date of Publication'''
:[A logarithmic scale running horizontally, from 3000 BCE to past 2015 CE]
:'''Years in the Future'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 1 billion down to 0]
:'''Stories Set in the Future''' (Science Fiction, Prediction)
::Stories set in 2015
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled "Still Possible"; the lower side is labelled "Obsolete".]
:[from left to right...]
::Memoirs of the Twentieth Century [1733, 265 years in the future]
::Looking Backward [1888, 112 years in the future]
::Golf in the Year 2000 [1892, 108 years in the future]
::The Time Machine [1895, 800 thousand to 30 million years in the future]
::Enoch Soames [1916, ''circa'' 60 years in the future]
::1984 [1949, 35 years in the future]
::A Week in the Wales of the Future [1957, 76 years in the future]
::The Jetsons [1962-63, 100 years in the future]
::Star Trek [1966-69, 300 years in the future]
::2001: A Space Odyssey [1968, 33 years in the future]
::Space: 1999 [1975-77, 24 years in the future]
::2010: Odyssey Two [1982, 28 years in the future]
::Transformers (TV series) [1984-87, 20 years in the future]
::2061: Odyssey Three [1987, 74 years in the future]
::Star Trek: The Next Generation [1987-94, ''circa'' 500 years in the future]
::Back to the Future Part II [1989, 26 years in the future]
::Zero Wing [1989, 112 years in the future]
::Terminator 2 (1995 portion) [1991, 4 years in the future]
::3001: The Final Odyssey [1997, 1004 years in the future]
::Enterprise [2001-2005, 150 years in the future]
::This chart [2015, 0 years in the future]
:'''Years in the Past'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 0 down past 1 billion to "Big Bang"]
:'''Stories Set in the Past''' (History, Period Fiction)
::Stories written X years ago and set 2X years ago
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled as follows.]
::'''Former Period Pieces'''
::Stories set in the past, but created long enough ago that they were published closer to their setting than to today.
::Modern audiences may not recognize which parts were ''supposed'' to sound old.
:[from left to right...]
::The Epic of Gilgamesh [''circa'' 2100 BCE, 600 years in the past]
::The Iliad [''circa''' 800 BCE, 450 years in the past]
::History of the Peloponnesian War [''circa'' 390 BCE, 10 years in the past]
::Book of Genesis [''circa'' 500 BCE, 4000 years in the past]
::Ashokavadana [''circa'' 100 BCE, 300 years in the past]
::Gospels (various estimates) [''circa'' 250 CE, 24 to 75 years in the past]
::The Pillow Book [1000 CE, 5 years in the past]
::Water Margin [''circa'' 1300, 195 years in the past]
::Richard III [''circa'' 1590, 115 years in the past]
::Julius Caesar [1599, 1650 years in the past]
::King John [''circa'' 1600, 500 years in the past]
::Henry IV [''circa'' 1600, 190 years in the past]
::King Lear [''circa'' 1606, 3000 years in the past]
::Henry VIII [''circa'' 1612, 105 years in the past]
::The Last of the Mohicans [1826, 69 years in the past]
::Rip Van Winkel [1819, 31-51 years in the past]
::A Tale of Two Cities [1859, 60 years in the past]
::Moby-Dick [1851, around 10 years ago]
:::"Some years ago--never mind how long precisely..."
::Les Miserábles [1862, 30 years in the past]
::A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
::Treasure Island
::Gone With the Wind
::Lest Darkness Fall
::Casablanca
::Oklahoma!
::The Ten Commandments
::The Bridge on the River Kwai
::Gunsmoke
::Catch-22 (book)
::The Flintstones
::The Great Escape
::Asterix
::Lawrence of Arabia
::The Music Man
::Bonnie and Clyde
::2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)
::American Graffiti
::Patton
::Catch-22 (movie)
::Chinatown
::Blazing Saddles
::Apocalypse Now
::Happy Days
::Grease
::M*A*S*H
::Annie (play)
::Roots
::Chariots of Fire
::Star Wars (IV-VI)
::Annie (movie)
::The Right Stuff
::Back to the Future
::Gandhi
::Platoon
::Dirty Dancing
::Back to the Future Part III
::The Wonder Years
::JFK
::The Sandlot
::Schindler's List
::Raptor Red
::Apollo 13
::Star Wars (I-III)
::The Big Lebowski
::Evita
::Saving Private Ryan
::The Prince of Egypt
::Freaks and Geeks
::Hotel Rwanda
::I Love the '80s
::That '70s Show
::Pearl Harbor
::Ice Age
::I Love the '90s
::United 93
::300
::10,000 BC
::Year One
::The Wolf of Wall Street
::I Love the 2000s
::Mad Men
::Downton Abbey
::Star Wars (VII-IX)

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]

1491: Stories of the Past and Future

2015-02-25T20:25:01Z

Nyq: /* Works listed */ decaitalized common nouns in table headings

{{comic
| number = 1491
| date = February 25, 2015
| title = Stories of the Past and Future
| image = stories_of_the_past_and_future.png
| titletext = Little-known fact: The 'Dawn of Man' opening sequence in 2001 cuts away seconds before the Flinstones theme becomes recognizable.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}
''A larger version of the image is available [http://xkcd.com/1491/large/ here].''

X-axis: Date of publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the future": Number of years the story's events take place, after the story's publication.

Y-axis, "Years in the past": Number of years the story's events take place, before the story's publication.

For example, "Water Margin" was published in the 14th century (x ~= 1300) and relates events from the 12th century, about 200 years before its publication (y ~= 200 in the past).

Another example: The film ''{{w|The Bridge on the River Kwai}}'' was released in 1957 and it was set around 14 years before (~1942-43).

Grey area in the "Years in the future" part: Stories set in the future (from their publication's date), whose the story's events' date is already past (from now).

Grey area in the "Years in the past" part: Stories set in the past (from their publication's date), published closer to their setting than to today.

Taking the "years in the past" on the y-axis to be read as negatives like in most graphs one can write:

Dates on the lower line satisfy: y = x-2015. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015+y and are set in the year x+y = 2015+2y.

Dates on the upper line satisfy: y = 2015-x. Corresponding works were published in the year x = 2015-y and are set in the year x+y = 2015.

Thus it's clear that the definitions of the lines are consistent with each other as they follow similar but inverted functions.

In the top portion of the graph, the two sides of the line are defined as "still possible" and "obsolete" (gray area). The gray area (obsolete) expands over time, the prediction (or science fiction work) that are not confirmed by reality are doomed to be obsolete. The author mark the line of the stories set in 2015; they are the expectation for our present in different past times.

In the bottom graph, the line indicates the limit in which the publishing time is nearer to the time treated in the work than to the present. The work in the gray area could be perceived as written by contemporary writers while in most cases they refer to a further past. This is expressed in the warning: "Modern audiences may not recognize which part were supposed to sound old". This is a recurrent theme in the author's work, being already formulated in [[Period_Speech]].

The bottom of the chart has the Star Wars films, which are set "A long time ago".

===Works listed===

{| {{table}}
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Publication'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Description'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year written'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year difference'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year set in'''
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Memoirs of the Twentieth Century|Memoirs of the Twentieth Century]]|| book written by Samuel Madden||1733||264||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Golf in the Year 2000|Golf in the Year 2000]]|| novel written by J. McCullough||1892||108||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Looking Backward|Looking Backward]]|| novel written by Edward Bellamy||1888||112||2000
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Enoch Soames|Enoch Soames]]|| short story by Max Beerbohm||1897||100||1997
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Time Machine|The Time Machine]]|| novel written by H.G. Wells||1895||800,806||802,701
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]||novel written by George Orwell||1949||35||1984
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd|A Week in the Wales of the Future]]||novel written by Islwyn Ffowc Elis||1957||76||2033
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Jetsons|The Jetsons]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1962 *||100||2062 †
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek !TOS!]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1966 *||298||2264
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968||33||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Space: 1999|Space: 1999]]||TV series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson||1975 *||24||1999
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2010: Odyssey Two|2010: Odyssey Two]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1982||28||2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek: The Next Generation]]||TV series created by Gene Roddenberry||1987 *||377||2364
|-
| [[Wikipedia:2061: Odyssey Three|2061: Odyssey Three]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1987||74||2061
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Zero Wing|Zero Wing]]||arcade/computer game||1989||112||2101 (previously referenced in [[887: Future Timeline]])
|-
| [[Wikipedia:3001: The Final Odyssey|3001: The Final Odyssey]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1997||1004||3001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]||TV series||2001 *||150||2151
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Back to the Future Part II|Back to the Future Part II]]||film directed by Robert Zemeckis||1989||26||2015
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Transformers (TV series)|Transformers (TV Series)]]||TV series||1984 *||~ 20||< 2010
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Terminator 2: Judgment Day|Terminator 2 (1995 Portion)]]||film directed by James Cameron||1991||4||1995
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]||film directed by Michael Curtiz||1942||< 1||1941
|-
| [[Wikipedia:The Pillow Book|The Pillow Book]]||book written by Sei Shōnagon||1002||6||996
|-
| [[Wikipedia:History of the Peloponnesian War|History of the Peloponnesian War]]||history written by Thucydides||~400 BCE||~10||431-411 BCE
|-
| Moby Dick||||||||
|-
| Gospels||||||||
|-
| The Epic of Gilgamesh||||||||
|-
| The Iliad||||||||
|-
| Ashokavadana||||||||
|-
| Book of Genesis||||||||
|-
| Water Margin||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:King John (play)|King John]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1623||~400||~1200-1216
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry IV (play)|Henry IV]]||Plays by William Shakespeare||1598*||185-196||1402-1413
|-
| [[wikipedia:Richard III (play)|Richard III]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1597||112-119||1478-1485
|-
| [[wikipedia:Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1623||90-102||1521-1533
|-
| [[wikipedia:Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1623||1667-1670||45-2 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:King Lear|King Lear]]||Play by William Shakespeare||1608||2400|| 8th century B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court|A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]||novel by Mark Twain||1889||1200||6th Century
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lest Darkness Fall|Lest Darkness Fall]]||alternate history SF novel by L. Sprague de Camp||1939||1404||535
|-
|[[wikipedia:Asterix|Asterix]]||French comic by Goscinny and Uderzo||1959*||-2009||50 B.C.
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|The Ten Commandments]]||film by Cecil B. DeMille||1956||->3000||[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Flintstones|The Flintstones]]||TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera||1960*||->2,5 million||[[wikipedia:Stone Age|Stone Age]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:2001: A Space Odyssey|2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)]]||novel written by Arthur C. Clarke||1968|||-3 million||3 million years B.C. (4 in the movie)
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Original trilogy|Star Wars (IV - VI)]]||original film trilogy ||1977-1983|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars#Prequel trilogy|Star Wars (I - III)]]||prequel film trilogy||1999-2005|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Raptor Red|Raptor Red]]||novel by Robert Bakker||1995||->65 million||Cretaceous Period
|-
| [[wikipedia:Star Wars sequel trilogy|Star Wars (VII - IX)]]||sequel film trilogy||2015-2021|| ||A long time ago
|-
| [[wikipedia:Ice Age (film series)|Ice Age]]||animated films by Blue Sky Studios||2002*||->12,000||[[wikipedia:Last glacial period| Paleolithic-Mesolithic]]
|-
|[[wikipedia:10,000 BC (film)|10,000 BC]]||film by Roland Emmerich||2008||-11,992||10,000 BC
|-
| [[wikipedia:300 (film)|300]]||film by Zack Snyder||2007||-2487||[[wikipedia:Battle of Thermopylae|480 BC]]
|-
| [[wikipedia:Year One (film)|Year One]]||film by Harold Ramis||2009||-2008||1 AD
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Prince of Egypt|The Prince of Egypt]]||animated film by DreamWorks||1998||->3400|[[wikipedia:The Exodus#Date|1446 BCE]]†
|-
| [[wikipedia:Downton Abbey|Downtown Abbey]]||TV series||2010*||->90||1912-1923
|-
| [[wikipedia:Pearl Harbor (film)|Pearl Harbour]]||film by Michael Bay||2001||-60||1941
|-
| [[wikipedia:Saving Private Ryan|Saving Private Ryan]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1998||-54||1944
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chariots of Fire|Chariots of Fire]]||film by Hugh Hudson||1981||-57||1924
|-
| [[wikipedia:Blazing Saddles|Blazing Saddles]]||film by Mel Brooks||1974||-100||1874
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future Part III|Back to the Future Part III]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1990||-105||1885
|-
| [[wikipedia:Roots (miniseries)|Roots]]||TV series, adapted from eponymous novel||1977||->113||1750-1861
|-
| Treasure Island||||||||
|-
| The Last of the Mohicans||||||||
|-
| A Tale of Two Cities||||||||
|-
| Gone With The Wind||||||||
|-
| Gunsmoke||||||||
|-
| Rip Van Winkel [sic]||||||||
|-
| Les Miserábles [sic]||||||||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Oklahoma!|Oklahoma!]]||Broadway musical||1943||-37||1906
|-
| [[wikipedia:Lawrence of Arabia|Lawrence of Arabia]]||film by David Lean||1962||->44||1916-8
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Music Man|The Music Man]]||Broadway musical||1957||-45||1912
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (musical)|Annie (Play)]]||Broadway musical||1977||-44||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Annie (1982 film)|Annie (Movie)]]||film adaptation of the above by John Huston||1982||-49||1933
|-
| [[wikipedia:Schindler's List|Schindler's List]]||film by Steven Spielberg||1993||->48||1939-1945
|-
| [[wikipedia:Mad Men|Mad Men]]||TV series||2007*||->47||1960-1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:Evita (1996 film)|Evita]]||film by Alan Parker||1996||-44||1952
|-
| [[wikipedia:Bonnie and Clyde(film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]||film by Arthur Penn||1967||->33||1932-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Chinatown (1974 film)|Chinatown]]||film by Roman Polanski||1974||-37||1937
|-
| [[wikipedia:Gandhi (film)|Gandhi]]||film by Robert Attenborough||1982||->34||1893-1948
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Sandlot|The Sandlot]]||film by David Mickey Evans||1993||-31||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Back to the Future|Back to the Future]]||film by Robert Zemeckis||1985||-30||1955
|-
| [[wikipedia:Patton (film)|Patton]]||film by Franklin J. Schaffner||1970||->25||1943-5
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22 (film)|Catch-22 (Movie)]]||film by Mike Nichols||1970||->26||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Great Escape (film)|The Great Escape]]||film by John Sturges||1963||-20||1943-4
|-
| [[wikipedia:Catch-22|Catch-22 (Book)]]||novel by Joseph Heller||1961||->17||1942-44
|-
| [[wikipedia:MASH (film)|M*A*S*H]]||film by Robert Altman||1970||-19||1951
|-
| [[wikipedia:Grease (film)|Grease]]||film by Randall Kleiser||1978||-20||1958
|-
| [[wikipedia:Happy Days|Happy Days]]||TV series||1974-84||-19||1955-1965
|-
| [[wikipedia:Platoon (film)|Platoon]]||film by Oliver Stone||1986||-21||1967
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wonder Years|The Wonder Years]]||TV series||1988-93||-20||1968-73
|-
| [[wikipedia:Dirty Dancing|Dirty Dancing]]||film by Emile Ardolino||1987||-24||1963
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Right Stuff (film)|The Right Stuff]]||film by Philip Kaufman||1983||->20||1947-63
|-
| [[wikipedia:JFK (film)|JFK]]||film by Oliver Stone||1991||->22||1963-9
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apollo 13 (film)|Apollo 13]]||film by Ron Howard||1995||-25||1970
|-
| [[wikipedia:That '70s Show|That '70s Show]]||TV series||1998-2006||->22|||1976-1979
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Wolf of Wall Street|The Wolf of Wall Street]]||film by Martin Scorsese||2013||->18||1987-1995
|-
| [[wikipedia:Freaks and Geeks|Freaks and Geeks]]||TV series||1999-2000||-19||1980-1
|-
| [[wikipedia:I Love the '80s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '80s]]||TV miniseries by VH1||2002||-22||1980
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Bridge on the River Kwai|The Bridge on the River Kwai]]||film by David Lean||1952||-9\10||1942-3
|-
| [[wikipedia:American Graffiti|American Graffiti]]||film by George Lucas||1973||-11||1962
|-
| [[wikipedia:Apocalypse Now|Apocalypse Now]]||film by Francis Ford Coppola||1979||-10||1969
|-
| [[wikipedia:The Big Lebowski|The Big Lebowski]]||film by the Coen Brothers||1998||-7||1991
|-
| [[Wikipedia:United 93 (film)|United 93]]|| film directed by Paul Greengrass||2006||-5||2001
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the '90s (U.S. TV series)|I Love the '90s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2004||-14||1990
|-
| [[Wikipedia:Hotel Rwanda|Hotel Rwanda]]|| film directed by Terry George||2004||-10||1994
|-
| [[Wikipedia:I Love the 2000s|I Love the 2000s]]|| TV miniseries on VH1||2014||-14||2000
|-
|
|}

* = first episode aired. † = conjectured year set in.

==Trivia==
There is a hypercorrection in ''{{w|Rip Van Winkle}}'' as ''Rip van Winkel''. Washington Irving may have misspelled ''van {{w|nl:Winkel|Winkel}}''.

It's ''{{w|Les Misérables}}'' not ''Les Miserábles''. Note that French doesn't have "á".

{{w|Lest Darkness Fall}} takes place about 1400 years in the past, but is places around the -500 years line on the graph.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:'''Date of Publication'''
:[A logarithmic scale running horizontally, from 3000 BCE to past 2015 CE]
:'''Years in the Future'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 1 billion down to 0]
:'''Stories Set in the Future''' (Science Fiction, Prediction)
::Stories set in 2015
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled "Still Possible"; the lower side is labelled "Obsolete".]
:[from left to right...]
::Memoirs of the Twentieth Century [1733, 265 years in the future]
::Looking Backward [1888, 112 years in the future]
::Golf in the Year 2000 [1892, 108 years in the future]
::The Time Machine [1895, 800 thousand to 30 million years in the future]
::Enoch Soames [1916, ''circa'' 60 years in the future]
::1984 [1949, 35 years in the future]
::A Week in the Wales of the Future [1957, 76 years in the future]
::The Jetsons [1962-63, 100 years in the future]
::Star Trek [1966-69, 300 years in the future]
::2001: A Space Odyssey [1968, 33 years in the future]
::Space: 1999 [1975-77, 24 years in the future]
::2010: Odyssey Two [1982, 28 years in the future]
::Transformers (TV series) [1984-87, 20 years in the future]
::2061: Odyssey Three [1987, 74 years in the future]
::Star Trek: The Next Generation [1987-94, ''circa'' 500 years in the future]
::Back to the Future Part II [1989, 26 years in the future]
::Zero Wing [1989, 112 years in the future]
::Terminator 2 (1995 portion) [1991, 4 years in the future]
::3001: The Final Odyssey [1997, 1004 years in the future]
::Enterprise [2001-2005, 150 years in the future]
::This chart [2015, 0 years in the future]
:'''Years in the Past'''
:[A logarithmic scale running vertically, from 0 down past 1 billion to "Big Bang"]
:'''Stories Set in the Past''' (History, Period Fiction)
::Stories written X years ago and set 2X years ago
::[A line divides this region into two. The upper side is labelled as follows.]
::'''Former Period Pieces'''
::Stories set in the past, but created long enough ago that they were published closer to their setting than to today.
::Modern audiences may not recognize which parts were ''supposed'' to sound old.
:[from left to right...]
::The Epic of Gilgamesh [''circa'' 2100 BCE, 600 years in the past]
::The Iliad [''circa''' 800 BCE, 450 years in the past]
::History of the Peloponnesian War [''circa'' 390 BCE, 10 years in the past]
::Book of Genesis [''circa'' 500 BCE, 4000 years in the past]
::Ashokavadana [''circa'' 100 BCE, 300 years in the past]
::Gospels (various estimates) [''circa'' 250 CE, 24 to 75 years in the past]
::The Pillow Book [1000 CE, 5 years in the past]
::Water Margin [''circa'' 1300, 195 years in the past]
::Richard III [''circa'' 1590, 115 years in the past]
::Julius Caesar [1599, 1650 years in the past]
::King John [''circa'' 1600, 500 years in the past]
::Henry IV [''circa'' 1600, 190 years in the past]
::King Lear [''circa'' 1606, 3000 years in the past]
::Henry VIII [''circa'' 1612, 105 years in the past]
::The Last of the Mohicans [1826, 69 years in the past]
::Rip Van Winkel [1819, 31-51 years in the past]
::A Tale of Two Cities [1859, 60 years in the past]
::Moby-Dick [1851, around 10 years ago]
:::"Some years ago--never mind how long precisely..."
::Les Miserábles [1862, 30 years in the past]
::A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
::Treasure Island
::Gone With the Wind
::Lest Darkness Fall
::Casablanca
::Oklahoma!
::The Ten Commandments
::The Bridge on the River Kwai
::Gunsmoke
::Catch-22 (book)
::The Flintstones
::The Great Escape
::Asterix
::Lawrence of Arabia
::The Music Man
::Bonnie and Clyde
::2001: A Space Odyssey (prologue)
::American Graffiti
::Patton
::Catch-22 (movie)
::Chinatown
::Blazing Saddles
::Apocalypse Now
::Happy Days
::Grease
::M*A*S*H
::Annie (play)
::Roots
::Chariots of Fire
::Star Wars (IV-VI)
::Annie (movie)
::The Right Stuff
::Back to the Future
::Gandhi
::Platoon
::Dirty Dancing
::Back to the Future Part III
::The Wonder Years
::JFK
::The Sandlot
::Schindler's List
::Raptor Red
::Apollo 13
::Star Wars (I-III)
::The Big Lebowski
::Evita
::Saving Private Ryan
::The Prince of Egypt
::Freaks and Geeks
::Hotel Rwanda
::I Love the '80s
::That '70s Show
::Pearl Harbor
::Ice Age
::I Love the '90s
::United 93
::300
::10,000 BC
::Year One
::The Wolf of Wall Street
::I Love the 2000s
::Mad Men
::Downton Abbey
::Star Wars (VII-IX)

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]

1061: EST

2015-02-24T15:22:57Z

Nyq: Decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1061
| date = May 28, 2012
| title = EST
| image = est.png
| titletext = The month names are the same, except that the fourth month only has the name 'April' in even-numbered years, and is otherwise unnamed.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic pokes fun of attempts to "fix" the calendar by making it simpler or more rational, which inevitably result in a system just as complicated. This is an example of the paradox in complexity theory that if you attempt to simplify a system of problems by creating a new system of evaluation for the problems you often have instead made the problem more complex than it was originally.

===Length of year===
Because there are approximately 365.2422 days in a {{w|solar year}}, various calendars use different means to keep the calendar year in sync with the solar year and the seasons. The Julian Calendar, for example, has leap days every four years, giving it an average year length of 365.25 days. The most widely used system is the {{w|Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian Calendar}}, which also has leap days every four years, but skips leap days in years divisible by 100 unless the year is also divisible by 400. This gives it an average year length of 365.2425 days, which is very close to the length of a solar year.

{{w|Calendar reform|Other calendars}} have been proposed, such not counting leap days and special "festival days" as a day of the week, in order to make every date fall on the same day of the week every year.

[[Randall]] advertises his idea for an "Universal Calendar for a Universal Planet". He combines {{w|calendar#Calendars in use|calendar}} definitions with {{w|Time zone|time zone}} definitions. The abbreviation ''EST'' is a joke on the American {{w|Eastern Time Zone|Eastern Standard Time}}.

*At "24 hours 4 minutes", EST days are longer, though there are only 360 of them in the year. The extra 4 minutes over the course of 360 days adds up to one standard day, so Randall's EST calendar would at this point have a year that is 361 standard days long.

*Running the clock backwards for 4 hours after every full moon gives 8 additional hours at each full moon, twelve or thirteen times in a year. Because a thirteenth full moon will occur once every 2.7 solar years on average, this modification adds 4.1228 standard days to an EST year, bringing it to 365.1228 days.

*The doubling of the non-prime numbers of the first non-reversed hour after each solstice and equinox is a final, very complicated way to bring Randall's EST year in extremely close sync with the solar year. There are 17 prime numbers between 0 and 59 and 43 non-primes. There are 2 equinoxes and 2 solstices each year, so a total of 172 minutes will occur twice. This brings the average length of Randall's EST year to 365.2422 standard days, equal to the solar year to four decimal places.

===Claimed benefits===
Many of the claimed benefits for the calendar are highly dubious:
*While it is fairly ''simple'' to describe, EST is far from simple to understand or put in practice. Clocks in particular would have to regularly undertake very complicated processes like running backwards or duplicating non-prime minutes.
*EST does appear to be fairly ''clearly defined''.
*EST fails completely to be ''unambiguous''. Following each full moon, four hours occur three times, twice forward and once backward. Several minutes are also duplicated, making times during those periods ambiguous.
*The only way EST is ''free of historical baggage'' is that it breaks free of any sensible bits of historical baggage; it keeps such things as the 30-day month and 12-month year, but adopts a different (and variable) length of day that would make it wildly out of sync with the Earth's day-night cycle.
*EST is ''compatible with old units'', as far as seconds, minutes, and hours are concerned, though not for days, months, or years.
*EST is indeed very ''precisely synced with the solar cycle''.
*EST is ''free of leap years'', though some EST years are 8 hours longer than others on account of having an extra full moon.
*A calendar ''amenable to date math'' makes it easy to find the length of time between two dates and times by having standardized periods of time. The complex variability of the length of EST years, days, and hours mean it is only ''intermittently'' amenable to date math, which is to say not at all.

===Other features===
The features of the calendar get increasingly bizarre as the description proceeds:

*The {{w|Epoch (reference date)|Epoch}} for EST is set by reference to the {{w|Julian calendar}}, which was superseded by the {{w|Gregorian calendar}}. The Julian calendar is currently 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar.

*The different zone for the United Kingdom is a reference to 1 yard being equal to 0.9144 meters, a pun on using {{w|imperial units}} instead of the {{w|metric system}}.

*Randall does not like {{w|Daylight Savings Time}} very much, as mentioned later in [[1268: Alternate Universe]].

*{{w|Narnia (world)|Narnian time}} is a reference to the fictitious world of Narnia in CS Lewis's {{w|The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe}} and its sequels. In Narnia, time passes much more quickly than in the real world. You could be in Narnia for several days and only a few minutes would have passed in the real world. However, synchronizing this effect would be impossible because it is not a consistent rate; it fluctuates wildly based on the whims of drama and magic.

*The Gregorian calendar does not include the year "0", after "1" BC the next year is "1" AD. Randall's invention fixes this according to correct Mathematics, only to reintroduce the problem immediately by arbitrarily omitting the year 1958. The year 1958 is significant because January 1, 1958 is the epoch (time zero) in {{w|International Atomic Time}} (TAI), which is part of the basis for {{w|Coordinated Universal Time}} (UTC). (The main difference is that TAI doesn't add leap seconds.)

*The title text may be a reference to the ancient (Pre-Babylonian Exile) [http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm Jewish Calendar], which did not name the months, rather assigning them numbers from 1 to 12. The names used by Jews today are the names of the Babylonian months, derived from various Babylonian deities.

==Transcript==
:XKCD{{sic}} Presents
:'''EARTH STANDARD TIME'''
:(EST)
:A Universal Calendar for a Universal Planet
:EST is...
:Simple * Clearly Defined * Unambiguous
:Free of Historical Baggage * Compatible with Old Units
:Precisely Synced with the Solar Cycle * Free of Leap Years
:Intermittently Amenable to Date Math

:UNITS
:Second: 1 S.I. Second
:Minute: 60 seconds
:Hour: 60 minutes
:Day: 1444 minutes (24 hours 4 minutes)

:Month: 30 Days
:Year: 12 months

:RULES
:For 4 hours after every full moon, run clocks backward.
:The non-prime-numbered minutes of the first full non-reversed hour after a solstice or equinox happen twice.

:[Epoch]
:00:00:00 EST, January 1, 1970 = 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970 (Julian calendar)
:[Time Zones]
:The two EST time zones are
:''EST'' and ''EST (United Kingdom)''. These are the same except that the UK second is 0.9144 standard seconds.

:Daylight saving: Countries may enter DST, but no time may pass there.
:Narnian Time: Synchronized.
:Year Zero: EST ''does'' have a year 0. (However, there is no 1958.)

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

1490: Atoms

2015-02-23T22:08:31Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ punctuation

{{comic
| number = 1490
| date = February 23, 2015
| title = Atoms
| image = atoms.png
| titletext = When I was little I had trouble telling my dad apart form ''[sic]'' the dog. I always recognized my mom because she had a bunch of extra plutoniums in her middle. I never did ask her why ...
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Megan]] is preparing a sample of what appears to be some mineral for {{w|elemental analysis}}. It seems to be some kind of {{w|silicate}} containing a small amount of {{w|iron}} (a common example of this would be {{w|red sandstone}}), and she is running a test to see if it contains {{w|beryllium}} (a rarer element whose best-known natural form is as a component of {{w|emerald}}).

[[Beret Guy]] seems to be able to tell what elements the substance is composed of just by eyeballing it, making him perhaps the perfect elemental analysis instrument. To confirm this, Megan asks Beret Guy what he sees when he looks at her face. Since he only sees the atoms Megan is composed of (mostly {{w|Composition_of_the_human_body|oxygen, carbon and hydrogen}}) he only notices the unusual atoms. In this case he sees the metal atoms her {{w|Dental_restoration#Materials_used|dental fillings}} are composed of. This shows his "atomic vision" extends beyond the surface of the substances. Megan finds this bizarre and asks him what is wrong with him. He states that he suspects people think he is weird because he contains too much {{w|zinc}}, missing Megan’s point: what is weird is not Beret guy’s zinc content, but his tendency to apparently see everyone as clouds of atoms.

High zinc intake ({{w|Zinc_toxicity|zinc toxicity}}) can cause nausea, vomiting, pain, cramps and diarrhea. It also reduces copper absorption, which affects the immune system.

The comic continues the theme of Beret Guy’s naive misunderstandings of scientific terminology turning to be literally true: in a previous [[1486: Vacuum|comic]] his ill-informed misinterpretation of the notion of energy in the vacuum resulted in him gaining significant superpowers.

In the title text, the concept is taken even further: Beret Guy found his dad indistinguishable from a dog; and apparently could recognize his mother only because she contained {{w|plutonium}} ― a very unusual occurrence that cannot possibly occur in nature ― either she had an {{w|Radioisotope thermoelectric generator|RTG}}-powered pacemaker (a few hundred were made in the 1970s), or she was the victim of unethical medical experimentation. The presence of plutonium in his mother may be an explanation or source of his own differences.

A typo in the title text mistakes "form" for "from". This may alternatively be a play on form as in form factor - dog vs man or even man = dog.

==Transcript==
:Beret guy: What’re you doing?
:
:Megan: Testing a sample for beryllium.
:Beret guy: That? Yeah, there’s a bunch of berylliums.
:Megan: How do you know?
:
:Beret guy: Look at it! See? Tons of oxygens and silicons, a few irons but definitely some berylliums too! Can’t you see them?
:
:Megan: No, I can’t see a list of the atoms in a thing by looking.
:Beret guy: How do you tell what things are?
:
:Megan: This is ridiculous. Look at me. What do you see?
:Beret guy: You have tons of metal in your face. Lots of fillings, I guess?
:
:Megan: What’s wrong with you?
:Beret guy: Too many zincs? I’ve always worried I had too much zinc and everyone thought I was weird.

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

1238: Enlightenment

2015-02-22T15:39:10Z

Nyq: slightly expanded the explanation

{{comic
| number = 1238
| date = July 15, 2013
| title = Enlightenment
| image = enlightenment.png
| titletext = But the rules of writing are like magic spells. If you never acquire them, then not using them says nothing.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a reference to a scene from {{w|Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace}} in which {{w|Yoda}} expresses doubt in a young {{w|Anakin Skywalker|Anakin}}'s potential to join the {{w|Jedi}} order. Yoda delivers a speech similar to the one that [[Ponytail]] gives here, except that the end of the sequence he presents is "{{w|Dark side (Star Wars)|the dark side}}" instead of "being an asshole". Yoda is ultimately correct; Anakin's fears lead him to join the dark side so that he may keep his loved ones from dying; this is at the expense of the stability of the galaxy, however, and his actions are in vain, as {{w|Padmé Amidala|his wife}} dies nonetheless. The circle on the ground is also taken from the ''Star Wars'' scene, and [[Cueball]] is presumably in the {{w|Mace Windu}} role.

Here, [[Randall]] compares Anakin's decision to join the dark side to the propensity of many Internet commenters to correct others on their spelling and grammar, and to the extreme prevalence of criticism over commendation or confirmation. Randall's point is that correcting people, like joining the dark side, ultimately stems from insecurity.

Ponytail and Cueball challenge [[Megan]] to type the sentence "I heard you're idea's and their definately good", which contains four {{w|Commonly misspelled words|common misspellings}} (''{{w|wikt:you're|you''''re'''}}'' instead of ''{{w|wikt:your|you'''r'''}}'', ''{{w|possessive|idea'''''''s}}'' instead of ''{{w|wikt:ideas|ideas}}'' [see {{w|greengrocers' apostrophe}}], ''{{w|wikt:their|the'''ir'''}}'' instead of ''{{w|wikt:they're|the'''y're'''}}'', and ''{{w|wikt:definately|defin'''a'''tely}}'' instead of ''{{w|wikt:definitely|defin'''i'''tely}}'').
Regarding the content, this sentence is one that is highly unlikely to be ever read in an internet argument, as almost every time people still have things they claim to know better about.
Megan thus can't bring herself to typing this sentence, having spent so much time judging others for their trivial errors, even when they're saying helpful things like the sentence in question. Instead, she smashes the computer and runs away — demonstrating the sort of anger that [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grammar%20Nazi "Grammar Nazis"] and internet wiseacres like her can feel about punctuation and spelling errors, and about content-related errors respectively. Cueball and Ponytail remark on this, both failing to use {{w|apostrophe}}s.

The title text specifically refers to {{w|Terry Pratchett}}'s novel {{w|Equal Rites}}, in which the characters discover that the most powerful magic is not using magic — with the distinction that not using magic because you don't know how is not the same as choosing to refrain from using magic when you do know how. Randall is comparing this with use or misuse of the rules of English: not even knowing the rules is not admirable, whereas knowing the rules but choosing to disregard them is.

==Transcript==
:[The two Internet Bodhisattvas Ponytail and Cueball lecture Megan encircled by a wheel placed upon the ground.]
:Ponytail: To achieve '''internet enlightenment''', you must free yourself from insecurity.
:Megan: But insecurity keeps me humble!
:Ponytail: No. Insecurity leads to conceit. Conceit leads to judgment. Judgment leads to being an asshole.
:[A laptop is placed on a stand in front of Megan.]
:Megan: I'm ready. How do I begin?
:Ponytail: Type this sentence.
:[White text on black background.]
:I heard you're idea's and their definately good.
:[The laptop has been smashed to the floor. The circle, once full of hope and excitement, is now full of despair and no Megan.]
:Ponytail: She wasnt ready.
:Cueball: Its a difficult road.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]

721: Flatland

2015-02-20T21:35:06Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added wikilinks

{{comic
| number = 721
| date = March 31, 2010
| title = Flatland
| image = flatland.png
| titletext = Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a reference to the satirical novel {{w|Flatland|''Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions''}}, in which a society of flat shapes live in a {{w|Two-dimensional space|2D}} world. Half the book is a direct satire of {{w|Victorian era|Victorian}} society, and the other half explores the experience of discovering a new dimension, where a sphere introduces a square (named A. Square) to {{w|Three-dimensional space|3D}}. [[Cueball]] appears to have taken the place of this sphere, and the comic takes place after the square knows the third dimension exists.

