Talk:1904: Research Risks

Entymology? Misspelled "entomology" or (more confusingly) "etymology"? Psychology lower risk than micology? Absolutely hogwash!

The comic has been updated, so it was just a typo. 141.101.99.35 16:05, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

How do I update picture. Last update always matches first upload for whatever reason --Trimutius (talk) 17:24, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Molasses storage is misplaced -- should be in the quadrant to its right. See [1]. 21 dead and 150 injured. 108.162.219.52 14:12, 18 October 2017 (UTC) Agreed that it did get out and kill people. But only once in something like 200 years and only a few. (Is this where the phrase slower than molasses in January comes from?) I would not expect that this would be a common danger.

Ah, but there was another in 2013 in Honolulu. (I just learned of it from the "See Also" section of the Wikipedia page on the Great Molasses Flood.) That one didn't kill any people (though it was an ecological disaster) but it speaks to risk. Anyway, the item is in the right quadrant. Arguably is should be further to the right, but also arguably not, since conducting experiments in the area could lead to more accidents.Jqavins (talk) 16:08, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Only, even assuming there's such a thing as molasses storage research, it's unlikely that your lab is going to contain life-threatening quantities of molasses. It's not as if a few liters escaping could reproduce and turn into thousands of tons. 141.101.99.35 16:27, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I think entymology is a reference to 1012 162.158.91.95 14:50, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I think the title text may have a somewhat humorous naming scheme derived from the Great Molasses Flood Wikipedia discussion page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Great_Molasses_Flood There's a lengthy discussion about changing the name from "Boston Molasses Disaster" to "Great Molasses Flood". I noticed that Randall used both approaches to describing the events in the title text, but maybe that was a coincidence.

I am not impressed. Movie supervillains often use paleontology (dinosaurs), geology (volcano/earthquake) and astronomy (comets). Also, there is a tendency to pair marine biology with laser-optics. And, to actually dominate the world, a real-life villain will probably need to use cunning linguistics at some level or the other. _{--Nialpxe, 2017. (Arguments welcome)}

I had the same initial reaction, but note how Randall didn't write "movie supervillain", but just "supervillain", so you should only take into account what is currently feasible in technology state-of-the-art, or what we can reasonably foresee for the next decade or so. I don't see any madman being able to revive (and control!) dinosaurs, capture a comet or trigger an earthquake in the next 10-20 years. As for shark-mounted lasers, they are cool to show off and inspire fear, but hardly useful to achieve world domination by themselves. 141.101.99.35 16:18, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

When we get into the realm of supervillainy - especially given XKCD's history - we're almost certainly talking fiction. And if we're talking fiction, Randall's forgotten about Moonraker, where astronomy and dentistry both play a significant role in the supervillain's plot, and should thus rate higher on the vertical scale. 172.68.78.16 02:42, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Looks like the "Research Risk" column is just a comment field open for speculation -- can we merge Comments and Research Risk into one column? Spongebob (talk) 03:34, 19 October 2017 (UTC)