explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1537: Types

2015-06-27T16:21:32Z

108.162.238.186: /* Explanation */ consecutive double quotes

{{comic
| number = 1537
| date = June 12, 2015
| title = Types
| image = types.png
| titletext = colors.rgb("blue") yields "#0000FF". colors.rgb("yellowish blue") yields NaN. colors.sort() yields "rainbow"
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a series of programming jokes about a ridiculous new programming language, perhaps inspired by {{w|Mathematica}} and {{w|Wolfram Research}} — the latter was used by [[Randall]] many times before. Maybe it's also inspired by [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat Gary Bernhardt's CodeMash 2012 lightning talk] on JavaScript's unpredictable typing. In the talk, the highly technical audience was unable to correctly guess the results of adding various JavaScript types and roared with laughter when they were revealed. The programming language shown in this comic has types even more unpredictable than JavaScript.

Most regular programming languages distinguish types, e.g. integers, strings, lists… all of which have different behaviours. But for instance, the operation "+" is usually conventionally defined over more than one of these types. Applied to two integers, it returns their sum. Applied to two strings (denoted by being enclosed in quotes) it concatenates them:

<code>> 2 + 3<br>5

> "123" + "abc"<br>"123abc"</code>

While these behaviours are standard, conventional, and intuitive, there is a huge amount of variation among programming languages when you apply an operation like "+" to different types. One logical approach is to always return an error in all cases of type mixing, but it is often practical to allow some case mixing, since it can hugely simplify expressions. Variation and lack of a clearly more intuitive behaviour leads some languages to have weird results when you mix types.

Weird results abound in the new XKCD programming language:
# <code>2 + "2"</code> uses the <code>+</code> operator on a number and a string. In some programming languages, this might result in the number <code>4</code> in math addition, or <code>"22"</code> in string concatenation; however, the new language converts the string to an integer, adds them to produce <code>4</code> and converts back to a string. Alternately, it may instead be adding 2 to the ASCII value of the character <code>"2"</code> (50), resulting in the character <code>"4"</code> (52). This is (somewhat) consistent with the behavior for item 4.
# <code>"2" + []</code> adds a string to an array or list. This first inexplicably converts the string to a number again, and then it literally adds the number to the list by prepending it. And then the result (the entire array) is converted to a string again.
# <code>(2/0)</code> divides <code>2</code> by <code>0</code> and quite reasonably results in <code>NaN</code>, meaning "Not a Number", though in most languages, as prescribed by the IEEE 854 standard for floating point numbers, dividing a nonzero number by zero would instead return an infinity value.
# <code>(2/0)+2</code> adds <code>2</code> to <code>NaN</code>. <code>2</code> Is "added" to the string <code>"NaN"</code> as again, the number is converted to a string for apparently no reason, which produces <code>"NaP"</code>. If the language's convention is to add to the ASCII value of a character or string, then in this case it added 2 to the character <code>"N"</code> (78), resulting in <code>"P"</code> (80). How the string "NaP" is converted into a bare NaP with undefined meaning is not clear. It is possible the "NaP" means "Not a Positive" as opposed to "Not a Negative". It could also mean "Not a Prayer", as you're taking a "NaN" condition and trying to do more with it.
# <code>""+""</code>: In many languages, two consecutive double-quote characters denote an empty string, so this expression would concatenate two empty strings, resulting in an empty string. However, it appears that this language treats only the outermost quotes of the expression as the string boundary, so all of the characters between them become part of the literal string, producing '<code>"+"</code>' (In many programming languages, you can use both <code>"</code> or <code>'</code> to delimit strings and both behave similar if not identical). Alternately, theses two consecutive double quotes may be treated similar to the way that consecutive single quotes are treated in a SQL string, with the first quote escaping the 2nd. This would result in a string that contains the value <code>"+"</code>.
# <code>[1,2,3]+2</code> seems to test whether it's sound to append <code>2</code> to the list <code>[1,2,3]</code>, and concludes that it doesn't fit the pattern, returning the boolean value <code>false</code>. It could conceivably also be the result of an attempt to add <code>2</code> to the ''set'' <code>[1,2,3]</code>, which already contains that element (although <code>{1,2,3}</code> would be a more common notation for sets).
# <code>[1,2,3]+4</code> returns <code>true</code> for much the same reason.
# <code>2/(2-(3/2+1/2))</code> is a floating point joke. Floating point numbers are notoriously imprecise. With precise mathematics, <code>(3/2+1/2)</code> would be exactly 2, hence the entire thing would evaluate to <code>2/0</code> or <code>NaN</code> in Randall's new language. However, the result of <code>(3/2+1/2)</code> is "just slightly off," which makes the result "just slightly off" of <code>NaN</code>, which would be ridiculous in a real language. The ironic thing is that fractions with 2 in the denominator are ''not'' the kind of numbers that typically suffer from floating point impreciseness. Additionally, if there was indeed a rounding error, the actual calculation becomes something like <code>2/0.000000000000013</code>, which should not return a <code>NaN</code> since it is not division by zero. It is most likely not a coincidence that there are 13 zeros before the "13" at the end of the "decimal".
# <code>RANGE(" ")</code> normally wouldn't make any sense. However, the new language appears to interpret it as ASCII, and in the ASCII table, character #32 is space, #33 is <code>!</code>, and #34 is <code>"</code>. So, instead of interpreting <code>" "</code> as a string, it seems to be interpreted as <code>34, 32, 34</code> (in ASCII), and then <code>range</code> appears to transform this into <code>34, 33, 32, 33, 34</code> (the "ranges" between the numbers), which, interpreted as ASCII, becomes <code>('"','!',' ','!','"')</code>.
# <code>+2</code> is "simply" attempting to add 2 to the line number 10 to get 12.
# <code>2+2</code> would normally be <code>4</code>. However, the interpreter takes this instruction to mean that the user wishes to increase the actual value of the number <code>2</code> (aka the "literal value") by <code>2</code> for the remainder of the program, making it <code>4</code> and then reports that the work is "Done". The result can be seen in the subsequent lines where all <code>2</code>s are replaced by <code>4</code>s. This could be a reference to languages like Fortran where [http://everything2.com/title/Changing+the+value+of+5+in+FORTRAN literals could be assigned new values].