Humans will never fully be able to grasp the concept of a four spatial dimensions (at least not in the foreseeable future), but there are ways of squashing or slicing four dimensions to create partial visualizations of 4D space. {{w|Miegakure}} is a 4D game that uses cross-sections of 4D space. Cueball attempted to play it, but after having his mind blown, he gained more sympathy for A. Square, who'd had similar trouble understanding 3D. A. Square accepts his apology.

The joke here is that Cueball was being silly and drew lines on A. Square to make him look like {{w|SpongeBob SquarePants (character)|Spongebob}}, which did not make the square happy. Cueball apologizes again. There is actually a Spongebob episode featuring a flat creature that resembles a crude drawing of Spongebob.

The title text is a third apology for when Cueball crawled down into the second dimension. Being a stick figure, he is comprised of a circle and straight lines. In Flatland, circles are priests (Flatland's highest social level), and all women are lines; thus, to a watcher in Flatland, Cueball would look very much like a priest above many connected women, which would look like a lesbian orgy.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball encounters a square on the ground.]
:Cueball: Hey, A. Square. How's Flatland?
:Square: Still flat. What's up?
:Cueball: I just spent an hour playing a demo of this 4D game called Miegakure.

:[A character in Miegakure jumps around the 4D landscape.]
:Trying to jump from block to block in four dimensions hurt my brain.

:Cueball: So I apologize for giving you a hard time when you were slow to understand 3D space. I sympathize now.
:Square: It's okay.

:Cueball: Also, I apologize for drawing arms, legs, and eyes on you to make you look like Spongebob. That was out of line.
:Square: Yes, it was.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Sex]]

1489: Fundamental Forces

2015-02-20T14:48:39Z

Nyq: added wikilinks, decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1489
| date = February 20, 2015
| title = Fundamental Forces
| image = fundamental_forces.png
| titletext = "Of these four forces, there's one we don't really understand." "Is it the weak force or the strong--" "It's gravity."
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is acting here as someone teaching physics at a basic level, perhaps a high school science teacher. He seems to understand the general idea of the {{w|Fundamental interaction#Overview of the fundamental interaction|four fundamental forces}}, but his understanding gets progressively more sketchy about the details. The off-panel audience, probably a student or class, is interested, but quickly begins to realize Cueball's lack of understanding. Instead of acknowledging the problem directly, Cueball simply blusters onwards.

The comic also outlines how progressively difficult it gets to describe the forces. {{w|Gravitation|Gravity}} was first mathematically characterized in 1686 as {{w|Newton's law of universal gravitation}}, which was considered an essentially complete account until the introduction of {{w|general relativity}} in 1915. The {{w|Electromagnetism|electromagnetic force}} does indeed give rise to {{w|Coulomb's law}} of {{w|electrostatics|electrostatic}} interaction (another {{w|inverse-square law}}, proposed in 1785), but a much more comprehensive description, covering full {{w|Classical electromagnetism|classical electrodynamics}}, was only given in {{w|Maxwell's equations}} around 1861. The {{w|strong interaction|strong}} and {{w|weak interaction|weak}} forces cannot easily be summarized as comparably simple mathematical equations. It's possible that Cueball does understand the strong and weak interactions, but is completely at a loss when he tries to describe them.

The strong force doesn't act directly between {{w|Proton|protons}} and {{w|Neutron|neutrons}} but between the {{w|Quark|quarks}} that form them. Unlike gravity and electromagnetism, the strong force grows ''stronger'' with distance. Between protons and neutrons there is a residual strong force, analogous in some ways to the {{w|van der Waals force}} between molecules. This residual strong force is carried by {{w|Pion|pions}} and does decrease rapidly and exponentially with distance due to the pions having mass.

The weak force is much weaker than electromagnetism at typical distances within an atomic nucleus, and has a short range, so has very little effect as a ''force'', but has the property of changing one particle into another. It can cause an up quark to become a down quark, and in the process release a high energy electron and neutrino. This is known as beta decay, a form of radioactivity. Over even shorter distances the weak interaction and electromagnetism are essentially the same.

The title text refers to the fact that it is gravity that appears to be the simplest and easiest to understand of the four forces, but turns out to be the {{w|Graviton|hardest}} to reconcile with a coherent (quantum) understanding of all four forces together.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is holding his hands up while giving a lecture to an off panel audience.]
:Cueball: There are four fundamental forces between particles:
::(1) '''''Gravity''''', which obeys the inverse square law:
::: Fgravity = G m1m2/d2
:Off panel audience: OK...

:[Cueball is still holding his hands up while continues the lecture to the off panel audience.]
:Cueball: (2) '''''Electromagnetism''''', which obeys this inverse-square law:
:::Fstatic = Ke q1q2/d2
::...and also Maxwell's equations
:Off panel audience: Also what?

:[Zoom in on Cueball as he continues the lecture to the off panel audience.]
:Cueball: (3) The '''''strong nuclear force''''', which obeys, uh ...
:::...well, umm...
::...it holds protons and neutrons together.
:Off panel audience: I see.
:Cueball: It's strong.

:[Cueball finishes the lecture to the off panel audience and spreads out his arm for the final remark.]
:Cueball: And (4) the '''''weak force'''''. It [mumble mumble] radioactive decay [mumble mumble]
:Off panel audience: That's not a sentence. You just said “Radio-
:Cueball: – '''''And those are the four fundamental forces!'''''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Physics]]

1488: Flowcharts

2015-02-19T00:49:45Z

Nyq: Decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1488
| date = February 18, 2015
| title = Flowcharts
| image = flowcharts.png
| titletext = Whoa, and if you overlay a Fibonacci spiral on a golden spiral it matches up almost perfectly!
}}
*If you click on the comic at xkcd you get to the following page: [http://xkcd.com/spiral/].
*The arrow at the bottom of this comic points to the [http://c.xkcd.com/random/comic/ "Random" button] at the bottom of the xkcd page.
**Go to the comic, as always, by clicking on the date line above this comic.

==Explanation==
'''Note''': A flawed version of this comic was posted at first and then quickly a correct version was uploaded. But this gave rise to several misunderstandings and confusion. See the [[#Trivia|Trivia]] section below.

This comic is a {{w|flowchart}} style. Interestingly, the first option, ''Do you like flowcharts?'' loops back to itself if you say ''Yes''. This will cause the reader who actually likes flow charts to go into an endless loop of choosing ''Yes'', until they are so annoyed by flowcharts that they do not like them anymore and can progress by saying ''No''.

After asking about flowcharts, the reader is asked whether they like {{w|line graph|line graphs}}. If they follow yes line, it becomes a line graph where "Time" is the x-axis and "Your Happiness" is the y-axis, and shows that your happiness increases with time. If you don't like line graphs, they are asked the same question about {{w|scatter plots}} where again the lines turn into the points and the axis of such a plot.

Taking yet another line, the reader is asked "Charge a battery?" If they follow the line marked yes they are asked whether they are {{w|Alternating current|A/C}} or {{w|Direct current|D/C}} current and are led to a portion of the flowchart which resembles a {{w|circuit diagram}} of a {{w|rectifier bridge}} with a battery connected to it.

If the reader follows the "no" line, they are asked if they like spirals. If they choose "no" they are told to take the {{w|path of least resistance}}. This part of the flowchart resembles a circuit diagram, and the word "{{w|resistance}}" is a pun because resistance can have several meanings. In electricity it is an electrical quantity that measures how the device or material reduces the electric current flow through it. Going left is the "Never" option, which goes through extra resistors and a diode, therefore making the "Yes" option the "path of least resistance". However, when asked if you choose the path of least resistance and answers ''never'' it could also mean that you do not try to avoid a little trouble.

Whether they choose "Yes" or "No", they arrive at "Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?" If they choose "yes" the line fades into a drawing of a golden spiral, and we see that the flowchart is structured around it. If they choose "no" they are asked if they are tired of flowcharts. If not, they are taken to the beginning to start over again. If they are tired, the line points to the "random" button on the xkcd website.

The title text and the faint image of a golden spiral parody the fact that the golden spiral is superimposed on nearly ''everything''. The golden spiral is a spiral that has the growth rate of the golden ratio, a number that has inspired both artists and mathematicians alike. However, people try to find the golden ratio in seemingly random objects, and they fall to confirmation bias when drawing a golden spiral on top that seemingly fits. The comic links to [http://xkcd.com/spiral/], where one can see exactly that- golden spirals Randall "found" in random photographs. The title text is funny because the mathematics of the famous Fibonacci sequence. The limit of consecutive terms of the Fibonacci sequence is equal to the golden ratio. So it matches up almost perfectly for a good reason, unlike the coincidental matchings of the pictures in the mobile site link.

This comic bears reminiscence of [[730: Circuit Diagram]], although it is not exactly the same idea.

===List of Items in Flowchart===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Text in boxes
! Explanation
! Successor(s)
! Predeccessor(s)
|-
| Start
| Start here
| Do you like flowcharts?
| Tired of flowcharts yet?
|-
| Do you like flowcharts?
| Asking whether or not the reader likes flow charts. Recursively returns to itself until the reader is annoyed enough to not like flowcharts and can move on to the next point.
| Do you like flowcharts?, Do you like line graphs?
| Start, Do you like flowcharts?
|-
| Do you like line graphs?
| It asks if you like {{w|line graph|line graphs}}
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs], Scatter plots?
| Do you like flowcharts?
|-
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs]
| It is asking if you wish to be the data or the axis. If you choose the line, the flow chart line turns into a line graph with a positive curve. The same question will be asked later if you say no to line graphs and yes to scatter plots.
| [A line in a line graph], Time or your happiness?
| Do you like line graphs?
|-
| Time or your happiness?
| If you choose ''time'' the flow chart line becomes the x-axis of time and if you choose ''your happiness'' it becomes the y-axis in the line graph with the line from before indicating that your happiness increases over time (maybe because you like line graphs and are now becoming part of one?)
| [Time axis], [Your Happiness axis]
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs]
|-
| Scatter plots?
| If you don't like line graphs then maybe you like {{w|scatterplot|scatter plots}}?
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots], Help charge a battery?
| Do you like line graphs?
|-
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots]
| It is asking if you wish to be the data or the axis. If you choose the data, the flow chart line turns into a scatter plot that is also a flowchart where each of the 10 flow chart boxes is black with two white arrow, one pointing up and the other to the right. They are all connected with multiple connections. The same question was asked earlier if you said yes to line graphs.
| [A flow chart that looks line points in in a scatter plot], X of Y?
| Scatter plots?
|-
| X or Y?
| Which axis do you prefer? The line you chooses turns in to this axis in the scatter plot.
| [X axis], [Y axis]
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots]
|-
| Help charge a battery?
| From here on the flowchart is at the beginning of morphing into a circuit diagram.
| Like spirals?, Are you A/C or D/C?
| Scatter plots?
|-
| Are you A/C or D/C?,
| Asks whether you are an {{w|AC current}} or a {{w|DC current}}.
| Positive or negative phase?, positive or negative DC terminal?
| Help charging a battery?
|-
| Positive or negative phase?
| Conventional current will flow forwards during the positive phase of AC current, whereas in the negative phase the forwards directions matches the actual flow of electrons (see [[567: Urgent Mission]]]).
| Positive or negative DC terminal? [To either side of this box]
| Are you A/C or D/C?
|-
| Positive or negative DC terminal?
| This box looks like a {{w|rectifier bridge}}, which is used to convert AC to DC. The single output leads to a battery which is joined in a circuit to the bottom of the rectifier bridge.
| Battery [plus or minus]
| Positive or negative phase?
|-
| Like spirals?
| Well, do you? If you do you instantly goes to the question of golden spirals. If not you take a detour.
| Take the path of least resistance?, Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Help charge a battery?
|-
| Take the path of least resistance?
| This one is a pun. If resistance is seen as electrical resistance, then the bottom one labeled ''yes'' is the one with least resistance. The other labeled "Never" sends you through ''more'' resistance, and a 'protective' diode. But in either case you are lead to the same decision box. Also the resistors could look like spirals - making this detour for those who dislike these even more painful.
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Like spirals?
|-
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Here is a question regarding if you like the idea that some people can find and superimpose a {{w|golden spiral}} on a random image. No matter which options you choose you are forced to admit that it is totally BS ({{w|bullshit}}). But maybe you like it anyway? If you choose the ''Yes, even though it's total BS'' option the flow chart continues to the side of the chart, then starts to spiral up only to fades out to a very faint golden spiral aligned to the other items in the flow chart. It is almost impossible to see it before you follow this line. The other option is of course ''No, it's total BS''. If you do like it - then click on the [http://www.xkcd.com/1488/ comic on xkcd].
| Tired of flowcharts yet?, [A very faint golden spiral]
| Like spirals?, Take the path of least resistance?
|-
| Tired of flowcharts yet?
| Have you had enough of flow chart? If not then you are returned to the ''start'' box at the top of the chart. Maybe you have not tried all options yet, although you have already answered that you are tired of flow charts if you get this far. If you have ahd enough and answers ''Yes, I want to look at something else'' this option leads to the random comic button below the comic (only on xkcd). This decision ''literally'' breaks the fourth wall in traveling through the image's nominal boundary to point at a specific button to look at some other comic.
| Start, [The xkcd [http://c.xkcd.com/random/comic/ Random] comic button]
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
|}

==Transcript==
:[A flow chart. The first option the start box is white text on a black rectangle. The other boxes are rhombuses standing on edge. Except for the first there are always two options going out. Most onlyhave one option coming in, but there are exceptions with two options going in]
:Start
:[One arrow points to the first real choice]
:[Below the text on the two options going out from each option will be indented. The top of these two options will be the one to be mentioned first below. Then the chart will be mapped like this going back to the previous unfinished option]
:Do you like flowcharts?
::Yes
::No
:[Yes goes back where it came from]
:Do you like line graphs?
::Yes
::No
:Data or axis?
::Line
::Axis
:[The line is just a line – but now as the line in a line graph]
:Time or your happiness?
::Time
::Your happiness
:[These two lines turn into the x and y axis of the line graph]
:Scatter plots?
::Yes
::No
:Data or axis?
::Data
::Axis
:[The data line turns into the points in a scatter plot]
:X or Y?
::X
::Y
:[These two lines turn into the x and y axis of the scatter plot]
:Help charge a battery?
::Yes
::No
:Are you A/C or D/C?,
::A/C
::D/C
:Positive or negative phase?
::+
::-
:[The D/C option also goes to this next option, but directly. This next rhombus looks like a part of a circuit diagram]
:Positive or negative DC terminal?
::+
::-
:[These two lines goes to the + and – poles of a battery]
:Like spirals?
::No
::Yes
:Take the path of least resistance?
::Never
::Yes
:[Never goes through two resistors and a diode before reaching the point of the Yes option, which then also goes though yet another resistor. Both thus end at the same option, which is also the one that Yes to like Spirals ends up at:]
:Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
::Yes, even though it's total BS.
::No, it's total BS.
:[Yes option takes the chart into a fading line that turns into a golden spiral spanning the whole chart.]
:Tired of flowcharts yet?
::No
::Yes, I want to look at something else
:[No takes you back to the start box at the top]
:[Yes takes you out of the comic and points to the Random button at xkcd.]

==Trivia==
*A corrected version of the comic was uploaded later on the same day.
**This is the second time in February 2015 this has happened. Last time it was with [[1482: NowPlaying]]. Is Randall getting sloppy?
*It appears that an unfinished version of the comic was uploaded, with several of the lines and labels missing, and the bridge circuit incorrectly drawn.
*This [[Media:OriginalFlowcharts.png|original]] comic can be seen on the link.
*The errors were:
**Missing yes/no at the line graph options.
**Missing yes/no at the scatter plot options and missing the line for the yes option going to the second Data axis.
**Missing yes at charge a battery options
**Missing DC from the AC or DC options and missing the line for the DC option going to the terminal.
**Missing the arrow pointing to the terminal from the "-" option of the phase.
**Missing +/- at terminal option and missing the line going from the negative pole of the battery to the terminal.
**The terminal, which is a rectifier bridge, had both diodes drawn in the wrong direction on the left side of the diagram. This was corrected.
**There where a + floating between the phase and terminal option. This was deleted.
**Missing yes like spirals options.
**Missing yes/never! at the least resistance options. Also the arrow pointing to the next option was missing.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Flowcharts]]

654: Nachos

2015-02-17T19:00:06Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ grammar and clarificatiton that microwave radiation is non-ionizing (i.e. not radioactive)

{{comic
| number = 654
| date = October 26, 2009
| title = Nachos
| image = nachos.png
| titletext = Hey, gaming on wifi? You have only yourself to blame.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Megan]] and [[Ponytail]] are playing an online shooter game. Ponytail calls [[Cueball]], who is living with Megan, and easily persuades him to make {{w|nachos}}. {{w|Wi-Fi}} and {{w|microwave oven}}s both use {{w|ISM band|radio frequencies around 2.4 GHz}}, so Cueball's cooking disrupts Megan's connection and allows Ponytail to kill Megan's character.

The title text points out that Megan has only herself to blame, as gaming on WiFi is susceptible to such issues, while gaming with a wired connection (e.g. {{w|Ethernet}}) is not.

Note: If using the microwave actually does interfere with your WiFi, then get another microwave. Not (strictly) because it would mess with the WiFi, but because your microwave has a hole somewhere and is leaking non-ionizing radiation it shouldn't. It won't kill you, but it's not be operating at peak efficiency.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is on the phone with Ponytail, who's on her computer in the other half of a split panel.]
:Cueball: Hello? ... Oh, hey. Looking for Megan? She's gaming.
:Ponytail: I know. You know what's delicious? Nachos.

:[Ponytail clicks on her computer while talking.]
:Ponytail: When you layer the cheese so it gets on every chip... then smother them in sour cream and salsa...

:Cueball: Mm, that IS delicious. And I've got the ingredients, too!
:Ponytail, on phone: You should make some!
:Cueball: I will!
:Ponytail, on phone: Hurry.

:[Cueball is making nachos in the microwave.]
:Microwave: ''beep beep whirrrr''

:Megan, at her computer: My wifi signal!

:[Ponytail who called is at her computer.]
:Computer: Boom! Headshot.

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

1442: Chemistry

2015-02-17T18:29:13Z

Nyq: /* Transcript */ decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1442
| date = November 3, 2014
| title = Chemistry
| image = chemistry.png
| titletext = These are all sans-serif compounds. Serif compounds are dramatically different and usually much more reactive.
}}

==Explanation==
The idea of Typographic Chemistry presented in this comic is a play on Douglas [[Hofstadter]]’s {{w|Typographical Number Theory}} and [http://smallshire.org.uk/sufficientlysmall/2013/05/12/typogenetics-in-f-part-i/ Typographical Genetics], which are featured in {{w|Gödel, Escher, Bach}}. While Hofstadter's typographical systems are designed to model aspects of real genetics and number theory, Randall abuses this notion by inventing a typographical system which bears no resemblance to real chemistry.

Chemical bonding is a well-known subject which explains the formation of {{w|molecule}}s from {{w|atom}}s. This comic refers to three {{w|chemical element}}s: carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O). In real chemistry, the formation of bonds between atoms depends on the number of valence electrons each atom has, and how accessible those electrons are for bonding. The comic jokingly replaces valence electron theory with a theory that the number of bonds an atom can form depends on the number of {{w|Leaf vertex|leaf vertices}} possessed by the chemical symbol's letter. A leaf vertex is a vertex having only one edge connecting to one other vertex. "H" for example, the chemical symbol of hydrogen, has 4 leaf vertices. This is shown in the comic by the four half-circles placed at each leaf vertex of the "H". Thus, in the comic's theory, elemental hydrogen can form 4 bonds. Oxygen, however, having the chemical symbol "O", has no leaf vertices, and according to the comic's theory should not bond to anything, and is therefore inert.

Of course, the theory is completely inconsistent with observed chemistry. While the comic declares oxygen is inert and forms no bonds, this is not really the case: the two unpaired valence electrons in a lone oxygen atom makes oxygen reactive, and oxygen readily form molecules. Diatomic oxygen, O2, makes up about 20.9% of Earth's atmosphere, and is essential for aerobic life, including human life. Similarly, a water molecule consists of an oxygen atom tightly bonded to two hydrogen atoms.

By observing real chemical compounds, chemists have deduced that hydrogen atoms really have 1 valence electron, carbon 4 and oxygen 6, allowing hydrogen to have up to 1 bond, carbon up to 4, and oxygen up to 2. Thus carbon can have up to four bonds, and really is {{w|graphite|often found}} in {{w|diamond|crystalline form}} in nature (diamonds and coal are {{w|allotropy|allotropes}} of carbon); oxygen can have up to 2 bonds, and can combine with carbon to form CO2 (instead of C2H in the comic). [[Randall]] thus gives to "typographic" hydrogen qualities that belong in real-life to carbon, since "typographic" hydrogen can have 4 bonds. Similarly, "typographic" carbon is ascribed properties belonging to real-life oxygen. "Typographic" oxygen takes on the properties of the real-life noble gases (like helium, neon, and argon), which form no bonds and are inert.

While the {{w|ethynyl radical}}, which has the structure ∙C≡C-H, does have the formula C2H, there is no molecule with the C-H-C structure in nature. The word "mydrane" is a whimsical neologism for this fictional substance: the "hydr-" prefix for hydrogen is changed to "mydr-" (a prefix which does not exist) and combined to the "-ane" suffix for {{w|alkane}}s (simple hydrocarbon molecules). Perhaps Randall named this compound "mydrane" to declare ownership of it ("my-" as in "mine"). Another reasonable assumption is that the word is a portmanteau of methyl (Me- is the prefix for 1 carbon chains attached to a functional group) and hydrogen with the -ane suffix for alkanes; the nomenclature stems from (di-)m(ethyl) (h)ydr(ogen) -ane, which would form mydrane. Technically, the nomenclature would be "dimethyl" since there are two "methyl" groups attached to the functional group (i.e. hydrogen in this case). It would, however, not be uncommon to drop a di- from a compound name if it's redundant (only one possible compound, e.g. dimethyl ether which sometimes is referred to as methyl ether) or makes a clumsy name ("dimydrane" could make it sound as if there are two mydrane groups).

The title text points out that the theory as presented only applies to sans-serif text. A {{w|serif}} is a small line across the end of each stroke. "H", for instance, has four serifs, each with two leaf vertices. Thus hydrogen in a serif font would be able to form 8 bonds making it, according to the comic's theory, "more reactive".

==Transcript==
:[The symbol for hydrogen.]
:Hydrogen can form four bonds. It readily bonds with itself, and often exists as a crystal.
:[A diagram with several 'H's is shown. The 'H's are connected in a pattern like a crystal.]
:Crystalline hydrogen

:[The symbol for carbon.]
:Carbon can only form two bonds. It readily bonds with hydrogen to form C2H (mydrane) or itself.
:[Two diagrams, one with two 'C's connected together and the other with two 'C's and one 'H' connected.]

:[The symbol for oxygen.]
:Oxygen is inert, forming no bonds...
:[A diagram of several 'O's is shown. None are connected to anything.]
:Monoatomic oxygen gas.

:Typographic chemistry

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Chemistry]]

1442: Chemistry

2015-02-17T18:28:04Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1442
| date = November 3, 2014
| title = Chemistry
| image = chemistry.png
| titletext = These are all sans-serif compounds. Serif compounds are dramatically different and usually much more reactive.
}}

==Explanation==
The idea of Typographic Chemistry presented in this comic is a play on Douglas [[Hofstadter]]’s {{w|Typographical Number Theory}} and [http://smallshire.org.uk/sufficientlysmall/2013/05/12/typogenetics-in-f-part-i/ Typographical Genetics], which are featured in {{w|Gödel, Escher, Bach}}. While Hofstadter's typographical systems are designed to model aspects of real genetics and number theory, Randall abuses this notion by inventing a typographical system which bears no resemblance to real chemistry.

Chemical bonding is a well-known subject which explains the formation of {{w|molecule}}s from {{w|atom}}s. This comic refers to three {{w|chemical element}}s: carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O). In real chemistry, the formation of bonds between atoms depends on the number of valence electrons each atom has, and how accessible those electrons are for bonding. The comic jokingly replaces valence electron theory with a theory that the number of bonds an atom can form depends on the number of {{w|Leaf vertex|leaf vertices}} possessed by the chemical symbol's letter. A leaf vertex is a vertex having only one edge connecting to one other vertex. "H" for example, the chemical symbol of hydrogen, has 4 leaf vertices. This is shown in the comic by the four half-circles placed at each leaf vertex of the "H". Thus, in the comic's theory, elemental hydrogen can form 4 bonds. Oxygen, however, having the chemical symbol "O", has no leaf vertices, and according to the comic's theory should not bond to anything, and is therefore inert.

Of course, the theory is completely inconsistent with observed chemistry. While the comic declares oxygen is inert and forms no bonds, this is not really the case: the two unpaired valence electrons in a lone oxygen atom makes oxygen reactive, and oxygen readily form molecules. Diatomic oxygen, O2, makes up about 20.9% of Earth's atmosphere, and is essential for aerobic life, including human life. Similarly, a water molecule consists of an oxygen atom tightly bonded to two hydrogen atoms.

By observing real chemical compounds, chemists have deduced that hydrogen atoms really have 1 valence electron, carbon 4 and oxygen 6, allowing hydrogen to have up to 1 bond, carbon up to 4, and oxygen up to 2. Thus carbon can have up to four bonds, and really is {{w|graphite|often found}} in {{w|diamond|crystalline form}} in nature (diamonds and coal are {{w|allotropy|allotropes}} of carbon); oxygen can have up to 2 bonds, and can combine with carbon to form CO2 (instead of C2H in the comic). [[Randall]] thus gives to "typographic" hydrogen qualities that belong in real-life to carbon, since "typographic" hydrogen can have 4 bonds. Similarly, "typographic" carbon is ascribed properties belonging to real-life oxygen. "Typographic" oxygen takes on the properties of the real-life noble gases (like helium, neon, and argon), which form no bonds and are inert.

While the {{w|ethynyl radical}}, which has the structure ∙C≡C-H, does have the formula C2H, there is no molecule with the C-H-C structure in nature. The word "mydrane" is a whimsical neologism for this fictional substance: the "hydr-" prefix for hydrogen is changed to "mydr-" (a prefix which does not exist) and combined to the "-ane" suffix for {{w|alkane}}s (simple hydrocarbon molecules). Perhaps Randall named this compound "mydrane" to declare ownership of it ("my-" as in "mine"). Another reasonable assumption is that the word is a portmanteau of methyl (Me- is the prefix for 1 carbon chains attached to a functional group) and hydrogen with the -ane suffix for alkanes; the nomenclature stems from (di-)m(ethyl) (h)ydr(ogen) -ane, which would form mydrane. Technically, the nomenclature would be "dimethyl" since there are two "methyl" groups attached to the functional group (i.e. hydrogen in this case). It would, however, not be uncommon to drop a di- from a compound name if it's redundant (only one possible compound, e.g. dimethyl ether which sometimes is referred to as methyl ether) or makes a clumsy name ("dimydrane" could make it sound as if there are two mydrane groups).

The title text points out that the theory as presented only applies to sans-serif text. A {{w|serif}} is a small line across the end of each stroke. "H", for instance, has four serifs, each with two leaf vertices. Thus hydrogen in a serif font would be able to form 8 bonds making it, according to the comic's theory, "more reactive".

==Transcript==
:[The symbol for Hydrogen.]
:Hydrogen can form four bonds. It readily bonds with itself, and often exists as a crystal.
:[A diagram with several 'H's is shown. The 'H's are connected in a pattern like a crystal.]
:Crystalline Hydrogen

:[The symbol for Carbon.]
:Carbon can only form two bonds. It readily bonds with Hydrogen to form C2H (Mydrane) or itself.
:[Two diagrams, one with two 'C's connected together and the other with two 'C's and one 'H' connected.]

:[The symbol for Oxygen.]
:Oxygen is inert, forming no bonds...
:[A diagram of several 'O's is shown. None are connected to anything.]
:Monoatomic Oxygen gas.

:Typographic Chemistry

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Chemistry]]

752: Phobia

2015-02-15T08:46:53Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added wikilink and expanded explanation

{{comic
| number = 752
| date = June 11, 2010
| title = Phobia
| image = phobia.png
| titletext = Oh God, the tornado picked up snakes!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is about {{w|Phobia|phobias}} and being afraid of specific and non-specific things. The blonde is {{w|Ophidiophobia|afraid of snakes}}, while [[Megan]] as usual acts overly philosophical and says that she is not afraid of snakes, but instead afraid of putting off personal relationships for too long.

In attempt to address the problem of having fears, both women decide to become {{w|Storm chasing|storm chasers}} - individuals who pursue severe weather conditions, for either scientific investigation, providing media coverage or an adventure. Ironically, chasing adverse weather, especially tornadoes, is more dangerous than the things that cause original phobias of the main charters. Indeed, one's ability to control the risk while being near tornado is far less than one's ability to control the risk of being bitten by a snake: the tornado is violent and unpredictable, while snakes only attack humans when they feel threatened. Additionally, one needs to deliberately expose oneself to the snake in order to have any risk of being attacked.

The second element of irony in this comic is that while observing the adverse weather, the main characters notice that the snakes have been picked up by the tornado, and now, in addition to being exposed to the violence of weather, the main characters are also exposed to snakes again.

This comic may have references to the movies: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417148/?ref_=sr_1 Snakes on a plane], [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117998/?ref_=sr_1 Twister] and [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103074/?ref_=sr_1 Thelma & Louise].

==Transcript==
:[A blonde woman and Megan observe a snake on the ground.]
:Blonde: Whoa, a snake!
:Megan: Cool!
:Blonde: I'm afraid of snakes.

:[The brunette looks pensive.]
:Megan: I'm afraid of saying "Everything's complicated right now, but maybe next year" until there are no more years left.

:[The blonde considers her response.]

:[Megan cuts her off mid-sentence.]
:Blonde: Do you-
:Megan: I want to be a storm chaser.

:[A tornado reaches from the black storm clouds to the earth, kicking up a sizable cloud of debris at its base. The blonde woman is at the wheel of a car, Megan hanging out the window and holding a camera.]

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

1484: Apollo Speeches

2015-02-14T18:53:35Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added wikilink

{{comic
| number = 1484
| date = February 9, 2015
| title = Apollo Speeches
| image = apollo_speeches.png
| titletext = While our commitment to recycling initiatives has been unwavering, this is not a cost any of us should be expected to pay.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|The framework is laid out. Needs a much more in-depth explanation, however.}}
As explained in the comic, {{w|Richard Nixon|Nixon}} staffer {{w|William Safire}} wrote [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/11/in-event-of-moon-disaster.html two speeches] for the United States President to deliver, depending on whether or not the {{w|Apollo 11}} return launch was successful. When the outcome of an event (moon landing, military actions, etc.) can't be predicted with sufficient certainty, it is a common practice for "[http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/events/centennials/nixon/exhibit/nixon-online-exhibit-disaster.html contingency speeches]" to be prepared.

The rest of the comic runs with this theme, making the false claim that Safire had written several other such contingency speeches for increasingly unlikely possibilities. First listed are a couple pages from the real contingency speech to be delivered in the event that the astronauts were left stranded on the Moon. Lying on top of that is a speech to be delivered in the case that the spacecraft went missing altogether, which was relatively unlikely. The speeches after that deal with the following highly unlikely or impossible contingencies:
*The astronauts had stolen the ship and piloted it towards Mars, which was clearly not feasible: while the crew could have redirected the ship while sending insulting messages to Earth, the spacecraft lacked the power to fly to Mars within any reasonable period of time by several orders of magnitude or the supplies for the astronauts to survive such an extended trip.
**At the time of production for this strip in 2015, several governments and private companies have designs on Martian colonization.
*More astronauts than expected were found in the recovered ship;
**The appearance of three additional astronauts ventures into the realm of possibility normally reserved for science fiction and Twilight Zone episodes.
*The ship had hit the {{w|USS Hornet (CV-12)|USS ''Hornet''}} and crushed Nixon;
**The U.S.S. Hornet was the ship that recovered the Apollo 11 astronauts after they completed their return mission by landing their command module in the Pacific Ocean; President Nixon himself was on board to greet them upon their return. Apollo 11 famously landed in the Pacific Ocean, and the single ship tasked with its recovery would be a very small target to hit for the technology even if that had been the intent, which it was of course not. Spiro Agnew was, in 1969, Vice President of the United States, and thus next in line for the presidency. This joke plays off the irony of the ship, and indeed President, being hit and triggering a succession, causing "President Agnew" to address the world.
*The re-entry craft had been sold for scrap and crushed along with the astronauts inside.
**Apollo 11 observed a strict quarantine procedure after landing. This possibility requires extraordinary incompetence and unholy zeal for recycling programs. The command module was historically recovered, examined, and is now on permanent display in the {{w|National Air and Space Museum}}. Obviously, the astronauts were allowed to leave the craft before it was put on display.

The title text builds upon this last contingency speech, delving into the bathos of the horror of the spacecraft's recycling and its passengers' resulting deaths despite the U.S.'s commitment to recycling initiatives.

Shortly after this comic was released, in that weeks ''What if?'', ''those speeches'' are referenced with a link to this comic. (see [[http://what-if.xkcd.com/129/ Black Hole Moon]]).

==Transcript==
:[Commentary above the speeches.]
:In 1969, Nixon staffer William Safire wrote a speech for the president to deliver if the Apollo 11 return launch failed, stranding the doomed astronauts on the Moon.
:Uncovered in 1999, it is often called the greatest speech never given.
:Today, the ''full'' set of Safire's contingency speeches has been found.

:'''In event astronauts stranded on Moon'''
:Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.
:[Here, several lines from the original speech are cut.]
:In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
:Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever

:'''In event spacecraft goes missing'''
:Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins went to the Moon as ambassadors of peace for all mankind, and all mankind prays that they may yet return safely home.
:We are separated from the Moon by a vast gulf of space, against which their tiny vessel appeared as but a drifting speck. For a few brief seconds, we took our eye off them, and despite days of desperate searching, never again was their vessel sighted from Earth.
:While these men are lost, they are not forgotten, and their sacrifice will not

:'''In even astronauts abscond with spacecraft'''
:We do not know what led Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to betray the trust we placed in them, abandon their mission, and steer their vessel toward Mars. Nor do we know what compelled them to transmit such hurtful messages back to Earth, heaping contempt on their onetime home.
:But whatever the cause of their dereliction, I call upon the United States to commit itself, before this year is out, to launching a mission to chase down Apollo 11 and return its crew to earth to face justice. We must not rest until

:'''In event spacecraft returns with extra astronauts'''
:While there is much we do not understand, tonight all of earth is united in celebrating the safe return of our brave explorers.
:We of course have many questions, and in the days and weeks to come we will demand answers. How many souls were truly aboard Apollo 11 when it launched? Who are the six men now in quarantine aboard the USS Hornet? What happened

:'''In event spacecraft hits U.S.S. Hornet, crushing Nixon'''
:'''President Agnew''': Tonight, we have experienced a great national triumph and a great national loss. We take joy in the safe return from the Moon of Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins, but that joy is tempered with sorrow as we mourn our president’s tragic death beneath their wayward capsule.
:Richard Nixon wholeheartedly supported our courageous astronauts as they carried the hopes and prayers of Earth to the heavens, and in the moment of their homecoming, he himself has departed on that ultimate voyage. As we grieve, we must rededicate ourselves to the cause for which our president

:'''In event spacecraft accidentally sold for scrap and crushed with astronauts inside'''
:My fellow Americans, I am as shocked and appalled as you at this stunning and

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Space]]

842: Mark

2015-02-14T18:51:18Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decapitalized common noun, added wikilink

{{comic
| number = 842
| date = January 3, 2011
| title = Mark
| image = mark.png
| titletext = I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I will not stop until I find out what.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic [[Cueball]] believes he is part of a secret society, so secret that he doesn't know anything about the society. His belief in the existence of the society, and that he is a part of it, stem from one contact with an 'agent'. Most people would immediately dismiss the idea of such a secret society, especially with no evidence of its existence, and no knowledge of the goals or even whether it is inherently good or evil.

