https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=141.101.104.5&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T15:49:57ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2458:_Bubble_Wrap&diff=211529Talk:2458: Bubble Wrap2021-05-04T15:46:42Z<p>141.101.104.5: bubble wrap is not "smell tight"</p>
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<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
In another 25 years, unpopped bubble wrap will be the only source of pure air left in the world. [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 04:42, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
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:In 25 ''thousand'' years, scientists will use bubble wrap to see what the air what like today, in a similar fashion to how we use ice core samples to look at the atmosphere from thousands of years ago. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.74|108.162.249.74]] 04:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
::mmm, air time capsule. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.204|162.158.63.204]] 13:55, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
<br />
WD-40 is not a lubricant. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.244|172.68.65.244]] 05:16, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
: You're right, but in the time it took for you to post the comment, you could have just fixed it. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 07:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
:: Are you sure? Its not ''lube'' despite its penetrating powers, I'll concede to that. But why wouldn't it be a lubricant? Its an oil based product, I need more context. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.170.142|172.69.170.142]] 07:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
::: You're right, that since it's oil based it can and sometimes is used as a short term lubricant. However it is not advisable to use it (or other penetrating oils) that way. They generally evaporate too quickly to be used long term. You'd have to constantly reapply it to moving parts. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 09:27, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
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Could the comic be some sort of mocking people who taste all weird stuff from wine? Or basically anyone who has a distinguished taste on [wine, whiskey, tobacco, cheese etc]? [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 08:59, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I relegated the "sound of popping bubblewrap" out of being the single explicit reason why people like doing it, although obviously different people have different needs (up to and including annoying ''other'' people by the noise they create, as perhaps the primary reason to pop the bubbles when given the opportunity), but it's a complex issue. [https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/Why-Do-People-Like-Bubble-Wrap-So-Much There's various explanations out there], and I know I get ''more'' frustrated when I have to try harder to pop 'pop resisting' stuff, even with the same end sound, or can be satisfied with pin-pricking with something sharp to 'doodle' a pop-pattern (and/or flood-fill a methodical 'wasteland' of poppedness) even if it gives nothing more than a faint 'snick'/hiss sound whilst doing it.<br />
<br />
...but, no, I've never thought of sniffing it. I suppose I always imagined it was inflated with compressed gasses, like "packaged in a protective atmosphere", for foodstuffs, even though this now sounds ridiculously over-engineered to waste fractionated atmosphere or chemically-evolved gas rather than just blow in (filtered) atmosphere, or even just letting the plastic layers settle down over the original ambient airgap when fusing the 'bubble edges' down between them - however they actually do it.<br />
<br />
And then there's the old chestnut about using helium-filled bubble-wrap to reduce/nullify (charged by weight) shipping costs! Note, though, that it's commonly suggested, if you search around, and then commonly refuted by (among other things) the economics of buying enough helium-filled packaging to make any postage-rate change. I suppose you could invest in equipment to split water (powered by solar power) and try infusing it into a standard air-pocket wrapping (could that break even, eventually?), though shipping companies might well consider the Hindenbubblewrap strays outside their standard handling processes so no longer benefits from the sought after lightness-discount. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.146|141.101.98.146]] 09:45, 4 May 2021 (UTC)<br />
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I think that some times bubble wrap is made with out air and then sent out and inflated where it is needed.<br />
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Bubble wrap is usually made of LDPE, polyethylene. This polymer is quite permeable for many chemicals, especially more lipophilic ones. WD-40 "smell" definitely wouldn't stay in a bubble for long and neither would most components of diesel exhaust. I think the comparison between bubble wrap and ice cores is thus too far fetched since bulk ice provides _much_ better isolation than an LDPE foil. But I am not sure if Randall is aware that all three smells rely on a quite esoteric view and wouldn't work even in theory.</div>141.101.104.5https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2456:_Types_of_Scientific_Paper&diff=2114982456: Types of Scientific Paper2021-05-04T08:53:26Z<p>141.101.104.5: /* Derivatives */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2456<br />
| date = April 28, 2021<br />
| title = Types of Scientific Paper<br />
| image = types_of_scientific_paper.png<br />
| titletext = Others include "We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient," "Maybe all these categories are wrong," and "We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks."<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a RESEARCH DEPARTMENT ON A LUNCHBREAK. The explanation is one line of text and a table, the table's third row has empty cells, and the whole thing is generally in need of a little polish. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, Randall describes categories of scientific papers with somewhat humorous generalized titles.<br />
<br />
==Table of papers==<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|+Breakdown of Papers<br />
|-<br />
!Paper Title<br />
!Explanation<br />
!Article Description<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We put a camera somewhere new<br />
|This may involve miniaturisation or other improvements of imaging sensors, power supply, transmission or retention of data, environmental hardening and (possibly) recovery afterwards. Photographs and videos can be especially helpful in understanding what is or was going on, especially for the layman, than more limited signal traces.<br />
<br />
