Green Flash
by Jeff
Image text: The exact cause of the phenomenon is unknown, but it's thought to be linked to atmospheric refraction and you getting a really cool car.
The green flash is an atmospheric optical phenomena in which a small green spot will appear above or around the sun as it sets below the horizon. The green flash occurs because of refraction of different colors of light. Green light is higher frequency than red and orange light and so green light stays visible after the red and orange lights are blocked by the Earth. Wikipedia has a great gallery of examples of the green flash. Personally, I have been looking for the green flash my whole life and have never seen it. The name is slightly a misnomer as it is not really a flash at all, but stays for a few minutes.
The Tesla roadster is a new car from the Tesla Motors. All of the Tesla Motors cars run entirely on electricity. Check out the car here, as it is a pretty sweet little sports car. No wonder the Black Hat Character wants to smash the other character over the head with the bottle he is holding to steal the car.
Southern Half
by Jeff
Image text: Also, if you read his speech at Rice, all his arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars.
Not much to explain here.
Here's the full text of the speech to Rice.
Here's the full text of the 1961 speech to Congress.
Worst-Case Scenario
by Jeff
Image text: To get serious analyses of hurricanes and oil slicks, see Jeff Masters' blog. To get serious discussions of worst-case scenario thinking, see Bruce Schneier's blog. To get enough Vitamin D, don't read any blogs and go outside instead.
This comic is about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is leaking from one of BP's oil rigs. Just in case you have been under a rock for weeks or are reading this from the past.
Michael Bay is the director of the Transformers series amongst other movies that are famous for explosions, explosions and even bigger explosions and of course impossible and improbable situations. Bay has been featured in xkcd before for his potential remake of Harriet the Spy.
James Carville is a CNN political commentator and Louisiana native. He has already said that the govermental response to the oil spill was "too lax and too slow".
Here's Jeff Masters' blog on Weather Underground and Bruce Schneier's blog.
Outbreak
by Jeff
Image text: Let's get dinner after we promptly destroy all the X-7 we've manufactured.
Patient Zero is the usual terminology for the first patient tested or infected with an outbreak-style infection.
Also, it seems every zombie movie is rife with terrible mistakes which allow the slowly lurching zombies (or outbreak) to escape and spread. For example, the nurse will look at the chart and not look at the patient and then walk away. The security guard will cross the hall 2 seconds after the zombie has left the doorway.
This sounds more realistic...blast the zombie, destroy the toxin and then go on a date.
Laser Pointer
by Jeff
Image text: It's a lasing cat-vity!
This comic is a cat's dream sequence in which the cat finally catches the laser pointer. (If you are not familiar, cats love to chase laser pointers.) The cat catches and then consumes the laser pointer and becomes some sort of laser cat. It then destroys its tormentor.
The image text is a pun on "laser cavity".
Hell
by Jeff
Image text: There's also a Katamari level where everything is just slightly bigger than you, and a Mario level with a star just out of reach.
This is a reference to the famous game of Tetris. If you have never played Tetris, I don't know where you have been for the past 20 years, but try this. The goal of Tetris is to completely fill one line, which then dissipates and grants you points. With a curved bottom, there is no way to gain points and no way to get anywhere in the game. You would have to hope for two straight pieces in a row to create and artificial flat surface.
In Katamari Damancy everything smaller than you sticks to you and everything larger than you is an obstacle. If nothing sticks to you, there is no way to get larger and then the game goes nowhere.
And Mario is the famous Mario Brothers series of games. Now, if you haven't even heard of Mario, then I do not know what else I can do for you.
Flatland
by Jeff
Image text: Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.
Flatland is a short story by Edwin Abbott Abbott. Yes, that is really his name. In Flatland, women are represented by lines, and the more important a man is, the more sides he has. The least important male would be a triangle and the priest, in Flatland, has so many sides, he looks like a circle. So, the image text is a reference to how an xkcd stick figure would look to the members of Flatland. The text for Flatland is on Wikisource here, if you feel like browsing on your Wednesday morning.
Miegakure is an actual game in development that will allow the player to move in 4 dimensions. The website is here, with a screen shot that looks eerily similar to panel 2.
And if you didn't realize, Spongebob is a reference to Spongebob Squarepants, the Nickelodeon cartoon about a sponge named Spongebob. Spongebob is a square (as his name implies) - so that is why the character in the comic is able to draw arms and legs on the square to make him look like Spongebob Squarepants.
Time Machine
by Jeff
Image text: We never see any time travelers because they all discover it's a huge mistake. This is also why your friend at the lab suddenly looked about a year older recently.
So, future Rob travels back in time to kill past Rob to prevent him from inventing the time machine, which we see in the image text is a bad idea. Then future Rob assumes Rob's identity and preventing the time machine from being invented at all.
But, wouldn't future Rob cease to exist if he prevented the time machine from being invented?
GeoIP
by Jeff
Image text: 'Meet hot young singles in your mom's basement today'? Man, screw you, GeoIP.
GeoIP does exactly what it sounds like it does, which is get your location based on your IP address, mostly to show trashy advertisments with your location thrown in at random. I'm not sure who those ads are fooling, but I'm sure it is someone.
Anyhow, the characters in the comic are in "low-earth orbit" in the International Space Station. So, the joke is, that is where GeoIP would pinpoint them in low-earth orbit instead of a city or state location.
The joke in the image text is a riff on the famous "blogger's live in their mother's basement" joke. Which, in the image text is apparently true, but because the "writer" of the image text is pissed that GeoIP got his location correct down to the fact that he lived in the basement. And of course, it is entirely untrue that blogger's live in their mother's basement!
But, now I smell some eggs and bacon coming from the kitchen upstairs! Gotta go!
Complexion
by Jeff
Image text: Why do all my attempts at science end with me being punched by Batman? (P.S. benzoyl peroxide soap works great.)
This comic is a reference to the Batman villain "Two-Face". Because the main character had pimples on one side of his face and not the other, he resembled the Batman villain. Two-Face is also fond of flipping a coin to decide what to do. The two different sides of his face and the flipping of the coin is what drew Batman into the comic.