731: Desert Island

explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Revision as of 17:33, 3 December 2012

Desert Island
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.
Title 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.

Explanation

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. This comic is a commentary on the need to head below the waves and start exploring.

Transcript

[A man sits writing in a diary on a desert island, only the sandy tip of which with a palm tree on it stands above the water. Beneath the surface is a kelp forest, some sharks, a stingray, a shipwreck, a submarine, several large jellyfish, a giant squid fighting a sperm whale, a crashed plane, some coral formations, a thermal vent emitting a plume of smoke surrounded by several annelids, and a snail.]

Man: Day 44: Still stranded, with nothing but flat empty water as far as the eye can see.

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Discussion

There's a shark, a manta ray, giant jellyfish, and a giant squid in the water. It's totally safe. And what the heck are those worms at the ocean bed? Davidy22[talk] 13:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Those worms are extremophiles feeding off of the nutrients emitted by the volcanic column... and from what I understand, they're completely harmless. Their entire ecology centers around the extreme heat and alternative chemical sources of energy provided by the center of the earth (vs sun-based photosynthetic life.) Oh, and I think Randall left off the "not to scale" attribute of the map, otherwise the ocean floor would only be a few hundred feet deep... -- IronyChef (talk) 15:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
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