Six years after being 'chosen', Cueball finds the scrap of paper with an address on, and the can of {{w|kerosene}}. Both of these events are not unlikely, and easily explained as simple coincidences, but Cueball somehow sees this as a command that he must burn down the house. Cueball shows that he is willing to put other peoples lives at risk, destroy property and posessions, and face the possibility of prison all because of one event twenty years prior. To the sane person this is absurd. {{Citation needed}}

Cueball's belief in the society, his delusional linking of the address and kerosene, and his actions in burning down the house, show how badly he wants to be part of something bigger, and to find meaning in the "Chaos of Life".

The punchline refers to an old grade school/middle school prank (Urban Dictionary: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pen15+club pen 15 club], [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pen15 Pen 15].) You'd typically walk up to an unsuspecting schoolmate and ask him if he wants to join the Pen Fifteen club. You'd tell him that to join, you merely have to write the club name on him. You'd then write "PEN15" on his hand or arm, and everyone would laugh at him because it looks like "Penis". In this case, [[Cueball]] fell victim to this prank as a child without ever figuring out the joke.

As for the title text, {{w|solipsism}} is the philosophical idea that only your own mind is sure to exist while other minds can't be really known and so those other minds are not proved to be real.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and a child are talking.]
:Child: What's that on your arm?
:Cueball: The mark of a secret society.

:Child: If it's secret, why tell me-
:Cueball: Because I know nothing. I can't betray them because I don't know who they are. I was chosen by an agent 20 years ago. That was my first and last direct contact. It's safer that way.

:Six years later I found a piece of paper in the street with an address on it. The next day I found a can of kerosene in my garage that I'm sure I never bought.
:[The panel represents these actions by highlighting the mentioned objects in a world of gray.]

:I didn't know whose house it was. I just knew that I'd been given my orders. And I carried them out.
:[A dark figure is silhouetted against a flame.]

:Cueball: I don't know who or what we're fighting.
:Cueball: Maybe we're the bad guys.
:Cueball: It doesn't matter to me.

:Cueball: It's enough to know that there are forces working beneath the chaos of life, and I'm a ''part'' of them.

:Cueball: That whatever this "pen fifteen" club is,
:Cueball: I'm ''in'' it.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Penis]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]

1484: Apollo Speeches

2015-02-09T22:01:43Z

Nyq: /* Transcript */ decapitalized common noun, capitalized proper noun

{{comic
| number = 1484
| date = February 9, 2015
| title = Apollo Speeches
| image = apollo_speeches.png
| titletext = While our commitment to recycling initiatives has been unwavering, this is not a cost any of us should be expected to pay.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|The framework is laid out. Needs a much more in-depth explanation, however.}}
As explained in the comic, {{w|Richard Nixon|Nixon}} staffer {{w|William Safire}} wrote [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/11/in-event-of-moon-disaster.html two speeches] for the United States President to deliver, depending on whether or not the {{w|Apollo 11}} return launch was successful. When the outcome of an event (moon landing, military actions, etc.) can't be predicted with sufficient certainty, it is a common practice for "[http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/events/centennials/nixon/exhibit/nixon-online-exhibit-disaster.html contingency speeches]" to be prepared.

The rest of the comic runs with this theme, making the false claim that Safire had written several other such contingency speeches for increasingly unlikely possibilities. First listed are a couple pages from the real contingency speech to be delivered in the event that the astronauts were left stranded on the Moon. Lying on top of that is a speech to be delivered in the case that the spacecraft went missing altogether, which was relatively unlikely. The speeches after that deal with the following highly unlikely or impossible contingencies:
* The astronauts had stolen the ship and piloted it to Mars, which is clearly impossible: while the crew could have redirected the ship while sending insulting messages to Earth, the spacecraft lacked the power to fly to Mars within any reasonable period of time by several orders of magnitude or the supplies for the astronauts to survive such an extended trip.
* Upon landing, more astronauts than expected were found in the ship;
* The ship had hit the {{w|USS Hornet (CV-12)|USS ''Hornet''}} and crushed Nixon;
* The ship had been sold for scrap and crushed along with the astronauts inside.

The title text builds upon this last contingency speech, delving into the bathos of the horror of the spacecraft's recycling and its passengers' resulting deaths despite the U.S.'s commitment to recycling initiatives.

==Transcript==
:[Commentary above the speeches]
:In 1969, Nixon staffer William Safire wrote a speech for the president to deliver if the Apollo 11 return launch failed, stranding the doomed astronauts on the Moon.
:Uncovered in 1999, it is often called the greatest speech never given.
:Today, the ''full'' set of Safire's contingency speeches has been found.

:'''In event astronauts stranded on Moon'''
:Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.
:[Here, several lines from the original speech are cut]
:In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
:Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever

:'''In event spacecraft goes missing'''
:Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins went to the Moon as ambassadors of peace for all mankind, and all mankind prays that they may yet return safely home.
:We are separated from the Moon by a vast gulf of space, against which their tiny vessel appeared as but a drifting speck. For a few brief seconds, we took our eye off them, and despite days of desperate searching, never again was their vessel sighted from Earth.
:While these men are lost, they are not forgotten, and their sacrifice will not

:'''In even astronauts abscond with spacecraft'''
:We do not know what led Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to betray the trust we placed in them, abandon their mission, and steer their vessel toward Mars. Nor do we know what compelled them to transmit such hurtful messages back to Earth, heaping contempt on their onetime home.
:But whatever the cause of their dereliction, I call upon the United States to commit itself, before this year is out, to launching a mission to chase down Apollo 11 and return its crew to earth to face justice. We must not rest until

:'''In event spacecraft returns with extra astronauts'''
:While there is much we do not understand, tonight all of earth is united in celebrating the safe return of our brave explorers.
:We of course have many questions, and in the days and weeks to come we will demand answers. How many souls were truly aboard Apollo 11 when it launched? Who are the six men now in quarantine aboard the USS Hornet? What happened

:'''In event spacecraft hits U.S.S. Hornet, crushing Nixon'''
:'''President Agnew''': Tonight, we have experienced a great national triumph and a great national loss. We take joy in the safe return from the Moon of Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins, but that joy is tempered with sorrow as we mourn our president’s tragic death beneath their wayward capsule.
:Richard Nixon wholeheartedly supported our courageous astronauts as they carried the hopes and prayers of Earth to the heavens, and in the moment of their homecoming, he himself has departed on that ultimate voyage. As we grieve, we must rededicate ourselves to the cause for which our president

:'''In event spacecraft accidentally sold for scrap and crushed with astronauts inside'''
:My fellow Americans, I am as shocked and appalled as you at this stunning and

{{comic discussion}}

1484: Apollo Speeches

2015-02-09T13:46:21Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ Capitalized proper noun, formatted contents into the list

799: Stephen Hawking

2015-02-07T12:05:48Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added wikilink

{{comic
| number = 799
| date = September 27, 2010
| title = Stephen Hawking
| image = stephen_hawking.png
| titletext = Guys? The Town is supposed to be good, and I thou--' 'PHYSICIST STEPHEN HAWKING DECLARES NEW FILM BEST IN ALL SPACE AND TIME' 'No, I just heard that--' 'SHOULD SCIENCE PLAY A ROLE IN JUDGING BEN AFFLECK?' 'I don't think--' 'WHAT ABOUT MATT DAMON?'
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Stephen Hawking}} is a renowned theoretical physicist, and quite possibly the world's smartest human being. He is almost completely paralyzed due to {{w|amyotrophic lateral sclerosis}} and communicates with a {{w|Speech-generating device|speech-generating device}}, as shown in the first panel. In this comic, he asks [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] if they want to go see a movie, but they take it as a scientific declaration that they '''should''' go see a movie and have it published in a newspaper. In the final panel, Hawking is shown hanging his head in sadness since all he wanted to do was see a movie with his friends.

The title text continues the joke, with innocuous comments by Hawking interpreted as important revelations.

==Transcript==
:[Stephen Hawking is facing a pair of people. His voice appears in a square machine readable font.]

:Stephen Hawking: I thought maybe later we should go see a movie.

:[The two people are running.]

:[The front page of a newspaper appears instead of a third panel.]
:Name of the paper - The Times
:Main headline. - Physicist Stephen Hawking Suggests We See More Films
:[A picture of Stephen Hawking is in the center of the page.]
:Picture's caption. - Smartest Man Alive
:Secondary headline. - What Does He Know That We Don't?
:Large quote in article body. - Is this a warning?

:[Stephen Hawking is sitting alone, looking depressed.]

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

1056: Felidae

2015-02-07T09:58:01Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decapitalization

{{comic
| number = 1056
| date = May 16, 2012
| title = Felidae
| image = felidae.png
| titletext = 'Smilodon fatalis' narrowly edged out 'Tyrannosaurus rex' to win this year's Most Badass Latin Names competition, after edging out 'Dracorex hogwartsia' and 'Stygimoloch spinifer' (meaning 'horned dragon from the river of death') in the semifinals.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows a graph with three parts.

First, the names are sorted up by genera (plural of {{w|genus}}, a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms) from bottom to top of which animals would win in a fight. Secondly, the names within the genus are then sorted by coolness of name from left to right (the degree of "coolness" of the name is apparently determined in subjective manner by the author). Thirdly, in red you can see the direction that {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} has taken with nicknaming the versions of their {{w|OS X}} operating system. They started at v10.0 "Cheetah", and have moved through genera from there in no order that this chart can make out.

{| class="wikitable"
!OS X version
!Code name
!Year released
|-
|10.0||Cheetah||2001
|-
|10.1||Puma||2001
|-
|10.2||Jaguar||2002
|-
|10.3||Panther||2003
|-
|10.4||Tiger||2004
|-
|10.5||Leopard||2006
|-
|10.6||Snow Leopard||2008
|-
|10.7||Lion||2010
|-
|10.8||Mountain Lion||2012
|}

Please note that the second words in "Snow Leopard" and "Mountain Lion" are capitalized in the table because they are used as the proper names of the operating system versions. In their normal use, as species {{w|vernacular name}}s, they are not capitalized and are written as "snow leopard" and "mountain lion".

[[:Category:Bobcats|Bobcats]] are a running XKCD joke, so their inclusion is to be expected. The genus ''Puma'' here only lists synonyms for the puma (see {{w|cougar}}) instead of {{w|Puma_(genus)|the actual genus}}. Of course, the three OS X versions named by three of these synonyms are not the same.

Despite being named after "Hogwarts", the magical school from the Harry Potter series of books and movies, ''{{w|Dracorex hogwartsia}}'' is real.

Since this comic was published, Apple has stopped naming versions of OS X after big cats: v10.8 "Mountain Lion" was followed by v10.9 "Mavericks", named after a beach in California, followed by v10.10 "Yosemite", named after the California national park.

The title of the chart depicted on the comic ("OS X problem") is perhaps an allusion to the {{w|Travelling salesman problem|travelling salesman problem}}, as the directed arrows and graph nodes might appear as a possible path of the salesperson between the cities. The computational difficulty of the travelling salesman problem might echo with the difficulties that the author has with trying to figure out the underlying reason for naming the OS X versions in particular order. The chart thus looks like a parody on the scientific presentation.

==Transcript==
:Well-known felines:
:[A graph organizing various feline species labeled with common names ordered by genera (in order of which would win in a fight) on the y axis, and coolness of name on the x axis.]
:Smilodon (extinct): "Saber-toothed cat (scientific name: Smilodon fatalis)
:Panthera: "Jaguar", "Leopard", "Snow Leopard", "Tiger", "Lion"
:Puma: "Cougar", "Puma", "Panther", "Mountain Lion"
:Other felidae: "Ocelot", "Cheetah"
:Felis & Lynx: "Housecat", "Bobcat", "Wildcat", "Lynx"
:[Some elements are further connected using an unbranched acyclic digraph. The elements are connected thus: "Cheetah" -> "Puma" -> "Jaguar" -> "Panther" -> "Tiger" -> "Leopard" -> "Snow Leopard" -> "Lion" -> "Mountain Lion".]
:The OS X Problem

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Bobcats]]

927: Standards

2015-02-07T09:24:08Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added wikilinks, formatting

{{comic
| number = 927
| date = July 20, 2011
| title = Standards
| image = standards.png
| titletext = Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.
}}

==Explanation==
For any engineering task, there are numerous ways a given problem can be solved. The more complex the task, the more room for diversity. That's all well and good for a one-off problem, but if a design is meant to be iterated over time, or if an entire industry is solving that same problem, part reuse and {{w|interoperability}} become issues to deal with. Standards thus came to exist so that industries could avoid wasting resources {{w|reinventing the wheel}}, whilst offering their clients a certain amount of simplicity and compatibility between vendors.

But, standards have issues of their own. They don't accommodate every use case, they might have restrictions or royalties attached, and people tend to be plagued by so called ''{{w|Not invented here|not invented here syndrome}}''. So competing standards have a way of arising to address different perceived needs. After a while, things get messy and hard to follow, and integrating systems built around competing standards gets burdensome, so someone eventually takes on the challenge of creating a universal standard that everyone can rally around. This almost never works, ironically making things messier. Moreover, this can end up becoming cyclical, with new standards periodically rising and failing to gain traction.

==Transcript==
:How Standards Proliferate
:(See: A/C chargers, character encodings, instant messaging, etc.)

:Situation:
:There are 14 competing standards.

:Cueball: 14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases.
:Ponytail: Yeah!

:Soon:
:Situation: There are 15 competing standards.
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]

1438: Houston

2015-02-06T01:01:02Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ Capitalized proper noun, decapitalized common nouns, formatting

{{comic
| number = 1438
| date = October 24, 2014
| title = Houston
| image = houston.png
| titletext = 'Oh, hey Mom. No, nothing important, just at work.'
}}

==Explanation==
This comic appears to be an "alternate reality" view at what could happen today compairing NASA's Mission Control with a consumer technical customer service line. It is meant to contrast history with Cueball's lack of action. The topic of the comic’s commentary is unknown. The comic may be a commentary about one of the following:
*Outsourcing of call centers reducing quality.
*Call centers ignoring critical calls.
*Tech savvy people mocking those with limited technological comprehension.
*NASA's quality issues in recent decades, potently due to funding cuts and direction shift.

On {{w|Apollo 13}}'s way to the Moon, during a routine stirring of one of the oxygen tanks, an explosion occurred that damaged the craft. Frantic efforts, by the {{w|Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center|mission control}} center located in Houston, resulted in the safe return of all astronauts.

A similar situation is depicted in this strip including the design of the spacecraft, the nature of the problem, and the famous misquote "Houston, we have a problem". The modern type of monitor ({{w|Liquid-crystal display|flat panel LCD}}) in front of which Cueball sits suggests that the author is describing a more modern scenario. This time there is much less help from mission control. Upon receiving the message from the spacecraft, [[Cueball]] seems fairly indifferent. Instead of attempting to resolve the issue, he mocks the crew for not knowing how to stir and hangs up.

In the title text Cueball continues his belligerence by blowing off the crew in favor of a call from his mother.

=== Apollo 13 ===
NASA mission {{w|Apollo 13}} was intended to be the third manned landing on the moon. Immediately following the explosion, astronaut Jack Swigert calmly reported — and shortly later repeated by James A. Lovell — to mission control: "Houston, we've had a problem" — a notable understatement which was famously misquoted in the {{w|Apollo 13 (film)|1995 film adaptation of the mission}} as "Houston, we have a problem".

Mission control worked diligently and tirelessly to solve numerous problems such as:
* If and how to adjust the spacecraft's trajectory.
* How to have the astronauts jerry-rig CO2 removal equipment intended for the command module to work with the lunar module (to which the astronauts had evacuated) using the equipment on board.
* How to power the equipment back up within strict limitations.

==Transcript==
:[A spacecraft floats in outer space, the earth far in the background. Bits of it have broken off.]
:Orbiter transmission: Houston, we have a problem

:[Cueball with a headset sits at a computer desk with two monitors.]
:Cueball: Cool.

:[We see a close-up of Cueball.]
:Orbiter transmission: ...What? Houston, we stirred our O₂ tank and it exploded!
:Cueball: Sounds like you suck at stirring.

:[We see the orbiter in space, far from the planet.]
:Orbiter transmission: ...Houston? Are you-
:Cueball: Listen, I've got another call. Good luck landing your airplane or whatever.
:''Click''

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

354: Startling

2015-02-06T00:20:45Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ spelling corrections, formatting

{{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 2000s 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 20th 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]]

480: Spore

2015-02-05T15:01:39Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ punctuation and capitalization adjustment

{{comic
| number = 480
| date = September 24, 2008
| title = Spore
| image = spore.png
| titletext = Way to not support the GMA 950 under OS X, Spore. :(
}}

==Explanation==
'{{w|Spore (2008 video game)|Spore}}' is a game that was released in 2008. It was $50 when it first came out so many people could not afford it at the time. Spore starts you off as a small little water bug and when you become smart enough you leave the water for land and start growing. To begin with the scale of your interest is thus very small as you are only concerned with your spot of water. During the next two stages the scale grows to being the entire continent. Once you start building cities you get to view the entire planet. The last stage (and scale) is space, where you get to first travel your own solar system, then the entire galaxy.

