explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:802: Online Communities 2

2025-03-04T20:28:59Z

141.101.98.187: Tag typoed...

I believe I can explain why the e-mail, SMS and Internet areas of the map are surrounded by the "Spoken Language" country. Yes, SMS, e-mail and most of the Internet are "written", but they're more of a "written spoken language", sharing many traits with informal spoken language. Maybe Wikipedia articles and blog posts can be classified as "standard written texts", but most other forms of electronically-mediated communication bare more resemblance to the way we speak: forums, chatrooms, Facebook posts, SMS texts, the usage of acronyms and smiley faces, etc. It's a widely researched phenomenon, and it continues to be a topic in the fields of linguistics, psychology, sociology and education (literacy attainment). As an aspiring linguist myself, I smiled when I noticed that these so-called "written" forms were next to spoken language :) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.10|108.162.215.10]] 22:16, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if it's intentional that 4chan looks like a penis...{{unsigned ip|‎65.40.201.44}}

It needs to explain the ferry between 4chan and Gaia. Although, so does a lot of other stuff. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.45|108.162.216.45]] 07:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I am still working on this. However, not only is this a big job, but I also have a lot to do outside here. In fact, I might even take a break from the Internet. I am simply warning others here. [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 04:37, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

about the Catbus Route on 4chan island in the Forums inset: Might it have something to do with the catbus in the animated film Totoro? In the film, the bus appears to have a regular route, or at least standard bus stops. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.40|108.162.219.40]] 07:55, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Has anyone calculated the size of this (using Sulawesi for scale)? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.150|108.162.221.150]] 00:22, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

This comic makes a brief guest appearance at [//www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hFAOXdXZ5TM#t=256 4:25] in the MinutePhysics post about magnets. [[User:Fewmet|Fewmet]] ([[User talk:Fewmet|talk]]) 01:46, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Is there an explanation of why the Twitter area more or less resembles the shape of US/Mexico? If you have a look at the Youtube area then there's Alaska, too. And since Justin Bieber is Canadian and the "Bieber Bay" seems to resemble the Great Lakes... Was Twitter an "US only thing" back in 2010? [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 10:11, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
:Pareidolia. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.56.23|162.158.56.23]] 22:39, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Kind of cruel that someone linked to TV Tropes up there.--[[Special:Contributions/198.41.239.32|198.41.239.32]] 06:16, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The "Russia (DJ)" island just next to Sarah Palin's area is probably a reference to her very commented statement that you can see Russia from Alaska,[http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/sarah-palin-never-said-can-see-russia-house/] somehow implying that it gave her some kind of expertise in international relations.--[[User:Pere prlpz|Pere prlpz]] ([[User talk:Pere prlpz|talk]]) 10:06, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I looked, couldn't find anything about the Hidden Internet, Dark Web, Deep Web, etc. I sort of imagine it looks like a deep chasm or river (Styx?) to another world with the likes of the NSA, Wikileaks, Electronic Frontier Foundation on the outskirts. Tor is one entrance (or ferry?) to the Netherworld. -- [[User:GeoWendy|GeoWendy]] 5:41 PM Tuesday, January 26 (UTC)

In what way is this explanation "incomplete" still?! It's marked as today's "incomplete explanation of the day" but it's already sixteen printed pages long. How much more content does there need to be before this site will consider this page to no longer be "incomplete?" Yikes... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.253.18|162.158.253.18]] 20:20, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

MMO is not short for MMORPG. It's just not. MMO means Massively Multiplayer Online. Like Dota 2, which is in no way an RPG. Or maybe Realm of the Madgod. Also not and RPG, but YES an MMO. that little gripe having been posted publicly, however, I've just realized that even if it's the day's incomplete article, nothing's going to happen, so fair warning: I'm going to do it meself.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.128|162.158.92.128]] 10:48, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Annoying pedant again, here with another annoyingly pedantic statement. (https://xkcd.com/1405/)
RPG is short for ROLe PLAYING GAME. NOT "ROLE PLAYER GAME" It doesn't matter now, because I fixed it, but if someone who doesn't understand the difference between MMO and MMORPG, they can at least remember to fix "Role Player Game."
Annoying Pedant out. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.128|162.158.92.128]] 10:54, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

There are many things wrong with the part about MMOs.
[[User:AnnoyingInconsistentPedant|AnnoyingInconsistentPedant]] ([[User talk:AnnoyingInconsistentPedant|talk]]) 20:25, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I added some things to MMO isle. Someone should probably give better descriptions though. I didn't have the time to research: Active Worlds, Smallworlds, UO, EQ. Feel free to add those in if you are looking for something to inprove. [[User:PowerKitten|PowerKitten]] ([[User talk:PowerKitten|talk]]) 15:45, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

It seems like this comic has been "incomplete" for all eternity. This comic is in the "Incomplete explanation spotlight" more than ANY OTHER COMIC. The thing's huge! That's natural! I say this explanation does a pretty good job of explaining most if not every grating detail about this comic! I think we should use the Incomplete Spotlight for comic explanations that are ACTUALLY BAD. So can we stop giving this explanation grief for maybe leaving out a few 5-pixel towns? Thank you and stop fussing.
-A person who thinks this explanation is good

Hey, you can play Club Penguin at https://play.cprewritten.net/ now. Just saying. [[User:Sarah the Pie(yes, the food)|Sarah the Pie(yes, the food)]] ([[User talk:Sarah the Pie(yes, the food)|talk]]) 13:24, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.56|108.162.219.56]] 11:34, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
: No. If an explanation is incomplete, an explanation should be edited until the point where it is as complete as possible. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.86|141.101.104.86]] 16:04, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that there are other explanations that are more incomplete than this one. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.56|108.162.219.56]] 21:04, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Hold it. Did no one else notice the "Edit War Memorial" in the Wikipedia Talk Island? It's not in the explanation or transcript anywhere. If it's too insignificant to be considered part of an "official" transcript, that's a shame, because I think that's one of the funniest parts, [[User:Trogdor147|Trogdor147]] ([[User talk:Trogdor147|talk]]) 00:48, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Sad to not see the beamNG.drive forum on here[[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.6|162.158.63.6]] 20:21, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Is the link to explanation of classmates.com couple's story on seattletimes.com broken for anyone else? I get redirected to the main page, no story in sight. But it could be because I'm on mobile.
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.138.114|172.68.138.114]] 04:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

As it's a mentioned 'location', some here might wish to take note of the https://urbandead.com/shutdown.html as of Friday 14 March 2025
{{cot|In case it doesn't survive the date...}}
;Urban Dead is shutting down
:Sad to have to announce that Urban Dead will be closing down on Friday 14 March 2025, due to an upcoming change in UK website legislation.
:The Online Safety Act comes into force later this month, applying to all social and gaming websites where users interact, and especially those without strong age restrictions. With the possibility of heavy corporate-sized fines even for solo web projects like this one, I've reluctantly concluded that it doesn't look feasible for Urban Dead to be able to continue operating.
:So a full 19 years, 8 months and 11 days after its quarantine began, Urban Dead will be shut down. No grand finale. No final catastrophe. No helicopter evac. Make your peace or your final stand in whichever part of Malton you called home, and the game will be switched off at noon UTC on 14 March.
:The game's wiki will be set to read-only the same day. If Urban Dead is ever revivified or spun off in any way in the future, it'll be announced on this website. I'll be happy to refund any IP unlock donations made in the past six months, on request, since this shutdown was an unexpected one. If you're glad that the game stayed up as long as it did, you can scavenge me a freeze-dried coffee.
:— Kevan, 2025
{{cob}}
...if I've ever possibly met you there (over more than the last decade and a half), I hope it was mutually enjoyable; either as allies or enemies, in the ...now ''not'' so eternal... battle between the living and the dead. And have some Stale Candy. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.187|141.101.98.187]] 20:27, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Talk:802: Online Communities 2

2025-03-04T20:27:32Z

141.101.98.187:

I believe I can explain why the e-mail, SMS and Internet areas of the map are surrounded by the "Spoken Language" country. Yes, SMS, e-mail and most of the Internet are "written", but they're more of a "written spoken language", sharing many traits with informal spoken language. Maybe Wikipedia articles and blog posts can be classified as "standard written texts", but most other forms of electronically-mediated communication bare more resemblance to the way we speak: forums, chatrooms, Facebook posts, SMS texts, the usage of acronyms and smiley faces, etc. It's a widely researched phenomenon, and it continues to be a topic in the fields of linguistics, psychology, sociology and education (literacy attainment). As an aspiring linguist myself, I smiled when I noticed that these so-called "written" forms were next to spoken language :) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.10|108.162.215.10]] 22:16, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if it's intentional that 4chan looks like a penis...{{unsigned ip|‎65.40.201.44}}

It needs to explain the ferry between 4chan and Gaia. Although, so does a lot of other stuff. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.45|108.162.216.45]] 07:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I am still working on this. However, not only is this a big job, but I also have a lot to do outside here. In fact, I might even take a break from the Internet. I am simply warning others here. [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 04:37, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

about the Catbus Route on 4chan island in the Forums inset: Might it have something to do with the catbus in the animated film Totoro? In the film, the bus appears to have a regular route, or at least standard bus stops. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.40|108.162.219.40]] 07:55, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Has anyone calculated the size of this (using Sulawesi for scale)? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.150|108.162.221.150]] 00:22, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

This comic makes a brief guest appearance at [//www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hFAOXdXZ5TM#t=256 4:25] in the MinutePhysics post about magnets. [[User:Fewmet|Fewmet]] ([[User talk:Fewmet|talk]]) 01:46, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Is there an explanation of why the Twitter area more or less resembles the shape of US/Mexico? If you have a look at the Youtube area then there's Alaska, too. And since Justin Bieber is Canadian and the "Bieber Bay" seems to resemble the Great Lakes... Was Twitter an "US only thing" back in 2010? [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 10:11, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
:Pareidolia. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.56.23|162.158.56.23]] 22:39, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Kind of cruel that someone linked to TV Tropes up there.--[[Special:Contributions/198.41.239.32|198.41.239.32]] 06:16, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The "Russia (DJ)" island just next to Sarah Palin's area is probably a reference to her very commented statement that you can see Russia from Alaska,[http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/sarah-palin-never-said-can-see-russia-house/] somehow implying that it gave her some kind of expertise in international relations.--[[User:Pere prlpz|Pere prlpz]] ([[User talk:Pere prlpz|talk]]) 10:06, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I looked, couldn't find anything about the Hidden Internet, Dark Web, Deep Web, etc. I sort of imagine it looks like a deep chasm or river (Styx?) to another world with the likes of the NSA, Wikileaks, Electronic Frontier Foundation on the outskirts. Tor is one entrance (or ferry?) to the Netherworld. -- [[User:GeoWendy|GeoWendy]] 5:41 PM Tuesday, January 26 (UTC)

