explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:36: Scientists

2021-11-06T20:35:02Z

108.162.237.191: Inflamed a dead comment section argument because nothing matters and we're all going to die

If Cueball's a scientist, the statement is perfectly valid. Even more so if his scientist friends are helping him, and they can't find his shoes either. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 07:07, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

 I found the fact that the last sentence was present in the explanation funnier than the comic itself. -- [[Special:Contributions/131.175.28.142|131.175.28.142]] 22:13, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Its worth pointing out the comic was drawn in 2006 -- 'pretty gay' was not nearly as politically incorrect then as it is now. Wow, this is an old comic. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.125|162.158.255.125]] 14:33, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Political incorrectness is a good thing. I'd hope he'd do this one again today. — [[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 01:07, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
:Political incorrectness is a good thing? wow. While I also find overly political correctness in many cases over the top, unneccesary and annoying, this is a clear example where political correctness helps to battle discrimination. By using the term "gay" to describe one stereotype associated with homosexuality, this stereotype is further enforced, and people are treated according to it. I do not know a lot about you, but your username sounds like an adjective, so imagine, I started a trend describing people who are e.g. pedophile as "kazvorpal", and this trend catches on. Soon you would find yourself excluded from events, jobs, etc. because people would assume you are a pedophile. Wouldn't you prefer that to not happen? that is one example why political correctness is a good thing. Sorry for the trollfeeding. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 06:04, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
::No, you are suffering from the ravages of inductive reasoning. Political correctness includes a pretense that the speaker is battling discrimination, but it's just virtue signalling. They are, in fact, ''encouraging'' discrimination, and heaping advocacy of censorship and repression on top of it. Using "gay" as a mock pejorative does nothing to harm actual homosexuals, and in fact robs the term of its emotional power, as humor often does. Daniel Tosh incessantly making faux-bigoted comments uses humor to weaken racism, sexism, et cetera. And the end does not justify the means: Repressing the expression of others is evil, even when you're trying to use doing so to impress others about how virtuous you are. — [[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 15:43, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
::: That opinion is what scientists call "pretty straight white man". --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.163|141.101.99.163]] 22:18, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
:::: Ad hominem

1583: NASA Press Conference

2015-09-28T16:24:03Z

108.162.237.191: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1583
| date = September 28, 2015
| title = NASA Press Conference
| image = nasa_press_conference.png
| titletext = Why are we spending billions to ruin Mars with swarms of robots when Elon Musk has promised to ruin Mars for a FRACTION of the cost?
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a reference to the press conference to be held by NASA on 28th September 2015, (the same day this comic is published), which promises to solve "The Mars Mystery", and possibly announce the discovery of water or life on Mars.

The "questions" portion of the press conference is derailed by [[Beret Guy]], acting as a reporter for a network known only as "The News". He asks irrelevant questions about how the data relates to other (entirely unrelated) fields and also asks questions related to the Star Wars movie franchise. This causes the other reporters to forget their original questions and to join in on the irrelevant discussion, much to the dismay of the NASA scientist.

This is probably meant to mock previous NASA press conferences, where reporters have asked inane questions that reveal their total ignorance of the field.

The title text refers to Elon Musk, who suggested [http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/11/us/elon-musk-mars-nuclear-bomb-colbert-feat/ nuking Mars] as a faster way of warming it up to make it habitable.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:[Cueball is standing at a podium with the NASA logo on it]
:Cueball: That concludes the press conference. Any questions?
:Cueball: Yes, you, from... it just says "The News"?

:[Beret Guy is standing in a crowd holding a microphone]
:Beret Guy: Hi! I have a microphone so I'm real loud now.
:Beret Guy: How does this Mars data compare to data from other fields? Like medicine? Or sports?

:Cueball (offscreen): That question makes no sense.
:Beret Guy: If there's water on Mars, is it ruined?
:Beret Guy: Or will it be okay when it dries out?
:Cueball (offscreen): Any ''other'' questions?

:[The shot zooms out, now showing both Cueball at the podium and the crowd]
:Beret Guy: What were those guys hassling Luke in the Mos Eisley Cantina trying to accomplish? I felt like I was supposed to understand that.
:Cueball: Anyone ''else?''
:Ponytail: That's now my question, too.
:Megan: Were they just picking a fight?
:Ponytail: If so, why did...

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]

1583: NASA Press Conference

2015-09-28T16:23:35Z

108.162.237.191: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1583
| date = September 28, 2015
| title = NASA Press Conference
| image = nasa_press_conference.png
| titletext = Why are we spending billions to ruin Mars with swarms of robots when Elon Musk has promised to ruin Mars for a FRACTION of the cost?
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a reference to the press conference to be held by NASA on 28th September 2015, (the same day this comic is published), which promises to solve "The Mars Mystery", and possibly announce the discovery of water or life on Mars.

The "questions" portion of the press conference is derailed by [[Beret Guy]], acting as a reporter for a network known only as "The News". He asks irrelevant questions about how the data relates to other (entirely unrelated) fields and also asks questions related to the Star Wars movie franchise. This causes the other reporters to forget their original questions and to join in on the irrelevant discussion, much to the dismay of the NASA scientist.

This is probably meant to mock previous NASA press conferences, where reporters have asked inane questions that reveal their total ignorance of the field before.

The title text refers to Elon Musk, who suggested [http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/11/us/elon-musk-mars-nuclear-bomb-colbert-feat/ nuking Mars] as a faster way of warming it up to make it habitable.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:[Cueball is standing at a podium with the NASA logo on it]
:Cueball: That concludes the press conference. Any questions?
:Cueball: Yes, you, from... it just says "The News"?

:[Beret Guy is standing in a crowd holding a microphone]
:Beret Guy: Hi! I have a microphone so I'm real loud now.
:Beret Guy: How does this Mars data compare to data from other fields? Like medicine? Or sports?

:Cueball (offscreen): That question makes no sense.
:Beret Guy: If there's water on Mars, is it ruined?
:Beret Guy: Or will it be okay when it dries out?
:Cueball (offscreen): Any ''other'' questions?

:[The shot zooms out, now showing both Cueball at the podium and the crowd]
:Beret Guy: What were those guys hassling Luke in the Mos Eisley Cantina trying to accomplish? I felt like I was supposed to understand that.
:Cueball: Anyone ''else?''
:Ponytail: That's now my question, too.
:Megan: Were they just picking a fight?
:Ponytail: If so, why did...

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]

Talk:1564: Every Seven Seconds

2015-08-15T07:10:14Z

108.162.237.191: /* Plausibility of every seven seconds */ new section

Not true, but where did it come from? http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/thinksex.asp [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.155|108.162.249.155]] 11:55, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry SteveMB, but I don't think we need to tell the joke again in order to explain it. [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1564%3A_Every_Seven_Seconds&diff=99634&oldid=99632]. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 12:58, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
:While this may be true, I actually found the first explanation to be much more valuable and insightful than this two mini-paragraph drab. The author of this new version doesn't even make the distinction between thinking about sex every seven seconds and thinking about having sex every seven seconds. [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 13:04, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
::Agreed. Although the first explanation wasn't perfect, it was better than the replacement. The title text explanation in this version is missing the point. We should look to re-incorporate some/most of the original explanation. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 13:08, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
:::The first explanation says nothing about sociologists. I added that when I realized I had missed it, and Pudder realized it was missing when he read my terse explanation, but not when he read the verbose explanation that SteveMB wrote. Note also that we always explain the difficult terms first ''(seven seconds'' in this case). The original "explanation" actually is a retelling of the joke. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 13:29, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
:::: The sociologist joke explanation was missing, I noted that when I added the incomplete tag, not because of your comment. In adding your explanation you wiped a lot of existing explanation, perhaps you believe it isn't necessary, but its frustrating because your explanation is frankly no better. In particular, your version of the title text explanation is simply missing the point. (The point that was previously explained!) --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 13:34, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

The title text is misunderstood. It's about <<sex in every 7 seconds>> he thinks, how unplausible ''that'' would be. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.97.202|141.101.97.202]] 13:39, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

You all may be right about the title text. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 13:44, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Please compare
{|class=wikitable
!Verbose!!Terse
|-
|Cueball is raising skeptical objections to something, first dismissing the notion out of hand ("There's no way that's true."), then noting that it would cause obvious and unmistakable effects that are not, in fact, observed ("It would interfere with basic cognition."), then deciding that the idea is tied to an absurd worldview ("Such a ridiculous view of masculinity."), then raising the question of how anyone would even know whether or not the claim is true ("How would you even ''study'' that?"). These objections, particularly the second and third one, and the title "Every Seven Seconds" suggest that the statement Cueball is dismissing is the oft-stated assertion that men think about sex every seven seconds.
 
The title text confirms this inference...
|In this joke Cueball seems to be raising skeptical objections to this myth ''[the seven-seconds myth]''. The title of the comic (Every seven seconds) hints strongly about it, and all comments lead us to believe that Cueball wants to debunk the myth. However in the punchline we learn that Cueball is a sociologist who disbelieves in a team of his colleagues actually studying such a difficult subject (the same objection raised in BBC's reference).
|-
|}
The first explanation says nothing about sociologists, and falls into the trap of believing that the joke is simply about debunking an urban myth. I fell into that trap myself, but soon I realized my mistake. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 13:51, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I think the Explanation is missing the obvious connotations to this joke. For example, ''"Cueball is a sociologist who disbelieves in a team of his colleagues actually studying such a difficult subject"'' what does this even mean? The explanation is that sociologists (implied: all sociologists) think about the urban myth every seven seconds and the thought bubbles in the comic are their possible thoughts. Each thought bubble would take place predictably every seven seconds. The setup is that thinking about sex every seven seconds would be dysfunctional and unproductive in addition to making working, social interactions, etc... nearly impossible as explained by the sociologists thoughts. The punch line is that thinking about how ridiculous it is to think about sex every seven seconds is just as dysfunctional and unproductive even if the thought time is spent refuting the original notion as understood in third person.--[[User:R0hrshach|R0hrshach]] ([[User talk:R0hrshach|talk]]) 16:27, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
:Agreed, nowhere does the comic imply that Cueball is thinking about any "team". His thoughts are about how ridiculous the fact is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.156|162.158.255.156]] 04:54, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

== Plausibility of every seven seconds ==

Cueball is thinking about it from a statician's standpoint (units have a tendency to be within a couple orders of magnitude at furthest). However, it should be pointed out that from a math & physics perspective, there's nothing irrational about the comment at all. Afterall, a person can assume that it's an average. (Afterall, it would be difficult for a counterpoint of un-concious un-dreaming men to be thinking about sex every seven seconds.) "Once" leaves a lot of wiggle room as "once" is not coupled with any particular unit of measurement. Once could be one second, it could be seven seconds, it could be a millionth of a second.

All a man (or woman) would have to do is think about sex once in their entire lifespan, and that moment would just have to be divided by 1/7th of all of the seconds in their life combined, and you have your average figure.

So, considering that interpretation, I would like to present my mathmatical observation to provide a more complete picture of men thinking of sex every seven seconds...

Women think about sex once every 3 seconds.

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.191|108.162.237.191]] 07:10, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Talk:148: Mispronouncing

2015-06-03T15:27:47Z

108.162.237.191: Added opposing argument to a comment.

The "airpart" could be referencing a Saint Louis accent, rather than intentional mispronunciation. [[Special:Contributions/130.160.145.185|130.160.145.185]] 19:48, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Emad is supposed to refer to Ahmed, and is some sort of joke about Muslim terrorists.[[User:GallantChaos|GallantChaos]] ([[User talk:GallantChaos|talk]]) 18:08, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and it's written Emad because he's deliberately mispronouncing it. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.203|173.245.52.203]] 02:23, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

No, Emad is the online name of one of Randall's friends, look it up at http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/Emad_%28Explanation%29
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.73|173.245.55.73]] 05:31, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Man goes into a shop.
"Half a pound of kiddleyes, please"
"Don't you mean 'kidneys"
"That's what I said, diddleye" {{unsigned ip|141.101.99.217}}

Isn't the whole joke on 'blag' that 'blog' and 'blag' are homonyms according to the wonderful English orthography *unless* one is aware that it is originally portmanteau of words 'web' and 'log' and by convention it is pronounced with 'o', but think for a minute: if one would never have seen nor heard that word ever before, would they not pronounce it something like... blag? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.67|108.162.231.67]] 23:42, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

No. Examples to disprove: flog, clog, nog, bog, tog, cog, fog, etc. No reason why they would not pronounce blog in the same manner.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.191|108.162.237.191]] 15:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth, an Emad is mentioned [http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/ here] [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.178|108.162.215.178]] 01:39, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey

2014-08-22T20:50:44Z

108.162.237.191: /* Interpretations */

{{comic
| number = 24
| date = September 30, 2005
| title = Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = godel_escher_kurthalsey.jpg
| titletext = I love the idea here, though of course it's not a great-quality drawing or scan.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|the bubbles, expanding text, shreds & ending are not yet explained.}}
Before starting xkcd, [[Randall]] worked on robotics at {{w|NASA}}'s Langley Center. This drawing was apparently made during that period, while attending a talk that he didn't like.

The name of the comic is a portmanteau-like play on the following:
* {{w|Gödel, Escher, Bach}} is a book by {{w|Douglas Hofstadter}}. He is an American author who has written several books about philosophy, mathematics, and science. This particular book is his most famous one, about "strange loops", self-reference, and recurring patterns, partially shown through the works of the three people in its title:
** {{w|Kurt Gödel}} was a 20th-century mathematician most famous for proving that in our commonly used axiomatic systems, there are true propositions that cannot be proved from the axioms. His proof used a self-referential paradox.
** {{w|M. C. Escher}} was a 20th-century artist most famous for mathematically-inspired engravings of tessellated animals, impossible scenes, [http://philosopherdeveloper.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/devilsangels.jpg fractals], and so on. The form of this strip resembles one of his [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2c/Escher,_Metamorphosis_II.jpg Metamorphosis etchings].
** {{w|Johann Sebastian Bach}} was a German composer and musician from the Baroque Period, famous for numerous works such as the Brandenburg Concertos.

* [http://www.kurthalsey.com Kurt Halsey] is a comic artist from Oregon. His work often contains introspective philosophical musings.

The comic is drawn in the form of a {{w|storyboard}} and is clearly intended to be visualized as an animated sequence.

In the first part of the comic, two people discuss the difficulty of comparing past and present generations, since the person making the comparison invariably belongs to one of the two groups.

It's unclear whether the hatted guy is [[Black Hat]], because Randall hadn't standardized his character designs yet. The sarcastic comment suggests that it is.

The assembly of text panels found in the middle of the strip is similar to his [[124: Blogofractal]].

==Interpretations==
''While I feel this article can't be improved with rational arguments, I believe a standalone section with different hypothesis is a great way to tackle the problem. If the goal here is not to go into subjective interpretations of the comic, then I think its better tagged as closed, because you obviously can't go any further by ignoring the symbols. (You may want to edit meta-comments out, but I wanted to make my point first). Please add to or adapt my interpretation to whatever suits you or the community here. It would be very nice if we could have a subjective section for people to explain what they interpreted out of the strips.''

* The bubbles may illustrate ideas, memories or subjects that one could wonder about. In the context of the boring talk, this would mean that Randall is lost in thoughts and gradually looses focus of things going on around him. He sees the talk as mundane, as a part of so many other "subject bubbles".
** Even the comic vertical lines (and therefor the strip's structure) seems to loose their sense to Randall as they collapses and become part of the scene, eventually merging three panels into one. They later reappear for the last six panels.
* The big bubble pushing the small ones further outside may demonstrate how shallow the surface bubbles are to him or represent an infinite (or very large) amount of small bubbles.
* The quote stating "There's too much. And so little feels important." tell us that he feels overwhelmed by the world; maybe by information given in the NASA talk or by events in his life. He recognizes what is important to him, and feels it is small compared to the size of the worries of the world (or the big bubble). He may have experienced a sort of existential crisis before turning to his feeling of love in the last panels, when asking himself "What do you do?".

The biggest bubble is expanding, and on it is a fractal arrangement of articles describing various scientific and philosophical discussions. A subjective interpretation is that the fractal nature of the excerpts are a comment on the unending attempt to rationalize and justify the unchanging nature of humanity. The largest bubble bursts, leaving the two figures on a shred of what once was. The final question is "What do you do when the bubble bursts?" It seems his answer is to find someone, and love them; in the end that's all that matters. The rest is just air.

==Transcript==
:Drawn during an unending NASA lecture.
:[Two people are talking, one in a hat.]
:Cueball: it's just so hard to compare kids now with kids in the past. you can't help but to belong to one group or the other.

:Cueball: and of course every generation seems awful to the one before it. look at quotes from throughout history.

:Hatted: yeah, and it sure would be nice to have some historical perspective on some of this stuff. I just don't know what to make of it.
:[Circles are appearing--maybe snow?]

:Cueball: i guess you do what you can to help the people around you and hope it turns out okay.

:Cueball: in the end, what else can you do?

:Hatted: lead a crusade?

:[We can no longer see the people, just the circles.]
:it's presentism, man. the idea that historical context is irrelevant, that we understand it

:all that we need take no warnings from the follies of the past. that we're facing something new.

:socrates couldn't imagine the internet. but people don't change.
:[We can start to see the corner of a darker circle in the lower right.]

:(The borders between the three panels on this line are cracking.)
:have you seen those collections of historical pornography? talk about historical context.

:did you know the first porn photo was bestial in.
:[inside a circle:] nature?

:at least that stuff was out of the mainstream
:[each word in one circle:]
:no
:just
:in
:history

:(the three panels have merged into one on each row.)

:i don't know about you, but
:[circled] I
:[uncircled] never

:even once seen

:[The circles are highly variable in size now, and pressed up against a larger one on the right side.]

:[There is mass of circles of different sizes, with some dark fissures in between, against the side of a large circle which we can see part of in the right half of the panel. They look like cells. There's a tiny square in the center of the giant cell.]

:[We see only the tiny square, centered. It has a few marks inside it.]

:[Closer, the square is divided into rectangles of different sizes, each of which has text in it.]

:[Much closer, we can see fragments of the text. Some are sideways, some are cut off, some are too small to read.]
:machine language translated by principles of isomorphism it is a consequence of the Church-Turing thesis that ...
:but how do you select the channel you wish to se-
:thou ... shou ... palin ... stri ... it is a ... crab ...

:[Closer still, we can just see a huge sideways s and h.]

:[Those letters are faded and mixed with a faded version of the next panel.]

:girls take boys away ...
:never be further than a phone call and a goosebumped shiver away ...
:drove all night listening to mix tapes ...
:the past is just practice
:[There is a heart at the bottom and, in the lower left, the name Kurt.]

:[The same as the previous panel, but with the words blurred out to scribbles.]

:[Jagged, shaded shapes and strands start to fall. Faint panel borders appear again. There is a person on the far right.]

:(Back to three panels per row.)
:[Cueball and Megan are standing amid the fragments.]

:Man: There's too much. And so little feels important.

:[The jagged edge of the shaded area is encroaching on the sides of the panel.]

:What do you do?

:[We see them from farther away through a rough hole in the shaded area. Bits continue to fall around them.]

:[They are holding hands.]

==Trivia==
*This is the sixth comic originally posted on livejournal. The previous was [[1: Barrel - Part 1]]. The next was [[13: Canyon]]. View archive [http://liveweb.archive.org/web/20070927001941/http://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/?skip=40 here].
*[Original title]: "Strip series"
*[Original [[Randall]] quote]: "One of a series of strips I drew during a long and boring NASA lecture. It careens wildly from intellectual to chaotic to Godel, Escher, Bach to Kurt Halsey to chaotic and sappy." This might suggest that the image on LiveJournal was only part of this strip. Unfortunately, the image link on LiveJournal is broken.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics posted on livejournal]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]