Cameras have been inserted into ''every'' obvious bodily orifice (including swallowed, to be later excreted), placed in habitats to monitor wildlife, attached to wildlife to monitor habitats, sent into volcanic craters/ocean trenches/high altitudes/nuclear reactors, launched into space and sent past/round/onto several of the solar-system's more interesting bodies. This makes the "somewhere new" claim intriguing, possibly even comparable to 'clickbait'.<br/>This could also be generalized even more by replacing "camera" with "sensor", and then going to debate the newly derived sensor data.<br />
|Includes a large figure, likely an image captured with the camera.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!<br />
|Rather than starting with the aim of investigating some question, and finding some way of answering it by uncovering evidence, sometimes a writer may have stumbled upon a cache of historic documents that they then feel compelled to justify the resulting 'WikiWalk' they may have found themselves sucked into. The author may be far more excited about this than any future reader. This could also be a paper by a historian who found out ancient records which could be useful. A similar sentiment appears in [[1979: History]].<br />
|Small figure may show the most interesting fragment of the records.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it<br />
|This title refers to the occasional rivalries between scientists within a field, which can push them to seek proof that they, and not their colleague, are correct. It reflects a tone of smug self-satisfaction.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|The immune system is at it again<br />
|The human immune system is notoriously complex, and there are countless papers in medical fields just describing its strangeness. While it is best known for preventing and battling infections, in auto-immune disease, it can also turn against the body that it is supposed to protect. Moreover it can overreact, for instance in allergic reactions or in a potentially lethal {{w|cytokine storm}} known to occur in certain viral infections, including {{w|Influenza}} and {{w|COVID-19}}. The title may convey exasperation with the amorphous nature of their study subject. <br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some<br />
|Researchers often attempt to create materials despite there not being any demand, predicting that in the future their material will be game-changing without any actual applications. These researchers have created such a material, and are offering to produce it for anyone who needs it. It is couched in terms of having created an answer for which there was not yet any proper question.<br />
This may be also referring to the discovering/creating of elements and subatomic particles. The statement if you wish to buy it is humorous in these cases because they will decay too quickly to be purchased.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|What are fish even doing down there<br />
|Deep sea marine biology regularly discovers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7QXdlSBGGY strange lifeforms] in [https://www.9news.com.au/world/sharks-living-in-volcano-why-are-marine-predators-living-in-an-active-crater/db112bd9-21b2-46c2-9d58-ed07f981ae01 unexpected places], and theories explaining deep sea ecosystems are regularly confounded by new data.<br />
<br />
Scientists may also bump into marine organisms when looking for something else. For example, one planned underwater neutrino detector [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44938 picked up bioluminescence instead].<br />
<br />
Whichever way, the title probably reflects a totally unexpected result that is possibly too cross-disciplinary to be properly comprehended as an actual scientific advance by the authors. However, a proper study of the species could very well be an important paper.<br />
|This paper does not appear to have any headers, implying a longer, free-flowing format.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper<br />
|There is a huge variety in the complexity and importance of subjects studied in scientific papers, and often some supposedly easy task will be sufficiently complicated as to merit its own paper. For example, a scientist may have discovered a better way of finding out if a substance is X or Y while studying something else.<br />
<br />
The author may be glad to have been able to turn mundane 'housekeeping' activities, that don't normally do much to enhance academic reputations, into an actual opportunity to be cite-worthy.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?<br />
|One of the struggles of the scientific method is that many experiments will not produce the results scientists desired or expected. Negative or conflicting results of well-conducted research are as important as positive or dramatic ones, but are often ignored in favor of more novel findings. As a result, some journals are established specifically for negative results, reducing the bias towards only positive claims that may actually be outliers or anomalies.<br />
<br />
In this case, the authors may otherwise have worked on their problem and been left with no citable proof of their efforts. The title perhaps reflects an attempt to present this as 'success' of a different kind, rather than a submission to such a null/negative-results platform. This may be similar to the above type of paper too.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk<br />
|This paper may be imagined as an opportunistic publication. A department or team has seen itself low down on the local 'league table' for academic output. A brainstorming session for a way of rectifying this led to desperately seizing upon the first idle comment made (in lieu of any better sounding ideas) that can somehow be shoehorned into their respective subject area, and is now being presented similar to "this one weird thing" clickbait titles that almost always oversell their content.<br />
<br />
This also works in the context of entomology. Insects have the most species of any class of animals [https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos by a wide margin], but due to their small size, they're not easily seen. As a result, new species are constantly being discovered in places as innocuous as [https://wildlife.org/video-entomologists-discover-30-new-species-in-la-backyards/ someone's backyard.]<br />
<br />
It also works in botany, especially floristics. Papers of first records of alien plants refer to weird things botanists saw on walks. Vagrant birds, unusual animal behaviour, and strange meteorological phenomena are other subcategories.<br />
|Includes several large figures, likely close-up photographs of the weird thing. There are no headers, as the paper may have little background or methodology, just observations.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years<br />
