824: Guest Week: Bill Amend (FoxTrot)

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Guest Week: Bill Amend (FoxTrot)
Guest comic by Bill Amend of FoxTrot, an inspiration to all us nerdy-physics-majors-turned-cartoonists, of which there are an oddly large number.
Title text: Guest comic by Bill Amend of FoxTrot, an inspiration to all us nerdy-physics-majors-turned-cartoonists, of which there are an oddly large number.
[[Category:Comics from Error: Invalid time.]][[Category:Comics from Error: Invalid time.]] [[Category:Error: Invalid time. comics]]

Explanation

Bill Amend draws for Randall in this special 'Guest Week' edition of xkcd. In it, the geeky boy from Foxtrot, Jason, asks to draw comics for Randall. When Randall refuses, he used the sudo command, used in Linux systems to perform an action as an administrator/power user to force Randall to agree. This is a reference to a very popular Make Me a Sandwich xkcd, which is often referred to in pop culture.

Jason's artwork, a pseudo-xkcd, geeky, intelligent style comic, is shown in the lines below. The guy jokes that he is attracted to the girl because of all the girl's gravitational pull (i.e. she's fat). Next, Mr. Heisenberg cannot find his car keys because too much information about its momentum has made him impossible to find enough information about the key's position. This is a reference to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which states that effectively, you cannot know too much of both the momentum (mass and speed) and position of an object. Finnally, a geeky congressman, instead of saying 'aye', says 'i', which is the symbol for the square root of negative one, as seen in the comic. Not surprisingly, 'i' is pronounced as 'i'.

Transcript

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Discussion

isn't sudo used in any Unix system? so linux and mac108.162.216.62 23:29, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

From the last paragraph of the explanation: "The dissenters are then asked. Their response being 'Nay.'" I remember it being "No". In the US Congress a voice vote is conducted as follows: "Those in favor say 'Aye'..." ("Aye...") "Those oppose, 'No'..." ("No...") "The [ayes/noes] have it." --Troy0 (talk) 08:58, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Actually, it looks a bit more complicated than that. It appears that in the Senate, when a voice vote is called, appropriate responses are "yea" and "no," but for a role call vote, it's "yea" or "nay." In the House, the appropriate response to a voice vote is "aye" or "no," while a record vote merits a "yea" or "nay." Amusingly, for a so-called "yea or nay" vote (in which House members are called for voice vote alphabetically), the appropriate response is neither "yea" nor "nay," but rather "aye" or "no." Sources: https://www.senate.gov/general/Features/votes.htm and http://archives.democrats.rules.house.gov/Archives/voting_house.htm Orazor (talk) 09:04, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Why not add the links to other physics comics listed? -- Ата (talk) 09:54, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Done this (as you could have), although I note that earlier FoxTrot is linked to the Wikipedia article: would it be better to link to the comic there? I didn't consider it necessary to link xkcd, but if this is done I think it should be to [xkcd | the explain xkcd article]. Also it may be worth linking the authors to their Wikipedia pages, but I think there's already enough blue text around. 141.101.107.204 14:39, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

For some reason, I think it's Wienersmith, rather than just Wiener. I might be wrong though.162.158.255.28 15:26, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps this page should mention that it was reoccurring theme in Fox Trot to have Jason draw substitute comic strips for other well-known newspaper comics. This would be the first time his work was ever 'accepted'.162.158.75.82 14:44, 22 August 2017 (UTC)