2901: Geographic Qualifiers

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Geographic Qualifiers

Title text: 'Thank you for the loveliest evening I've ever had...' [normal] '...east of the Mississippi.' [instant intrigue!]

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a BOT EAST OF THE BERLIN WALL - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

In this comic, two Cueballs are admiring a giant statue of a squirrel standing on a skateboard. The first is bragging about how it is the largest statue of that theme in “the Northern Hemisphere”. The second one is visibly confused, as he realizes that this seems to imply the existence of a taller one in the Southern Hemisphere. He considers several countries, with his last thought being Australia, where many overly large statues have been built. However, squirrels are not native to Australia, so it's unlikely there would be any statues of them, let alone larger than this one.

Adding an unnecessary qualifier like this doesn't change the truth of the statement. But it suggests that there's a need to restrict the scope of the statement, i.e. it wouldn't be true with a less restrictive qualifier (or none at all). This will cause the listener to wonder about these other cases.

Sometimes qualifiers are added simply due to incomplete information. They've surveyed squirrel statues in the Northern Hemisphere and determined that this one is the largest. But since they haven't searched the Southern Hemisphere, they don't want to commit to it being the largest in the world.

In the title text, someone is expressing gratitude at the end of a date, saying that it's the loveliest evening they've ever had (in actuality, "loveliest" is usually hyperbole).^{[citation needed]} This seems normal until they add a location qualifier. This leaves the companion wondering what kind of great evening they had in some other location. In this case, it's unlikely that the speaker would have incomplete information about their own dating history.

The statue may be a reference to Ms. Pearl, the giant squirrel statue in Cedar Creek, Texas which, at 14 ft (4 m) [1] is indeed the largest squirrel statue in the western hemisphere. The qualifier, in this case, is necessary since a 40 ft (12 m) statue does exist in Kazakhstan [2] but information for tourists in Cedar Creek, Texas, doesn't tent to include this information^{[citation needed]} creating the mystique. The artist behind the Kazakhstan statue appears to have been unaware of the Cedar Creek statue so the Kazakh statue is not intentionally at least three times bigger.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[A huge statue of a squirrel on a skateboard, which is on a pedestal. Next to it on the right, are two people, presumably two Cueballs. The Cueball on the left is pointing at the statue. The Cueball on the right has a thought bubble above him. The scene is shown from afar in black silhouette on a white background.]

Left Cueball: At over 40 feet, it's the tallest statue of a skateboarding squirrel in the Northern Hemisphere.

Right Cueball (thinking): ...Wait, who in the heck...Brazil? South Africa? Australia? Squirrels aren't even native there...

[Caption below the panel:]

I love the instant mystery created by qualifiers like "east of the Mississippi" or "in the Northern Hemisphere."

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Discussion

Related to this comic 1368

According to Atlas Obscura, the world's largest squirrel statue is 14 feet tall, in Cedar Creek, Texas. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ms-pearl-the-worlds-largest-squirrel-statue Nitpicking (talk) 03:06, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

There are two African families of squirrels that have range into the Southern Hemisphere, the Xerini and Protoxerini. Yes, I checked Wikipedia. Nitpicking (talk) 03:10, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Australia has large number of “Big Things”. These are big sculptures / novelty architecture that are scattered over the country. These include things like the Big Cow, The Big Penguin and the Giant Koala. The Koala at 14 meters high is bigger then the fictional squirrel statue.

Since there may be as many as 600 of these things across Australia, the qualification is not as odd as it may sound at first. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_things_(Australia) )

New Zealand also has a smaller collection of big things: List of New Zealand's big things. Maplestrip (talk) 07:52, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

But does it have a bigger collection of small things? Enquiring minds wish to know! 172.69.194.83 11:52, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Australia has a lot more land-area, and though a bigger proportion of that is desert, it does have more hectares of forests and a bigger population too. I think it's safe to say Australia wins in the collection of small objects competition :p Maplestrip (talk) 09:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Including the pedestal, the statue's height is approximately six Cueballs, which means Cueball is over ~6 2/3 feet tall. But it would make more sense to me for the record to exclude the pedestal, as the pedestal is not a likeness of a squirrel or a skateboard; in that case, Cueball is well over 10 feet tall.172.71.150.213 06:13, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