| Some papers summarize the work of big research teams, like those working on the [https://repositorio.uc.cl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11534/13948/Observation%20of%20a%20new%20particle%20in%20the%20search%20for%20the%20Standard%20Model%20Higgs%20boson%20with%20the%20ATLAS%20detector%20at%20the%20LHC.pdf Higgs Boson] (list of authors starts at page 17 and goes to page 26 with foot notes about authors to page 29, and a dedication in the header would suggest that more than one other contributor ''died'' over the course of the research, which would be rather unusual for a smaller project) or LIGO. Since the discoveries which are made are a team effort, probably outlasting many of the individual tenures involved, the papers have many authors listed.<br />
A credit for participation may not mean any particularly great contribution by each individual, but being left out (even for one summer's secondment, seven years before any results could be recorded) would be taken as a slight, and an opportunity missed to be 'citable' in the future.<br />
|A huge portion of the page is taken up by the presumably 500 authors' names, above the main horizontal bar.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research<br />
|Similar to the "my colleague is wrong" paper, but in this case applied to far greater swathes of the community by the author(s) of this (possibly unfocused) tract. Usually a "systematic review", the words 'some thoughts' might indicate a meta-approach with no original research - and possibly a passive-aggressive style of assessment.<br />
|No header sections, possibly because these particular thoughts are in the form of an essay or letter without an accompanying investigation. Formatting this article as a single column with large blocks of text could also be indicating a slightly unhinged rant by someone who - wrongly - perceives themselves as unjustly marginalised.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We scanned some undergraduates<br />
|Initial research is often done at universities, so when human subjects are required, recruiting undergraduate students is a common, easy, and inexpensive way to gather enough people to conduct studies or experiments. This is extremely common in psychological or sociological studies, but can involve more medical (but non-invasive) 'scans', from simple eyeball-tracking to full-body MRI. This practice is often criticized, as it introduces a selection bias, which makes the results difficult to generalize to the entire population, as university students in a given country are not necessarily a representative sample of human beings as a whole. Nonetheless, easy accessibility makes these students a source of data for many academic papers. The low-key approach to the title (concentrating blandly upon the method with no references to results) may indicate that the results obtained are very trivial and no great developments were even made in implementation. Alternately, this is a truly ground-breaking paper obscured entirely by the lead author's over-narrow professional focus and avoidance of any hype.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient<br />
|Often scientific research, e.g. in cosmology or physics, will work with an assumed constant value that is known to be only an 'educated guess' of the actual definite value, or an inclusive range. However accurate/certain this is, further experimentation or observation may further narrow down the uncertainty involved to a statistically significant degree. An improvement to one of these constants also improves the accuracy of every single calculation that uses it.<br />
<br />
Even if these improvements may seem trivial to those outside the discipline (e.g. narrowing down a seemingly esoteric value from 99.99% certainty to 99.995% certainty), they are probably understood as significant achievements by those aware of the effort needed to obtain such diminishing returns, and the authors are probably very excited to have done what they did.<br />
<br />
Another possible interpretation of this title is that it refers not to cosmological constants but to an exponent in algorithmic complexity, for example the [https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.7714 2014 paper] that proved that the complexity of matrix multiplication is at most n^2.3728639 in place of the previous upper bound n^2.3729.<br />
|rowspan="3"|(Only referenced in Title Text)<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Maybe all these categories are wrong<br />
|In some field that relies heavily upon classification (e.g. phylogenetic biology, or the Standard Model in physics) sometimes observations arise that cast doubt on the previously established ideas. It seems that this may have happened here, hopefully with a suggestion of how to reimagine the situation.<br />
<br />
The article may have been written with with a sense of euphoria (the chance to present a paradigm shift in thinking, to rewrite the textbooks) or pessimism (it demonstrates only the failings in current thinking, without any obvious solution).<br />
<br />
Alternatively, it may be a reference to the categories of papers that this comic proposes.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks<br />
|Possibly a psychology experiment, and maybe not even the result expected. In general, the repetition of an activity will induce greater skill/capacity in a tested individual. By accident or design, the study group in this instance has induced the opposite correlation. (There ''are'', however, some studies that explicitly look at how e.g. lack of sleep reduces productivity.)<br />
<br />
Exactly what emotion the title reflects might depend upon whether the worsening was an intended result, or even how the team were able to refocus and seize upon the adverse outcomes.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Could need description of each paper}}<br />
:[Heading:]<br />
:Types of Scientific Paper <br />
<br />
:[An array of 4 rows with 3 scientific papers each, is shown. The first page of each is shown, but only the papers titles are legible. Black lines for headings, several lines for paragraphs of text and white rectangles indicating figures are used to make each paper look different. Titles are as follows:]<br />
:We put a camera somewhere new<br />
:Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!<br />
:My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it<br />
:The immune system is at it again<br />
:We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some<br />
:What are fish even doing down there<br />
:This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper<br />
:Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?<br />
:Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk<br />
:We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years<br />
:Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research<br />
:We scanned some undergraduates<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
*Originally, this comic's title text misspelled "volunteers" as "volunters". <br />
**This could have been intentional (''we'' might be the volunteers)<br />
**But it was not as it was quickly corrected.<br />
*Another comic, [[2012: Thorough Analysis]], similarly categorizes or mocks research papers.<br />
<br />
==Derivatives==<br />
The comic inspired many derivatives, changing the paper titles to be more relevant to specific fields. <br />
The hashtag #TypesOfScientificPapers on twitter includes many of these.<br />
There is a [https://observablehq.com/@guillaume-levrier/xkcd-types-paper generator].<br />
<br />
Some examples include:<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
| https://twitter.com/neil_chilson/status/1388216386967715846 || Privacy Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/SamLMontano/status/1388268078279049217 || Disaster Science Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jfbastien/status/1388229180211404803 || C++ Standards papers<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/waiterich/status/1388207060412682247 || Scientific Paper (Food, Land, and Natural Climate Solutions Version)<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/stefan_d_jevtic/status/1388192045920137216 || Hematology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jeffpeapod/status/1388185831140118529 || Papers for Grad Students<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/EdinburghKnee/status/1388069182642794496 || Ortho Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/j_remy_green/status/1387960392954138624 || Law Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/JavierApfeld/status/1387891336515362819 || Aging Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/Gabeincognito/status/1387873643435216897 || Infosec Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/acarriebear/status/1387870050581889024 || Toxicology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/yesitsnicholas/status/1387865583908114432 || Neuroscience<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/nexel_art/status/1388263392545280009 || Archeology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/skinnyfatPhD/status/1388253551013498882 || Metabolism<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/zamanian_/status/1388179675806158848 || Parasitology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/PWGTennant/status/1387734254960975881 || Epidemiology and Public Health<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/DrIanKellar/status/1387760304818372620 || Health Psychology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/nappqm/status/1388098251136589824 || Pest Science<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/theangelremiel/status/1388134620219297793 || Clinical Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/plantspipettes/status/1387825850372997121 || Plant science<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/girlandkat/status/1388030240358768642 || Planetary Science<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/Nesquixotic/status/1387848121342853122 || History<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/SamLemonick/status/1388177531703070722 || How a reporter sees types of science papers<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/AndrewBarnas/status/1388161745684996098 || Scientific Paper PAYWALL meta-joke<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/ctdicanio/status/1388630827857289221 || Phonetics<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/ProfSimonFisher/status/1388096934343233537|| Language Research<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jeanburgess/status/1388245879119781889 || Internet Studies<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/drzimmermann/status/1388526687814656004 || AI Ethics<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/ElephantEating/status/1388552610236403714 || Energy systems modelling 1<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/WPSchill/status/1388584606375493634 || Energy systems modelling 2<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/oikoweather/status/1388533147768434689 || Building energy modelling<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1388947303025844225 || Articles on trans people<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jiaqikangjiaqi/status/1389225735202607115 || Types of diaspora writing<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jdporterlive/status/1388192751653687297 || Literarcy Criticism<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/spiroferrer/status/1388169795674120193 || Urban planning<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/ChanceBonar/status/1388266744784080903 || Biblical studies<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/AmesCG/status/1389368675887554562 || A certain genre of center-right opinion column<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jonathanagray/status/1388527626495594504 || Media studies<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/OriPomson/status/1388911680277651462 || International Humanitarian Law (aka 'Law of Armed Conflicts')<br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Research Papers]]<br />
[[Category:Science]]</div>141.101.104.5https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2456:_Types_of_Scientific_Paper&diff=2114972456: Types of Scientific Paper2021-05-04T08:52:43Z<p>141.101.104.5: /* Derivatives */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2456<br />
| date = April 28, 2021<br />
| title = Types of Scientific Paper<br />
| image = types_of_scientific_paper.png<br />
| titletext = Others include "We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient," "Maybe all these categories are wrong," and "We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks."<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a RESEARCH DEPARTMENT ON A LUNCHBREAK. The explanation is one line of text and a table, the table's third row has empty cells, and the whole thing is generally in need of a little polish. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
In this comic, Randall describes categories of scientific papers with somewhat humorous generalized titles.<br />
<br />
==Table of papers==<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|+Breakdown of Papers<br />
|-<br />
!Paper Title<br />
!Explanation<br />
!Article Description<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We put a camera somewhere new<br />
|This may involve miniaturisation or other improvements of imaging sensors, power supply, transmission or retention of data, environmental hardening and (possibly) recovery afterwards. Photographs and videos can be especially helpful in understanding what is or was going on, especially for the layman, than more limited signal traces.<br />
<br />
Cameras have been inserted into ''every'' obvious bodily orifice (including swallowed, to be later excreted), placed in habitats to monitor wildlife, attached to wildlife to monitor habitats, sent into volcanic craters/ocean trenches/high altitudes/nuclear reactors, launched into space and sent past/round/onto several of the solar-system's more interesting bodies. This makes the "somewhere new" claim intriguing, possibly even comparable to 'clickbait'.<br/>This could also be generalized even more by replacing "camera" with "sensor", and then going to debate the newly derived sensor data.<br />