In what way is this explanation "incomplete" still?! It's marked as today's "incomplete explanation of the day" but it's already sixteen printed pages long. How much more content does there need to be before this site will consider this page to no longer be "incomplete?" Yikes... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.253.18|162.158.253.18]] 20:20, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

MMO is not short for MMORPG. It's just not. MMO means Massively Multiplayer Online. Like Dota 2, which is in no way an RPG. Or maybe Realm of the Madgod. Also not and RPG, but YES an MMO. that little gripe having been posted publicly, however, I've just realized that even if it's the day's incomplete article, nothing's going to happen, so fair warning: I'm going to do it meself.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.128|162.158.92.128]] 10:48, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Annoying pedant again, here with another annoyingly pedantic statement. (https://xkcd.com/1405/)
RPG is short for ROLe PLAYING GAME. NOT "ROLE PLAYER GAME" It doesn't matter now, because I fixed it, but if someone who doesn't understand the difference between MMO and MMORPG, they can at least remember to fix "Role Player Game."
Annoying Pedant out. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.128|162.158.92.128]] 10:54, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

There are many things wrong with the part about MMOs.
[[User:AnnoyingInconsistentPedant|AnnoyingInconsistentPedant]] ([[User talk:AnnoyingInconsistentPedant|talk]]) 20:25, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I added some things to MMO isle. Someone should probably give better descriptions though. I didn't have the time to research: Active Worlds, Smallworlds, UO, EQ. Feel free to add those in if you are looking for something to inprove. [[User:PowerKitten|PowerKitten]] ([[User talk:PowerKitten|talk]]) 15:45, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

It seems like this comic has been "incomplete" for all eternity. This comic is in the "Incomplete explanation spotlight" more than ANY OTHER COMIC. The thing's huge! That's natural! I say this explanation does a pretty good job of explaining most if not every grating detail about this comic! I think we should use the Incomplete Spotlight for comic explanations that are ACTUALLY BAD. So can we stop giving this explanation grief for maybe leaving out a few 5-pixel towns? Thank you and stop fussing.
-A person who thinks this explanation is good

Hey, you can play Club Penguin at https://play.cprewritten.net/ now. Just saying. [[User:Sarah the Pie(yes, the food)|Sarah the Pie(yes, the food)]] ([[User talk:Sarah the Pie(yes, the food)|talk]]) 13:24, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.56|108.162.219.56]] 11:34, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
: No. If an explanation is incomplete, an explanation should be edited until the point where it is as complete as possible. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.86|141.101.104.86]] 16:04, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that there are other explanations that are more incomplete than this one. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.56|108.162.219.56]] 21:04, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Hold it. Did no one else notice the "Edit War Memorial" in the Wikipedia Talk Island? It's not in the explanation or transcript anywhere. If it's too insignificant to be considered part of an "official" transcript, that's a shame, because I think that's one of the funniest parts, [[User:Trogdor147|Trogdor147]] ([[User talk:Trogdor147|talk]]) 00:48, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Sad to not see the beamNG.drive forum on here[[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.6|162.158.63.6]] 20:21, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Is the link to explanation of classmates.com couple's story on seattletimes.com broken for anyone else? I get redirected to the main page, no story in sight. But it could be because I'm on mobile.
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.138.114|172.68.138.114]] 04:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

As it's a mentioned 'location', some here might wish to take note of the https://urbandead.com/shutdown.html as of Friday 14 March 2025
{{cob|In case it doesn't survive the date...}}
;Urban Dead is shutting down
:Sad to have to announce that Urban Dead will be closing down on Friday 14 March 2025, due to an upcoming change in UK website legislation.
:The Online Safety Act comes into force later this month, applying to all social and gaming websites where users interact, and especially those without strong age restrictions. With the possibility of heavy corporate-sized fines even for solo web projects like this one, I've reluctantly concluded that it doesn't look feasible for Urban Dead to be able to continue operating.
:So a full 19 years, 8 months and 11 days after its quarantine began, Urban Dead will be shut down. No grand finale. No final catastrophe. No helicopter evac. Make your peace or your final stand in whichever part of Malton you called home, and the game will be switched off at noon UTC on 14 March.
:The game's wiki will be set to read-only the same day. If Urban Dead is ever revivified or spun off in any way in the future, it'll be announced on this website. I'll be happy to refund any IP unlock donations made in the past six months, on request, since this shutdown was an unexpected one. If you're glad that the game stayed up as long as it did, you can scavenge me a freeze-dried coffee.
:— Kevan, 2025
{{cob}}
...if I've ever possibly met you there (over more than the last decade and a half), I hope it was mutually enjoyable; either as allies or enemies, in the ...now ''not'' so eternal... battle between the living and the dead. And have some Stale Candy. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.187|141.101.98.187]] 20:27, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

850: World According to Americans

2025-02-12T08:23:07Z

141.101.98.187: Redone, so to avoid any "...as of 2026... as of 2032... as of 2037" updating, whenever someone stumbles across it again. Unless it *needs* updating. And added a 'near-miss' that happened (officially, but long anticipated) within just a few months.

{{comic
| number = 850
| date = January 21, 2011
| title = World According to Americans
| image = world according to americans.png
| titletext = It's not our fault we caught a group on their way home from a geography bee. And they taught us that Uzbekistan is one of the world's two doubly-landlocked countries!
}}
*A [http://xkcd.com/850_large/ larger version] of this image can be found by clicking the image at xkcd.com - the comic's page can also be accessed by clicking on the comic number above.

==Explanation==

There's a somewhat well-circulated image on the internet entitled "The World According to Americans" which plays on the stereotype of the ignorant American. In it, the entirety of Eastern Europe and most of Asia are entitled "commies" and the Middle-East as "evil-doers," and so on. Later, other people created similar maps to re-do the concept. It later spread to other cultures.

This comic is an anti-joke playing on that idea. You expect to see something which plays on the {{w|stereotypes}} that exist in American culture of various parts of the world. However, instead, the map is remarkably well-informed, and shows how sampling bias can be used to conflate results. See below the [[#Table of items in the map|table of items in the map]].

The title text jokes that it was "not their fault" that the Americans involved were coming from a {{w|National Geographic Bee|geography bee}}. On the other hand, if even apparent geography buffs use vague labels such as "rest of South America" and "various former Soviet states" instead of using more detailed labels, the average American are likely even less geographically knowledgeable. (Although, as the illustrators wrote below Cape Horn, the reason they did not draw Antarctica or many South American, Middle Eastern and British countries and the lack of detail may be because the people who asked them to draw this map were beginning to 'look impatient' since they did not get the expected ignorant result.)

A {{w|landlocked country}} is a country that does not border any major bodies of water. Furthering the concept, a {{w|Landlocked country#Doubly landlocked|doubly-landlocked}} country is a country that not only has no connection to water, but is only bordered by ''other'' landlocked countries. As the title text states, there are only two such countries in the world as of the date of the comic: {{w|Uzbekistan}} and {{w|Liechtenstein}}. {{w|South Sudan}} became officially recognised as a new independant state not long after this comic's publication but, being only a ''singly-''landlocked nation, did not alter this particular statistic. This is the type of fact that may be stereotypically expected to be known by a sufficiently well-prepared geography bee competitor.

===Table of items in the map===
{| class="wikitable"
!style="width: 25%;"|Annotation
! Further details
|-
| Hey so what projection should we use? I’ll aim for "Robinson".
| Any flat [[977|map projection]] of a sphere must have inaccuracies. {{w|Mercator projection}} displays shapes well at the expense of size. For example, Mercator's Greenland appears larger than South America, but is actually one eighth the size. {{w|Gall-Peters projection}} does the opposite, showing accurate surface area with distorted ("awful") shapes. {{w|Robinson projection}} compromises between shape & size for aesthetics; hence Greenland is "still too big".
|-
| Did you know Maine is actually the US state closest to Africa?
| The distance is about 5076 km (~3754 mi). Measurement points are {{w|Sail Rock (disambiguation)|Sail Rock (Maine)}}, the most eastern point of the USA, and a point which seems to be the most southern (and as such western) point of el-Beddouza Beach, {{w|Morocco}}. It's not the most western point of Morocco (or Africa), though.
|-
| Hispañola
| For some reason, the map labels the island of {{w|Hispaniola}} using an archaic and now rarely-used spelling of its name.
|-
| Do we have to label all the Virgin Islands?
| Which are {{w|Virgin Islands#Larger Islands|9 larger}} and about 100 {{w|List of Caribbean islands#British Virgin Islands|smaller}} {{w|List of Caribbean islands#United States Virgin Islands|islands}} - surely a lot of labels. The location of the label suggests this actually refers to the larger chain of islands which makes up the {{w|Lesser Antilles}}.
|-
| French, and I think Dutch and English
| The three separated areas are (from west to east) {{w|Guyana}} (former British colony), {{w|Suriname}} (former Dutch colony) and {{w|French Guiana}} (still officially part of France). The former two often switched between French, Dutch and British colonial rule. The latter was French most times except for a short Portuguese episode.
|-
| Brazil (Portugese-speaking)
Rest of South America (Spanish-speaking)
| In green is Portuguese-speaking (misspelled) Brazil, and in blue are the Spanish speaking Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.
|-
| {{w|Greenland}} (Still too big!)
Yeah, but the Peters map is awful
| Relating back to the choice of map projection, the apparent size of Greenland is one of the most commonly known projection based inaccuracies. The {{w|Gall-Peters projection}} shows accurate surface area, but with distorted ("awful") shapes.
|-
|Scandanavia
| A typo of {{w|Scandinavia}}. The area shown includes Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark, but the actual area of Scandinavia excludes Finland. The Scandinavian peninsula countries include Norway, Finland, and Sweden, and those can be collectively (and nerdily) referred to as "Fennoscandia."
|-
| Western Europe
Eastern Europe
| The line here approximately follows that of the {{w|Iron Curtain}} that separated the {{w|Warsaw Pact}} states (the Soviet Union and other Communist allies) from the {{w|NATO}} (US-allied) and neutral states. However, all of Germany is included in Western Europe (when during the Cold War it was divided into East and West Germany) while Austria (which was officially neutral in the Cold War but closely tied to the West and therefore blocked off from its Communist neighbors) is marked as Eastern Europe. Here, Eastern Europe also includes the {{w|Balkans}} (the southern peninsula east of Italy), which are usually considered separate. During the Cold War, the Balkans were divided between Soviet-allied Albania (which later left the Pact) and Bulgaria, NATO-allied Greece and Turkey, and Yugoslavia, which was a neutral Communist state. It's also worth noting that there should be a blob of Russian red in the middle of Eastern Europe, representing the Russian exclave of {{w|Kaliningrad oblast}}.
|-
| British Isles
Ireland
| Although {{w|Ireland}} belongs to the {{w|British Isles}} geographically, it does not belong to the {{w|British Islands}} politically. That may be the reason why Ireland is labeled additionally - to show it's known that Ireland does not belong to the {{w|United Kingdom}}. {{w|Northern Ireland}} does, though.
|-
| Rainforest DRC
| The area shown is actually not completely the {{w|Democratic Republic of the Congo}} (DRC), but since one of the persons who made this map says they don't know the African map very well (see statement below), it's fairly accurate. Also the area called rainforest is somewhat larger than the area depicted as {{w|tropical rainforest}} on Wikipedia, although this might be due to {{w|deforestation}} and {{w|desertification in Africa}}
|-
| So this is one of those things where you point out our ignorance and stereotypes?
Yeah – I mean I freely admit I don’t know the African map very well, which speaks volumes in itself.
| Here two of the persons involved in drawing this map discusses what their lack of knowledge about Africa says about them. The African portion of the map is for sure the most poorly labeled, which lends weight to the stereotype of the 'Ignorant American'. Although it has to be mentioned, that the geography of Africa is in general not well known - at least within the Western world. So that's not really an American thing, here. The few countries which are labeled here mostly are well known because of their unstable political situation or because of their remarkable location. The labeled locations (and the presumably reasons of their "publicity") are west to east, north to south: {{w|Morocco}} ({{w|Arab Spring}}, location), {{w|Algeria}} (Arab Spring, {{w|Algerian Civil War|Civil War}}), {{w|Sahara|Sahara Desert}} (largest hot desert of the world), {{w|Sudan}} ({{w|Second Sudanese Civil War|Civil war}}, Arab Spring), {{w|West Africa}} ({{w|West Africa#Postcolonial eras|Lots of Civil wars}} and thus bad humanitarian situation, {{w|Blood diamond|Blood diamonds}}), {{w|Somalia}} ({{w|Somali Civil War|Civil war}}, {{w|Piracy in Somalia|pirates}}), {{w|Lake Victoria}} (largest lake of Africa, quite remarkable even at large scale maps (as here)), {{w|Mozambique}} ({{w|Mozambican Civil War|Civil war}}), {{w|Angola}} ({{w|Angolan Civil War|Civil War}}) and {{w|Madagascar}} (one of the worlds large island at the east coast - quite remarkable).
|-
| Cape Horn
| {{w|Cape Horn}} is the southern tip of ''South America'', not ''Africa''. The southern tip of Africa is called {{w|Cape Agulhas}}.
|-
| Should we include {{w|Antarctica}}?
Let’s not – these guys are looking impatient
| Here it is made clear that those who came with this assignment are getting impatient since their project of proving how little Americans know about the world has failed miserably. It also shows that if some labels or parts are missing, then it could be because of this and not for lack of knowledge. This is also a joke on the lack of labels that would be required for the map of Antarctica. Drawing Antarctica and labeling it would probably take less time than having the discussion about whether to include it, and then writing that discussion on the map.
|-
| {{w|Aral Sea}} (Gone)
| Formerly one of the largest fresh-water lakes of the world, now actually not completely gone, but almost.
|-
| Various former Soviet states
| Which are (west to east) {{w|Kazakhstan}}, {{w|Turkmenistan}}, {{w|Uzbekistan}}, {{w|Tajikistan}} and {{w|Kyrgyzstan}}. The former {{w|Soviet Union|Union of Soviet Socialist Republics}} was dissolved in 1991 and thus the {{w|Cold War}} ended.
|-
| Middle East
| Drawn here to include {{w|Egypt}} and {{w|Turkey}}. Whether these should be included depends on whether you mean the phrase ''Middle East'' politically or geographically. They are both Muslim countries, but geographically Egypt is in Africa and Turkey is usually not included because of its close affiliation with Europe.
|-
| Boxing Day quake
Wait, "Boxing Day"? There’s no way you’re American.

I read BBC News, OK?
| On December 26, 2004, a {{w|2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami|huge earthquake}} struck off the coast of Indonesia, causing severe tsunamis. December 26, the day after {{w|Christmas Day}}, is celebrated as {{w|Boxing Day}} in the UK, Canada, Australia, and some other English-speaking countries, but not the US. As such, the earthquake became known as the Boxing Day Quake.
One of the people who came asked these people to draw this map picks up on the use of 'Boxing Day' as something no American would say and questions if this person is, in fact, American. But an American reader of {{w|BBC News}} (part of the British Broadcasting Corporation) may start to use the phrase "Boxing Day" about the Tsunami.
|-
| India -> Mostly Muslim
India -> Mostly Hindu
| In general {{w|India}} is separated in {{w|Religion in India|two religious groups}}. Muslims in the north-west, Hindus in the rest. As visible on the [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Religion_in_India.svg map] in Wikimedia Commons, the area with a predominant Muslim population is far smaller (and mostly concentrated to Kashmir) than depicted in the comic.
|-
| Tibet (contested)
| The area was annexed by the {{w|People's Republic of China}} in the 1950s. Since then there are {{w|Tibetan independence movement|moves to gain}} some degree or other of independence. The marked area is fairly inaccurate, though. Today's {{w|Tibet Autonomous Region}} (former {{w|Kingdom of Tibet}}) is roughly the southern half of the marked area extended a bit to the south-east.
|-
| Kamchatka Peninsula, but I admit I only know this one from Risk
|''{{w|Risk (game)|Risk}}'' is a board game played on a map of the world, where players own territories and battle each other for world domination. The person in the comic admits to knowing {{w|Kamchatka Peninsula}} only from the territory "Kamchatka" in the game. Kamchatka is notable among the territories in the game because it and Alaska are connected, despite being on opposite sides of the board- a fact that can easily be overlooked.
|-
| Koreas
| The two Koreas are the "{{w|Democratic People's Republic of Korea}}" (North Korea) and the "{{w|Republic of Korea}}" (South Korea).
|-
| Japan, duh.
| Well...{{w|Japan}}.
|-
| Taiwan (actually called "The Republic of China" – it's complicated).
| This is a reference to the complicated political history of {{w|Taiwan}}. After the {{w|Chinese Civil War}}, the Nationalists fled {{w|mainland China}} for the island of Taiwan and set up a {{w|martial law in Taiwan|martial law}} there, vowing to return. In the intervening 70 years or so, Taiwan eventually began to transform into a democracy, being a self-governing state in its own right, but hasn't shed the name, or the animosity with the new rulers of mainland China. According to Americans, China and Taiwan are {{w|Taiwan Relations Act#Since 2000|separate countries}}, but many other nations do not feel able to treat with the latter to that degree, given the political pressures from the former. The government of China claims ''de jure'' {{w|Political status of Taiwan|sovereignty of Taiwan}}, even though there is ''de facto'' separation of governance, and the island is not represented as a sovereign territory by the United Nations …hence the "it's complicated" tag. There is also a missing end-paren here, which is likely a typo. The tag "it's complicated" is one of the options for relationship statuses on Facebook, and denotes two people whose relationship defies the usual labels. In this case, it is the relationship between the "countries" which is complicated.
|-
| Sulawesi
| As a running gag, the island of {{w|Sulawesi}} (formerly known as Celebes) is depicted in several map-like drawings and charts (see [[256: Online Communities]], [[273: Electromagnetic Spectrum]], [[802: Online Communities 2]], and [[1555: Exoplanet Names 2]]). Of course, there are good reasons to show it on an actual world map like the one here.
|-
| Paupa New Guinea
| A spelling mistake of {{w|Papua New Guinea}}.
|-
| Phillipines
| A spelling mistake of the {{w|Philippines}}.
|-
| Southeast Asia
| {{w|Southeast Asia}} is a region in Asia, which includes Buddhist-majority countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, Muslim-majority countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, and Christian-majority countries of the Philippines and Timor-Leste. However, in this map, Indonesia is depicted separately from the rest of SE Asia.
|-
| Malaysia
| Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia (it is not known why it was excluded on the map)
|-
| Indonesia
| Indonesia is another country in Southeast Asia (it is not known why it was excluded on the map).
|-
| Sri Lanka
| Sri Lanka is a small island country near India.
|-
| Tasmania
| Tasmania is an Australian state.
|}

==Transcript==
:THE WORLD
:According to a Group of
:'''AMERICANS'''
:who turned out to be unexpectedly good at geography, derailing our attempt to illustrate their country's attitude toward the rest of the world.

:[Left to right, up to down.]

:[North of Canada.] Hey so what projection should we use?
:I'll aim for "Robinson."

:[North America.] Alaska; Canada; Hudson Bay; Québec; United States
:Did you know Maine is actually the US state closest to Africa?; Bermuda (British!)

:[Central America.] Baja California (Mexico); Mexico; Central America; Panama Canal; Gulf of Mexico; Cuba; Hispañola; POR.; Jamaica
:Do we have to label all the Virgin Islands?

:[South America.] Rest of South America (spanish-speaking); Brazil (portugese-speaking); French, and I think Dutch and English; Tierra del Fuego

:[Greenland.] Greenland (still too big!); Yeah but the Peters map is awful; Iceland

:[Europe.] British Isles; [https://iecasimile.com/ Ireland]; Gibralter; Scandanavia; Western Europe; Eastern Europe; Black sea; Middle East

:[Africa.] Morocco; Algera; Sahara Desert; West Africa; Sudan; Rainforest DRC; Lake Victoria; Somalia; Angola; Mozambique; South Africa; Cape Horn; Madagascar

:[West of DRC.] So this is one of those things where you point out our ignorance and stereotypes?
:Yeah – I mean, I freely admit I don't know the African map very well, which speaks volumes in itself.

:[West Asia.] Russia; Aral sea (Gone); Various former Soviet states; Afghanistan & Pakistan; India; Mostly Muslim; Mostly Hindu

:[Indian Ocea.] Sri Lanka; Boxing Day Quake
:Wait, "Boxing day"? There's no way you're American.
:I read BBC News, OK?

:[East Asia.] Mongolia; Tibet (contested); China; Southeast Asia

:[Pacific Ocean.] Kamchatka Pennisula, but I admit I only know this one from Risk.
:Koreas; Japan, duh.; Taiwan (actually called "The Republic of China." – it's complicated.); Phillipines; Malaysia; Indonesia; Sulawesi; Paupa New Guinea; Australia; Tasmania; New Zealand

:[South of Africa.] Should we include Antarctica?
:Let's not – these guys are looking impatient.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Geography]]
[[Category:Maps]]
[[Category:Board games]]

2656: Scientific Field Prefixes

2025-02-06T10:28:32Z

141.101.98.187:

{{comic
| number = 2656
| date = August 8, 2022
| title = Scientific Field Prefixes
| image = scientific_field_prefixes.png
| titletext = Massage: Theoretical (10), Quantum (6), High-energy (2), Computational (1), Marine (1), Astro- (None)
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Google Scholar}} is a search engine for academic publications, and [[Randall]] has been having fun with it.

Randall searches for various terms that are composed of some common prefixes and common suffixes, but not always commonly associated with each other in each possible combination, and tabulates the results. See this [[#Table with numbers|table with numbers]] for easy overview.

This reveals some very commonly used full terms like "{{w|Theoretical Physics}}", the most discovered, which represents almost four million hits compared to the next highest, "{{w|Computational Biology}}", with almost 3 million hits and {{w|Astrophysics}} with 2 million hits. Ducking just below 1 million hits is fourth placing {{w|Marine Biology}}. Of the 42 possible fields just 14 have more than 100,000 hits, and only four more have over 10,000.

But there are also some that have much lower numbers, eight with fewer than 10 hits in the table. "High-Energy Psychology" and "Marine Dentistry" have just one apparent occurrence each (equivalent to a {{w|Googlewhack}}), whilst there are no hits at all recorded for four of the initially combined terms. In total (with the title text) there are 48 fields, see a full [[#List of Scientific fields|list of scientific fields]] below.

An explanation for both existing and fictive scientific fields can be given below in the [[#Table with explanations|table with explanations]].

In the caption to the table Randall list four potential research opportunities i.e. those with no hits in the table: Quantum Dentistry, High-Energy Dentistry, Astrodentistry and High-Energy Theology

He thus suggests that, because of the (apparent) lack of current studies in these specialized sub-fields, there may be unexplored potential for a study. This could be that the more "used" areas have far too much competition and be might already be "used up" for potentially useful discoveries. (This does not account for how much 'study space' might be available in a given box of research, even though Randall has previously hinted that anything "Astro"-related is potentially [[2640: The Universe by Scientific Field|full of many things to study]].)
Of course the real reason for no one studying these fields are that they make no sense. {{w|Dentistry}} is related to fixing peoples teeth. The quantum world has no effect on human teeth,{{Citation needed}} and high-energy bombardment of a human's mouth may also be a bit dangerous (although x-rays and radiation treatment in the mouth could be seen as high energy). Astrodentistry is not really relevant if seeing this as something used on humans. Of course astronauts might need dentistry while in space, but it would be a stretch to call the study of dentistry in zero-G, "astrodentistry". "High-energy Theology" as a term, seems more likely to have been used...

In the title text Randall lists the figures for another 'major' field suffix, {{w|Massage}}, and the numbers of its prefixed forms. From this, we learn that Astromassage is another 'open' field that is currently unstudied, but none of the five others have more than 10. Probably the most surprising aspect of the title text is that there are hits for both quantum massage and high-energy massage.

===Table with numbers===
*Here the table is presented with only numbers, so it can be sorted.
**Massage from the title text has been added.
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!
! Physics
! Chemistry
! Biology
! Engineering
! Psychology
! Theology
! Dentistry
! Massage
|-
| Theoretical
| 3990000
| 445000
| 553000
| 2460
| 15500
| 726
| 41
| 10
|-
| Quantum
| 478000
| 740000
| 7620
| 21100
| 699
| 447
| 0
| 6
|-
| High-Energy
| 844000
| 9600
| 3
| 119
| 1
| 0
| 0
| 2
|-
| Computational
| 510000
| 599000
| 2910000
| 67400
| 4620
| 40
| 11
| 1
|-
| Marine
| 3920
| 136000
| 945000
| 108000
| 35
| 6
| 1
| 1
|-
| Astro-
| 2010000
| 20600
| 226000
| 430
| 64
| 580
| 0
| 0
|}

===List of Scientific fields===
This is included for easy reading of the numbers:
*Theoretical Physics: 3,990,000
*Theoretical Chemistry: 445,000
*Theoretical Biology: 553,000
*Theoretical Engineering: 2,460
*Theoretical Psychology: 15,500
*Theoretical Theology: 726
*Theoretical Dentistry: 41
*Theoretical Massage: 10
*Quantum Physics: 478,000
*Quantum Chemistry: 740,000
*Quantum Biology: 7,620
*Quantum Engineering: 21,100
*Quantum Psychology: 699
*Quantum Theology: 447
*Quantum Dentistry: None
*Quantum Massage: 6
**5 of these are objections to pseudoscientific healing nonsense. The last is from a Dutch medical text in which one sentence ends with "quantum" and the next begins with "massage", published in 1895 and having nothing to do with quantum mechanics.
*High-Energy Physics: 844,000
*High-Energy Chemistry: 9,600
*High-Energy Biology: 3
**Two of these are for the same conference proceedings about use of accelerators in biological research. The third is from an article which mentions a list of research areas: "extensive programs in chemistry, physics (other than high energy), biology".
*High-Energy Engineering: 119
*High-Energy Psychology: 1
**Job ad from October 31st, 2001, asking for "high energy psychology, speech pathology or special education majors to work with our mildly autistic son"
*High-Energy Theology: None
*High-Energy Dentistry: None
*High-Energy Massage: 2
*Computational Physics: 510,000
*Computational Chemistry: 599,000
*Computational Biology: 2,910,000
*Computational Engineering: 67,400
*Computational Psychology: 4,620
*Computational Theology: 40
*Computational Dentistry: 11
*Computational Massage: 1
**This is an article about modular wearable electronic devices, in the form of clothing, which provide massage.
*Marine Physics: 3,920
*Marine Chemistry: 136,000
*Marine Biology: 945,000
*Marine Engineering: 108,000
*Marine Psychology: 35
*Marine Theology: 6
*Marine Dentistry: 1
**The paper mentions the application of something in "Transportation, Marine, Dentistry, Electronics" and other fields
*Marine Massage: 1
**Article in "Professional Beauty" of 2021, mentioning "An exceptional massage technique with the professional-only Oligo-Marine Massage Cream includes smoothing, relaxing and stretching movements for total relaxation and optimal skin"
*Astrophysics: 2,010,000
*Astrochemistry: 20,600
*Astrobiology: 226,000
*Astroengineering: 430
*Astropsychology: 64
*Astrotheology: 580
*Astrodentistry: None
*Astromassage: None

