Editing Talk:2086: History Department

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The business about the 1750s probably has something to do with the British doing their changeover from Julian to Gregorian calendars then, but you can't look too carefully at the details. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.16|108.162.219.16]] 18:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
: Perhaps the "previously-unstudied history in the 1750s" refers to the eleven days that were simply removed when the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750 Calendar Act 1750] went into effect? [[User:Mr. I|Mr. I]] ([[User talk:Mr. I|talk]]) 00:23, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
:: This may even refer to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis Phantom Time Hypothesis], a historical conspiracy theory proposed by German journalist H. Illig. That theory basically proposes that the 297 years between September 614 and August 911 were simply invented later. Maybe the History Department just recently discovered that the Phantom Time Hypothesis was indeed a conspiracy? That would amount to falling almost 300 years behind schedule.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.161|162.158.91.161]] 10:07, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm confused. Is there any joke apart from the obvious "haha, studying history by fully covering time slices instead of topics"? [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 19:05, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
: There's also the joke about taking longer to study a period of time than that time took to pass. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.208|108.162.216.208]] 19:31, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
: I think it's also a reference to the fact that we are creating more and more data in the digital age, leading to the problem of there being too much data to keep up with. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.202|108.162.241.202]] 01:13, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
::Anything created will became part of history almost immediately. Taken literally, study of history means to study EVERYTHING, and it's obviously impossible to be done due to self-reference. Digital data are just subset of it. In reality, historians try to focus just on important things and hope they don't miss anything ; for digital data, it often involves algorithms automatically analyzing data and finding "interesting" ones.
::In not-so-distant future, archaeologists won't be digging in mud to find physical artefacts from past periods (any mud would be already covered by buildings or roads anyway). They would be digging in digital archives and searching for stuff which didn't seemed important when fresh, but in hindsight turned out to be more important and require to be better indexed or correlated with other data. Sometimes, they would be able to find newsworthy discoveries without ever setting foot from their home.
Or, well, sometimes they will find a piece of entertainment, say, a webcomics, which they realize can easily be turned out to blockbuster ; I mean, seriously, major movie studios could already learn from webcomics ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
:Are you hinting at an xkcd movie? Perhaps Black Hat trying to destroy the world classhole-ily?[[User:Linker|Linker]] ([[User talk:Linker|talk]]) 12:59, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
::An xkcd movie would be... entertaining... I would watch it! (I assume most people on this wiki would, too, there IS a reason we are here, after all...) [[User:Nyx goddess|Nyx goddess]] ([[User talk:Nyx goddess|talk]]) 22:08, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Two sides to the same coin? We normally think about historians studying time periods on the order of years, decades, or even longer periods (e.g. the Dark Ages), which naturally takes less time than the original era. Another joke is the idea that an entire department is devoted to such narrow periods, but maybe it's a really small college.
[[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:04, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that the humor is based on the incongruity of thinking in business-like terms of productivity and gains and losses in a history department.

I think the 1750s reference is to Tristram Shandy.

The last Animorphs novel was published in May 2001. Given the number of times Randall's brought up Animorphs in comics, is it possible that May 16, 2001 refers to that? I think it would be very much in line with comic 1380 for him to strangely emphasize an Animorphs-related date. [[User:Gman314|Gman314]] ([[User talk:Gman314|talk]]) 02:36, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure he meant this as a joke, But there's a real phenomena when covering ongoing wars where day-by-day front line maps like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN5ylBNvqic this one] have to be produced faster than the war actually happened, in order for them to be released while the war is still relevant. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.192|141.101.105.192]] 10:06, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

The answer is clear: The History Department needs more funding.
<nowiki> ;S </nowiki>
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 17:05, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Randall touched on this problem with history in Comic #1979, where he said history was so huge! [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 03:58, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I think the date May 16, 2001 probably refers to the originally scheduled date of the Timothy McVeigh execution.
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.50.16|172.69.50.16]] 19:05, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

There is a right square bracket under the comments on this page. I can't locate it either in the page wikisource or the comments wikisource. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 21:44, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
:Hidden in plain(ish!) sight... <code><nowiki>[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]]</nowiki></code> ...or at least it was, until just now. ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.221|172.70.85.221]] 00:04, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
::Thanks. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 00:54, 27 August 2022 (UTC)