Since Cueball can't yet afford Spore (which is now only about $15) he instead is recreating the experience by playing older games, starting off with small scale games. In the comic Cueball had just beaten the game '{{w|Populous}}' which is on a planet scale, so now he can go on to the galactic scale with the game '{{w|Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri|Alpha Centauri}}'.

The following three games could for instance have been played before the ones mentioned: starting with '{{w|SimAnt}}' (ant scale) then moving up to '{{w|The Sims}}' (human scale) and then proceeding with '{{w|SimCity}}' (city scale).

The {{w|Civilization (series)|Civilization}} games could also fit in to this process, however, as they are planet-scale to begin with and ending up with you going to the star {{w|Alpha Centauri}} they do not fit in well between the two games mentioned in the comic.

The title text refers to the game not being able to run on the Mac using a {{w|GMA 950}} which is a type of Intel integrated graphics processor. It was first supported in OSX 10.4. It lacked hardware support for vertex shader 2.0, which some games required.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sitting at computer desk, surrounded by game boxes.]
:Cueball: Sweet, beat ''Populous''. Now, on to ''Alpha Centauri''.
:Until I can afford ''Spore'', I'm just playing through all my old games in order of scale.

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

1384: Krypton

2015-02-05T00:17:41Z

Nyq: /* Trivia */ capitalized "Earth"

{{comic
| number = 1384
| date = June 20, 2014
| title = Krypton
| image = krypton.png
| titletext = Their Sun and gravity will make you, uh, something, I guess. Out of earshot from Earth, mostly.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is an [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InvertedTrope inverse] version of the {{w|origin story}} of the {{w|superhero}} character {{w|Superman}}.

In the Superman story, {{w|Jor-El}} and his wife {{w|Lara (comics)|Lara}} notice that their home planet {{w|Krypton (comics)|Krypton}} is about to be destroyed in a giant explosion, so they decide to send their baby {{w|Superman|Kal-El}} to {{w|Earth}} to save him - and there he becomes Superman.

In this comic, [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] also notice that the planet Krypton is about to explode, but instead of attempting to save a baby from Krypton, they decide to send a baby to Krypton from Earth so that he'll stop annoying them with his crying.

In the fourth panel both spaceships can be seen. The rocket containing the Earth baby arrives at planet Krypton, while the crystal star shaped spaceship containing Kal-El leaves Krypton towards Earth - this is a reference to the [http://collectingsuperman.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/stmstoryboard1a.jpg version of the spaceship] depicted in the 1978 {{w|Superman_(1978_film)|Superman movie}}, (see [[#Trivia|trivia section]]).

In the fifth and last panel we see Krypton explode.

In the Superman movie, Kal-El carries with him a lot of information pre-recorded by his parents. During the very long trip he listens to the recordings, one of which explains that the Sun and gravity of Earth will give him (Kal-El) great powers (this is the way he becomes Superman). The '''title text''' is a satirical version of this information, given to the Earth baby during his trip: That Megan & Cueball do not have the faintest idea (or care about) what the sun and gravity of Krypton will do to him - but their best guess at what these ''mostly'' will do to him is to "make you out of earshot from Earth", which was their original reason for shipping the baby off in the first place.

While this may seem like an extreme reaction to a crying baby, people who have never experienced a child crying for a whole night may have no idea about what types of fantasies could go through one's head. During the long hours of the night, shipping the crying thing in to space may seem like a great idea. This comic could be seen as an illustration of this.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are standing near a telescope.]
:Cueball: The distant planet Krypton is becoming unstable!
:Baby crying (from outside the panel): Waaaaaa
:Megan: That crying baby is really annoying.

:[Cueball and Megan looking at each other.]

:[Spaceship taking off.]

:[Spaceship passing another spaceship on route to distant planet.]

:[Planet exploding.]

==Trivia==
*Whereas the Kal-El rocket clearly looks like the one in the 1978 Superman, a movie which is also the origin of the title text joke, the Earth baby rocket looks like any nondescript rocket. It has some features in common with the one used in [[1350: Lorenz]] as can be seen here under the [[1350: Lorenz#Rocket launch|Rocket launch theme]] - color scheme the same, but different body of the rocket. One could also argue that it resembles some of the [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_M7D1hE_0cz0/TS88t-Rs2vI/AAAAAAAAEMY/EnIOj3AGFu8/s800/SupermanOrigins.jpg various] [http://thecomicmuseum.com/superman146.jpg versions] of the rocket that brought Superman to Earth as depicted in early {{w|List of Superman comics|comic books}} - Not that big a resemblance though, due to the very different tip and fins.
*As the nearest stars are several light years away, this comic does of course not make any sense if you look at it from a scientific point of view, but can still do if you don't.
**First of all - how would Cueball be able to see that Krypton is unstable in a telescope - as we at the moment can only just detect planets around other stars.
**And even if he did detect this and immediately shipped his baby away in a close to light-speed rocket, then it would take several years to reach Krypton; at best - more likely to be somewhere between a hundred to a thousand years.
***Plus, because light takes time to travel, Cueball was seeing the planet as it was many years ago, meaning it had been unstable for some time already. So even for the closest star (exclusive of the Earth's sun), it would be 4.3 years to see the instability and then over 4.3 more years for the ship to travel, even with close to light speed travel, for a total of over 8.6 years from when the light left the planet until the rocket arrived there.
**As faster than light-speed travel is impossible according to the current model of our universe this option is not really relevant here.
**During all those years, the unstable planet should still keep together - in spite of being so unstable that Cueball can determine this instability with his telescope on Earth.
**And then the rocket arrives just when Kal-El is being shipped the other way a few moments before the planet explodes. Of course if the arrival of the rocket causes the explosion this would explain the last two events. Kal-El is shipped off at the last moment when his parents realizes an incoming rocket will destroy their planet.
**The previous remarks assume that Cueball and Megan are standing on Earth. The comic could be plausible if they are standing on a different planet in the same planetary system.

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

1482: NowPlaying

2015-02-04T19:33:07Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decapitalization

<noinclude>:''The correct title of this page is '''1482: #NowPlaying'''. It appears incorrectly here because of {{w|mw:Manual:Page title|technical restrictions}}.''</noinclude>
{{comic
| number = 1482
| date = February 4, 2015
| title = #NowPlaying
| image = nowplaying.png
| titletext = If you click on the post, it takes you to search results for the note on various online music stores.
}}

==Explanation==
There are a variety of applications that post a user's music-listening habits on their preferred social network. In this comic, [[Randall]] takes that notion to its extreme, envisioning a program that does this note-by-note, rather than just song-by-song. As notes are much shorter than songs, this would lead to the flooding of friends' notification streams. In the example, the software is sharing the notes and chords that Brian is listening to; and his friends Mike and Caitlin are getting annoyed with the amount of posts they are receiving.

There are typically many hundreds of notes in any song. Any song with more than a single line of music contains multiple different notes at the same time which seem to be communicated here as {{w|Chord_(music)|chords}}. It's not clear in general how the service would describe various combinations of notes or chords in sequence. But even if only the primary melody is reported by the service, all but the slowest songs will still require reporting dozens to hundreds of notes every minute (a single {{w|Glissando|glissando}} may cover a dozen or more notes in less than a second), meaning that anyone who can see your stream of posts will be [[Literally|literally]] inundated by posts from the service. Even if you could keep up with the speed of the posted notes that someone is listening to, the similarity in {{w|Phrase_(music)|phrases}} in many songs (especially pop songs eg: [http://youtu.be/JdxkVQy7QLM Pachelbel's Rant]) means that many different songs may include the same sequence of notes, though possibly in different {{w|Octave|octaves}} or at different speeds.

The comic's title alludes to the fact that you can "play a song" but can also "play a note." It may also allude to the visual similarities between the hash/pound/{{w|number sign}} (#) and the {{w|Sharp (music)|sharp sign}} (♯). ''C sharp'', above Mike's comment, is the only note not given by a single letter (after the correction - see [[#Trivia|Trivia]]).

The title text continues the joke of this new musical service: ''If you click on the post, it takes you to search results for the note on various online music store.'' Since almost any song has any of the notes posted, you would literally be given a list of all the music you can buy in any on-line music stores. Of course this is at least as useless as being told which note someone is listening to.

Here are some synthesized versions of the notes in the order they appear in the comic:
*[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1079661/65467.ogg OGG]
*[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1079661/65467.mid MIDI]

They appear to be the beginning of ''{{w|I'll Be There for You (The Rembrandts song)|I'll Be There For You}}'' by {{w|The Rembrandts}}, the title music of the TV series "{{w|Friends}}". This could be an internal reference to the idea that it is informing your "friends" of the notes. Alternatively it could simply be an instance of effective [[356: Nerd Sniping|nerd sniping]].

==Transcript==
:[A social network news feed with user images for each of the three different contributors. The top of the first post is partly obscured, and for the last post only half of the first line is visible. ]

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: E
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: B
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: D
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: C sharp
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Mike''' What the hell
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: B
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Caitlin''' Can someone call him?
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today ● 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: E
:Today ● 3:29 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A

:[Caption below the frame:]
:My new social music service notifies your
:friends about what notes you're listening to.

==Trivia==
*In the [[Media:OriginalNowPlaying.png|original]] comic there were a few errors/mistakes that were corrected later the same day:
**One of the tweets were out of order. The instance where "Brian is now listening to A" above Caitlin's post was {{w|Timestamp|timestamped}} at 3:29, but the next two posts were timestamped at 3:28. Now this timestamp has been corrected to 3:28 so only the last timestamp reads 3:29, the rest 3:28.
**The first partially visible 'note' post was "{{w|E major}}". This is actually not a note, but a {{w|major scale}}, with the pitches E, F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, and D♯. The "major" was removed from the comic so it now reads simply "E".

{{comic discussion}}

1099: Tuesdays

2015-02-04T19:22:46Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ Capitalized proper noun

{{comic
| number = 1099
| date = August 24, 2012
| title = Tuesdays
| image = tuesdays.png
| titletext = Try our bottomless drinks and fall forever!
}}

==Explanation==
[[Beret Guy]] and at least one other person ([[Megan]]) are sitting at a restaurant. The waitress, [[Ponytail]], tells Beret Guy there is a special on Tuesdays for "endless wings". Restaurants often have different daily discounts to encourage people to come in. In a normal restaurant, "endless wings" would presumably refer to "all-you-can-eat" chicken wings, meaning the customer can pay a flat price and continue ordering additional wings without paying any more money.

However, in this comic, Beret Guy tells the waitress that he already has "endless wings", which he means literally (a similar issue of wishes being taken literally is referenced in [[1086: Eyelash Wish Log]]) and Beret Guy begins growing wings which ultimately appear "endless" as they grow to a span of at least the circumference of the Earth by the last panel (and presumably continue growing). The other characters scream in horror for obvious{{Citation needed}} reasons.

The title text plays on another common restaurant offer of "bottomless drinks", meaning unlimited free refills of drinks. However, falling into something literally bottomless (i.e. without a bottom) would result in falling forever. (However, even this is unlikely unless the diameter of the cups that the drinks are served in is large enough to fit a whole person into.)

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail serves Beret Guy and Megan at a table.]
:Ponytail: ...and on Tuesdays we offer endless wings.
:Beret Guy: Haha, cool. <code>i have those.</code>

:Ponytail: You what?

:[Beret Guy sprouts a pair of wings.]
:Ponytail: ''AAAAA!!''

:[Beret Guy's wings start getting longer.]
:Ponytail and Megan: ''AAAAAAA''

:[Wings start to extend into space out from the earth.]
:Everyone: ''AAAAAAAA''

==Trivia==
*This is one of the few comics since the ''xkcd'' lettering became inked and standardized as all-caps that lowercase lettering has been used (including the word "i" which would normally be capitalized). In this case, the usage may be to denote a whisper or soft voice.

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

860: Never Do This

2015-02-04T19:17:15Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added wikilink

{{comic
| number = 860
| date = February 14, 2011
| title = Never Do This
| image = never_do_this.png
| titletext = I call Rule 34 on The Secret House.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] shows his new pocket {{w|microscope}} to [[Megan]]. With the curiosity of scientists, they quickly decide to use the microscope to look at a number of different things.

But after they use the microscope to inspect what is under their fingernails, they both sink into a {{w|Catatonia|catatonic state}}. Our fingers are how we interact with the world, and all manner of things get trapped under our fingernails; different kinds of dirt, fungus, spores, fragments of insects, insect droppings and so on. Such things that obviously look pretty horrific when magnified a few hundred times. Cueball and Megan never suspected what they would find, and seem unable to process or deal with the horror they have uncovered.

The title text refers to {{w|Rule 34 (Internet meme)|Rule 34}} (see [[305: Rule 34]]), an {{w|internet meme}} which states "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.". The book referenced is "The Secret House: 24 hours in the strange & wonderful world in which we spend our nights and days" by {{w|David Bodanis}} and is a study in {{w|micrograph|microphotography}}. It features extreme close-ups of everyday phenomena in the common house, but as seen from a microscopic perspective. "Rule 34" states that there must be porn of this nature, but it is not clear what form this would take. You would, however, probably be able to see the individual {{w|sperm cells}}.

[[Randall]] must have done this check himself - and now chooses to warn others not to make the same mistake. He later gives the same type of advice against using a UV lamp in the bathroom through this comic: [[1469: UV]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball brings in a pocket microscope.]
:Cueball: Check it out—a pocket microscope!
:Megan: Ooh! Let's look at stuff!

:[Cueball holds a pencil; Megan peers at a quarter through the microscope.]
:Cueball: The tip of this pencil is ''neat''.
:Megan: This quarter is really scratched.

:Cueball: Let's look at the skin under our fingernails!

:Minutes later...
:[Cueball and Megan curl up in a black pit of despair.]
:Cueball and Megan: oh god oh god

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

372: To Be Wanted

2015-02-04T19:12:20Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decaptalization, formatting

{{comic
| number = 372
| date = January 19, 2008
| title = To Be Wanted
| image = to_be_wanted.png
| titletext = Or so I hope?
}}

==Explanation==
The comic begins with a grainy, pencil-drawing of [[Megan]] on a ship. This is a clue that things are not as they appear.

As the point-of-view pulls back in each successive frame, we see that "Megan on a ship" is really a {{w|Thought bubble#Thought bubbles|thought-bubble}} belonging to [[Cueball]], who is sitting at his desk. He apparently is day-dreaming instead of working. Note that this is presented in the standard, crisp format, as if drawn on a computer. This suggests it shows us our "normal" view.

However, as the perspective continues to pull back, we see that "Cueball thinking of Megan" is actually a thought-bubble belonging to Megan. In the final frames, the ship sails out of frame. However, since the final frames are in the same grainy pencil-drawing format, it suggests that this is still Cueball's thoughts, rather than an actual image of Megan.

The title text, "Or so I hope", shows us what this {{w|recursion}} really means: Cueball hopes that Megan realizes that he misses her, but suggests he's not entirely certain she does.

==Alternate explanation==

Comic starts with Megan on the bow of a ship, but in following panels it turns out that Cueball (presumably in a relationship with Megan) is thinking about about her, sitting afar from her. As we move forward (or downwards) in the comic, it turns out indeed that Megan is thinking that her partner Cueball might be missing her and thinking about her while she is on a voyage or at least she hopes it to be that way as the title text suggests. This also explains the title of the comic "To Be Wanted" which Megan expects from Cueball.

==More about the title text==

Both of the above explanations could be true without conflict. But as the title text is most often assigned to [[Randall]] himself or to a Cueball character, the ''Or so I hope'' is most likely written by the guy who drew the comic. This would then indicate that it is Cueball/Randall who wishes to be wanted by Megan - but he also hopes that Megan knows/hopes that he wants her.

==Transcript==
:[Megan stands looking out on the bow of a ship.]
:[Scene backs up. More of the boat is shown.]
:[Scene backs up. The boat with Megan is within a thought bubble.]
:[Scene backs up. The thought bubble comes from Cueball sitting at a computer in an office.]
:[Scene repeated for the next frame.]
:[Scene backs up. Cueball is within yet another thought bubble.]
:[Scene backs up. The thought bubble with Cueball in it belongs to the Megan at the bow of the ship.]
:[The thought bubble disappears, showing only Megan in the boat.]
:[The boat sails out of view.]

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

465: Quantum Teleportation

2015-02-04T19:06:33Z

Nyq: /* Transcript */ decapitalization

{{comic
| number = 465
| date = August 20, 2008
| title = Quantum Teleportation
| image = quantum teleportation.png
| titletext = Science should be exactly as cool as the headlines sound. Like the "RUSSIANS CUT APART AND REASSEMBLE DOGS" thing
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Quantum teleportation}} is a method of effectively taking a quantum state that exists in one laboratory and destroying it in the current laboratory and later recreating exactly the same — still unmeasured — quantum state in another laboratory that could potentially be very far away.

This is achieved by first creating an entangled quantum state in a laboratory and moving one part of the entangled quantum state to a faraway laboratory. Now let's say a scientist desires to teleport the quantum state |ψ> to a faraway lab. The scientists does a specific measurement on the combination of |ψ> and their half of the entangled quantum state and the outcome of their measurement will be two bits of classical information. They can then telephone over the results of their two bits of information to tell scientists at the faraway lab how to do a measurement on their half of the entangled quantum state, which will recreate the quantum state |ψ> at the faraway lab, effectively teleporting it. This is an important result in quantum mechanics, especially in regards to quantum computing.

