23Apr/109
Desert Island
by Mike
Image Text: Telescopes and bathyscapes and sonar probes of Scottish lakes, Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse explained with abstract phase-space maps, some x-ray slides, a music score, Minard's Napoleonic war: the most exciting new frontier is charting what's already here.
This comic is making the point that there is a wonderful world waiting to be explored in the ocean. From above it seems so plain, endless, and boring. But underneath the surface lies the most unexplored area on the planet. We know more about the surface of Mars than we know about the ocean floors on our own planet. This comic is a commentary on the need to head below the waves and start exploring.
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April 23rd, 2010
Sing the image text to the tune of Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire
April 23rd, 2010
It also works excellently to the tune of the Llama Song.
April 23rd, 2010
Not just the oceans, either — the title-text references other things being reexamined or better explored with newer techniques. Some Googling reveals that Charles Joseph Minard “was a French civil engineer noted for his inventions in the field of information graphics.” To quote more from Wikipedia: “Minard was a pioneer of the use of graphics in engineering and statistics. He is famous for his Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813, a flow map published in 1869 on the subject of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812.”
In postscript, that flow map kind of reminds me of another xkcd comic, Movie Narrative Charts (which has been covered here).
April 23rd, 2010
Alas, my first attempt at the above post seemed too spammy for this blog’s spam filter when it still included the link to the Wikipedia article about Charles Joseph Minard, so I’m putting it here.
April 24th, 2010
Also. The octopus wrapped around the shark is most likely a reference to the sci-fi movie MegaShark vs Giant Octopus.
April 25th, 2010
That’s a whale. The flukes and tail are “whaley” not “sharkey.”
April 25th, 2010
Yeah, its probably a sperm whale and a giant squid locked in combat based on the shape of the whale’s head.
April 26th, 2010
I believe it’s the Squid and the Whale from the AMNH and the namesake of the Noah Baumbach movie.
May 19th, 2010
The poem reminds me of work by Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame.