explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

339: Classic

2014-10-07T02:36:07Z

108.162.246.213: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 339
| date = November 7, 2007
| title = Classic
| image = classic.png
| titletext = Someone get that Pachelbel's Canon kid a recording contract, stat.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] listens to the song "{{w|Stairway to Heaven}}" performed by {{w|Led Zeppelin}} using an old {{w|phonograph}}. After the song fades out to the end he is impressed and states that modern music is far away from that {{w|Baby-boom generation|Baby Boomer generation}} publications.

The title text refers to the {{w|Pachelbel's Canon}} and all that modern interpretations shown up on {{w|YouTube}}. Younger people need to support talented musicians from their own generation.

The title of this comic refers also to {{w|Classical music}}, artworks still remembered after hundreds years after the creation. Modern music will be forgotten after a few years. But the "Baby Boomer generation" did create many still today well known musicians including but not limited to:
*{{w|Led Zeppelin}}
*{{w|The Who}}
*{{w|Deep Purple}}
*{{w|Genesis}}
*{{w|The Doors}}
*{{w|Pink Floyd}}
*{{w|Janis Joplin}}
*{{w|Jimi Hendrix}}
*{{w|The Rolling Stones}}
*{{w|Stevie Ray Vaughn}}
*{{w|Creedence Clearwater Revival}}
*{{w|Grateful Dead}}
*{{w|The Beatles}}
*...

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting in front of a turntable, listening to Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. A guitarist (possibly meant to be Jimmy Page) can be seen in an inset in the top left corner of the first two panels.]
:Song: And as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our soul

:Song: When all is one and one is all, to be a rock and not to rooooll

:Song [fading away]: And she's buying a stairway to Heaven

:Cueball: Man. The Baby Boomers are kicking our ASSES.
:Cueball: We need to get it together, guys.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Music]]

Talk:936: Password Strength

2014-09-01T22:21:39Z

108.162.246.213:

You still have to vary the words with a bit of capitalization, punctuation and numbers a bit, or hackers can just run a dictionary attack against your string of four words. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|purple|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 09:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

No you don't. Hackers cannot run a dictionary attack against a string of four randomly picked words.
Look at the number of bits displayed in the image: 11 bits for each word.
That means he's assuming a dictionary of 2048 words, from which each word is picked randomly.
The assumption is that the cracker knows your password scheme.
[[Special:Contributions/86.81.151.19|86.81.151.19]] 20:17, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Willem

Sometimes this is not possible. (I'm looking at you, local banks with 8-12 character passwords and PayPal) If I can, I use a full sentence. A compound sentence for the important stuff. This adds the capitalization, punctuation and possibly the use of numbers while it's even easier to remember then Randall's scheme. I think it might help against the keyloggers too, if your browser/application autofills the username filed, because you password doesn't stand out from the feed with being gibberish. [[Special:Contributions/195.56.58.169|195.56.58.169]] 09:01, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The basic concept can be adapted to limited-length passwords easily enough: memorize a phrase and use the first letter of each word. It'll require about a dozen words (you're only getting 4.7 bits per letter at best, actually less because first letters of words are not truly random, though they are weakly if at all correlated with their neighbors -- based on the frequencies of first letters of words in English, and assuming no correlation between each first letter and the next, I calculate about 4 bits per character of Shannon entropy). SteveMB 18:35, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Followup: The results of extracting the first letters of words in sample texts (the {{w|Project_Gutenberg|Project Gutenberg}} texts of ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', ''The War of the Worlds'', and ''Little Fuzzy'') and applying a {{w|Entropy_(information_theory)|Shannon entropy calculation}} were 4.07 bits per letter (i.e. first letter in word) and 8.08 bits per digraph (i.e. first letters in two consecutive words). These results suggest that first-letter-of-phrase passwords have approximately 4 bits per letter of entropy. --[[User:SteveMB|SteveMB]] ([[User talk:SteveMB|talk]]) 14:21, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: The above test was case-insensitive (all letters converted to lowercase before feeding them to the [[http://millikeys.sourceforge.net/freqanalysis.html frequency counter]]). Thus, true-random use of uppercase and lowercase would have 5 bits per letter of entropy, and any variation in case (e.g. preserving the case of the original first letter) would fall between 4 and 5 bits per letter. --[[User:SteveMB|SteveMB]] ([[User talk:SteveMB|talk]]) 14:28, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I just have RANDOM.ORG print me ten pages of 8-character passwords and tape it to the wall, then highlight some of them and use others (say two down and to the right or similar) for my passwords, maybe a given line a line a little jumbled for more security. [[Special:Contributions/70.24.167.3|70.24.167.3]] 13:27, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
:Remind me to visit your office and secretly replace your wall-lists by a list of very similar looking strings ;) --[[User:Chtz|Chtz]] ([[User talk:Chtz|talk]]) 13:53, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Simple.com (online banking site) had the following on it’s registration page:

“Passphrase? Yes. Passphrases are easier to remember and more secure than traditional passwords. For example, try a group of words with spaces in between, or a sentence you know you'll remember. "correct horse battery staple" is a better passphrase than r0b0tz26.”

Online security for a banking site has been informed by an online comic. Astounding.
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.78|173.245.54.78]] 21:22, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The Web service Dropbox has an Easter egg related to this comic on their sign-up page. That page has a password strength indicator (powered by JavaScript) which changes as you type your password. This indicator also shows hints when hovering the mouse cursor over it. Entering "Tr0ub4dor&3" or "Tr0ub4dour&3" as the password causes the password strength indicator to fall to zero, with the hint saying, "Guess again." Entering "correcthorsebatterystaple" as the password also causes the strength indicator to fall to zero, but the hint says, "Whoa there, don't take advice from a webcomic too literally ;)." [[Special:Contributions/108.162.218.95|108.162.218.95]] 15:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The explanation said that the comic uses a dictionary[http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=936:_Password_Strength&oldid=59309]. In fact it's a word list, which seems similar but it's not. All the words in the word list must be easy to memorize. This means it's better not to have words such as ''than'' or ''if''. Also, it's better not to have homophones (''wood'' and ''would'', for example). The sentence ''dictionary attack'' doesn't apply here. A dictionary attack requires the attacker to use all the words in the dictionary (e.g. 100,000 words). Here we must generate the 17,592,186,044,416 combinations of 4 common words. Those combinations can't be found in any dictionary. At 25 bytes per "word" that dictionary would need 400 {{w|tebi|binary terabytes}} to be stored. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 21:37, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

This comic was mentioned in a TED talk by Lorrie Faith Cranor on in March 2014. After performing a lot of studies and analysis, she concludes that "pass phrase" passwords are no easier to remember than complex passwords and that the increased length of the password increases the number of errors when typing it. There is a lot of other useful information from her studies that can be gleaned from the talk. [http://www.ted.com/talks/lorrie_faith_cranor_what_s_wrong_with_your_pa_w0rd Link]. What she doesn't mention is the frequency of changing passwords - in most organizations it's ~90 days. I don't know where that standard originated, but (as a sys admin) I suspect it's about as ineffective as most of our other password trickery - that is that it does nothing. Today's password thieves don't bash stolen password hash tables, they bundle keyloggers with game trainers and browser plugins.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.75|173.245.50.75]] 18:14, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Just because you are required to have a password that has letters and numbers in it doesn't mean you can't make it memorable. When caps are required, use CamelCase. When punctuation is required, make it an ampersand (&) or include a contraction. When numbers are required, pick something that has significance to you (your birthday, the resolution of your television, ect.). Keep in mind that, if your phrase is an actual sentence, the password entropy is 1.1 bits per character (http://what-if.xkcd.com/34), so length is key if you want your password to be secure. (Though no known algorithm can actually exploit the 1.1 bits of entropy to gain time, so it might be more like 11 bits of entropy per word. Even then, my passwords have nonexistent and uncommon words in them, (like doge or trope), which also adds some entropy.) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.213|108.162.246.213]] 22:18, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Talk:936: Password Strength

2014-09-01T22:18:41Z

108.162.246.213:

You still have to vary the words with a bit of capitalization, punctuation and numbers a bit, or hackers can just run a dictionary attack against your string of four words. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|purple|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 09:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

No you don't. Hackers cannot run a dictionary attack against a string of four randomly picked words.
Look at the number of bits displayed in the image: 11 bits for each word.
That means he's assuming a dictionary of 2048 words, from which each word is picked randomly.
The assumption is that the cracker knows your password scheme.
[[Special:Contributions/86.81.151.19|86.81.151.19]] 20:17, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Willem

Sometimes this is not possible. (I'm looking at you, local banks with 8-12 character passwords and PayPal) If I can, I use a full sentence. A compound sentence for the important stuff. This adds the capitalization, punctuation and possibly the use of numbers while it's even easier to remember then Randall's scheme. I think it might help against the keyloggers too, if your browser/application autofills the username filed, because you password doesn't stand out from the feed with being gibberish. [[Special:Contributions/195.56.58.169|195.56.58.169]] 09:01, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The basic concept can be adapted to limited-length passwords easily enough: memorize a phrase and use the first letter of each word. It'll require about a dozen words (you're only getting 4.7 bits per letter at best, actually less because first letters of words are not truly random, though they are weakly if at all correlated with their neighbors -- based on the frequencies of first letters of words in English, and assuming no correlation between each first letter and the next, I calculate about 4 bits per character of Shannon entropy). SteveMB 18:35, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Followup: The results of extracting the first letters of words in sample texts (the {{w|Project_Gutenberg|Project Gutenberg}} texts of ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', ''The War of the Worlds'', and ''Little Fuzzy'') and applying a {{w|Entropy_(information_theory)|Shannon entropy calculation}} were 4.07 bits per letter (i.e. first letter in word) and 8.08 bits per digraph (i.e. first letters in two consecutive words). These results suggest that first-letter-of-phrase passwords have approximately 4 bits per letter of entropy. --[[User:SteveMB|SteveMB]] ([[User talk:SteveMB|talk]]) 14:21, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: The above test was case-insensitive (all letters converted to lowercase before feeding them to the [[http://millikeys.sourceforge.net/freqanalysis.html frequency counter]]). Thus, true-random use of uppercase and lowercase would have 5 bits per letter of entropy, and any variation in case (e.g. preserving the case of the original first letter) would fall between 4 and 5 bits per letter. --[[User:SteveMB|SteveMB]] ([[User talk:SteveMB|talk]]) 14:28, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I just have RANDOM.ORG print me ten pages of 8-character passwords and tape it to the wall, then highlight some of them and use others (say two down and to the right or similar) for my passwords, maybe a given line a line a little jumbled for more security. [[Special:Contributions/70.24.167.3|70.24.167.3]] 13:27, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
:Remind me to visit your office and secretly replace your wall-lists by a list of very similar looking strings ;) --[[User:Chtz|Chtz]] ([[User talk:Chtz|talk]]) 13:53, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Simple.com (online banking site) had the following on it’s registration page:

“Passphrase? Yes. Passphrases are easier to remember and more secure than traditional passwords. For example, try a group of words with spaces in between, or a sentence you know you'll remember. "correct horse battery staple" is a better passphrase than r0b0tz26.”

Online security for a banking site has been informed by an online comic. Astounding.
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.78|173.245.54.78]] 21:22, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The Web service Dropbox has an Easter egg related to this comic on their sign-up page. That page has a password strength indicator (powered by JavaScript) which changes as you type your password. This indicator also shows hints when hovering the mouse cursor over it. Entering "Tr0ub4dor&3" or "Tr0ub4dour&3" as the password causes the password strength indicator to fall to zero, with the hint saying, "Guess again." Entering "correcthorsebatterystaple" as the password also causes the strength indicator to fall to zero, but the hint says, "Whoa there, don't take advice from a webcomic too literally ;)." [[Special:Contributions/108.162.218.95|108.162.218.95]] 15:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The explanation said that the comic uses a dictionary[http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=936:_Password_Strength&oldid=59309]. In fact it's a word list, which seems similar but it's not. All the words in the word list must be easy to memorize. This means it's better not to have words such as ''than'' or ''if''. Also, it's better not to have homophones (''wood'' and ''would'', for example). The sentence ''dictionary attack'' doesn't apply here. A dictionary attack requires the attacker to use all the words in the dictionary (e.g. 100,000 words). Here we must generate the 17,592,186,044,416 combinations of 4 common words. Those combinations can't be found in any dictionary. At 25 bytes per "word" that dictionary would need 400 {{w|tebi|binary terabytes}} to be stored. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 21:37, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

This comic was mentioned in a TED talk by Lorrie Faith Cranor on in March 2014. After performing a lot of studies and analysis, she concludes that "pass phrase" passwords are no easier to remember than complex passwords and that the increased length of the password increases the number of errors when typing it. There is a lot of other useful information from her studies that can be gleaned from the talk. [http://www.ted.com/talks/lorrie_faith_cranor_what_s_wrong_with_your_pa_w0rd Link]. What she doesn't mention is the frequency of changing passwords - in most organizations it's ~90 days. I don't know where that standard originated, but (as a sys admin) I suspect it's about as ineffective as most of our other password trickery - that is that it does nothing. Today's password thieves don't bash stolen password hash tables, they bundle keyloggers with game trainers and browser plugins.--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.75|173.245.50.75]] 18:14, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Just because you are required to have a password that has letters and numbers in it doesn't mean you can't make it memorable. When caps are required, use CamelCase. When punctuation is required, make it an ampersand (&) or include a contraction. When numbers are required, pick something that has significance to you (your birthday, the resolution of your television, ect.). Keep in mind that, if your phrase is an actual sentence, the password entropy is 1.1 bits per character (http://what-if.xkcd.com/34), so length is key if you want your password to be secure. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.213|108.162.246.213]] 22:18, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1412: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2014-08-26T03:18:04Z

