explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1593: Play-By-Play

2015-10-21T15:30:39Z

Mellowish: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1593
| date = October 21, 2015
| title = Play-By-Play
| image = play_by_play.png
| titletext = The thrower started hitting the bats too much, so the king of the game told him to leave and brought out another thrower from thrower jail.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Beret Guy]] comments on a {{w|Baseball|baseball}} game in a way that demonstrates that he has never seen one previously. Moreover, his naïve way of speaking reveals that he is not aware of his lack of knowledge and does not consider it possible that, as is probably the case, his audience is much more familiar with this sport and its rules.

While the text sounds like it was done in the same style as Up-Goer Five, it does not comply with Randall's rules for Thing Explainer. Running the text of the comic through simplewriter shows that this comic uses words that are not among the 10,000 most commonly used words in the English language. The non-complying words are "Bat," "Shelves" "Wow," "Rude," "Teammates," "Pillow," "Yikes," and "Hopefully."

This comic may also be seen as a commentary on the fact that the final trailer for Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens was shown at halftime during Monday Night Football on the Monday just prior to this comic's publication. A commonly held prejudice is that those who are interested in sports (whether it's baseball, football, or whatever) and would be watching professional football on Monday night is a different population from the group that would be excited about seeing the trailer for a science fiction film as soon as humanly possible. This comic seems to be poking fun at science fiction fans, who are often experts in the details and esoterica of fictional worlds, and how they would react to a sports game they have no practical experience with.

{| class="wikitable"
! Text
! Explanation
|-
|"We're on part 5 of a hitting game."
|Part of baseball is hitting the ball with the {{w|Baseball bat|bat}}. A game is divided into 9 rounds, or {{w|Inning|innings}}.
|-
|"The next guy has a big bat, so he'll probably hit the ball real far."
|Every hitter uses a bat that fits his physique (within certain {{w|Baseball_bat#Baseball_bat_regulations|limits}}). Carrying a larger bat does not automatically mean successfully batting the ball far.
|-
|"Wait - he missed!" "Oh good, they're letting him try again."
|The {{w|Pitcher|pitcher}} tries to throw (or pitch) the ball in such a way as to make it hard for the hitter to hit the ball, but still have the ball go through the {{w|Strike zone|strike zone}}. (A swing and a miss is counted as a strike, regardless of whether the ball passes the strike zone.) A hitter is out when he accumulates three strikes (a {{w|Strikeout|strikeout}}); thus, swinging and missing will not get a hitter out if he has not accumulated two strikes already, and in this case he will be allowed to "try again".
|-
|"The people sitting on the chair shelves are yelling at this guy but he's ignoring them."
|Cheering and heckling is so commonplace that the players on the field are unlikely to react to it. "Chair shelves" refers to {{w|bleacher}}s.
|-
|"This thrower is good! He keeps making people leave by throwing balls at them."
|The pitcher strikes out every hitter, who then has to leave the batting area and gets replaced by another hitter (until three outs after which the teams switch sides). Or, he keeps {{w|Base on Balls|walking}} hitters, making them leave the batting area and go to first base.
|-
|"It's just him, though. None of his teammates are joining in."
|The other players of the team do not pitch, they wait until the batter successfully hits the ball into the field.
|-
|"That guy just ran to the second pillow when no one was looking!!"
|Any {{w|Baserunning|baserunner}} (a player standing at a {{w|Baseball field|base}} waiting to run to the next base) can attempt to run to the next base when the pitcher is delivering a pitch (called {{w|Stolen base|stealing a base}}). The pitcher can throw the ball to a defense player to {{w|Tag out|tag out}} the runner before he reaches the next base. Thus, an attempt to steal a base is most successful if no one notices.
|-
|"Everyone's real mad but I guess they checked the rules and there's nothing that says he can't do that."
|Successfully stealing a base, an infrequent event, usually receives a lot of cheers, especially if the offensive team is the home team. This may be a reference to [[1552: Rulebook]].
|-
|Title text: "The thrower started hitting the bats too much, so the king of the game told him to leave and brought out another thrower from thrower jail."
|A pitcher throwing pitches that get hit too often is undesirable, and will be substituted by a {{w|Relief pitcher|relief pitcher}} who will come out of the {{w|Bullpen|bullpen}} (the area next to the playing field where relief pitchers warm up; the "thrower jail") to join the game. Substitution decisions are made by the manager of the team (the "king of the game", though this name wrongfully suggests that one "king" controls both teams).
|}

==Transcript==
:[Beret guy is sitting with headphones with a microphone on, looking out of the frame, hands resting on a table.]
:Beret Guy: For those just joining us, hi! We're on part 5 of a hitting game.

:[Zoom out with Beret guy shown from the side sitting at a desk.]
:Beret Guy: The next guy has a big bat, so he'll probably hit the ball real far.
:Beret Guy: Wait - he missed!
:Beret Guy: Oh good, they're letting him try again.

:[Zoom in again on Beret Guy still seen from the side.]
:Beret Guy: The people sitting on the chair shelves are yelling at this guy but he's ignoring them. Wow.
:Beret Guy: Rude.

:[Beret guy looks straight out.]
:Beret Guy: This thrower is good! He keeps making people leave by throwing balls at them.
:Beret Guy: It's just him, though. None of his teammates are joining in.

:[Beret guy turns his head to the side.]
:Beret Guy: ''That guy just ran to the second pillow when no one was looking!!''
:Beret Guy: Everyone's real mad but I guess they checked the rules and there's nothing that says he can't do that.
:Beret Guy: Yikes. Hopefully they can fix that once this game is over.

==Trivia==
* Even though Beret Guy speaks in simple words, his speech fails the [http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ Thing Explainer word checker] due to the words "bat", "shelves", "wow", "rude", "teammates", "pillow", "rules", "yikes", and "hopefully".

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Baseball]]
[[Category:Simplified language]]

1592: Overthinking

2015-10-19T22:15:27Z

Mellowish: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1592
| date = October 19, 2015
| title = Overthinking
| image = overthinking.png
| titletext = On the other hand, it took us embarrassingly long to clue in to the lung cancer/cigarette thing, so I guess the real lesson is "figuring out which ideas are true is hard."
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Cueball]] is telling [[White Hat]] about several recent scientific studies he read that appear to contradict the results of either prior studies whose results have stood for a long time or at least long-held misconceptions. The studies can be reviewed on-line via their {{w|Digital Object Identifier}} (DOI) in [[Randall|Randall's]] citations.

In the first, Cueball mentions a study that showed that while water is good for you, you only need to drink when you are thirsty. This appears to be a reference to common misconceptions that we should drink a certain set quantity of water per day (oft-cited as eight cups - see [[715: Numbers]]) and may even be referencing a belief drinking water can be bad for you.

Another recent study showed that prolonged sitting is not bad for you which contradicts the long-held belief that sitting at a desk all day is unhealthy and that standing or lying down are healthier. The study showed that the position is not particularly relevant if there is no physical activity in any of the positions.

Finally, Cueball references a study that pre-industrial humans have similar sleep patterns to our own, which would appear to contradict a belief that modern technology has disrupted our sleep patterns (which is likely tied to health concerns around our modern sleep habits).

Cueball's conclusion is that humanity may be over-thinking things in trying to find problems in the way we live our everyday lives. In the last panel, White Hat seems to be attempting to start an inquiry into what everyday modern phenomenon has caused us to over-think things. This is obviously a self-referencing example of the types of claims Cueball is debunking in the first three panels. Cueball responds by suggesting that humanity's over-thinking is likely not a recent phenomenon but probably dates back to the stone age. This could also be viewed as an argument that over-thinking is not all bad. The wheel is definitely an good result of over-thinking.

In the title text, Cueball gives a counter-example to his own argument, suggesting that it took far longer for us to realize the negative health connotations of smoking than it should have. That said, the link between cigarettes and lung cancer has been known for longer than most people realize, possibly coming as early as the 1940s.

It is noted that White Hat does not fulfill his usual role in this comic of being the character with an odd "surreal" way of thinking, although his leap to blame humanity's over-thinking on some environmental cause could be seen as an unusual comment in line with his character.

===Links to studies referenced===
* Panel 1: [https://dx.doi.org/10.1097/JSM.0000000000000221 DOI:10.1097/JSM.0000000000000221]: [http://journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Fulltext/2015/07000/Statement_of_the_Third_International.2.aspx "Statement of the Third International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference, Carlsbad, California, 2015"], ''Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine'', July 2015, Retrieved 19-Oct-2015
* Panel 2: [https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyv191 DOI:10.1093/ije/dyv191]: [http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ije.dyv191 "Associations of sitting behaviours with all-cause mortality over a 16-year follow-up: the Whitehall II study"], ''International Journal of Epidemiology'', 27-Aug-2015, Retrieved 19-Oct-2015
* Panel 3: [https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.046 DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.046]: [http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)01157-4 "Natural Sleep and Its Seasonal Variations in Three Pre-industrial Societies"], ''Current Biology'', 15-Oct-2015, Retrieved 19-Oct-2015

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and White Hat are walking together. The references are at the bottom of the thee first panels.]
:Cueball: I found a study* that said water is good for you, but you should just drink it when you feel thirsty and not go overboard.
:White Hat: Uh huh?
:<nowiki>*</nowiki>DOI:10.1097/JSM.0000000000000221

:[More walking with Cueball lifting his hand in front of him.]
:Cueball: Another study* found that prolonged sitting isn't necessarily bad for you, as long as you're also getting exercise.
:White Hat: Okay...
:<nowiki>*</nowiki>DOI:10.1093/ije/dyv191

:[A border-less panel, but still walking.]
:Cueball:Now a study* claims that humans in pre-industrial societies stay up late and sleep 6 or 7 hours a night, just like most people today.
:White Hat: Huh.
:White Hat: So what you're saying is...
:<nowiki>*</nowiki>DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.046

:[Zoom out showing Cueball and White Hat walking in silhouette.]
:Cueball: Maybe we're overthinking it.
:White Hat: But what ''caused'' our modern epidemic of overthinking?! Plumbing? Or is it email?
:Cueball: Modern? I bet the wheel was invented by someone overthinking "pushing."

==Trivia==
*In the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/0/0d/20151019153329!overthinking.png original version] of the comic the three DOIs where shifted one panel, so the reference in the first panel belonged to the second panel, the second belonged to the third panel and the reference in the third panel belonged to the first. This was corrected within a few hours.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Science]]