Conservation
| Conservation |
| Original blog post on Building a Smarter Planet: http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2009/06/building-a-smarter-planet-for-squirrels.html |
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Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Expand? If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
Two special A Smarter Planet comics were created by Randal after a special request from IBM's blog A Smarter Planet. They are not part of the regular numbered series of comics for xkcd's home site.
In the past "a squirrel could go from the Atlantic to the Mississippi without touching the ground", meant that the squirrel could hop from tree to tree from the Atlantic Ocean to Mississipi. However, squirrels can't do that anymore since people cut down much of the forests. Cueball misunderstands what the saying means, (possibly deliberately) announcing his development of the Aerial Squirrel Transit Pod: An aircraft, presumably unmanned, designed to allow the modern squirrel the same range of not having to touch the ground. This is yet another instance of people announcing odd things or elaborately setting up a pun at conferences, a recurring theme in xkcd.
Transcript
- [Trees, with a squirrel flying in-between.]
- They say that 400 years ago a squirrel could go from the Atlantic to the Mississippi without touching the ground.
- [Cueball speaking to an audience, under a banner labeled "Conservation Society".]
- Cueball: I dream of bringing back those days.
- Cueball [pointing to a diagram of a helicopter-like device carrying a squirrel]: Which is why I've developed the aerial squirrel transit pod.
- Audience member [Offscreen]: Okay, back up.
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refresh comments!Discussion
I separated A Smarter Planet into two pages. One for each comic in the series.--17jiangz1 (talk) 12:54, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Is there a reason for that link in the transcript? --108.162.228.5 15:03, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
"But they are featured (both of them at the same page) on xkcd under asmarterplanet." Now they link to comic 404. (Haha, but seriously) anyone got the comics? Tsumikiminiwa (talk) 22:02, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
