Frogger
by Berg
Image Text: I understand you and your team worked hard on this, but when we said to make it more realistic, we meant the graphics.
In case you’ve been living under a rock your entire life, Frogger is a classic video game in which you, the frog, are trying to cross a freeway (or a swamp). Your crossing is fraught with danger, so you’ve got to dodge traffic in order to make it across safely. It’s a simple game, and doesn’t deal with the real world consequences of stepping out in front of a truck, as today’s xkcd does.
When the comic starts, everything’s fine. There’s a frog on the side of the freeway, and he’s not bothering anybody. When he hops out to make his crossing, however, the driver of the semi swerves to avoid him, causing the sedan to his right (more on that in a moment) to slam into his cab, causing a pretty severe traffic accident. The frog then retreats back to the side of the freeway, though whether or not he’s fleeing carnage or a guilty conscience is up for debate.
Now then, concerning the truck driver. There’s a large grassy area off to his left, and yet he chooses to swerve to his right, into traffic. Given that we can see the freeway at a resolution fine enough to make out lines on the road and that the frog seemed to have no barrier to hop onto the freeway, we can presume there’s no guard rail preventing the truck driver from swerving left. Even if there was, it would be hard to imagine a scenario in which this truck driver is risking more by going through a guard rail than he is by swerving into traffic. The most plausible explanation is that the grey car was in his blind spot. Our truck driver is in this way redeemed, for rather than making an illogical choice to swerve into traffic when he didn’t need to, he’s made a logical choice to keep his truck on the road by merging into what he thinks is an empty lane. This way, he minimizes damage to his truck and any interruption to traffic flow. Of course, he’s miscalculated, and carnage ensues.
…or does it? The image text adds another layer to the reality here, suggesting that what we’ve been watching isn’t real, but a hyper realistic Frogger game being presented for evaluation. Apparently, the memo to make it “more realistic” was misinterpreted. Konami had wanted better graphics, not a more real simulation of what would happen if a frog jumped out in front of a truck. Of course, that’s not even a real Konami- it’s a fake Konami that exists in the xkcd universe, which is of course a series of scenarios imagined in Randall Munroe’s mind. And even Randall Munroe might not exist as more than a mental illusion, produced by some sort of coordinated data parallax put on the web, but if THAT was the case then he’d be-
You know what? I’m gonna go gargle with Thorazine and call it a night.
War
by Berg
Image Text: They offered to make me a green beret, but I liked my regular one. Although it gets kind of squashed under my helmet.
Today's comic seems to be a parable about the perils of love during wartime. Our protagonist is seen here leaning against his pack behind a low wall, surely a good hiding spot for any gentleman with a rifle and scope. Judging by the letter he's in the midst of writing, he has a complex relationship with Cordelia. On the one hand, she's attractive. On the other hand, she's a sniper, as evidenced by the shots fired mid-missive. Cordelia's ire works against her, though, as her volley of shots has revealed her own position atop the maintenance shed. We can presume that in a matter of minutes, this love affair will go sour as the love letter is wrapped around a live grenade and "delivered," so to speak. War is indeed hell.
As to the image text, the green berets are worn only by Special Forces soldiers. It takes a lot of training to become a green beret, and as evidenced by our protagonist's clever use of decoys to outwit a sniper, he may be qualified for the honor. It sounds, however, as he didn't understand the proposition, preferring his regular beret instead. Further evidence for his idiocy is given immediately thereafter, as he confesses that he wears a beret under his helmet.
Dilution
by Berg
Image Text: Dear editors of Homeopathy Monthly: I have two small corrections for your July issue. One, it's spelled "echinacea," and two, homeopathic medicines are no better than placebos and your entire magazine is a sham.
Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine which makes bold claims as to its efficacy without offering any sound science to back it. Although the angles from which one can viably attack homeopathy are as diverse as they are numerous, this particular panel is taking on serial dilution. In a serial dilution, a substance is dissolved in solution. The solution is then divided, and diluted. This dilution is then divided and diluted, and then the dilution of the dilution may be divided and diluted again, and again, and again.
While serial dilution does serve a function in many legitimate procedures, homeopathic remedies prepared using serial dilution are often diluted so much that none of the original substance remains in the final preparation. This point was proven dramatically by noted skeptic James Randi at TED 2007, when he ingested a purportedly lethal dosage of homeopathic sleeping pills on stage. Spoiler alert: James Randi is still alive.
So, back to the comic. The couple in question is preparing a serial dilution of semen and expecting its potency to either remain constant or perhaps increase, resulting in a pregnancy. However, we the ever-so-well-informed xkcd reader know full well that if James Randi isn't dead, then that lovely young woman isn't getting pregnant. If she can't get pregnant, then she can't pass on whatever part of her or her partner's genetic makeup it is that makes them susceptible to a belief in homeopathy. Since the couple's belief in homeopathy is negatively affecting their ability to have offspring, its lowering their fitness (Darwinian fitness, not gym membership fitness). A belief in homeopathy which is so strong that it prevents it's believers from having offspring is therefore an evolutionary dead end, and is not selected for.
This point is underscored by the image text, which is playfully realized in this comic as a letter to the editors of Homeopathy Monthly, a fictional homeopathy magazine which we can imagine is of some import the homeopathic community. The jab against homeopathy is set up with a classic use of the foot-in-the-door technique, opening up with a nitpicky correction about the spelling of "echinacea." Now that the editors of homeopathy are paying attention, the payload is delivered and their passion is called out for being what it is: a complete sham.
One Two
by Berg
Image Text: Cue letters from Anthropology majors complaining that this view of numerolinguistic development perpetuates a widespread myth. They get to write letters like that because when you're not getting a real science degree you have a lot of free time.
First off- in case you breezed past the "by" line, this is Berg, not Jeff. I'm gonna be updating the site periodically whenever Ol' Jeffaroo needs a helping hand. Pleasure to meet you. And now, on to the explanation...
Today's comic shows us a television screen featuring The Count, a Sesame Street character of some renown who's a fan of counting (and probably has some sort of Autistic Spectrum Disorder). He counts, as he is known to do, but runs out of numbers after 2, defaulting then to "Many." The implication, based on the caption, is that The Count is presenting a counting lesson for primitive cultures, who don't have a sophisticated enough system of numbers to express anything larger than 2 specifically.
Based on the 2005 documentary "The World According to Sesame Street," there is reason to believe that if there were a culture who's numeric system was this simple that this is indeed the Sesame Street that was created for them. After all, if Rruga Sesam (Kosovo) can have a bit about how to identify and avoid old landmines, why wouldn't this fictional culture's Sesame Street have a simplified version of The Count?
The image text is fairly self-explanatory, but still worth picking apart- it's a clear dig at Anthropology, and by extension the rest of the so-called "soft sciences." Soft science is a derisive categorization of many social sciences, or fields of study in general who's methodology falls very much under the umbrella of science, but who's areas of study require the use of more subjective conjecturing than objective analysis of data (I'm looking at you, Sociology). Soft sciences, such as Anthropology, are therefore seen by many as less rigorous than hard sciences, such as Physics.
The author is suggesting, then, that the lack of rigor necessary to earn a degree in Anthropology enables its students to pursue less important lines of inquiry- such as "is Xkcd sensitive to stereotypes of primitive cultures?" The answer to which is, of course, NO.
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.
iPad
by Mike
Image Text: Maybe we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in *really cool ways*.
Kind of puts iPads in persepective. Monkeys ARE controlling robot arms. But I'm sure soon there will be an app for that.
Off Topic: Display Problems
by Jeff
UPDATE: And we are back to the middle, thanks everyone!
We'll get you back to your regularly scheduled explanations in a second, but just wanted to see if anyone is having display problems with the site.
i.e. - is the content showing on the far right?
If you are having trouble, please fire your browser and version into the comments.
Many apologies if it is not looking right for you and we are currently trying to get it fixed, so hopefully you will not see that much longer.
Researcher Translation
by Jeff
Image text: A technology that is '20 years away' will be 20 years away indefinitely.
The image text is a continuation of the graph.
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.
Static
by Mike
Image Text: I firmly believe that nothing can go wrong on a project if you're wearing one of those wrist things.
This comic is making of the fact that the male geek here thinks the anti-static bracelet will work as a contraceptive technique. Anti-static bracelets are used by computer technicians to prevent an accidental static discharge that can damage sensitive electronic equipment.
UPDATE: From the comments it looks like there's some confusion over who is talking in each panel. In my opinion, the girl is always the speech bubble the originates on top (the ones that have the arrows pointing down) and the guy is the one with the arrows pointing up. They are currently trying to have sex and the guy is wearing an anti-static bracelet (where on his body he's wearing it is unclear). Earlier in the week he was replacing RAM and wearing a condom (again, where on his body is unclear).