“Why, that’s the second biggest monkey head I’ve ever seen!” - 172.69.6.195 08:28, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Someone should probably link Grice's maxims here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle 172.68.26.2 09:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I once heard a friend, commenting after a rather chaotic pub crawl, "That's the most drunk I've ever been while off duty." It was part of a running joke about how seriously his employer took their NDAs; he used to act like any information even remotely related to his job (such as whether he'd ever been blackout drunk at work) was top secret. Other examples included "I've never seen 'Groundhog Day' while off duty before" or "This is the best bbq chicken I ever tasted while off-duty" -- Angel (talk) 12:48, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

or the viral "Did you get many spankings as a kid?" "As a kid, no" blooper from Fox News...Mumiemonstret (talk) 11:20, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Kynde (and others, but especially Kynde), I was never going to just revert your edits, but the Edit Conflict page's summary of differences was far too hard to work out (would have been easier without the newline below the Incomplete-tag being removed, but it offset the first para and then did dumb-matching of odd words from them on...). The plan was always to review what changes I'd intentionally overriden, copypaste them back and shuffle accordingly, then make it much more as if I'd only spent time editing after your edit (but using my own effort that I had started before). Looks like I caught you (and others) still actively reviewing. I think I sorted out everything in useful ways, after another edit or two, but (even by the time this Talk post is posted) no doubt you'll be fine-tuning it in your own way. - I did end up sort-of-reverting some different turns of phrase (not all of which worked, IMO) that changed the sense of my prior editing's intent, but tried to put all *new* contributions by yourself(/ves) back in there. It is always tricky comparing between tabs (one a diff between two prior versions the other an active editing page) on a small device such as I find myself on now, so I hope it wasn't too much disruption. (If I'd have not pipelined quite so many little relevent changes, myself, I'd have checked a soon-to-be-dismissed EC cross-comparison tab with a brand new fresh edit.) Anyway: apologies, explanations and letting you know I've done all my 'big edits' (for now). And tried to leave it tidy and correct, but there are always unintended errors. 172.69.43.210 15:06, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes I was in the process of changing somethings and was going to add some more to that, and then it had just all been reverted, and that I could not just accept and reverted it right back. I have no idea what you ended up doing, but seems like the important gist of what I was changing has been left in. It is far from the version I last left. But better! It is always annoying with edit conflicts. But it is hard to avoid close to the release of a comic. --Kynde (talk) 12:55, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

By my by-eye reckoning, the 40ft stated (compared to the probably high-5-foot-maybe-even-6-footer Cueballs) seems to include the very significant plinth/base-mount. Not sure if that's totally honest... 172.69.195.85 15:44, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

"This last country is a place know for its many overly large statues." S/B 'known'. PRR (talk) 18:04, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

...The last sentence of the explanation is incomprehensible to me. IMO it looks like a snob using thesaurus dot com to say something mundane and really should be changed to something better 172.68.27.26 21:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Bumpf

Reminds me a bit of the kind of news article saying "one of the top x", with x being an oddly specific number. Like explainxkcd being one of my top 6 most visited websites. 141.101.76.125 21:51, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

This is the source of many entries on "dumb law" lists that circulate. "It is illegal to discharge a firearm from a moving vehicle" is sensible. "It's illegal to shoot bear from a helicopter" is a listicle entry. 172.69.247.41 00:41, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

My favorite: "yesterday was the coldest day since November 14th". It so happens that it was a freak 62 degrees on November 14th, but the statement is still (potentially) true. 172.70.34.200 15:29, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I've never wanted to live in the southern hemisphere more than right now. With the time and materials available, of course. Surely somebody already down-under (and/or down-under-and-a-bit-to-the-side) has some 50ft ladders, etc? And a bit of spare time. 172.69.43.211 12:03, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

At least in Sweden, the corresponding ubiquitous but often unnecessary qualifier is "...in northern Europe". Maybe it's more a sign of how far the writer bothers to extend their search for contenders, rather than of there actually being any. Mumiemonstret (talk) 11:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)