==Table with explanations==
*Here all 48 fields can be explained in a table:
{|class="wikitable sortable"
! Field
! Number of Searches
! Explanation of field
|-
| Theoretical Physics
| 3990000
| {{w|Theoretical Physics}} is a whole field in itself, with journals made only for that type of physics. Also the one with by far most hits.
|-
| Theoretical Chemistry
| 445000
| {{w|Theoretical chemistry}} is the branch of chemistry which explores the underlying explanations for chemical phenomena, and has major overlaps with Quantum Chemistry.
|-
| Theoretical Biology
| 553000
| {{w|Theoretical biology}} aims at the mathematical representation and modeling of biological processes, using techniques and tools of applied mathematics. It has applications in the modelling of biological systems and evolutionary systems.
|-
| Theoretical Engineering
| 2460
| 'Theoretical engineering' is a term that can be applied to many different types of engineering. A few that can be found on the front page, as of the time of writing, are software engineering, mobile engineering, band engineering and engineering optimisation. The term itself simply talks about the theory to do with those types of engineering.
|-
| Theoretical Psychology
| 15500
| Searching this term yields almost five million results, at the time of writing. According to the [https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ps.04.020153.002251 first result], this branch is the {{w|epistemological}} analysis of psychological science.
|-
| Theoretical Theology
| 726
| Theoretical Theology is a bit of a misnomer, considering that Theology is theoretical from the outset. Theoretical Theology would hence be equivalent to Theology, that is, the systematic study of divine nature and religion in general. Unless, perhaps, it concerns itself with questions of how any given theology would have to be under differing conditions, e.g. how a society would interact under the aegis of different moralities or deitic purposes than those currently understood to exist by that society.
|-
| Theoretical Dentistry
| 41
| While there is theory in dentistry, as with all other sciences, there is no branch of dentistry specifically concerning it.{{Citation needed}}
|-
| Theoretical Massage
| 10
| Theoretical Massage is not a real scientific field,{{Citation needed}} but rather the theory about it, in contrast to the practical application of {{w|Massage|massage}}. This term is most likely to be used in the context of learning or studying massages, for example during the process of becoming a massage therapist. Alternatively this term could refer to the studying of the masses of matter, (or its massage if you will). This would make it a field of physics.
|-
| Quantum Physics
| 478000
| As with Theoretical Physics, above, {{w|Quantum Physics}} is an entire field within itself.
|-
| Quantum Chemistry
| 740000
| A field within chemistry, quantum chemistry is the study of how quantum-level effects extrapolate to chemical properties, such as the shape of electron orbitals.
|-
| Quantum Biology
| 7620
| {{w|Quantum Biology}} is a legitimate field, strange as though it may seem. It also applies another "strange" field elsewhere in this table: theoretical chemistry.
|-
| Quantum Engineering
| 21100
| Quantum engineering is the engineering of technology that uses the laws of quantum mechanics for their operation. It is used in the manufacture of quantum sensors and quantum computers. An emerging field, it is slowly growing alongside the current rise in quantum applications in technology and the push towards quantum computing.
|-
| Quantum Psychology
| 699
| Quantum Psychology is used in a similar manner to Quantum Theology (see below) - a way push pseudoscience under the guise of quantum phenomena. While quantum effects can be seen in the brain, it would mostly fall under the purview of neuroscience.
|-
| Quantum Theology
| 447
| Using 'Quantum' as a buzzword to prop up forms of spirituality is a common form of pseudoscience today, and is used to push fringe beliefs under the illusion of 'quantum phenomena'.
|-
| Quantum Dentistry
| None
| This would presumably be dentistry done on teeth which are too small to be observed on normal levels, or do not exist while also existing.
|-
| Quantum Massage
| 6
| Similar to Quantum Theology, the word 'quantum' is being used as a buzzword to promote massage services which no actual relation to quantum phenomena.
|-
| High-Energy Physics
| 844000
| High-Energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. Also known as particle physics, it is a major subfield of theoretical and quantum physics.
|-
| High-Energy Chemistry
| 9600
| High-Energy Chemistry refers to the chemistry of high-energy compounds.
|-
| High-Energy Biology
| 3
| High-Energy Biology would probably refer to biology at high energies. However, at that point, biology stops being biology and starts being physics.
|-
| High-Energy Engineering
| 119
| High-Energy Engineering would most likely refer to engineering undertaken for high-energy environments. However, this is not a real subfield of engineering and would more likely be done by as a part of another subfield of engineering.
|-
| High-Energy Psychology
| 1
| High-Energy Psychology would presumably refer to psychology done at high energies. However, the result which this refers to is, in fact, an advertisement for a job which requires knowledge of psychology and the ability to sustain your energy for a large period of time.
|-
| High-Energy Theology
| None
| High-Energy Theology presumably involves theology performed at extremely high energies. It is unknown if one can find God in a particle accelerator however.{{Citation needed}}
|-
| High-Energy Dentistry
| None
| High-Energy Dentistry would most likely involve performing dentistry with high-energy particle beams, which would be incredibly damaging to a human being. High energy lasers do exist and are used in dentistry, however they are orders of magnitude less energetic than the high-energy beams this prefix would refer to.
|-
| High-Energy Massage
| 2
| High-Energy Massage could either mean a massage done with lots of energy, which may or may not be a soothing experience, or a massage that leaves you with lots of energy, which is a claimed benefit by many massage therapists.
|-
| Computational Physics
| 510000
| The field of using computational models to simulate physical systems. Such models are commonly used in both theoretical and applied physics, hence the large number of hits.
|-
| Computational Chemistry
| 599000
| The field of using computational models to simulate chemical systems. Commonly used in the field of theoretical chemistry.
|-
| Computational Biology
| 2910000
| Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. Due to its very high relevance in the fields of genetics, biochemistry, evolution, neuroscience among others, has the highest number of hits for the 'Computational' prefix, and is 2nd highest overall.
|-
| Computational Engineering
| 67400
| Computational Engineering is a relatively new discipline that deals with the development and application of computational models for engineering. Being a subfield of engineering, it has a moderate amount of hits.
|-
| Computational Psychology
| 4620
| Computational Psychology, also known as {{w|Computational cognition}} is the study of learning and cognition via mathematical modelling and computer simulation.
|-
| Computational Theology
| 40
| Computational Theology is a very fringe field, that seeks to explore the relations between God, religion and computer science and related phenomena.
|-
| Computational Dentistry
| 11
|Computational Dentistry refers to using artificial intelligence to improve dentistry. This could presumably be used to allow a robot to do troublesome tasks, such as root canals.
|-
| Computational Massage
| 1
| It is unknown what computation would be required for massage, if any. Searches show results for a paper on 'Computational Modeling of Deep Tissue Heating by an Automatic Thermal Massage Bed: Predicting the Effects on Circulation'.
|-
| Marine Physics
| 3920
| Marine Physics is a subfield of oceanography that focuses on the fundamental physical processes in the marine environment and their effects on the biosphere.
|-
| Marine Chemistry
| 136000
| Marine chemistry studies the chemistry of marine environments including the influences of different variables, such as plate tectonics, currents, sediments, pH levels, atmospheric constituents, metamorphic activity and ecology.
|-
| Marine Biology
| 945000
| Marine biology is the study of marine organisms, their behaviors and interactions with the environment. A very well established subfield of Biology, hence the high number of hits.
|-
| Marine Engineering
| 108000
| Marine engineering is the operation, maintenance and monitoring of mechanical systems aboard marine vessels, including boats, ships and submarines. Moderately known, due to the continued growth of the modern shipping industry.
|-
| Marine Psychology
| 35
| Marine Psychology is a subfield of Psychology that studies psychosocial issues and behavioral and safety concerns inherent in life and careers at sea. It does not refer to the psychology of marine life as one would assume, however.
|-
| Marine Theology
| 6
| Marine Theology is not an organised field of study, and is merely a convinient way to refer to Theology in Marine Biology. It may also result from discussion of aspectsctheology as they applies to a marine society (one heavily dependant on the sea, or subject to its effects, like an island-chain population).
|-
| Marine Dentistry
| 1
| Marine Dentistry is dentistry performed on marine animals, which falls under the field of veterinary science.
|-
| Marine Massage
| 1
| Marine Massage would probably be about underwater massages. Its unknown what benefits this might give over a traditional massage however.
|-
| Astrophysics
| 2010000
| Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. Just like Theoretical Physics, it is a field onto itself, and has the 3rd highest hits for a scientific field in the comic.
|-
| Astrochemistry
| 20600
| Astrochemistry is the study of molecules in the universe, and their interaction with radiation. A hybrid field of astronomy and chemistry with overlap with Astrophysics, especially when dealing with nuclear reactions.
|-
| Astrobiology
| 226000
| Astrobiology is a scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Fairly known due to the unanswered nature of the question 'Is there life beyond Earth.'
|-
| Astroengineering
| 430
| Astronomical engineering is engineering at the astronomical scale. Highly speculative, as humanity barely has progressed beyond the Earth, and mostly the realm of science fiction.
|-
| Astropsychology
| 64
| {{w|Psychological astrology}}, also known as Astropsychology, is a form of pseudoscience blending together astrology with fields of psychology.
|-
| Astrotheology
| 580
|{{w|Astrotheology}} is the worship of heavenly bodies as deities or by association to deities. It has its roots in ancient polytheistic religions, and has survived in various forms to present-day.
|-
| Astrodentistry
| None
| Astrodentistry presumably relates to performing dentistry on astronomical objects. As astronomical bodies do not have teeth,{{Citation needed}} this is impossible to perform, and hence impossible to research.
|-
| Astromassage
| None
| Astromassage can either mean performing massages on astronomical objects, which would be impossible, or performing massages on beings in space. Since there have been no trained massage therapists in space, it is unknown how one can massage a body in space, or how the human body reacts to massages in space.
|}

==Transcript==
:[A table is drawn with seven columns and six rows. Above each column and to the left of each row there is a label. All 42 fields are filled out with a number, except when the number is 0, then it says none in a red font. Above the table there is a large header:]
:<big>Number of search results on Google Scholar</big>
:{|class="wikitable"
|
| Physics
| Chemistry
| Biology
| Engineering
| Psychology
| Theology
| Dentistry
|-
| Theoretical
| 3,990,000
| 445,000
| 553,000
| 2,460
| 15,500
| 726
| 41
|-
| Quantum
| 478,000
| 740,000
| 7,620
| 21,100
| 699
| 447
| ''None'' 
|-
| High-Energy
| 844,000
| 9,600
| 3
| 119
| 1
| ''None'' 
| ''None'' 
|-
| Computational
| 510,000
| 599,000
| 2,910,000
| 67,400
| 4,620
| 40
| 11
|-
| Marine
| 3,920
| 136,000
| 945,000
| 108,000
| 35
| 6
| 1
|-
| Astro-
| 2,010,000
| 20,600
| 226,000
| 430
| 64
| 580
| ''None'' 
|}

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Potential research opportunities: Quantum Dentistry, High-Energy Dentistry, Astrodentistry, and High-Energy Theology

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Google Search]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Engineering]]
[[Category:Psychology]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Scientific research]]
[[Category:Confusion matrices]]

Talk:3046: Stromatolites

2025-02-06T09:24:58Z

141.101.98.187:

Yay, another Beret Guy appearance! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 03:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I'm trying to remember Bloom County and the penguin (Opus) or Snoopy by Schulz because of the last panel. Shrug. Prolly both. Warm is good. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.208|172.70.175.208]] 06:08, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:Add Zonker to this list? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.39|108.162.245.39]] 17:29, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:: Zonker Harris, yes! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.106|172.70.175.106]] 18:16, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

How can anybody be related to rock formations? Stomatolites are not organisms, they are the product of organisms. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.88|141.101.105.88]] 08:12, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:This might be one of Randall's weaker offerings in terms of scientific accuracy. I think that "stromatolites" as here used refers to the cyanobacterial component of stromatolites, which is the component detected in ancient fossils and is the one responsible for oxygen-evolving photosynthesis (responsible for what was perhaps the {{w|Great_Oxidation_Event|first global environmental catastrophe}} - an element of ancestry of which it might be wise not to boast). Modern stromatolites have both cyanobacteria (ancestors of plastids) and alpha-proteobacteria (ancestors of mitochondria) in their microbial mats, and it's reasonable to assume that alpha-proteobacteria were present in the fossils. So the "cousins" would be of cyanobacteria in the stromatolites, not the stromatolites themselves (in which both were, presumably, cohabiting). Beret Guy also appears to be confused about the proposed sequence of events leading to the origins of mitochondria and eukaryotic cell nuclei. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.39|108.162.245.39]] 17:29, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:I've seen the surviving microbial mats in Australia referred to as "stromatolites" as well.[[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 12:39, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if he is related to any specific dinosaurs or whether he bypassed that branch of the tree completely. 09:48, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I think there's a joke (or at least a reference) here about the relatedness of life. All currently-known organisms are related by descent from a common ancestor, which in English makes us all cousins, of various distances. Mitochondria in plants and animals, for instance, must descend from the same bacterium-like organism that became an endosymbiont in a proto-eukaryote.[[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 12:39, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:Since mitochondria and chloroplasts were both originally distinct organisms that were absorbed into the host cells, that makes most modern life descendants of cannibals. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:37, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
::By that logic, eating pretty much any food except salt (and maybe dairy?) is cannibalism. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.70.87|172.68.70.87]] 16:09, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I immediately thought of [https://fabpedigree.com/ Fabulous Pedigree], which ''does'' include ancestry (and side-branches) going back to (and past) mitochondria, though from a quick check it doesn't seem to specifically include stromatolites. Obviously the listing has lots of (mostly implied) gaps. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.217.72|162.158.217.72]] 13:55, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Beret Guy is emulating Pooh-Bah in The Mikado: "I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule."[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.190|172.69.33.190]] 19:07, 4 February 2025 (UTC)NickM

I've added a bit about the length of time it would need to take to click that far back in the past. I'm sure I have got the amount out by several orders of magnitude, so I would appreciate it if anyone fancies a go at estimating how long Beret Guy would have taken. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.27|172.71.241.27]] 10:49, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
: [[2608: Family Reunion]] estimates about 50 billion generations to the MRCA with plants; this would have taken about a century at a speed of 15 clicks per second. Bacteria reproduce extremely fast - or at least modern ones do - which could easily add a few trillion generations (and a few thousand years of clicking) on the bacterial side of the ancestry. In other words, "thousands of years" is likely an overestimate but not ''that'' much of one. (Obviously the time becomes very feasible if Beret Guy used a site that summarized the ancestry.) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.134|162.158.111.134]] 20:25, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
::Typically the way it works is you work back so far and then find a connection to a ''pre-existing'' tree, so he wouldn't need to go very far back to get to a tree that covered all modern humans, provided someone had already done the work beyond that point before him.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.29|172.70.91.29]] 10:27, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
:::...this would have required someone else to have (give or take a small proportion of BG's generations, due to mismatches) done the same work as BG ''and then'' the work that we're now excusing BG as having not done. Hard to know how that would happen
:::Theoretically, if the website/database was ''live'' at the point of the point of Most Recent Common Human Ancestor, that individual could establish the 'further back' (ready for BG's search to find them and latch on to it), or at least as far back as a prior MRCA that also had the website hand to pre-establish yet further back (for as many further iterations as necessary), which might even be tied in with ''how'' sufficiently(?) detailed core family tree data. But then BG's Special Powers is reliant upon finding a website that actually predates the web ('90s) and the internet ('70s), and networked databases ('60s), and programmable computers ('40s), and keyboards (let's say the 1700s), and mice (the paleocene, who would have probably prefered using {{w|Gopher (protocol)|gopher}}), that was somehow still interacted with in order to set things up ready for BG's own (more trivial) direct miracles. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.167|172.70.163.167]] 13:10, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
::::It would have required someone else to create it, but not necessarily by repeated clicking - they could have used some automated process to do it that would speed things up substantially. Of course, there is then a problem of where the data comes from to feed that process, but once you start worrying about that you've got a more fundamental issue than how quickly he (or anyone else) can click things.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.187|141.101.98.187]] 17:05, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Six paragraphs should be four. Too much non-explanatory and otherwise pointless digression. I'm sure the people who write it don't realize how much it turns off people coming here to read an explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.215.72|172.70.215.72]] 11:03, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
:Which two paragraphs? And we already have long paragraphs, but if we joined two pairs together then you'd be happy? Counting just paragraphs is not a good measure, whatever you really mean. And I guarantee that most of what you'd want to remove is only subjectively unnecessary.
:Personally, I'd like the existing six to be tightened up (somehow, yet to go through them to work out how), but each has good points in. Could you be happier with just less loquacious verbosity, but presenting the same general scope in less space? (Probably not, but depends exactly which elements are "pointless digression" in your POV...) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.167|172.70.163.167]] 13:10, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
:Tolkien wrote this about critique of his Lord of the Rings: "... for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved." In the absence of a polling system, how are folk to assess the significance of individual comments? One could do a Musk run through the text, roiling the explain-xkcd community and thereby creating a disturbance in the Force, without actually improving the read. The uncharacteristically poor handling of the science underlying the comic complicates efforts to achieve conciseness and clarity. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.146.32|172.71.146.32]] 14:07, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Parody? (with an evolutionary theory). Several news sites (tabloids?) occasionally write news about people being extremely distantly related to (e. g. 17th-order cousins and above) each other. This comic takes it to the extreme case of being related to the bacteria that created stromatolites. The evolutionary theory shown in the comic is that every organism (Bacteria and Archaea s. l.) is related. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.35.190|172.70.35.190]] 07:07, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

== The [[What If? chapters|What If? article index]] project ==

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure if you noticed the banner of the site, but for the last few weeks a group of [[Talk:What If? chapters|incredibly talented editors]] have been redesigning the [[What If? chapters|'''index of ''What If?'' articles''']] from the ground up. Among other things, we've merged two huge tables, added a TON of additional info, created complex templates, and made [[What If? chapters|dozens and dozens of other improvements]]. I believe that, as a wiki, we should have a complete and detailed index of all what if? articles, [[List of all comics (full)|just like we do for the comics]], and we're getting so close to that goal! We mostly only need to add the missing explanations, improve the existing ones, and add the questions and answer summary from the books (plus other things).

We would love your help (especially if you have the first book)! We've prepared a [[What If? chapters|to-do list]] at the top of the page, containing everything that needs to be done, if you're interested. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:00, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3046: Stromatolites

2025-02-05T17:05:50Z

141.101.98.187:

Yay, another Beret Guy appearance! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 03:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I'm trying to remember Bloom County and the penguin (Opus) or Snoopy by Schulz because of the last panel. Shrug. Prolly both. Warm is good. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.208|172.70.175.208]] 06:08, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:Add Zonker to this list? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.39|108.162.245.39]] 17:29, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:: Zonker Harris, yes! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.175.106|172.70.175.106]] 18:16, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

How can anybody be related to rock formations? Stomatolites are not organisms, they are the product of organisms. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.88|141.101.105.88]] 08:12, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:This might be one of Randall's weaker offerings in terms of scientific accuracy. I think that "stromatolites" as here used refers to the cyanobacterial component of stromatolites, which is the component detected in ancient fossils and is the one responsible for oxygen-evolving photosynthesis (responsible for what was perhaps the {{w|Great_Oxidation_Event|first global environmental catastrophe}} - an element of ancestry of which it might be wise not to boast). Modern stromatolites have both cyanobacteria (ancestors of plastids) and alpha-proteobacteria (ancestors of mitochondria) in their microbial mats, and it's reasonable to assume that alpha-proteobacteria were present in the fossils. So the "cousins" would be of cyanobacteria in the stromatolites, not the stromatolites themselves (in which both were, presumably, cohabiting). Beret Guy also appears to be confused about the proposed sequence of events leading to the origins of mitochondria and eukaryotic cell nuclei. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.39|108.162.245.39]] 17:29, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:I've seen the surviving microbial mats in Australia referred to as "stromatolites" as well.[[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 12:39, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if he is related to any specific dinosaurs or whether he bypassed that branch of the tree completely. 09:48, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I think there's a joke (or at least a reference) here about the relatedness of life. All currently-known organisms are related by descent from a common ancestor, which in English makes us all cousins, of various distances. Mitochondria in plants and animals, for instance, must descend from the same bacterium-like organism that became an endosymbiont in a proto-eukaryote.[[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 12:39, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
:Since mitochondria and chloroplasts were both originally distinct organisms that were absorbed into the host cells, that makes most modern life descendants of cannibals. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:37, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
::By that logic, eating pretty much any food except salt (and maybe dairy?) is cannibalism. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.70.87|172.68.70.87]] 16:09, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I immediately thought of [https://fabpedigree.com/ Fabulous Pedigree], which ''does'' include ancestry (and side-branches) going back to (and past) mitochondria, though from a quick check it doesn't seem to specifically include stromatolites. Obviously the listing has lots of (mostly implied) gaps. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.217.72|162.158.217.72]] 13:55, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Beret Guy is emulating Pooh-Bah in The Mikado: "I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule."[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.190|172.69.33.190]] 19:07, 4 February 2025 (UTC)NickM

I've added a bit about the length of time it would need to take to click that far back in the past. I'm sure I have got the amount out by several orders of magnitude, so I would appreciate it if anyone fancies a go at estimating how long Beret Guy would have taken. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.27|172.71.241.27]] 10:49, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
: [[2608: Family Reunion]] estimates about 50 billion generations to the MRCA with plants; this would have taken about a century at a speed of 15 clicks per second. Bacteria reproduce extremely fast - or at least modern ones do - which could easily add a few trillion generations (and a few thousand years of clicking) on the bacterial side of the ancestry. In other words, "thousands of years" is likely an overestimate but not ''that'' much of one. (Obviously the time becomes very feasible if Beret Guy used a site that summarized the ancestry.) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.134|162.158.111.134]] 20:25, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
::Typically the way it works is you work back so far and then find a connection to a ''pre-existing'' tree, so he wouldn't need to go very far back to get to a tree that covered all modern humans, provided someone had already done the work beyond that point before him.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.29|172.70.91.29]] 10:27, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
:::...this would have required someone else to have (give or take a small proportion of BG's generations, due to mismatches) done the same work as BG ''and then'' the work that we're now excusing BG as having not done. Hard to know how that would happen
:::Theoretically, if the website/database was ''live'' at the point of the point of Most Recent Common Human Ancestor, that individual could establish the 'further back' (ready for BG's search to find them and latch on to it), or at least as far back as a prior MRCA that also had the website hand to pre-establish yet further back (for as many further iterations as necessary), which might even be tied in with ''how'' sufficiently(?) detailed core family tree data. But then BG's Special Powers is reliant upon finding a website that actually predates the web ('90s) and the internet ('70s), and networked databases ('60s), and programmable computers ('40s), and keyboards (let's say the 1700s), and mice (the paleocene, who would have probably prefered using {{w|Gopher (protocol)|gopher}}), that was somehow still interacted with in order to set things up ready for BG's own (more trivial) direct miracles. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.167|172.70.163.167]] 13:10, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
::::It would have required someone else to create it, but not necessarily by repeated clicking - they could have used some automated process to do it that would speed things up substantially. Of course, there is then a problem of where the data comes from to feed that process, but once you start worrying about that you've got a more fundamental issue than how quickly he (or anyone else) can click things.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.187|141.101.98.187]] 17:05, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Six paragraphs should be four. Too much non-explanatory and otherwise pointless digression. I'm sure the people who write it don't realize how much it turns off people coming here to read an explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.215.72|172.70.215.72]] 11:03, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
:Which two paragraphs? And we already have long paragraphs, but if we joined two pairs together then you'd be happy? Counting just paragraphs is not a good measure, whatever you really mean. And I guarantee that most of what you'd want to remove is only subjectively unnecessary.
:Personally, I'd like the existing six to be tightened up (somehow, yet to go through them to work out how), but each has good points in. Could you be happier with just less loquacious verbosity, but presenting the same general scope in less space? (Probably not, but depends exactly which elements are "pointless digression" in your POV...) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.167|172.70.163.167]] 13:10, 5 February 2025 (UTC)
:Tolkien wrote this about critique of his Lord of the Rings: "... for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved." In the absence of a polling system, how are folk to assess the significance of individual comments? One could do a Musk run through the text, roiling the explain-xkcd community and thereby creating a disturbance in the Force, without actually improving the read. The uncharacteristically poor handling of the science underlying the comic complicates efforts to achieve conciseness and clarity. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.146.32|172.71.146.32]] 14:07, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

== The [[What If? chapters|What If? article index]] project ==

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure if you noticed the banner of the site, but for the last few weeks a group of [[Talk:What If? chapters|incredibly talented editors]] have been redesigning the [[What If? chapters|'''index of ''What If?'' articles''']] from the ground up. Among other things, we've merged two huge tables, added a TON of additional info, created complex templates, and made [[What If? chapters|dozens and dozens of other improvements]]. I believe that, as a wiki, we should have a complete and detailed index of all what if? articles, [[List of all comics (full)|just like we do for the comics]], and we're getting so close to that goal! We mostly only need to add the missing explanations, improve the existing ones, and add the questions and answer summary from the books (plus other things).

We would love your help (especially if you have the first book)! We've prepared a [[What If? chapters|to-do list]] at the top of the page, containing everything that needs to be done, if you're interested. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:00, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Talk:1579: Tech Loops

2015-09-18T11:19:04Z

141.101.98.187:

RANDALL, WHY DID YOU GIVE ME AN EXISTENIAL CRISIS?! [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.113|173.245.54.113]] 10:49, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

There are only three loops; "Awful hack from 2009" and "IRC for some reason" forms one, "Tool" → "Updater" → "Library" → "Tool" is the second, and there's a long one from "Awful hack from 2009" → "Library" → "Library" → "Custom settings" → "Library" → "Hardware workaround" → "Awful hack from 2009". Any other path not from "DLL needed by something" ends at "Repository". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.193|108.162.237.193]] 04:35, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

: I think the fact that "Repository" ends to be a sink (only entering connections) is a mistake - all other have at least one entry and at least one exit --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 07:24, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

:: No, I think that makes sense. A repository is where something is stored. If it's in use by something, it's not a repository. Of course, I'm thinking that repository means something like "USB Hard Drive", so I might be wrong. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.187|108.162.249.187]] 09:12, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
::: I agree to this. A repository is a perfect location for "dumping" things where they never come back [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 09:31, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
:::: I interpreted it to mean that the repository hosts the things it is dependent on, using the things it is dependent on, making the loop conceptual. The code that is hosted in the repository is only ultimately required because of the need for the repository to host thing code that the repository runs on. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.187|141.101.98.187]] 11:19, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

665: Prudence

2015-05-26T12:40:56Z

141.101.98.187: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia, not the second.

{{comic
| number = 665
| date = November 20, 2009
| title = Prudence
| image = prudence.png
| titletext = Moments later, the White Witch rolls up and, confused, tries to tempt the probe with a firmware upgrade.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic references the fantasy novel series "{{w|The Chronicles of Narnia}}" by {{w|C. S. Lewis}}. In the first book (and the first movie), four children discover the fictional world of Narnia which can be accessed through a wardrobe.

The comic mocks at the imprudent behaviour shown by the protagonists of the novel, who enter the world of Narnia without knowing anything about its dangers. In the comic, Megan discovers the magical wardrobe while playing {{w|hide-and-seek}}. Unlike the original characters, Megan does not precipitately set foot into Narnia. Instead, she fetches her technical equipment and sends a remote-controlled probe through the wardrobe door in order to sound the situation first. The probe can be seen in the last panel, encountering {{w|Mr. Tumnus}} the faun with an umbrella at a lamppost in a snowy wood. This picture is the first impression of Narnia in the novels and was apparently Lewis' original idea for the series.

The {{w|White Witch}} mentioned in the title text is the main antagonist in the novel. She originally lures one of the protagonists with a hot drink and Turkish Delight. In the scenario displayed in the comic, she tries to tempt the probe with a firmware update accordingly.

Megan takes a scientific approach to Narnia again in [[821: Five-Minute Comics: Part 3|a later comic]].

==Transcript==
:[Megan is running towards a closed wardrobe.]
:Someone off-panel: Everyone hide! 99... 98... 97...

:[Megan opens the wardrobe.]
:Wardrobe: click

:Megan, looking inside: !!!

:[Megan looks thoughtful.]

:[Megan walks away.]

:[Megan returns with an armful of electronics.]

:[Megan is kneeling, typing on a laptop, which has a cord extending into the wardrobe.]

:[A robotic probe is approaching Mr. Tumnus, the faun, under the lamppost in narnia.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan‏‎]]

Talk:505: A Bunch of Rocks

2015-03-29T22:46:35Z

141.101.98.187:

;Weird thing with lines in it
probably has something to do with relativity -- two objects moving, arriving at different points at the same time, or maybe a diagram of spacetime. [[Special:Contributions/66.202.132.250|66.202.132.250]] 16:44, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

It's a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_diagram Feynman Diagram] [[Special:Contributions/206.174.12.203|206.174.12.203]] 19:24, 10 June 2013 (UTC) Toby Ovod-Everett

:I did add the incomplete tag because this comic and also the explain is still really complex. More important: People without a proper physics background never will understand. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:01, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

There is a short story called "SOLE SOLUTION" by Eric Frank Russell which is quite similar to the one in the story. Just in case that matters.{{unsigned|Maob}}

Re Rule 34 - the point is that this comic _is_ cellular automaton porn (as are the YouTube videos of Minecraft calculators and the like). Rule 34 works, bitches! {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.241}}

Not sure what's incomplete about the explain. [[User:MrGameZone|0100011101100001011011010110010101011010011011110110111001100101]] ([[User talk:MrGameZone|talk page]]) 22:56, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Yo ''calculus'' is the latin word for pebble! I learned this and had to come straight to this page! ahhh connections! [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.88|173.245.50.88]] Sawyer Biddle

As it turns out, Rule 110 seems to be a ''really bad'' way to simulate a universe- you would be much better off using a {{w|Tag_system|Cyclic tag system}}, since Rule 110 takes dozens of generations and potentially hundreds of cells to simulate one step in such a system, or a more sophisticated cellular automaton, such as {{w|Wireworld.}} --[[User:Someone Else 37|Someone Else 37]] ([[User talk:Someone Else 37|talk]]) 05:12, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

To whoever objected to panel number references, does what I did with first words fix that? {{unsigned ip|199.27.128.99}}

Well, that's a pretty unfair comparison in the last panel, the protag is immortal after all, if I'm immortal I might do the same thing, but hey we got a much shorter life to live {{unsigned ip|103.22.201.168}}

The diagram to the right of the Epitaph of Stevinus looks like a system of coupled pendula, often used in math physics courses to illustrate Lagrangian mechanics. Also may relate to elasticity theory. See for example here: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ThreePendulumsConnectedByTwoSprings. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.96|108.162.221.96]] 03:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
:If this is true (which seems like the most probable solution so far) then what do the symbols inside the boxes represent?{{unsigned ip|108.162.216.209}}
:: Spring constants, masses, lengths, etc [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.220|108.162.221.220]] 18:11, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
::: The symbols on the top seem to be K and the bottom W. W is often used for angular momentum and K for potential energy. If you are not exactly right you are very close to being so.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.209|108.162.216.209]] 13:45, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
:The "diagram to the right of the Epitaph of Stevinus", also described as "A weird diagram with lines in it", or "partitioning of phase space into fundamental cells", or " system of coupled pendula, often used in math physics courses to illustrate Lagrangian mechanics", can be described more literally: ''There is are two horizontal rulers with divisions 13 pixels apart and 17 pixels apart, respectively; and diagonal lines showing the correspondence between the first four markings of the upper ruler with those on the lower. The intervals seem to be labeled.'' Returning to speculation, I think this suggests an illustration of '''Length contraction (Lorentz coordinate transformation) in Special Relativity'''. [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 20:22, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
:: That seems highly unlikely due to the top labels on this graph. In your explanation they can’t represent anything relevant. Also if this diagram is used to represent spatial contraction, it does not do a good job of it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.209|108.162.216.209]] 13:45, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
::: I imagined the labels were, top row: O', x', (2x)'; bottom row: O, x, 2x, Δv; or perhaps top row: Δx₁', Δx₂', Δx₃'; bottom row Δx₁, Δx₂, Δx₃, 0.7c. I don't think Randall put enough thought into those tiny squiggles for us to be able to use pixel-counting as a hint to which labels interpretation is more likely… but what of it? We can make up labels that fit any interpretation. I did say "Length contraction (Lorentz...)" was just ''speculation''. I do like the "four pendulums coupled by springs" idea, though the horizontals look too ruler-like to me. It might be better just to say "two horizontal ruled lines linked by some diagonals" ! [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 17:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
:::: You are totally right, this one may always be pure speculation. Though I am pretty sure the bottom points are labeled w, the top is by no means clear. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.209|108.162.216.209]] 20:46, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
::::: I propose that we change it again, from (current text: "A depiction of length contraction, with two lines of the same length locally but different lengths as one is viewed in motion") to something like ''"A depiction of length contraction with two rulers in relative motion, or of several pendulums coupled by springs"''. Or mention the pendula idea first, I don't want to decide. [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 02:20, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
:::::: Though it's in panel before that one, there's the text "and then some" referencing going beyond what we currently know in a field - could it ''possibly'' be that this is supposed to represent something we haven't derived yet? -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 10:44, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
:Also, I'd like to point out that all three diagrams unify the theme of "working out the kinks in quantum mechanics and relativity": The first illustrates a region of the bell curve where a particle might occasionally fall if it is about to exhibit quantum tunneling; the second relates to perpetual motion, thus hinting at general questions like "does quantum mechanics or relativity allow us to violate the laws of thermodynamics in any way?", and the third is from special relativity. [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 20:22, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
:: Having studied (and knowing the fundamentals about what profile is needed to create a device that performs quantum tunneling) I have never seen this graph as a representation of this, and frankly it makes no sense. If this diagram was an energy band the hole or electron would have no need to tunnel to go up or down the energy band as it is a gradual slope. If a device had a profile like this, it would not result in a significant number of tunneling events, especially at the positions that are marked on the diagram. For this to occur there would need to be a peak between the two points, and the points would need to be at similar heights (energy levels). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.209|108.162.216.209]] 13:06, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
::: Yes, you're right: all we know is that it's a bell curve (normal distribution), and mentioning "tunneling" might make the reader think we were saying it is a potential function. I was reading a bit much into it. Why are there two vertical dotted lines at roughly +σ and +2σ? I thought they indicated a "range" as if the graph were illustrating some discussion of things that fall within that range. I also incorrectly remembered what the Epitaph of Stevinus was about, so thanks for the corrections :-) [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 16:57, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
:::: I think we could reasonably add that the function represents a probability distribution of a partial, therefore tying in the quantum aspects. with a minor explanation of the probibility of 1 and 2 sigma. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.209|108.162.216.209]] 20:46, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
::::: I do think it was okay without the extra text referencing quantum mechanics. I was just trying to find a way to relate the image to the words… but there are so many ways to relate the normal distribution to anything in science :-) [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 02:20, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