:14. <code>RANGE(1,5)</code> would normally return <code>(1,2,3,4,5)</code>; however, because the value of <code>2</code> has been changed to <code>4</code>, it returns <code>(1,4,3,4,5)</code>. This also affects the line number by changing the "2" in 12 to "4" resulting in the line number 14.

:13. <code>FLOOR(10.5)</code> should return <code>10</code> (the "floor" of a decimal number is that number rounded down); however, it instead returns {{w|ASCII art}} of the number on a "floor."

The title text contains three further examples relating to color. <code>color.rgb("blue")</code> returns the hexadecimal code for pure blue (as would be used in HTML, for example), which is how a real programming language might work. The lookup for "yellowish blue" returns "NaN" (Not a Number) again, which makes sense at one level because there is no such color as "yellowish blue" (yellow and blue are opposites on the RGB {{w|color triangle}}, making yellowish-blue an {{w|impossible colour}}, which can only be perceived with great difficulty through contrived figures). However a more typical result would have been a failure indicating that the color database does not include the name, in the same way that a typo such as "bluw" would. (Note that HTML does [http://stackoverflow.com/q/8318911/256431 explicitly attempt] to handle all "color names". For the record, "yellowish blue" is a dark blue with an imperceptible amount of red — <code style='background-color: #0e00b0; color: white'>#0E00B0</code>.) Similarly sorting the colors would normally produce some defined ordering, such as alphabetical, but in this language it generates the string "rainbow". It seems that Randall's new language understands color theory in an unusually deep way.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the black part of the comic:]
:My new language is great, but it
:has a few quirks regarding type:

:[The rest of the comic is written in a black rectangle. All text to the left of ">" is written in gray. Text to the right of the ">" on the lines with numbers are in white, and then gray text on the other lines. There seems to be a missing ">" after line no. 3.]
:  [1]> 2+"2"
:    => "4"
:  [2]> "2"+[]
:    => "[2]"
:  [3] (2/0)
:    = > NaN
:  [4]> (2/0)+2
:    = > NaP
:  [5]> "" + ""
:    = > ' "+" '
:  [6]> [1,2,3]+2
:    = > False
:  [7]> [1,2,3]+4
:    = > True
:  [8]> 2/(2-(3/2+1/2))
:    = > NaN.000000000000013
:  [9]> Range("   ")
:    = > (' " ',"! "," ","!",' " ')
:[10]> + 2
:    = > 12
:[11]> 2+2
:    = > Done
:[14]> Range(1,5)
:    = > (1,4,3,4,5)
:[13]> Floor(10.5)
:    = > |
:    = > |
:    = > |
:    = > |_ _ _10.5_ _ _

==Trivia==
*There is an inconsistency in the comic after [3] where the ">" is missing.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:  Programming]]
[[Category:  Language]]

Talk:1534: Beer

2015-06-08T13:00:24Z

108.162.238.186: comment.

I hate the taste and smell and associations (such as urine and vomit where they shouldn't be). A friend used to freely admit he didn't like the taste and only drank to get drunk. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.161|108.162.249.161]] 06:24, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

This is why there are so many different styles of beers, or wines, or other alcoholic beverages. I personally don't care for IPAs, but will rarely pass up a good Pilsner.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.189|108.162.238.189]] 07:37, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

:LOL, that's exactly what Cueball is talking about. Beer is a canonical example of {{w|acquired taste}}. But even after having done so, all hoppy beers (including most IPAs and Pilsners) still taste pretty similar to me. - [[User:Frankie|Frankie]] ([[User talk:Frankie|talk]]) 11:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

:: Like of beer is actually a really bad example of acquired taste. I was stealing sips of beer from my dad at age 3-4, if he had an unattended open beer. Liking of beer is primarily generics, and secondary acquired taste. Now talk about {{w|Marmite}} and discuss acquired taste. [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]]) 16:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

:::And you, sir, are a canonical example of an ''outlier''. 😜 Seriously though, go to http://google.com and type "is an acquired taste". Google's very first autocomplete suggestion is beer. I'm not saying it's necessarily a ''good'' example, but it is about as canonical as you can get. - [[User:Frankie|Frankie]] ([[User talk:Frankie|talk]]) 03:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible that the characters, being American, have only ever tasted American beer? So when Cueball says that "all beer tastes kind of bad" hat he really means is "all <em>American</em> beer tastes kind of bad"? That would make a lot more sense (especially if you assume that they only buy from the major brands, and haven't yet tried beer from microbreweries.) --[[User:PeR|PeR]] ([[User talk:PeR|talk]]) 09:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
:Well the other character mentions "Stouts", which the major American brands don't really produce (or at least don't heavily market). I think from that it's safe to assume that these characters are basing their opinions on American Craft brews, and not just Budweiser. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.87|173.245.52.87]] 14:02, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
:entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. I think too many people forget Occam's Razor here, and are too eager to engage in deeper analysis than the content can really support without help from, say, an interview with Randall. No offense intended; this is a trend on this wiki in general. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.201|108.162.221.201]] 13:18, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

::I'm kind of tired of people automatically assuming is someone doesn't like beer, it's because the person saying so has only been exposed to bad ones due to their locality. I don't like beer at all because it tastes like a mouthful of yeast and medicine. Alcohol in general is an acquired taste for most people, who usually only start drinking it due to social pressure or as a recreational drug. Yeasty foods are as well, especially yeasty breads, and beer is basically fermented bread juice when you get down to it. There's also a genetic link behind whether or not someone will like alcohol, and it's usually he effect rather than the taste that makes it appealing. --[[Special:Contributions/188.114.111.209|188.114.111.209]] 14:45, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

::: You need to read the research -- it is actually linked to genetic differences in taste-buds. You may not like it, which is not unlikely, but that does not say that is the same for others who may be genetically disposed otherwise [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]]) 18:54, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Speaking from personal experience, I've never tried any form of alcohol that I've liked. And if you must know my experience is mainly centered around beer that's highly recommended by friends and family. The last case was at a tour of a local microbrewery that seems to be doing extremely well. I'm sure if I pulled a large scale taste test I'd aquire enough of a taste to delude myself into thinking that something or other is actually worth drinking but I don't see why I should go through the effort just to conform to a social norm. --not the mama[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.180|108.162.238.180]] 14:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

: You should NOT conform to social norm but drink what YOU feel taste good -- 10.000 years ago, humanity needed portable water -- west of the Urals, humans stared to use fermentation as a method to keep bacteria out of the drinking water, where east they started to brew tea -- their descendant responded genetically over the next 10.000 years with European developing genetic traits to be tolerant and liking the fermented brew. Beer is predominantly limited to north Europe as it has lower alcohol levels compared to wine -- the higher alcohol volume is needed to keep bacteria out in the warmer southern Europe -- HENCE unless you are of northen european decent you may not genetically be programmed to like (or tolerate) the taste of beer -- just don't drink beer if you don't like it !!! [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]]) 19:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

::I'm 1/16th northern European (Dutch), 1/4th southern European, Native American too. Guess I didn't get the North Europe beer gene. Why'd the even northerner Europeans like the Russians and Scottish become distilled spirit drinkers? Did their beer freeze too easily so they made vodka and whiskey? If this is why the north developed a beer culture then why'd Egyptians and Mesopotamians drink beer? It's very hot there. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.59|108.162.215.59]] 20:08, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

::: (1) "predominantly" and "exclusively" are to different words; they are also brewing wine in England. (2) Distilled alcohol for mass consumption is relatively new (~500 years), before that the process was known but not used for this purpose. (3) Many Europeans drink tea these days -- culture and fashion travels. [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]]) 00:55, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Major brands suck, but probably in most countries, even Germany, where people usually have very high opinion about German beer. There are thousands of small breweries, though, some with a very old tradition (like in monasteries), and many just popping up recently. At some microbreweries you have to order weeks in advance, but the brew you get is really exceptional, and you'll drink it at room temperature from wine glasses. Absolutely not meant for getting drunk. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.107|108.162.254.107]] 10:47, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I am disliking to indifferent to most of brands of beer, but I like a few specific ones, like Ginger's Beer, or gingerbread beer from local brewery. --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 11:34, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I know that beer is generally considered to be an acquired taste, but some people acquire that taste really quickly. The first beer I ever drank was a Miller that I stole from a case that my dad had left sitting in the kitchen for months. I was 12, and it is still probably the worst thing I've ever tasted. I decided I didn't like beer, and from ages 12 to 17 the only alcohol I drank was wine. At 17, I tried keg beer and was utterly indifferent to it. By the time I turned 19 I was into good local beers, but if I've been in the heat for a long time, I'll drink watery mediocre beer and it will be divine. And then there's shower beer...oh, shower beer!12:27, 5 June 2015 (UTC) {{unsigned ip|108.162.225.36}}

The only thing worse than a pilsner is an IPA... which is just a stronger version of a pilsner. Most beer just has way too high of an IBU rating. At least malts aren't entirely awful and oatmeal malts are somewhat palatable. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.83|162.158.255.83]] 14:25, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Culturally, for me, the common booze is 'a pint of bitter' (or 'best'). I apparently had my first sip when a toddler. I 'sneakily' took a sip from the top of a glass sat in front of my father, before screwing my face up most amusingly, I am told. I then went straight back in for another... it's not obvious to me if I was being influenced to 'want to like it'. Perhaps it was just the novelty. Anyway, I will admit I don't ''love'' the taste of bitter, but at least it's got an significant taste that all the seemingly anonymous mass-produced lagers can't match. (OTOH, cider's quite stimulating, but I take against the overly fizzy ones.) When it comes to non-alcoholic beverages, I will actively ''refuse'' a cup of tea (the social norm for adults, especially someone like me in their fifth decade), however socially awkward and unexpected, and politely turn down the offer of a coffee, if possible, on the basis that I might not be staying long. (I don't like teas at all, even fruit ones, but I can stand coffee if sweetened.) But it's ''amazing'' what we tend to eat and drink, just because it's expected. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.59|141.101.99.59]] 14:26, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Great comic. This is just for me. I do not like beer. Any kind. And I do rarely drink them. Same with cofee ans tee which I never drink. It is not always easy - so nice to see this comic. :) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm a stout man (will drink stout alone, if it is dark enough and if the hop content is small enough), but will admit that any beer is better after the fifth glass of it.[[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 14:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

;"Acquired Taste"

Part of the explanation refers to acquired tastes as being a response to social pressures and to avoid cognitive dissonance. This doesn't match the description of what the '''linked to''' wikipedia page for acquired tastes, as that page distinguishes authentic acquired tastes from those meeting the author's description.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_taste#Intentional_acquisition_of_tastes

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.190|108.162.238.190]] 15:08, 5 June 2015 (UTC)Aaron E

Budweiser tastes like urine. It's the most popular beer in the US. Immediately after trying it I tasted a drop of my urine to see if the urine was still worse and that wasn't enough urine to decide. Anyone care to put a larger amount of urine in their mouth for science? This is the crap they make Bud..Weis..Er and Wassuuuuuuup! commercials about? They actually make a Lite version of this so people can enjoy it while getting less drunk or fat? Extroverts are weird. Also, out of the legion of OKcupid questions the best predictor of the promiscuity question is "I like the taste of beer, true or false". So if you want to have sex quick, you want to hear "Beer tastes awesome! Woo! [Burp] [Vomit] Ooh!Ooh!" [drinks vodka from bottle] [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.59|108.162.215.59]] 16:55, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Strangely, many animals acquire a taste for alcohol, and they must do it quickly because they don't live long enough to do it slowly. Case in point-- robins and other birds, gobbling up fermented fallen fruit, and then stumbling around like human novice drinkers do. They only live 2-3 years, and they only have access to the stuff for a couple of weeks in the autumn, and yet, there they go, staggering down the sidewalk and tripping over imaginary twigs. And then there's my puppy, who was begging droplets of strong beer and black coffee off my fingertips from eight weeks old. (Good Canadian beer, by the way.) I wonder if a taste for bitterness might be adaptive, as many bitter plants are also medicinal? [[User:NoniMausa|NoniMausa]] ([[User talk:NoniMausa|talk]]) 22:46, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Okay, some people don't like beer. That doesn't mean everyone who does is faking it. I gravitate towards IPAs, stouts, rye IPAs and barrel-aged strong beers. I also like scotch, rye, and some bourbons. I fucking love dark roasted black coffee. I savor all of these in company and alone. Stop being so solipsic.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.163|173.245.48.163]] 03:32, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I actively dislike the taste of every beer that I have tried. That includes Guiness on tap in Dublin. I sort of got into trouble for it the few days I was there agus ag labhairt na Gaeilge. But this discussion is one of the most amusing and enjoyable arguments I have seen yet on this website. Go ahead on, folks! [[User:Taibhse|Taibhse]] ([[User talk:Taibhse|talk]]) 03:48, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I've been scratching my head over this one since I saw it come out, and I still can't tell what Randall is trying to say. Are we meant to take it at face value, where Cueball is right on and Hairy is simply unwilling to admit that deep down he (just like apparently every other beer drinker everywhere) dislikes beer, and everyone is pretending because of social pressure? Or is this a subversion of the expected, and meant as a dig at the kind of person who would so arrogantly think that their personal dislike of something popular simply means everyone who claims to like it is pretending to do so out of social pressures or internalized expectations (no pun intended)? In this comic, Cueball comes across to me as kind of a passive-aggressive jerk (which is normally Hairy's role) as he openly derides something that someone else may genuinely enjoy by claiming everyone is pretending, and when reminded that it's fine for him to not drink it, he responds with bitter sarcasm. So who's the butt of the joke here? Hairy because he can't see that he's only doing something from social pressure? Or Cueball for assuming that Hairy (as well as the other millions of people who regularly enjoy beer around the world) is only doing something and pretending to like it because of social pressure.
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.118|173.245.52.118]] 06:20, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

+1 above comment. I'm on the side of the second interpretation, but my (possibly prejudiced guess) is that Randall may dislike beer!
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.186|108.162.238.186]] 13:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

1520: Degree-Off

2015-05-05T02:08:06Z

108.162.238.186: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1520
| date = May 4, 2015
| title = Degree-Off
| image = degree off.png
| titletext = I'M SORRY, FROM YOUR YEARS OF CONDESCENDING TOWARD THE 'SQUISHY SCIENCES', I ASSUMED YOU'D BE A LITTLE HARDER.
}}
==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] (physics), [[Hair Bun Girl]] (biology), and [[Megan]] (chemistry) appear to be on a talk show called Degree-Off, hosted by [[Hairy]], where representatives of different fields, try to explain why their field is the best and why to get a degree in their field. The title "Degree-Off" is a portmanteau of "{{w|Academic degree|degree}}", as in the recognized completion of studies at a school or university, and "{{w|face-off}}", a direct confrontation between two people or groups.

The host asks the physicist Cueball to go first. He light-heartedly begins to tell, what appears to be long story, beginning with a {{w|Richard Feynman}} anecdote. During the {{w|Manhattan Project}} in Los Alamos, Richard Feymann got bored because of the isolation and started learning lock picking on the secret documents safes. Using these new skills, he played lots of pranks on his colleagues, like leaving notes and spooking them into believing there was a spy among them (which, of course, {{w|Klaus_Fuchs|there was}}). He finishes his case with [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford a quote] from {{w|Ernest Rutherford}}, implying that his speech was quite long and winding. The quote communicates the idea that physics is the only fundamental framework, so that the job of chemists, biologists and other scientist simply is to catalog and systematize observations ("collect stamps") on phenomena too complicated to presently be fully described in terms of physics. This idea was already used earlier by [[Randall]] in [[435: Purity]].

The biologist, Hair Bun Girl, goes next, showing, with a graph (see below), that the field of biology has helped reduce disease. She then goes on to claim that the heroes in biology (the part know as Medicine) has even "slain" one of the {{w|Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse}}. Originally these were Conquest, War, Famine and Death. But, mainly in popular culture, Conquest has been renamed to the one she refers to: {{w|Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse#As_infectious_disease|Pestilence}}.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
This graph shows the death rate from infectious disease in USA, similar to that shown in the comic presented by Hair Bun Girl, as both have the range of 1900-2000. The spike is attributable to the {{w|1918 flu pandemic}}. The graph has been published in this paper [http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=768249 Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century].
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">[[File:Crude_Infectious_Disease_Mortality_Rate_in_the_United_States_from_1900_Through_1996.gif]]</div>
</div>

Hair Bun Girl then goes on to directly accuses Cueball, i.e. the physicists, of creating a new Horseman to replace the one slain by the biologist. She claims that they gathered in the desert to do so. Given Cueball's opening remark, she must be referring to the creation of the first {{w|atomic bomb}}, which was built and tested in the {{w|New Mexico desert}}. After the test detonation of the first nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, {{w|J. Robert Oppenheimer}}, the director of the the {{w|Los Alamos National Laboratory}}, found himself quoting the {{w|Bhagavad Gita}}: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"---thus the creation of a new Horseman.

It has for some time been clear that Randall is a big fan of {{w|Terry Pratchett}}, but this became evident when the famous author died in march 2015, see [[1498: Terry Pratchett]]. Pratchett used the Four Horsemen several times in his books, although mainly {{w|Death (Discworld)|Death}}, in the the ''{{w|Discworld}}'' series, which was first featured in [[625: Collections]]. Especially in {{w|Good Omens}} do these four horsemen have a prominent part. In this book, Pestilence, has retired after the discovery of {{w|Penicillin}}, and he has then been replaced by {{w|Pollution}}.

In the title text the biologist goes on to even shout at Cueball ({{w|All caps}} letters), as she mocks the physicist for not being "harder" after all their condescending towards the squishy (soft) sciences, referring to the concepts of {{w|hard and soft science|hard and soft sciences}} and how physicists sometimes label all other sciences as "soft" and demean them. In [[435: Purity]], the only subject presented as "purer" than physics is mathematics, and even math is then degraded compared to physics in the title text.

Due to the obvious Terry Pratchett references as mentioned above, there have been some discussion about if the all-capital-letters in the title text should indicate that it was Death from the Discworld that spoke these lines (he always speaks in <span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant:small-caps;">[http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1520:_Degree-Off&oldid=92439#Explanation Small caps]</span>). However, the title text is clearly a continuation of the biologist remark and would make no sense if suddenly spoken by Death.

It is known that Randall thinks that biology is superior to physics, as also seen in [[520: Cuttlefish]].

==Transcript==
:[Hairy is acting as the host of a TV talk show, ''Degree-Off''. Cueball, Hair Bun Girl, and Megan are acting as representatives of Phys (Physics), Bio (Biology), and Chem (Chemistry) respectively. They each stand behind their own Lectern with the respective subject label.]

:Hairy: Welcome to the ''Degree-Off'', where we determine which field is the best! Physics, wanna go first?
:Cueball: Sure! I'd like to tell the story of Richard Feynman's Manhattan project lockpicking pranks...

:Cueball: ...and as he said, "all science is either physics or stamp collecting."
:Cueball: Thank you.
:Hairy: ''Great!'' Bio, you wanna go next?
:Hair Bun Girl: Okay.

:[A graph labeled "Per 100,000 is shown above Hair Bun Girl]
:Hair Bun Girl: This is a graph of the death rate from infectious disease in this country.

:[Hair Bun Girl raising her left hand]
:Hair Bun Girl: The heroes of my field have ''slain'' one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

:[Hair Bun Girl pointing at Cueball]
:Hair Bun Girl: While the heroes of ''your'' field gathered in the desert to create a new one.

:Cueball: ...Jeez, what the hell? I thought this was supposed to be fun and lighthearted!
:Hair Bun Girl: ''You must have been thinking of stamp collecting.''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
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