|Includes a large figure, likely an image captured with the camera.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!<br />
|Rather than starting with the aim of investigating some question, and finding some way of answering it by uncovering evidence, sometimes a writer may have stumbled upon a cache of historic documents that they then feel compelled to justify the resulting 'WikiWalk' they may have found themselves sucked into. The author may be far more excited about this than any future reader. This could also be a paper by a historian who found out ancient records which could be useful. A similar sentiment appears in [[1979: History]].<br />
|Small figure may show the most interesting fragment of the records.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it<br />
|This title refers to the occasional rivalries between scientists within a field, which can push them to seek proof that they, and not their colleague, are correct. It reflects a tone of smug self-satisfaction.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|The immune system is at it again<br />
|The human immune system is notoriously complex, and there are countless papers in medical fields just describing its strangeness. While it is best known for preventing and battling infections, in auto-immune disease, it can also turn against the body that it is supposed to protect. Moreover it can overreact, for instance in allergic reactions or in a potentially lethal {{w|cytokine storm}} known to occur in certain viral infections, including {{w|Influenza}} and {{w|COVID-19}}. The title may convey exasperation with the amorphous nature of their study subject. <br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some<br />
|Researchers often attempt to create materials despite there not being any demand, predicting that in the future their material will be game-changing without any actual applications. These researchers have created such a material, and are offering to produce it for anyone who needs it. It is couched in terms of having created an answer for which there was not yet any proper question.<br />
This may be also referring to the discovering/creating of elements and subatomic particles. The statement if you wish to buy it is humorous in these cases because they will decay too quickly to be purchased.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|What are fish even doing down there<br />
|Deep sea marine biology regularly discovers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7QXdlSBGGY strange lifeforms] in [https://www.9news.com.au/world/sharks-living-in-volcano-why-are-marine-predators-living-in-an-active-crater/db112bd9-21b2-46c2-9d58-ed07f981ae01 unexpected places], and theories explaining deep sea ecosystems are regularly confounded by new data.<br />
<br />
Scientists may also bump into marine organisms when looking for something else. For example, one planned underwater neutrino detector [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44938 picked up bioluminescence instead].<br />
<br />
Whichever way, the title probably reflects a totally unexpected result that is possibly too cross-disciplinary to be properly comprehended as an actual scientific advance by the authors. However, a proper study of the species could very well be an important paper.<br />
|This paper does not appear to have any headers, implying a longer, free-flowing format.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper<br />
|There is a huge variety in the complexity and importance of subjects studied in scientific papers, and often some supposedly easy task will be sufficiently complicated as to merit its own paper. For example, a scientist may have discovered a better way of finding out if a substance is X or Y while studying something else.<br />
<br />
The author may be glad to have been able to turn mundane 'housekeeping' activities, that don't normally do much to enhance academic reputations, into an actual opportunity to be cite-worthy.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?<br />
|One of the struggles of the scientific method is that many experiments will not produce the results scientists desired or expected. Negative or conflicting results of well-conducted research are as important as positive or dramatic ones, but are often ignored in favor of more novel findings. As a result, some journals are established specifically for negative results, reducing the bias towards only positive claims that may actually be outliers or anomalies.<br />
<br />
In this case, the authors may otherwise have worked on their problem and been left with no citable proof of their efforts. The title perhaps reflects an attempt to present this as 'success' of a different kind, rather than a submission to such a null/negative-results platform. This may be similar to the above type of paper too.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk<br />
|This paper may be imagined as an opportunistic publication. A department or team has seen itself low down on the local 'league table' for academic output. A brainstorming session for a way of rectifying this led to desperately seizing upon the first idle comment made (in lieu of any better sounding ideas) that can somehow be shoehorned into their respective subject area, and is now being presented similar to "this one weird thing" clickbait titles that almost always oversell their content.<br />
<br />
This also works in the context of entomology. Insects have the most species of any class of animals [https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos by a wide margin], but due to their small size, they're not easily seen. As a result, new species are constantly being discovered in places as innocuous as [https://wildlife.org/video-entomologists-discover-30-new-species-in-la-backyards/ someone's backyard.]<br />
<br />
It also works in botany, especially floristics. Papers of first records of alien plants refer to weird things botanists saw on walks. Vagrant birds, unusual animal behaviour, and strange meteorological phenomena are other subcategories.<br />
|Includes several large figures, likely close-up photographs of the weird thing. There are no headers, as the paper may have little background or methodology, just observations.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years<br />
| Some papers summarize the work of big research teams, like those working on the [https://repositorio.uc.cl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11534/13948/Observation%20of%20a%20new%20particle%20in%20the%20search%20for%20the%20Standard%20Model%20Higgs%20boson%20with%20the%20ATLAS%20detector%20at%20the%20LHC.pdf Higgs Boson] (list of authors starts at page 17 and goes to page 26 with foot notes about authors to page 29, and a dedication in the header would suggest that more than one other contributor ''died'' over the course of the research, which would be rather unusual for a smaller project) or LIGO. Since the discoveries which are made are a team effort, probably outlasting many of the individual tenures involved, the papers have many authors listed.<br />
A credit for participation may not mean any particularly great contribution by each individual, but being left out (even for one summer's secondment, seven years before any results could be recorded) would be taken as a slight, and an opportunity missed to be 'citable' in the future.<br />
|A huge portion of the page is taken up by the presumably 500 authors' names, above the main horizontal bar.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research<br />
|Similar to the "my colleague is wrong" paper, but in this case applied to far greater swathes of the community by the author(s) of this (possibly unfocused) tract. Usually a "systematic review", the words 'some thoughts' might indicate a meta-approach with no original research - and possibly a passive-aggressive style of assessment.<br />
|No header sections, possibly because these particular thoughts are in the form of an essay or letter without an accompanying investigation. Formatting this article as a single column with large blocks of text could also be indicating a slightly unhinged rant by someone who - wrongly - perceives themselves as unjustly marginalised.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We scanned some undergraduates<br />
|Initial research is often done at universities, so when human subjects are required, recruiting undergraduate students is a common, easy, and inexpensive way to gather enough people to conduct studies or experiments. This is extremely common in psychological or sociological studies, but can involve more medical (but non-invasive) 'scans', from simple eyeball-tracking to full-body MRI. This practice is often criticized, as it introduces a selection bias, which makes the results difficult to generalize to the entire population, as university students in a given country are not necessarily a representative sample of human beings as a whole. Nonetheless, easy accessibility makes these students a source of data for many academic papers. The low-key approach to the title (concentrating blandly upon the method with no references to results) may indicate that the results obtained are very trivial and no great developments were even made in implementation. Alternately, this is a truly ground-breaking paper obscured entirely by the lead author's over-narrow professional focus and avoidance of any hype.<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient<br />
|Often scientific research, e.g. in cosmology or physics, will work with an assumed constant value that is known to be only an 'educated guess' of the actual definite value, or an inclusive range. However accurate/certain this is, further experimentation or observation may further narrow down the uncertainty involved to a statistically significant degree. An improvement to one of these constants also improves the accuracy of every single calculation that uses it.<br />
<br />
Even if these improvements may seem trivial to those outside the discipline (e.g. narrowing down a seemingly esoteric value from 99.99% certainty to 99.995% certainty), they are probably understood as significant achievements by those aware of the effort needed to obtain such diminishing returns, and the authors are probably very excited to have done what they did.<br />
<br />
Another possible interpretation of this title is that it refers not to cosmological constants but to an exponent in algorithmic complexity, for example the [https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.7714 2014 paper] that proved that the complexity of matrix multiplication is at most n^2.3728639 in place of the previous upper bound n^2.3729.<br />
|rowspan="3"|(Only referenced in Title Text)<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|Maybe all these categories are wrong<br />
|In some field that relies heavily upon classification (e.g. phylogenetic biology, or the Standard Model in physics) sometimes observations arise that cast doubt on the previously established ideas. It seems that this may have happened here, hopefully with a suggestion of how to reimagine the situation.<br />
<br />
The article may have been written with with a sense of euphoria (the chance to present a paradigm shift in thinking, to rewrite the textbooks) or pessimism (it demonstrates only the failings in current thinking, without any obvious solution).<br />
<br />
Alternatively, it may be a reference to the categories of papers that this comic proposes.<br />
|-<br />
!scope=row|We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks<br />
|Possibly a psychology experiment, and maybe not even the result expected. In general, the repetition of an activity will induce greater skill/capacity in a tested individual. By accident or design, the study group in this instance has induced the opposite correlation. (There ''are'', however, some studies that explicitly look at how e.g. lack of sleep reduces productivity.)<br />
<br />
Exactly what emotion the title reflects might depend upon whether the worsening was an intended result, or even how the team were able to refocus and seize upon the adverse outcomes.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Could need description of each paper}}<br />
:[Heading:]<br />
:Types of Scientific Paper <br />
<br />
:[An array of 4 rows with 3 scientific papers each, is shown. The first page of each is shown, but only the papers titles are legible. Black lines for headings, several lines for paragraphs of text and white rectangles indicating figures are used to make each paper look different. Titles are as follows:]<br />
:We put a camera somewhere new<br />
:Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!<br />
:My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it<br />
:The immune system is at it again<br />
:We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some<br />
:What are fish even doing down there<br />
:This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper<br />
:Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?<br />
:Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk<br />
:We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years<br />
:Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research<br />
:We scanned some undergraduates<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
*Originally, this comic's title text misspelled "volunteers" as "volunters". <br />
**This could have been intentional (''we'' might be the volunteers)<br />
**But it was not as it was quickly corrected.<br />
*Another comic, [[2012: Thorough Analysis]], similarly categorizes or mocks research papers.<br />
<br />
==Derivatives==<br />
The comic inspired many derivatives, changing the paper titles to be more relevant to specific fields. <br />
The hashtag #TypesOfScientificPapers on twitter includes many of these.<br />
There is a [https://observablehq.com/@guillaume-levrier/xkcd-types-paper generator].<br />
<br />
Some examples include:<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
| https://twitter.com/neil_chilson/status/1388216386967715846 || Privacy Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/SamLMontano/status/1388268078279049217 || Disaster Science Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jfbastien/status/1388229180211404803 || C++ Standards papers<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/waiterich/status/1388207060412682247 || Scientific Paper (Food, Land, and Natural Climate Solutions Version)<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/stefan_d_jevtic/status/1388192045920137216 || Hematology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jeffpeapod/status/1388185831140118529 || Papers for Grad Students<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/EdinburghKnee/status/1388069182642794496 || Ortho Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/j_remy_green/status/1387960392954138624 || Law Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/JavierApfeld/status/1387891336515362819 || Aging Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/Gabeincognito/status/1387873643435216897 || Infosec Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/acarriebear/status/1387870050581889024 || Toxicology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/yesitsnicholas/status/1387865583908114432 || Neuroscience<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/nexel_art/status/1388263392545280009 || Archeology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/skinnyfatPhD/status/1388253551013498882 || Metabolism<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/zamanian_/status/1388179675806158848 || Parasitology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/PWGTennant/status/1387734254960975881 || Epidemiology and Public Health<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/DrIanKellar/status/1387760304818372620 || Health Psychology<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/nappqm/status/1388098251136589824 || Pest Science<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/theangelremiel/status/1388134620219297793 || Clinical Paper<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/plantspipettes/status/1387825850372997121 || Plant science<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/girlandkat/status/1388030240358768642 || Planetary Science<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/Nesquixotic/status/1387848121342853122 || History<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/SamLemonick/status/1388177531703070722 || How a reporter sees types of science papers<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/AndrewBarnas/status/1388161745684996098 || Scientific Paper PAYWALL meta-joke<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/ctdicanio/status/1388630827857289221 || Phonetics<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/ProfSimonFisher/status/1388096934343233537|| Language Research<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jeanburgess/status/1388245879119781889 || Internet Studies<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/drzimmermann/status/1388526687814656004 || AI Ethics<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/ElephantEating/status/1388552610236403714 || Energy systems modelling 1<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/WPSchill/status/1388584606375493634 || Energy systems modelling 2<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/oikoweather/status/1388533147768434689 || Building energy modelling<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1388947303025844225 || Articles on trans people<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jiaqikangjiaqi/status/1389225735202607115 || Types of diaspora writing<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jdporterlive/status/1388192751653687297 || Literarcy Criticism<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/spiroferrer/status/1388169795674120193 || Urban planning<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/ChanceBonar/status/1388266744784080903 || Biblical studies<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/AmesCG/status/1389368675887554562 || A certain genre of center-right opinion column<br />
|-<br />
| https://twitter.com/jonathanagray/status/1388527626495594504 || Media studies<br />
| https://twitter.com/OriPomson/status/1388911680277651462 || International Humanitarian Law (aka 'Law of Armed Conflicts')<br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Research Papers]]<br />
[[Category:Science]]</div>141.101.104.5https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2455:_Virus_Consulting&diff=211117Talk:2455: Virus Consulting2021-04-27T14:52:47Z<p>141.101.104.5: </p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
In a way telling the virus the 'bad' news actually should get them to work on more variants, so in a way Black Hat is encouraging COVID to mutate faster :S[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.5|141.101.104.5]] 14:52, 27 April 2021 (UTC)</div>141.101.104.5https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=169:_Words_that_End_in_GRY&diff=175028169: Words that End in GRY2019-06-07T16:18:12Z<p>141.101.104.5: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 169<br />
| date = October 11, 2006<br />
| title = Words that End in GRY<br />
| image = words_that_end_in_gry.png<br />
| titletext = The fifth panel also applies to postmodernists.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
This is a reference to a famous {{w|-gry#Alternate versions|joke}} (see the first of the meta versions under the wiki link), mistold in the above comic.<br />
<br />
The original, correct telling of the joke is:<br />
:''Think of words ending in "-gry". "Angry" and "Hungry" are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? Hint: The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.''<br />
Phrased this way, the answer is "language" because "There are only three words in (the phrase)'' 'the English language' ''."<br />
<br />
Cueball tells this joke, unfortunately, by poorly phrasing the original riddle. By instead saying, "There are three words in the English language that end in '-gry,'" the teller of the joke has actually removed any chance of the listener determining the correct answer. As such, when [[Cueball]] attempts to say the answer is "language" and act smugly about it, [[Black Hat]] is unimpressed and cuts off Cueball's hand, explaining that cleverness is not the same as communicating badly.<br />
<br />
Black Hat's point about bad communication may be directed at Cueball's botching of the joke, but he could also be talking about the riddle in general, properly told or not. The riddle's "cleverness" depends on misleadingly implying that "three words" refers to words ending in "-gry," rather than the phrase "the English language." Black Hat does not seem to agree that this riddle is clever.<br />
<br />