The bigger picture that's missing on this explains it that this comic seems to suggest that Cueball is God, as in being stuck in Eternity who happened to build a simulated universe, which we all live in. Seeing how he addresses the reader "So if you see a mote of dust vanish from your vision in a little flash or something I'm sorry. I must have misplaced a rock sometime in the last few billions and billions of millennia." {{[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.238|141.101.105.238]] 10:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC)}}
: I understand that English might not be your first language, but please clarify. The explanation covers Cueball being godlike. How can we add something that is already covered? Do you require further detail? Are you disagreeing with this assessment? Are you considering this observation irrelevant as your summary for your first comment "added not about Cueball being God" seems to imply? If so why?[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.209|108.162.216.209]] 17:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
:: nm. I blatantly overlooked the exisiting sentence in the explanation. i blame the layout of this page. inline text that spans the whole available screen width is not pleasant to read on large displays ;) ...as for my English... the confusion stems from my bad keyboard/typing. it was meant to read "added notE about Cueball" for instance, or "as in A being stuck". [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.233|141.101.105.233]] 08:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
:::you could shrink your window and display narrower lines of text(?) -- I guess it comes down to preference for masochism(?)... idunno. I think one of the most confusing parts of your question (and which may have contributed most to the ESL idea) is "missing on this explains it that...". Also, "as in being stuck" makes more sense than "as in a being stuck", though it seems you're suggesting otherwise (?) and I don't see any text mentioning added not(E) about Cueball) -- oh wait; is this a troll? -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 15:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Who or what is Nugui and why is it relivent.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.209|108.162.216.209]] 17:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

is randall not assuming that his universe (and by implication ours) is finite? if not, one iteration of the machine would still take infinite time. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.201|141.101.98.201]] 12:42, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
: I think it's good enough to assume that the universe is finite, but really really huge. Hypothesizing that adding one particle to the model requires twice as many cells in the cellular automaton, that means that Cueball's cellular automata rows could be about 2^(10^80) cells long, allowing simulation of a physics system containing 10^80 particles. Of course, each planck-time would require 2^(10^80) steps of simulation in the CA. If 10^80 isn't big enough for you, then just make it 10^1000 or Graham's number, or anything finite. [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 16:57, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Did anyone notice that the binary numbers pointing to the particle are both 42? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.16|108.162.241.16]] 19:26, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
:I did now. :) But, somewhere, he left out the towel. [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 14:33, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Just as a curiosity -- there is a somewhat similar concept in "Permutation City", a book by Greg Egan. {{unsigned ip|141.101.88.211}}
:And dust is probably a reference to Dust Theory: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ.html

Talk:1407: Worst Hurricane

2014-08-14T10:11:27Z

141.101.98.187: colouring the map

I tried to list all the unnamed hurricanes, but I gave up after 1938. Anybody feel like finishing it? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.195|108.162.219.195]] 05:37, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

The current explanation seems to interpret the title text completely wrongly; it isn't about finding a person that lived in *all* of the states, but finding people that lived in *each*. The point is that the entire data is estimated based on rainfall, not based on actually asking people the question. {{unsigned ip|108.162.250.231}}

Hurricane Audrey was in June 1957.{{unsigned|Jkrstrt}}

Some areas in the map is pretty large se Opal, Katrina, Hugo while others are very small like 1946 near the tip of Florida. I don't know much about hurricanes but could one draw a conclusion that the hurricanes in the small areas are not as bad as the larger ones (and that some large ones like those near Mexico, are large only because they don't receive many hurricanes)? Should one add a note in the description why not entire America is mapped? We know that the Atlantic is very good at producing hurricanes but why doesn't the Pacific Ocean produce as many? I write my comment out of curiousity hoping someone has the answers, not that I know much about this (I am not even an American). [[User:Aquaplanet|Aquaplanet]] ([[User talk:Aquaplanet|talk]]) 10:09, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
:On the Pacific coast of the US we get no hurricanes. This is due to the cold water flowing south from Alaska rather than coming north from the equator. This in turn is due to the clockwise flow of large bodies of water in the northern hemisphere, which is in turn due to the coreolis effect (caused by the rotation of the earth.) In California we only remember hurricanes because we here about them on the news, or occasionally when we travel. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.134|108.162.215.134]] 10:25, 13 August 2014 (UTC)BluDgeons

:There are no hurricanes in Pacific because they are called {{w|Typhoon}}s ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoonhttp://www.diffen.com/difference/Hurricane_vs_Typhoon difference]) and damage places like South East Asia where the concentration of news reporters is lower. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 11:01, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
::I swear there must be a small joke in there about the reporters, but the veil is a bit too opaque for me, I fear... Also, is it kosher for me to fix people's links, if it's evident what needs to be fixed, and what they ''meant'' to put? -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 11:19, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
:::You're welcome, and actually encouraged, to do that; a wiki is a group project, with every editor contributing their knowledge and fixing others' errors.--[[User:Troy0|Troy0]] ([[User talk:Troy0|talk]]) 12:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

"'If you think there was a worse one, find a 105 year old resident who agrees!'" I would like to point out that if someone has the specific hurricane that they would like to claim to be worse than the presented one, they only need to find someone who experienced both hurricanes; there is no need for 105-year-olds every time.--[[User:Troy0|Troy0]] ([[User talk:Troy0|talk]]) 12:16, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there any rhyme or reason to the parentheses? I can't figure out why we have ''Connie (1955)'' and ''Diane 1955''. [[User:Jameslucas|jameslucas]] ([[User talk:Jameslucas|" "]] / [[Special:Contributions/Jameslucas|+]]) 13:10, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

If we make a complete list, are we ordering it chronologically or north-to-south? It seems easier to list it from Maine to Texas. Unless we can create a list that lets you adjust those fields which I don't know how to do[[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.152|173.245.56.152]] 12:44, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
:There is no proper north to south order, but we could create a table with name, year, state and description, so you can order by it. [[User:Condor70|Condor70]] ([[User talk:Condor70|talk]]) 15:07, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Very cool. And next someone could mash this up with a population density map and find the number of people likely to remember each one as "worst", then sort by that ro find the hurricane most-remembered as "worst". [[User:Nealmcb|Nealmcb]] ([[User talk:Nealmcb|talk]]) 15:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

This comic might have been inspired by Robin William's bit on hurricanes in ''Weapons of Self-Destruction'' in light of his recent death.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.217.95|108.162.217.95]] 15:19, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

It might be of interest to colour the hurricanes by decade; see if there's a visible secular trend in hurricane "worseness". [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.187|141.101.98.187]] 20:24, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
:Like this? (smaller version isn't yet available or I'd link to that) --[[User:Mwarren|Mwarren]] ([[User talk:Mwarren|talk]]) 00:36, 14 August 2014 (UTC) 
::Not really. That doesn't distinguish between hurricanes which were the worse over a small area, and the worse over a large area. A less bad hurricane that by chance hasn't been topped in a small locality has the same weight as a more intense one that was the worse over large tracts of land. What I was thinking of was colouring the map according to date - start at hue 0 (red) in 1914 and end at hue 200 (magenta) in 2014. The problem is that the potential sample bias mentioned would lead to a apparent trend to worser hurricanes, so any map so coloured wouldn't necessarily represent the reality of the record.
[[File:XKCD_1407_with_timeline.png]]
 

That's beautiful but I thought it would be more like the tables here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elements (maybe not the best example) but each vertical column would be ordered so we'd have dates, states, severity, etc. Just basically like a grid. Maybe I was alone in that thought. {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.152}}

Talk:1407: Worst Hurricane

2014-08-13T20:24:34Z

141.101.98.187:

1380: Manual for Civilization

2014-06-11T07:50:15Z

141.101.98.187:

{{comic
| number = 1380
| date = June 11, 2014
| title = Manual for Civilization
| image = manual_for_civilization.png
| titletext = We will have an entire wing of the library devoted to copies of book #26, because ohmygod it's the one where Jake and Cassie finally KISS!!!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:[Brian Eno is talking to an unseen audience]
:Brian Eno: Hi. I'm music's Brian Eno, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation.

:[Panel 2 shows he is standing on a stage]
:Brian Eno: As part of our mission to promote long-term thinking, we've asked experts to help us assemble a collection of books from which civilization can be rebuilt if it ever collapses.

:[Panel 3 shows he is holding a manuscript]
:Brian Eno: Today we're showing the results - the first ever ''Manual for Civilization''.

:Brian Eno: *Ahem* ''Animorphs #1: The Invasion'', ''Animorths #2: The Visitor'', ''Animorphs #3: The Encounter''
:Unseen Audience member: ...Are they ''all'' Animorphs Books?
:Brian Eno: No! There's also ''Megamorphs'' and ''The Andalite Chronicles''.
{{comic discussion}}