The name is misleading in that it does not create an efficient means of transportation via teleportation — something like the {{w|Transporter (Star Trek)|teleporters}} from {{w|Star Trek}} i.e. a ''conventional teleporter'' — where macroscopic objects like humans (composed of [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+atoms+in+a+human&lk=4&num=3 7x1027 atoms]) could be teleported to an arbitrary place.

The comic jokes with the fact that news reporters wish to get a story about Star Trek teleporters and the scientist is angry that there is no interest in his quantum version — the reporters are even disapointed when they write their story. The last panel appears to indicate this scientist not only has a quantum teleporter he also has a "regular" teleporter of the type the reporter is asking about, which would be a gigantic news item — and also impossible according to the laws of physics. He uses the conventional to escape to The Bahamas.

The whole method of quantum teleportation is predicated on being able to first create entangled quantum states and then transport, by conventional means, one-half of the entangled state. Only after this step, could you then destroy the shared entangled quantum state, to "teleport" a different quantum state to the new location.

Quantum teleportation is deeply related to {{w|Bell's theorem}} where its shown that quantum mechanics is incompatible with the idea of local hidden variables and which has been experimentally demonstrated (though a few very small loopholes still have not been conclusively ruled out). Explaining "it's a particle statistics thing" is a great explanation of the related Bell's theorem experiments, which demonstrate quantum entanglement which is at the root of quantum teleportation. In these experiments, physicists take an entangled quantum state move it apart and then randomly decide which direction to measure each side of the quantum states. Through a statistical analysis of the results, you can demonstrate and measure each entangled particle in a randomly chosen direction. The statistical correlations between the particles are consistent with quantum mechanics and inconsistent with any local hidden variable theory; however this instantaneous wave-function collapse does not break special relativity as wave-function collapse {{w|No-communication theorem|does not allow communication of any information}}. Instead you can just analyze the correlations after the fact and compare the hypothesis of local hidden variables to the inconsistent hypothesis predicted by quantum mechanics, and verify the quantum mechanical prediction.

The title text refers to the controversial 1940s Soviet {{w|Experiments in the Revival of Organisms}} video that depicts a dog's head being cut off and revived. The film is controversial in that the footage is often perceived as being staged, though the {{w|Sergei S. Bryukhonenko|Soviet scientist}} depicted in the video was attempting these sorts of experiments and this research eventually led to the first Soviet open heart operation in 1957. Another instance of crazy headlines that may not be as interesting to the public when first explained — but may be an important step on the way to some type of practical use.

==Transcript==
:[Reporter and Cueball are facing each other, sitting in chairs.]
:Reporter: So, Quantum Teleportation-
:Cueball: The name is misleading. It's a particle statistics thing.
:Reporter: So it's not like Star Trek? That's boring.
:Cueball: Okay, I'm sick of this. Every time there's a paper on quantum teleportation, you reporters write the same disappointed story.
:[Cueball leaves seat and moves behind it.]
:Reporter: But-
:[Cueball has gone to device that was behind him and was out of the scope of the three previous panels.]
:Cueball: Talk to someone else. I'm going to the Bahamas. ''Click''
:[Cueball switches a device on.]
:[Device labelled "TELEPORTER" is switched from "Quantum" to "Regular".]
:''VRMMM''
:[Cueball is beamed up in classic Star Trek fashion.]

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

1482: NowPlaying

2015-02-04T12:29:59Z

Nyq: /* Transcript */ decapitalization

1482: NowPlaying

2015-02-04T12:28:45Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decapitalized common nouns, added wikilinks, corrected punctuation

1481: API

2015-02-03T19:38:45Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ adjusted capitalization

{{comic
| number = 1481
| date = February 2, 2015
| title = API
| image = api.png
| titletext = ACCESS LIMITS: Clients may maintain connections to the server for no more than 86,400 seconds per day. If you need additional time, you may contact IERS to file a request for up to one additional second.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete| Can we cite any examples of web sites advertising APIs for URLs that don't seem properly engineered, and are essentially just designed for humans, with CSS?}}

This comic presents a web site designed for human readers as if it was a proper a machine-to-machine {{w|web service}} with an {{w|application programming interface}} (API).

Normally, an API is intended to be used by a developer writing a computer program, so the output is meant to be easily machine-readable. The documentation explains to the developer how to use the API from their program.

In this case, the XML mentioned is {{w|XHTML}}. The "requested data" is the actual content (e.g. a blog post).
However, "documentation" is used to refer (in an obscure way) to the part of the response which documents how the blog post is laid out and styled for human consumption, i.e. the {{w|Cascading_Style_Sheets|CSS}}, and perhaps JavaScript layout code.

In order for a program to process a generic web site designed for human viewing, the program needs to use {{w|web scraping}} techniques, which often break when the web site design changes in subtle ways that a human might never notice. So developers much prefer to have proper APIs with well-defined machine-readable formats, stable interfaces and documentation that actually describes the semantics of the data.

For example, Google has an [https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/getting-started official API for version 3 of their Youtube web service]. But developers who don't want to hassle with the required API key or the costs associated with its use sometimes just scrape the regular YouTube web site, as described at [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20407107/scraping-youtube-mix-playlist-id-for-a-video scraping youtube mix playlist id for a video - Stack Overflow]. So someone could publish this comic with a Youtube URL as a convoluted hint to developers that there is an alternative to the official API.

The API keys section is a step-by-step description of how a web page is protected with {{w|HTTP Secure}} (HTTPS). The {{w|Transport Layer Security}} (TLS) protocol uses an {{w|Elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman|elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman}} (ECDH) key signed using {{w|Rivest-Shamir-Adleman}} (RSA) encryption, which is stored in an {{w|X.509}} certificate. Normally, the browser or operating system does this behind the scenes, so most web developers and users do not need to know these details.

The access limits mentioned in the title text says that the API can be used for 86,400 seconds each day. At first this may appear to be a strange arbitrary number, however it is in fact the total number of seconds in 24 hours, essentially meaning there is no limit on most days. The {{w|International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service}} (IERS) is the organization that decides when to add {{w|leap seconds}}, which account for slight anomalies in the Earth's rotation as compared to the {{w|mean solar day}}. These leap seconds will mean that the website is available for one extra second occasionally, although IERS decisions are based on actual Earth rotation rates and they of course wouldn't respond to requests for leap seconds in order to lengthen the number of seconds that a a web site would be available for in a given calendar day. The API does not discuss the issue that some days have 23 or 25 hours due to {{w|Daylight saving time|daylight saving time}} in the U.S. and {{w|Summer time|summer time}} in Europe and some other places. This suggests that the web service tracks time via {{w|UTC}}.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sitting at a desk staring at a computer screen.]
:API Guide
:Request URL format:
:<nowiki>http://~~~.com/<username>/<item ID> </nowiki>

:Server will return an XML document which contains:
:* The requested data.
:* Documentation describing how the data is organized spatially.

:API Keys
:To obtain API access, contact the X.509-authenticated server and request an ECDH-RSA TLS key...

:If you do things right, it can take people a while to realize that your "API documentation" is just instructions for how to look at your website.

{{comic discussion}}

514: Simultaneous

2015-02-03T16:13:55Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ adjusted capitalization

{{comic
| number = 514
| date = December 8, 2008
| title = Simultaneous
| image = simultaneous.png
| titletext = I'm leaving you for your twin. He's more mature than you by now.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are talking about the sex they just had. Cueball is remarking on how they both achieved orgasm simultaneously, but Megan disagrees.

This comic is a play on Einstein's {{w|Special relativity#Relativity of simultaneity|theory of special relativity}}. One piece of the theory deals with two observers who are moving at close to the speed of light relative to each other. According to Einstein, events that appear simultaneous to one observer will appear to happen at different times to the other.

So when one partner is moving and the other isn't, it's possible that they experience their orgasm at different times relative to each other. That would require one partner to be moving really fast in one direction, which would make him or her either a really bad partner, or a really good one. On small speeds this effect could not be measured.

The other joke is that partners often disagree with each other — even when the difference is minor and not important to the matter.

The title text is reference to the twin paradox, which arises from another piece of special relativity. In theory, if you stick one twin on a spaceship at near light speed and keep the other back on Earth, the former will only experience a few years while the latter will age decades. Megan (or Cueball if he rolls that way) expresses a preference for the older twin, who will be more "mature", meaning both older and less combative about simultaneity.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan in bed.]
:Cueball: Mmm, simultaneous orgasms.
:Megan: That wasn't simultaneous.
:Cueball: Huh? It totally was!
:A common disagreement when one of you is doing all the moving.

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

1070: Words for Small Sets

2015-02-03T13:24:01Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added explanation of mentioning of number of spaces after period in title text discussion

{{comic
| number = 1070
| date = June 18, 2012
| title = Words for Small Sets
| image = words_for_small_sets.png
| titletext = If things are too quiet, try asking a couple of friends whether "a couple" should always mean "two". As with the question of how many spaces should go after a period, it can turn acrimonious surprisingly fast unless all three of them agree.
}}

==Explanation==
The noun "couple" means "exactly two items of the same kind". This comic is satirizing how laymen sometimes use the word "couple" interchangeably with words like "few" or "several", which in this context mean "comparatively small but definitely greater than one". It is also satirizing arguments about the relative meaning of phrases like "few" and "several" (some people will argue that "several" should mean more than "few", while others will argue the opposite or that it doesn't matter), making this comic [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troll+bait troll bait]. [[Randall]] is attempting to "troll" (intentionally provoke) a certain group of people by taking an unpopular side of the argument. To be certain the side he picked is an unpopular one, Randall has made up his own by proposing a "compromise" more likely to infuriate everyone than to make any side happy (a technique he's [[:Category:Compromise|used before]]). The comic's claim to "clear things up" also makes it similar to the "definitive standard" proposed in [[394: Kilobyte]].

The title text is just more troll bait. Randall says "Try asking a couple of friends [...] unless all three of them agree," which implies that a couple means exactly three. The title text also mentions the {{w|Sentence spacing|sentence spacing}} issue as an example of another topic known to ignite energetic arguments among pedantic types without ever leading to consensus. The sentence spacing arguments typically revolve around the question of whether one or two space characters must be used after the period character at the end of the sentence.

==Transcript==
Just to clear things up:
{| class="wikitable" |
|A few
|Anywhere from 2 to 5
|-
|A handful
|Anywhere from 2 to 5
|-
|Several
|Anywhere from 2 to 5
|-
|A couple
|2 (but sometimes up to 5)
|}

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Compromise]]

829: Arsenic-Based Life

2015-02-03T13:14:12Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ added wikilink

{{comic
| number = 829
| date = December 3, 2010
| title = Arsenic-Based Life
| image = arsenic_based_life.png
| titletext = According to a new paper published in the journal Science, reporters are unable to thrive in an arsenic-rich environment.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Arsenic}} is a chemical element which is known to be poisonous to humans and most other life forms. In 2010 {{w|NASA}} announced the discovery of bacteria {{w|GFAJ-1}} and claimed it to be able to sustain itself when starved of phosphorus, by substituting arsenic for a small percentage of its phosphorus. Like most other scientists [[Randall]] did not believe in this, and indeed it it was disproved in 2012.

The scientists are worried that the press conference announcing their bacteria discovery may be seen as unexciting, especially with the reporters hoping for news of life on {{w|Saturn}}'s largest moon, {{w|Titan (moon)|Titan}}. The researchers decide to try and make the event more exciting, but admit that they don't know how to throw a good party. This is probably a dig at scientists, who are often portrayed as being somewhat socially inept. As a result they turn to the internet for advice, and come up with a plan to serve cocktails and {{w|Hors d'oeuvre|hors d'œuvres}} to fit the theme of the event.

The final panel shows the results of their plans, with the reporters dead or dying, and it becomes clear that in order to fit the theme the researchers have laced the food and drinks with arsenic. This is another joke on the perception that scientist may be extremely clever within their field, but sometimes lack common sense.

The words "hors d'oerves" at the comic are just a misspelling by Randall for "hors d'oeuvres" (in French ''"hors d'œuvre"'' both singular and plural). The pronunciation of these words is awr-DURVZ /ɔrˈdɜrvz/, with the R '''before''' the V, not after, which explains the mistake.

The girl with the curly ponytail in this comic is different from the character commonly referred to as [[Ponytail]].

==Transcript==
:[Three people, two women and a man, stand looking at a laptop screen, which is sitting on a desk. The woman with a ponytail is pointing at the screen.]
:Ponytail: Our arsenic-based DNA discovery is cool, but these reporters are expecting life on Titan! Our press conference will be such a letdown!

:[Ponytail turns around to face Megan.]
:Ponytail: Okay, we need to make it more exciting for them. How do you make an event entertaining?
:Megan: Dunno, I suck at parties. Music, I guess?

:[Ponytail girl turns back around and leans over to start typing on the computer, while the other two look on. Megan puts her hand to her chin.]
:Ponytail: WikiHow says you can "serve cocktails and hors d'oerves that fit the theme of your event."
:Megan: Easy enough!

:[Ponytail girl stands at a podium on a stage, the man stands amongst the audience with a tray. All the audience members are either dead or dying, having fallen onto the floor or slumped over in their seats.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]

434: xkcd Goes to the Airport

2015-02-02T19:27:40Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ corrected statement about disabling RF devices on board the aircraft

{{comic
| number = 434
| date = June 9, 2008
| title = xkcd Goes to the Airport
| image = xkcd_goes_to_the_airport.png
| titletext = Under three ounces, but it stains panties.
}}

==Explanation==
The various characters of xkcd cause problems at the airport due to their various quirks.

Panel 1: [[Beret Guy]] and [[Megan]] are lost, following each other in a loop. Beret Guy displays his obsession with baked goods as he also does in later comics: [[442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel]] and [[452: Mission]].

Panel 2: [[Cueball]] tries to carry a {{w|Lock picking|lockpick set}} (a tool able to unlock doors without the original key) through security because of "this hacker girl" (spoofing the incidents where someone has been manipulated into carrying drugs or other contraband by a romantic interest they met on the Internet). The security guard tells Cueball to come with him but Cueball continues rambling on about the girl. It could be a reference to the Homeless Hacker from [[343: 1337: Part 3]] or another guy Elaine met during this period of her life.

Panel 3: On the plane, Cueball has been instructed to disable the wireless transmission functionality of his device. Many airlines require passengers to disable {{w|Mobile phones on aircraft|mobile phones on aircraft}} as well as other radio transmitting devices because they may interfere with the radio-based navigation and communication equipment of the aircraft. However, his laptop is running Linux and he doesn't know how to change the wireless settings; he's reading the {{w|Man page|manual}} for the program that controls the wireless radio. However, this is probably not the ideal situation, as the airplane is pressed to take off. Man page was also referenced in [[293: RTFM]]. Much later a plane was again linked to a man page in [[912: Manual Override]].

Panel 4: [[Black Hat]] tries to carry a container of liquid through security. According to US law, the maximum amount of liquid in a container is three ounces, a security measure taken to prevent terrorists from taking explosives onto planes. When the guard has doubts about the amount of liquid in the vial, Black Hat reveals that the liquid is actually blood from a churchmouse, a fictional mouse created by Lewis Carroll. The guard is visibly uncomfortable and clearly does not want to deal with the issue any further.

The title text continues off the final panel, saying that there are less than three ounces of blood in a churchmouse, but it "stains panties", an undesirable scenario. However, this undesirable scenario is paralleled by the implied undesirable scenario of a terrorist attack due to explosive liquids, the possibility of which caused the law. The title text seems to parody the prospect of an explosion with the relatively insignificant staining of panties, a term for women's underwear. This may also be a menstruation joke.

==Transcript==
:[Standing outside the Airport. There is a sign saying "Airport" and a plane in the background.]
:Megan: Okay, what airline?
:Beret Guy: I'm following you.
:Megan: ...I'm following you.
:Beret Guy: I assumed we were walking to the bakery.
:Megan: You always assume that!

:[Presumably the security checkpoint.]
:Security Guy: Lockpicks? These are... illegal, actually. Where did you get them?
:Cueball: Oh man, it all started with this hacker girl.
:Security Guy: You need to come with-
:Cueball: Sure, sure. But man, let me tell you about her!

:[On a plane.]
:Announcement: If your device has a "Transmit" function, please disable it.
:Cueball: Okay - hang on, I'm half way through the iwconfig man page.

:[Security checkpoint.]
:Security guy: Sir, is this container under three ounces?
:Black Hat: Not sure, how much blood is there in a churchmouse?
:Security guy: . . .Why don't you just go.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Linux]]

526: Converting to Metric

2015-02-02T19:14:13Z

Nyq: Decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 526
| date = January 5, 2009
| title = Converting to Metric
| image = converting to metric.png
| titletext = According to River, "adequate" vacuuming systems drain the human body at about half a liter per second.
}}
==Explanation==
Most people will eventually develop an intuitive feel for how big certain measurements are (e.g., how long an inch or a foot is, how much a pound weighs). This comic points out that people who were brought up using the {{w|Imperial measurement|imperial system}} probably don't have the same intuitive understanding for metric units and attempts to provide some benchmarks for these people. Most of the benchmarks are common sense, highly-useful ones (e.g., if it's 30 degrees centigrade [86 °F], you'd be quite comfortable outside dressed for the beach) but some of the benchmarks are humorous and/or completely useless. Benchmarks include:

===Temperature===
* {{w|Extremes on Earth|Earth's hottest}}: 60⁠°C [140 °F]: The hottest temperature recorded on earth is actually {{W|List_of_weather_records#Heat|"only" 56.7}}. There have been reports of ten-twenty degrees higher (70-80⁠°C) but these measurements are not verified or accepted as world records.
* Various heat waves: {{w|Dubai}} is a city in the United Arab Emirates, and is smack-dab in the middle of an equatorial desert, so their heat waves can get ''hot!''. The southern Unites States will typically be a few degrees hotter than the northern United States simply because it's closer to the equator, but as mentioned they're both above "Beach Weather".
*30°C [86 °F]: A little too hot so perfect for a trip to the beach.
*20°C [68 °F]: Is defined as room temperature in many experimental settings. For some this would feel a little cool. But 25°C [77°] would as mentioned be too warm for room temperature...
*10°C [50 °F]: Definitely wear a jacket. Especially if there is just a little breeze.
*0⁠°C [32 °F]: The freezing point of water (32°⁠F)
*-5 to -10°C: In Moscow -10°C is not really that cold - it can go "spit goes clink" cold in {{W|Moscow#Climate|Moscow}}, whereas -5°C [23 °F] in {{W|Boston#Climate|Boston}} may be very cold...
*-20°C: FuckFuckFuckCold and -30°C - Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!: This is implied to be basically what some people would say when they step outside at this temperature. In reality, it would be best to keep ones's mouth firmly closed. At -30°C, without taking wind chill into account, exposed skin will feel painful in under a minute and frostbite could begin in as little as ten minutes [http://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/default.asp?lang=En&n=5FBF816A-1].
*-40⁠°C: Spit goes "clink": As shown in the drawing your spit would freeze ''before'' it hits the ground. This is the crossing point of the two temperature scales i.e. -40°C = -40 °F.