108.162.246.213:

Looks like they renamed the Wikipedia article mentioned as "Maple Syrup Urine '''Syndrome'''" to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_syrup_urine_disease Maple Syrup Urine '''Disease'''].[[User:Keavon|Keavon]] ([[User talk:Keavon|talk]]) 05:03, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

This rythmic sounding has to do with metrical <strike>foots</strike> feet, I think. Maybe someone more into it than I can explain...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_%28prosody%29 [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.164|108.162.229.164]] 05:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: It's just a 4-foot trochaic ("trochaic octameter"?) meter. ^- ^- ^- ^-. Also, I'm curious now, is "foots" the proper plural when discussing meter, or is that just a typo/misunderstanding? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.150|199.27.128.150]] 06:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

:: Oh, right, the plural must be "feet". I just had a brain fart. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.164|108.162.229.164]] 10:23, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

:: It is a trochaic tetrameter. Tetra = 4, octa = 8.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.38|108.162.216.38]] 12:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

::: Right, it's number of feet, not number of syllables. My mistake. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.150|199.27.128.150]] 15:04, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: This one is definitely related: http://xkcd.com/856/ --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.68|141.101.104.68]] 08:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Unless "Gloucester" is two syllables, Randall made a mistake/wanted to see if we're awake.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.224|108.162.246.224]] 06:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
:Depending on where you're from, it can be pronounced (quasi-phonetically) as "Glow-ster". [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 13:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: Actually it is. Silly British accents. It's pronounced roughly "Gloss-ter". [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.150|199.27.128.150]] 06:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

::In that case, I retract my previous statement and apologize.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.224|108.162.246.224]] 07:20, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

With regards to the roll-over text, mention could be made of the long-running BBC radio show "I'm sorry I haven't a clue" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_I_Haven%27t_A_Clue ). It is comedy panel game, and one of the regular rounds is 'One Song to the Tune of Another'. It may be coincidence, but one panellist of the show is Barry Cryer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Cryer ) who happened to have recorded Purple People Eater... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.184|141.101.98.184]] 08:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Why isn't Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the list? [[Special:Contributions/103.22.201.120|103.22.201.120]] 11:41, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

There's a typo in "Quantuum vacuum plasma thruster". [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.184|141.101.98.184]] 12:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Dang someone beat me to writing in the transcript. Oh well, you did a much better job than I was doing anyway. =8o) [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 13:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Is it just me, or do these lyrics not REALLY match the TMNT title song? The first three lines are OK, but the following lines just repeats the pattern - the TMNT song has a different rhythm. {{unsigned|141.101.98.16}}
:Each title is meant to be sung only to the "TMNT" part of the song. They aren't meant to be sung one after another to match the whole song. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 03:09, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

If you speak with a western US accent like me, museum is pronounced with 2 syllables (myoo zahm). I guess if you pronounce it correctly, its more like myoo-zee-uhm, which would make 'Edgar Allan Poe Museum' fit. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.213|108.162.246.213]] 03:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1152: Communion

2014-08-19T05:03:10Z

108.162.246.213:

This was one of the reasons early Christians were persecuted by the Romans. They thought the Christians were cannibals. [[Special:Contributions/76.20.159.250|76.20.159.250]] 00:53, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

:Did they actually though that or did they only used it as pretext for persecution? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 09:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Isn't he making fun of that doctrine?[[User:Guru-45|Guru-45]] ([[User talk:Guru-45|talk]]) 07:16, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Transubstantiation isn't about bread literally turning into flesh. I don't know how to explain it properly, but it is based on Middle Age Christian philosophy (scholastic, St. Thomas, I think) that differentiates the accidents (appearance, taste etc.) of a thing from its true substance. Transubstantiation means that the bread becomes flesh (acquires the substance of Jesus' flesh) even though it retains the appearance and all qualities of bread.
This doctrine is of course highly outdated and I can't think of why the Catholics haven't dropped it yet. It also causes a lot of confusion. --[[User:Artod|Artod]] ([[User talk:Artod|talk]]) 09:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

:If it's middle age Christian, what was the explanation before that? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 09:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

::I would think that the original interpretation is symbolism. Jesus and his diciples were eating the {{w|passover}} meal, and the central piece was a {{w|Korban Pesach|sacrifical lamb}}. I think that it's a way for Jesus to say that the purpouse of the lamb is becoming dated, cause I'm about to be murdered, and that is what will save you in the end, not sacrifices. From start christians have called him the {{w|Lamb of God}}. Hope you had a merry Christmas! -- [[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 10:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

:::The "lamb of God" is thought to be a malpropism from one ancient language to another. I don't have my source material to hand, but it seems likely that the original was "word of God", and "lamb" had a similar sound and so became entangled in the confusion

::::As a New Testament student, I would be interested in seeing a source for that. There are two Greek words translated as "Lamb" in the New Testament. Are you saying that one or both of them sound like an Aramaic word for "word", for instance? Both are used in contexts where "Lamb" makes sense and "Word" does not (i.e. referring to Jesus as a sin-bearing sacrifice). Also, John's Gospel has called Jesus "the Word" several times just before quoting John the Baptist as referring to Jesus as "the Lamb of God" twice. Seems strange that a mistake would be made twice on one page (for instance) when it was avoided five times on the previous page.[[Special:Contributions/75.157.92.41|75.157.92.41]] 08:53, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

::Thomism (the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas) is built on Aristotle's thought and thus this understanding has always been applied to the Eucharist, albeit possibly not as explicitly as through Thomism.

:::In fact, Wikipedia does have a pretty good article about transubstantiation.--[[User:Artod|Artod]] ([[User talk:Artod|talk]]) 11:53, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

::::It does seem quite good. Were you thinking about anything in particular? -- [[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 19:25, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

:[http://www.wftv.com/news/news/body-of-christ-snatched-from-church-held-hostage-b/nD9rH/ Are you sure?] Note the "kidnapping" line about halfway down. The literalness of the belief seems a bit vague to me in practice. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.117|108.162.238.117]] 03:42, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

The 'punchline' and title text are two of the most macabre things I've ever seen Randall write in this comic - and the hilarity still comes across!--[[User:Dangerkeith3000|Dangerkeith3000]] ([[User talk:Dangerkeith3000|talk]]) 16:22, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Has anybody figured out what the '1970s murder victim' reference in the hovertext is referring to? Lot of people died then - I have no idea how to even start narrowing it down [[Special:Contributions/76.116.83.55|76.116.83.55]] 16:39, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
:Will it referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_in_the_Box_(Philadelphia) [[User:Ykliu|Ykliu]] ([[User talk:Ykliu|talk]]) 06:58, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Just remind me of a film: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baby_of_Mâcon

Speaking as a Catholic, my first reaction was "Oy, I've never heard ''that one'' before (eye roll)". It is a pretty old gag, but Randall definitely has a gift for putting comedic timing into 2-dimensional comic panels; I still laughed. [[User:Tractarian|Tractarian]] ([[User talk:Tractarian|talk]]) 16:06, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Randall misspelled "parishioner". [[Special:Contributions/87.189.145.75|87.189.145.75]] 12:00, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The last sentence of the explanation is is really awkward to me. I want to rewrite it but I'm not too smart on theology so I'm not sure if this is the right way. What do you think?

: ''Protestant denominations (e.g., Baptists, Mennonites, Anabaptists, Pentecostals) reject the doctrine of Transubstantiation, with some taking the words as wholly symbolic of Jesus' sacrificial death. Others (e.g, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist) believe Christ is actually present in the bread and wine although the bread and wine are not changed in any physical way .'' --[[User:Smartin|Smartin]] ([[User talk:Smartin|talk]]) 03:35, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Hold on a minute. The church in the title text is evidently ritually sacrificing/apotheosizing persons and then transubstantiating their flesh and blood for consumption in order to redeem their sins. (Presumably ritual sacrifice is kosher.) Now the police have a blood sample from a 1970 murder victim as a result of confiscating the transubstantiated materials. How did they get the blood from the victim for comparison if he was killed by the church and they disposed of the remains? I hope Dexter isn't involved on this one. [[Special:Contributions/98.225.182.131|98.225.182.131]] 09:15, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

note that some presbyterian churches share the opinion that the Lords Supper is only "sign and seal of the covenant of grace". So they don't believe that Jezus is spiritual in the bread and wine.

Folks, I updated the theological explanation a bit to make it more accurate without hopefully getting too theologically geeky, but given the wonderfully geeky nature of this site (and comic), I'll go deeper in the comments. Full disclosure that I am Protestant but studied this stuff a lot in Divinity School (and love this new Pope). The Catholic belief in transubstantiation was developed within a world-view based on Plato & Aristotle, which is how the thinkers of the time understood reality and the world. Thomas Aquinas, probably the most influential of Catholic theologians, was a big fan of Aristotle, and that philosophical understanding of the nature of things fit well into an explanation of the Eucharist that makes a little more sense than how it is commonly understood. The change in the elements (bread/wine) happens when the priest consecrates them, not when they enter the mouth or stomach, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that they don't taste or look like flesh and blood. But Aristotle argued that the true nature--what something really was--could be and often was different from its simple outward appearance. Good example is that most anyone would say that each of us is more than simply our biological mechanisms. When someone dies, they look exactly the same as when they are sleeping, but there is obviously something fundamentally different about who/what they are. I don't say that to start a debate about the soul or anything but just for some context. What the Catholics argued was that there was an actual change in the substance--what the bread and wine REALLY were--when the priest blessed them, and that change gave them special salvific and "soul-cleansing" abilities. I had a theology prof who described it as the scrubbing bubbles of the spiritual world...they don't return your toilet back to its pristine condition, but they run all over cleaning it up. So enter the Reformation, and Luther (a Catholic priest) did not want to give up the significance of the Eucharist but was more focused on interpretation of the Bible (where most would think it seems pretty clear that Jesus isn't speaking literally). Perhaps more importantly though, he felt the centrality of the Catholic-ordained clergy in the process of salvation and access to God created abuses and stumbling blocks for the faithful. So he argued basically that there was still a scrubbing bubbles-type affect from the Eucharist, but that was not because the substance of the bread and wine changed when blessed but because the ritual, prayer, and remembrance created a special and unique spiritual connection to Christ. Calvin took it a step further and made a more symbolic claim, but as with Luther, didn't want to veer too far from the universal ideal that there was a real spiritual impact. The Anabaptists said it was purely symbolic. Modern Protestants pretty much all believe that it is symbolic, if special, and a reminder of our covenant with God and Christ's sacrifice...and few Christians know or bother with the more detailed theological reasoning behind this whole debate. As noted by someone above, Presbyterians use "sign and seal," and as someone who went through the rather rigorous ordination exams for the Presbyterian Church, I know we would not have been passed without providing that framing of symbol and promise. Most Catholics don't understand what it is they are supposed to believe about Transubstantiation, but the Church fathers worked very hard to make the details of their theology actually make sense and fit the world they knew and saw around them. The Bible does the same, and it is a shame that many Christians come to believe that faith calls on them to accept things they know not to be true as a test. As an aside, it has always struck me as ironic and tragic that there is such a fight over the creation narrative when the progression laid out in Gen 1 matches up so perfectly with what science now believes, and is how one might try to describe what we know about the history of the earth to a young child--or to people thousands of years ago who knew nothing of science, dinosaurs, etc. It is also frustrating how hard some fight to deny science when Genesis 1 is unique among the ancient creation myths in saying life started in the water and that plants and then birds came before animals, and people came last. As Randall is so fond of pointing out, "birds" did come first and ruled the earth for millions of years. Anyway, the more detailed explanation on the Eucharist and this little mini-rant against some of my fellow evangelicals on creationism stems from my strong agreement with St. Augustine's quote I'll conclude this comment with. I wish more Christians paid as much attention to Augustine's teachings like this as they do to the sex parts. “Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge is held to as being certain from reason and experience. It is therefore a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a non-believer to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics. If non-believers finds a Christian mistaken and maintaining foolish positions supposedly because of Scripture in a field which they themselves know well, how are they going to believe Scripture in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when it appears the pages of Scripture are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, and will bring untold trouble and sorrow on the faithful.”--St. Augustine of Hippo, around 400 AD.
[[User:Sapper14|Sapper14]] ([[User talk:Sapper14|talk]]) 14:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)Eric
:tl;dr or tl;nwr! (nobody will read!). My 2 cents. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
:Paragraphs, please. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.117|108.162.238.117]] 03:33, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Isn't the title text's date (1970) an epoch pun ? They would have killed a baby on year 0, but not on the right calendar... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.238|141.101.98.238]] 03:19, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
: I like this interpretation, but it does say 1970s, not 1970.