Talk:1133: Up Goer Five

2012-11-13T13:01:19Z

87.252.61.205: Note that inflammable is incorrect

This comic is also a celebration of what many people, presumably including former NASA employee Randall, consider the greatest technological achievement ever. {{unsigned|158.169.131.14}}

I'm surprised "ship" isn't among the most commonly used words in English. Where do these statistics come from? [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 12:35, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

:It makes sense that "capsule" and "spaceship" (as one word) are not in the "ten hundred" most-common words (Really, "thousand" isn't on this list either?), but not "fuel" and/or "tank"? People (context: US Midwesterner) talk about filling up their cars all the time! I'd like to see the original 1,000-word list. (Also: "Up Goer"? Well, it goes up -- that's about ALL it does. Makes sense, I guess.) --BigMal27 // [[Special:Contributions/192.136.15.149|192.136.15.149]] 13:13, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe is Randall referring to [[wikipedia:Simplified Technical English|Simplified Technical English]]? — [[User:Ethaniel|Ethaniel]] ([[User talk:Ethaniel|talk]]) 14:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
:There is an entry in the Simple English Wikipedia: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_English . The Simple English Wikipedia is interesting to browse, and challenging to write articles for. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 14:24, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm inclined to think this is also a nod to 1984's {{w|Newspeak}}, and the dumbing-down effect of an ''overly'' {{w|controlled language}}. It's good to simplify (linguistic) complexity, but with that simplification of text comes a simplification of capacity, too. We push back horizons by exploring unknowns, so restricting things to a small set of knowns may be counterproductive. -- [[User:IronyChef|IronyChef]] ([[User talk:IronyChef|talk]]) 15:13, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
:This is the very point I am trying to make time and again. Some topics cannot be correctly explained to everyone. BTW XKCD #547 had a similar point.
The comic is almost certainly using http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Basic_English_word_list or another work list like it.[[Special:Contributions/82.16.27.115|82.16.27.115]] 16:58, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The phrase in the explanation "Helium is much less prone to catching fire" brought a smile to my lips as there is literally <SIC> nothing less prone to catching fire than Helium. [[Special:Contributions/90.208.12.4|90.208.12.4]] 23:10, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

:<s>Unfortunately some pedant has changed it to the technically correct, but much less smile-inducing "inflammable". Pitty, it made me smile too.</s> [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]] ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 23:22, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

:Edit: I've reverted it, because the whole edit was fraught with incorrect minor changes. 23:27, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

:Inflammable is '''wrong'''. It means the same as flammable. If you mean 'incapable of burning', the opposite of flammable/inflammable is ''nonflammable''. This is one of the subtleties of English which is avoided by using a greater number of simple words! [[Special:Contributions/87.252.61.205|87.252.61.205]] 13:01, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Since the comic can't use the actual words, it took me some time to find Wikipedia's articles that describe the actual "up goer." In case there's anybody like me who wanted to know more details, I found the {{w|Apollo (spacecraft)}} and {{w|Saturn V}} articles to be very interesting and relevant. BTW, "that stuff they burned in lights before houses had power" is {{w|RP-1|highly refined kerosene}}. [[User:S|S]] ([[User talk:S|talk]]) 00:34, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

:Thanks for doing the research! I've incorporated this into the explanation. Feel free to add more if you think it needs more. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]] ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 01:33, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1133: Up Goer Five