===Length===
*1 cm [.4 inch] : Width of microSD card and 3 cm - Length of SD card: Refers to the {{w|MicroSD card|memory cards}} used in cell phones, digital cameras, etc.
*12 cm [almost 5 inches]: CD-ROM is a common object so nice to know it is a dozen centimeters.
*14 cm [5 1/2 inches]: Most males would probably exaggerate the size of their penis, but 14–15 cm is very average.
*15 cm [almost 6 inches]: A Bic pen
*80 cm [31 1/2 inches]: A typical doorway is also of standard size. This is barely over the minimum size typically required by codes for buildings [30 inches or 76.2 cm], but more than 50% over the size required for aircraft emergency exits. (It may seem illogical that larger doors are required in buildings than in airplanes, given airplanes are arguably more dangerous. However, there is no real disadvantage to using larger doors in buildings, which are not significantly pressurized, but using larger doors in aircraft would increase the force on the door caused by cabin pressure proportionally.)
*1 m [39.37 inches]: {{w|Lightsaber|Lightsaber blade}}: Refers the weapon used in the {{w|Star Wars}} movie franchise. Canonically, the length of a lightsaber's blade varies greatly depending on the setting of the weapon, but "one meter" is by no means a bad approximation.
*170 cm [5 feet, 7 inches]: {{w|Summer Glau}}: Refers to the height of the actress who portrays the character River Tam on the TV show {{w|Firefly (TV series)|Firefly}}.
*200 cm [6 feet, 6 and 3/4 inches]: Darth Vader: Refers to the height of the main antagonist from Star Wars.
*2.5 m [almost 10 feet]: Ceiling - of course very much depending on which type of building you are in!
*5 m [almost twenty feet]: Car length - also very much depending on the car...
*16 m 4 cm: Human tower of Serenity crew: Again, this refers to the Firefly TV show, which takes place mostly on a space ship called Serenity.
**Presumably, if all the crew of Serenity were stacked on top of each other, this would be their combined height.
**The comic depicts four characters from the show standing on top of each other; the bottom figure is the crew's captain, {{w|Malcolm Reynolds}} in his signature coat. Judging from the other drawing of Summer Glau from the volume section, she is standing on top of the captain.
**The other five members of the crew should also be stacked on top of these four to reach the 16m height - giving them an average height of 1.82 m (12 cm more than Summer Glaus height!)

===Speed===
:Here both the SI unit m/s as well as the more used unit kph (km per hour) is given.
*5 kph [3 mph] - 1.5 m/s: Walking at a normal pace
*13-25 kph [8-15 mph]: Jogging to sprinting.
*35 kph [21.75 mph] - 10 m/s: Fastest human: As of 2009, the fastest a human has been recorded to run in a single sprint is actually 45 kph, a record set by {{w|Usain Bolt}}.
*45-55 kph: Both cats and rabbits go much faster than normal people.
*75 kph [46.6 mph] - 20 m/s: Raptor: It's a comic written by [[Randall]], of course a reference to the {{w|velociraptors}} from ''{{w|Jurassic Park (film)|Jurassic Park}}'' was going to be here.
*100 kph - 25 m/s: A slow highway (62 mph).
*110 kph [68.35 mph] - 30 m/s: Interstate (65 mph): Refers to the {{w|Interstate|American highway system}}. (65 mph would actually be only 104.6 kph.)
*120 kph - 35 m/s: Speed you actually go when it says "65": People routinely break the aforementioned speed limit, and the police typically don't mind as long as it's not posing any danger. For the record, 120 kph is 74 mph.
*140 kph - 40 m/s: Raptor on hoverboard: The {{w|hoverboard}} is probably a reference to the ''{{w|Back to the Future Part II}}'', though it's a fairly common trope in older science fiction stories. Randall obviously did a lot of google searching on this subject the week before - see [[522: Google Trends]].

===Volume===
*3 ml: The amount of blood in a fieldmouse. A similar amount is used in comic [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport]], but instead of a fieldmouse, the measurement of blood is of a churchmouse, an imaginary animal created by Lewis Carroll. Click [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport|here]] for a more on [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport|comic 434]].
*5 ml: A teaspoon - a very common measure.
*30 mL: Nasal passages and 40mL - Shot glass: The comic points out that you could just about fill a shot glass using the mucus from your nose. Since shot glasses are usually used for mixed drinks, the comic jokes that this mucus could constitute a new, disgusting drink - and this is depictured in the drawing.
*350 ml: Soda can (this is roughly correct for the cans used in the U.S., which hold 12 fluid ounces; in Europe, soda cans commonly hold 330ml or 500 ml).
*500 ml: Water bottle (this is the also the volume of a European water bottle).
*3 L: Two-liter bottle: Refers to a bottle which contains two liters (in the US usually soda). There is debate as to the reason for the discrepancy in volume.
*5 L: An adult male has about 5 L of blood in his body (An ''adequate'' vacuuming system could drain this blood out in 10 s - as per the title text!)
*30 L: Milk crate: Refers to a {{w|Milk crate|type of small box}} originally used to transport milk but now often in demand to be used as bicycle basket, storage spaces, etc.
*55 L: Summer Glau: Again, this refers to the actress from Firefly.
*65 L: {{w|Dennis Kucinich}}: An American politician belonging to the {{w|Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic party}}, noted for his relatively strong (for the US) leftist views.
*75 L: {{w|Ron Paul}}: An American politician belonging to the rival {{w|Republican Party (United States)|Republican party}}, noted for his strong rightist views.
*200 L: Volume of refrigerator.
*As shown in the drawing of this part of the comic, the three persons mentioned above - Glau, Kucinich and Paul (summing up to 195 L) - could in principle all fit inside a standard refrigerator. Cueball thus attempts to push them all inside of one - though it would obviously be very uncomfortable for all parties involved to be trapped in such a small space with not much room between them.

===Mass===
*3 g: {{w|M&M's|Peanut M&M}}: A small chocolate candy with a peanut inside
*100 g: Cell phone - this very much depends on the age of the cell phone, and the type etc.
*500 g [1 lb.]: A bottle of water contains 500 ml according to the volume section and thus have mass of 500 g.
*1–3 kg: Different types of laptops. The newest and the best is the lightest...
*5 kg [11 lb.]: {{w|LCD monitor}}: A modern flat-screen-style monitor.
*15 kg: {{w|CRT monitor}}: An older-style, cathode ray tube-based monitor.
**This ends the section on computer screens, which overrode the normal sequence by weight as the next two feline inspired entries are lighter than the two before.
*4 kg: Cat and 4.1 kg - Cat (with caption): Refers to the internet's love of putting {{w|Lolcat|captions on cats}}. Usually, this is done in a graphics program, but here the cat is actually physically carrying around his caption. The "with caption" part is most likely a reference to [[262: IN UR REALITY]], where [[Black Hat]] glues captions to cats, after running out of staples.
*60 kg [130 lb.]: Lady - for instance if she is Summer Glau - could be her again depicted in the comic - average weight of an adult woman.
*70 kg [150 lb.]: Dude - here depicted as Cueball who is the average guy, and 70 kg is average weight for an adult man.
*150 kg: Shaq: {{w|Shaq|Shaquille O'Neal}}, a famously tall basketball player.
*200 kg [440 lb.]: Your mom
*220 kg: Your mom (incl. 20 kg of cheap jewelry) and
*223 kg: Your mom (also incl. 3 kg of makeup)
*These last refers to a common type of {{w|Your mom}} joking insult whereby someone insults someone else's mother in a creative way. Here, the comic slyly calls your mom fat, then implies she wears way too much jewelry and finally also almost 7 pounds of makeup. This is a common theme in [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Your_Mom xkcd]. (Twenty kg of "cheap" jewelry has several times the volume than 20 kg of gold jewelry, because of the difference in density.)

===Title text===
The title text refers once again to Summer Glau's Firefly character, {{w|River Tam}}, who (after being subjected to a long series of medical experiments) is severely mentally ill and often comes out with macabre — though scientifically accurate — pronouncements.

==Transcript==
:'''Guide to Converting to Metric'''

:[There are five frames with tables for different units. Between the two upper frames is the following text:]
:The key to converting to metric is establishing
:new reference points. When you hear "26°C",
:instead of thinking "That's 79°F" you should think,
:"that's warmer than a house but cool for swimming."
:Here are some helpful tables of reference points:

:[The frame to the left of the above text:]
:Temperature:
:{| class="wikitable"
|60°C||Earth's hottest
|-
|45°C||Dubai heat wave
|-
|40°C||Southern US heat wave
|-
|35°C||Northern US heat wave
|-
|30°C||Beach weather
|-
|25°C||Warm room
|-
|20°C||Room temperature
|-
|10°C||Jacket weather
|-
|0°C||Snow!
|-
| -5°C||Cold day (Boston)
|-
| -10°C||Cold day (Moscow)
|-
| -20°C||Fuckfuckfuckcold
|-
| -30°C||Fuuuuuuuuuuck!
|-
| -40°C||Spit goes "clink"
|}
:[Next to the last three entries we see Cueball spitting on the ground. The spit bounces.]
:Cueball: Ptoo
:Spit: Clink!

:[The frame to the right of the above text:]
:Length
:{| class="wikitable"
|1 cm||Width of microSD card
|-
|3 cm||Length of SD card
|-
|12 cm||CD diameter
|-
|14 cm||Penis
|-
|15 cm||BIC pen
|-
|80 cm||Doorway width
|-
|1 m||Lightsaber blade
|-
|170 cm||Summer Glau
|-
|200 cm||Darth Vader
|-
|2.5 m||Ceiling
|-
|5 m||Car-length
|-
|16 m 4 cm||Human tower of Serenity crew
|}
:[To the right of the table is a human tower of four of the people from the Serenity crew. The head of the upper person is right below the first entry.]

:[The frame below to the left:]
:Speed
:{| class="wikitable"
|kph|| m/s||
|-
|5||1.5||Walking
|-
|13||3.5||Jogging
|-
|25||7||Sprinting
|-
|35||10||Fastest human
|-
|45||13||Housecat
|-
|55||15||Rabbit
|-
|75||20||Raptor
|-
|100||25||Slow highway
|-
|110||30||Interstate (65 mph)
|-
|120||35||Speed you actually go when it says “65”
|-
|140||40||Raptor on hoverboard
|}

:[The frame below in the middle:]
:Volume
:{| class="wikitable"
|3 mL||Blood in a fieldmouse
|-
|5 mL||Teaspoon
|-
|30 mL||Nasal passages
|-
|40 mL||Shot glass
|-
|350 mL||Soda can
|-
|500 mL||Water bottle
|-
|3 L||Two-liter bottle
|-
|5 L||Blood in a human male
|-
|30 L||Milk crate
|-
|55 L||Summer Glau
|-
|65 L||Dennis Kucinich
|-
|75 L||Ron Paul
|-
|200 L||Fridge
|}
:[Next to the entry on nasal passages and shoot glass (starting one entry higher and finishing one entry lower) are the following text:]
:So, when it's blocked
:the mucus in your
:nose could about
:fill a shot glass.
:[Below this text is a drawing of a mucus filled shot glass.]
:Related: I've
:invented the
:worst mixed
:drink ever.
:[Below this next to the four last entries we see Cueball shoving Summer Glau, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul into an open fridge. Above the fridge in a loosely drawn ellipse are the following text:]
:55+65+75<200

:[The frame below to the right:]
:Mass
:{| class="wikitable"
|3 g||Peanut M&M
|-
|100 g||Cell phone
|-
|500 g||Bottled water
|-
|1 kg||Ultraportable laptop
|-
|2 kg||Light-medium laptop
|-
|3 kg||Heavy laptop
|-
|5 kg||LCD monitor
|-
|15 kg||CRT monitor
|-
|4 kg||Cat
|-
|4.1 kg||Cat (with caption)
|-
|60 kg||Lady
|-
|70 kg||Dude
|-
|150 kg||Shaq
|-
|200 kg||Your mom
|-
|220 kg||Your mom (incl. cheap jewelry)
|-
|223 kg||Your mom (also incl. makeup)
|}
:[Next to the entries of cat and cat (with caption) are two drawings of cats. The second one has a caption across its chest.]
:Cat (with caption): Mrowl?
:[Below this and next to the lady and dude entries (and the Shaq entry) are drawings of Megan and Cueball.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Your Mom]]
[[Category:Firefly]]

1112: Think Logically

2015-02-02T19:04:37Z

Nyq: /* Explanation */ decapitalized common nouns

{{comic
| number = 1112
| date = September 24, 2012
| title = Think Logically
| image = think logically.png
| titletext = I've developed a more logical set of rules but the people on the chess community have a bunch of stupid emotional biases and won't reply to my posts.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Chess}} is a centuries-old board game in which two players take turns moving one of their 16 pieces to try and checkmate the other player's king (one of the pieces). When one player is in a position to capture his or her opponent's king on their next move, and the opponent has no legal move available to avoid such capture, the opponent is said to be in "checkmate". This is considered to be the end of the game with a win for the first player; though chess etiquette suggests that a player facing inevitable checkmate ought to forfeit at that point.

The game, with origins around the 6th century, and with the modern rules being essentially set in the late 15th century, has a significant amount of history. The rules and traditions are well established. The knight is a piece that can only move in an L-shaped pattern (two squares in one direction, and one square perpendicular), but has the unique ability to jump over other pieces.

The comic highlights two mistakes players often make in chess: complete fixation on the king at the cost of their other pieces, and failure to take advantage of the knight's movement patterns. At the same time this is a jab at how people sometimes oversimplify an argument when confronted with a topic they are not familiar with. Previously this was depicted in [[675: Revolutionary]] and [[793: Physicists]]. See also the {{w|Dunning–Kruger effect}}. The units in chess are widely agreed to be well-balanced, and Cueball's criticism of the knight shows an obvious lack of knowledge of the knight's potential.

Given the long history of chess, a significant amount of writing and research has been dedicated to the game and its strategies. This is inadvertently mocked by Cueball who naively suggests it would be trivial to make a list of all situations in which a piece would move backwards (called a "retreat" in chess). Such a list — at least a partial one — certainly does exist, as do lists of numerous other chess moves and situations.

[[Cueball]]'s friend proceeds to demonstrate Cueball's lack of knowledge by beating him in four moves, which typically would only occur when an experienced player plays a novice. The checkmate depicted is likely the {{w|Scholar's mate|scholar's mate}} and is one of the classic checkmates in chess. Scholar's mate is easily parried by moving the knight, the piece considered weak by Cueball, to f6, although ironically, all movements in the scholar's mate are towards the enemy king.

Cueball, instead of admitting he underestimated the game, believes the failure is in the game itself. The title text indicates that Cueball attempted to suggest revisions to the rules of chess. Given that Cueball has no experience as a chess player, it is likely many of the changes are illogical or ridiculous. In the face of hundreds of years of history, it is not surprising that the chess community is ignoring them. The last major changes to the rules of chess occurred more than 400 years ago when, among other things, the pawn was given its two-space starting move and the queen was made into the most powerful piece (previously it was the weakest). The chess community's ties to the traditions of the game and their refusal to accept Cueball's suggestions are written off by Cueball as "{{w|emotional bias}}" suggesting his changes are logical, but that the community is letting their emotions cloud their rational decision making abilities.

The comic may also be a jab at competitive online games whose fans call for "buffs" (power additions) and "nerfs" (power reductions) to characters they believe to be underpowered or overpowered, often with inadequate knowledge of those characters. On the other hand, some online games and multiplayer computer games in general are unbalanced since they lack centuries of history to balance themselves, unlike chess.

==Transcript==
:[Person wearing a skullcap is sitting down at a computer. Cueball is standing behind him.]
:Laptop: ''*Move*''
:Cueball: Why'd you move your knight away?

:[Person wearing skullcap turns around and rests his arm on his chair.]
:Cueball: Just think ''logically''. The goal is checkmate, so you should always move pieces ''toward'' the other player's king.

:[Closeup of Cueball.]
:Cueball: I guess occasionally you need to move backward, but it'd be trivial to make a list of those circumstances and-

:[Person wearing skullcap is leaning back in chair facing Cueball.]
:Skullcap: Have you ever ''played'' chess?
:Cueball: Not much, but—
:Skullcap: Wanna?
:Cueball: Uh, ok.

:[Skullcap and Cueball playing chess.]
:Skullcap: *Move*
:Cueball: *Move*
:Skullcap: *Move*
:Cueball: *Move*
:Skullcap: *Move*
:Cueball: *Move*
:Skullcap: *Move* Checkmate.

:[Cueball standing and staring at the chess board.]

:[Skullcap returns to computer.]
:Cueball: This game isn't very well-designed. For starters, knights are too weak...

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