Comments on: Desert Island

By: Jimmy C

Jimmy C — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:42:36 +0000

To be honest, that’s not what I got at all. I honestly it was just meant to be a simple joke, and the image text was a parody of the I Spy books.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:46:16 +0000

The poem reminds me of work by Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame.

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:11:11 +0000

I believe it’s the Squid and the Whale from the AMNH and the namesake of the Noah Baumbach movie.

By: Thor

Thor — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:07:48 +0000

Yeah, its probably a sperm whale and a giant squid locked in combat based on the shape of the whale’s head.

By: BamaCracker

BamaCracker — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:49:38 +0000

That’s a whale. The flukes and tail are “whaley” not “sharkey.”

By: jemo

jemo — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:18:58 +0000

Also. The octopus wrapped around the shark is most likely a reference to the sci-fi movie MegaShark vs Giant Octopus.

By: Aaron of Minneapolis

Aaron of Minneapolis — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 03:14:46 +0000

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.

By: Aaron of Minneapolis

Aaron of Minneapolis — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 03:10:52 +0000

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).

By: Chrissy

Chrissy — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:52:18 +0000

It also works excellently to the tune of the Llama Song.

By: dave

dave — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:14:01 +0000

Sing the image text to the tune of Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire