Experiment
by Jeff
Image text: The other two are still lost on the infinite plane of uniform density.
Let's see if we can work through this one. The Black Hat character and a female accomplice knock out a Physics professor and put him in a frictionless vacuum. The professor wakes up and tries to talk but the vacuum prevents him from being able to say anything. In the first two frames of the bottom section, the professor tries to move, but falls down because the vacuum is frictionless as well.
EDIT: Please see the comments below for Rob and Paige's explanations of the comic who are much more attuned to physics jokes than I am. Thanks Rob and Paige!
Pandora
by Jeff
Image text: What? Oh, no, the 'Enchanted' soundtrack was just playing because Pandora's algorithms are terrible. [silence] ... (quietly) That's how you knooooooow ...
Pandora is a online software program for listening to music. It uses an algorithm to classify music. You put in an artist you like and it creates a whole station of similar music. Pandora has an application for iPhones and other wireless devices.
Enchanted is a Disney musical set it modern day New York City in which a cartoon princess is banished to New York by an evil witch. Typical Disney fare.
UPDATE: And also the lyrics sung in the image text are from the song "That's How You Know" from the Enchanted Sountrack.
SkiFree
by Jeff
Image text: And from that day on, I wore this little 'F' key pendant everywhere I went.
SkiFree was one of the most simple and amazing games for early Windows Operating Systems in the Windows Entertainment Pack. There are a few different types of games in which you move the skier down the course gaining points. Besides trees, the main obstacle is the Yeti that periodically appears in the game and will destroy the skier.
The comic gets philosophical about death when the female character thinks that the Yeti symbolizes death because you can keep dodging the Yet, but it will get you in the end. However, the existence of the 'F' key to speed up those the girl's whole world into uproar. If there is an 'F' key in SkiFree, there must be something equal in real life, hence the 'F' pendant from the image text. I had no idea about the 'F' key to go faster.
You can download SkiFree from this site http://ski.ihoc.net/ - However, it looks like the xkcd effect has taken down the site. We will keep trying and update when it is back up.
UPDATE: Here's another site to download the game from and relive all your memories of SkiFree.
Silent Hammer
by Jeff
Image text: I bet he'll keep quiet for a couple weeks and then-- wait, did you nail a piece of scrap wood to my antique table a moment ago?
In this comic, we see the return of the Black Hat character, who this time is using his silent hammer invention for trouble. The skeptics society is a group based on the fact that they must apply reason to all situations and only supports claims that have compelling and complete evidence. Obviously, the Black Hat character knew this before puling this prank on the "Chair of the American Skeptics Society". There does not appear to be such a title in real life, but Michael Shermer is the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society.
Additionally, it is probably not a coincidence that the Black Hat character returns on comic number 666.
Prudence
by Jeff
Image text: Moments later, the White Witch rolls up and, confused, tries to tempt the probe with a firmware upgrade.
This comic is a reference to the book The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis and later made into a movie. The children in the book are playing "hide and seek" in an unfamiliar house when one child hides in a wardrobe. They then find a entire world known as Narnia behind (or inside) the wardrobe.
The comic is making a play on the Narnia tale, by instead of the child exploring the new world herself, she sends a probe. This is similar and possibly a reference to the probes that NASA deploys to gather information about new worlds. It also may be a reference to Stargate, in which the Stargate Command sends a probe to new worlds to gather information about the world.
EDITED TO ADD: The title appears to be a reference to the fact that the child in the comic does not run blindly into the new world, like in the book, but instead she deploys the probe to gather information first, which would be seen as "prudent".
Academia vs Business
by Jeff
Image text: Some engineer out there has solved P=NP and it's locked up in an electric eggbeater calibration routine. For every 0x5f375a86 we learn about, there are thousands we never see.
This comic is a flow chart defining what would happen if this person solved an impossible problem given to him and what would happen if he were in academia or in business. The argument seems to be here that Academia is much better than business, at least for the ego.
p=NP problem is one of the great unsolved problems in computer science. The Clay Mathematics Institute has a $1 million prize to the first person or group who solves it.
EDIT: As mentioned by just about everybody in the comments, 0x5f375a86 is the algorithm to approximate the solution to the square root of an unsigned floating number, also known as fast inverse square root. The solution uses an ingenious first approximation and the difficult problem was solved without any fanfare (like in the cartoon) for the game, Quake III Arena. Thanks everyone!
Sagan-Man
by Jeff
Image text: They laugh now, but within 10 years the city's entire criminal class will have quit to work on space research.
Carl Sagan is an advocate for science, space and SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). He wrote the book, Contact, which was later made into the movie by the same name.
This comic is parodying Spiderman, in which Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider to become Spiderman. In this comic a radioactive Carl Sagan turns the person into "Sagan-Man".
iPhone or Droid
by Jeff
Image text: It may be a fundamentally empty experience, but holy crap the Droid's 265 ppi screen is amazing.
More existentialism for your Friday!
The iPhone is a portable computer device and phone that has millions hundreds of thousands of applications or "apps" that can be downloaded to add functionality to the phone. The iPhone commercial tag line is: "There's a app for that" which the question in panel 2 is a reference to. That explanation was for anyone who has been living under a rock for 4 years or is possibly reading this from the past. The iPhone store is notoriously strict in seemingly random times. Some apps will get approved and other similar apps will get rejected.
The Droid is a new portable computer device and phone, the software for this one was developed by Google to go head to head with the increasingly popular iPhone.
Everyone - Am I right about existentialism? Is my forgotten college philosophy failing me?
Two-Party System
by Jeff
Image text: I favor approval voting or IRV chiefly because they mean we might get to bring back The Bull Moose party.
This comic is taking a typical internet argument that the two party system is ruining American politics and taking it to a class president election in a school.
Approval voting is the type of voting in which the voter can vote for as many candidates as you would like. In a way, any candidate you "approve" of.
IRV or Instant - runoff voting is the type of voting in which the voter ranks their choices from 1 on down.
The Bull Moose Party is also known as the Progressive Party and it was formed when Teddy Roosevelt lost the nomination to William Taft.
The idea of the image text is that with the ability to vote for more than one person, that would develop more chances for additional political parties.
Sympathy
by Jeff
Image text: Excellent recovery: ... which we could try to use to somehow save your original brother!
This comic is a play on the word "moment" from the first frame.
Obviously, the second frame is the correct was to respond to a grieving person. The third frame would be the physicist questioning the use of the word "moment".
In the fourth frame, causality in physics means that every cause has an effect.