In this interview, Randall states that his point applies to the joke, no matter how is it phrased. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f95uxPO4Vk4]<br />
<br />
In any case, no matter how annoying Cueball's smugness, Black Hat's response, cutting off Cueball's hand, is a comical overreaction (while his calm demeanor in doing so is a comical underreaction). Additionally, his calmly-made point about the riddle is likely not to be understood by Cueball, who can only focus on his debilitating injury. Black Hat has, ironically, failed to communicate his point about proper communication, although given Black Hat's personality he likely doesn't care, and may even have intended the irony.<br />
<br />
As Black Hat mentioned in the comic, if you count obscure and archaic words, there are additional English words that end with "-gry." Some are listed [http://www.snopes.com/language/puzzlers/gry.asp here].<br />
<br />
The title text refers to {{w|postmodernism}}, a philosophy and corresponding art movement. Postmodern music is often {{w|minimalist}}, as exemplified by the weird sounds of {{w|Philip Glass}} and {{w|Steve Reich}}, and {{w|Postmodern art#Movements in postmodern art|postmodern visual art}} saw trends such as lowbrow and installation art gain attention. Apart from a rejection of modernism, however, it is difficult to outline postmodernism to justify the strange works of art. {{w|Deconstruction}} is another important concept, but it is difficult to describe the process. In short, postmodernists make art that no one understands and may act smugly about it, but they do not adequately explain what their art means, or it doesn't really mean anything. In other words, there is nothing to understand. Thus, Black Hat's statement, ''that such practice is not "cleverness,"'' applies to them as well.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Black Hat and Cueball are standing next to each other.]<br />
:Cueball: There are three words in the English language that end in "gry". "Angry" and "Hungry" are two. What's the third?<br />
<br />
:Black Hat: I don't think there is one, unless you count really obscure words.<br />
:Cueball: Ha! It's "language"! I said there are three words in "the English--" Hey!<br />
:''GRAB''<br />
:[Black Hat grabs Cueball's hand, with a knife in hand.]<br />
<br />
:Cueball: What th--AAAAAAAAAA<br />
:''SLICE''<br />
:[Black Hat slices off Cueball's hand with the knife.]<br />
<br />
:[Cueball is bleeding profusely.]<br />
:Black Hat: Ok, listen carefully.<br />
:Cueball: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<br />
<br />
:Black Hat: Communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness.<br />
:Cueball: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<br />
<br />
:Black Hat: I hope we've learned something today.<br />
:Cueball: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
Around the time this comic was posted, Randall also posted [[Blue Eyes]]: The Hardest Logic Puzzle in the World. He apparently took his own advice to heart as he explicitly states he has gone over the wording of the puzzle several times before publishing it to make it as unambiguous as possible. <br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Language]]<br />
[[Category:Social interactions]]</div>141.101.104.5https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2156:_Ufo&diff=174712Talk:2156: Ufo2019-05-30T12:05:57Z<p>141.101.104.5: </p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
<br />
Am I the only one now hearing the iconic opening music of the series in my head? :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:41, 29 May 2019 (UTC)<br />
:I wasn't until you mentioned it :-( [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.131|141.101.99.131]] 13:57, 29 May 2019 (UTC)<br />
<br />
May be related to this news released yesterday:[https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1133031/Aliens-news-UFO-Pentagon-US-Navy-pilot-footage-video] [[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 14:41, 29 May 2019 (UTC)<br />
:Yep, slow news day.[[User:OhFFS|OhFFS]] ([[User talk:OhFFS|talk]]) 15:19, 29 May 2019 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The title text is probably a reference to US government restrictions placed on their departments (such as NOAA), preventing them from releasing details which might support the idea of climate change. [[User:JamesCurran|JamesCurran]] ([[User talk:JamesCurran|talk]]) 18:27, 29 May 2019 (UTC)<br />
:Most likely [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Duties_Act_of_2005 this] or the more recent budgetary cuts and reallocations that have forced closure of some programs. Kinda surprised it wasn't noted on the main page actually [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.143|172.69.68.143]] 20:39, 29 May 2019 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Of course the shadowy forces that control the world want to believe ... or at least want YOU to believe in UFO. The idea is simple: 1) make you believe in UFO 2) blame UFO for problems they caused. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 02:46, 30 May 2019 (UTC)<br />
<br />
How does the title text makes it "clear" in any way that this is a reference to Trump policy? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.127|162.158.154.127]] 07:29, 30 May 2019 (UTC)<br />
: Clear only after reading it :-) (And even then it would make no sense for the Trump administration to suppress facts. Since when do facts still play a role in today's politics? ;-)<br />
:: Of course it is clear, especially knowing about Randall's political inclination, and I am pretty disappointed to see these parts of the explanation removed, however I don't want to be part of the edit war myself. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.5|141.101.104.5]] 12:05, 30 May 2019 (UTC)</div>141.101.104.5https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1552:_Rulebook&diff=97971Talk:1552: Rulebook2015-07-17T15:05:13Z<p>141.101.104.5: Pluto??</p>
<hr />
<div>Doesn't ''the law'' forbid harming another's domestic animal? --[[User:Tepples|Tepples]] ([[User talk:Tepples|talk]]) 05:20, 17 July 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Yes. Yes it does. So, basically, the rulebook of the country says they cannot do it. It could have been a great cartoon if he had picked an example that was actually legal. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.239.32|198.41.239.32]] 05:50, 17 July 2015 (UTC)<br />
::Well, technically ([[1475: Technically]]) the law isn't part of any rule book... Unless there is a law (or rule) which says otherwise. (edit: That doesn't mean the law wouldn't apply nevertheless!)[[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 06:15, 17 July 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Does this law exist in every country? The dog is on property owned by the sports venue in an unspecified country.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.17|108.162.221.17]] 08:23, 17 July 2015 (UTC)<br />
:: Slaughter is not technically harming, otherwise we would not be able to eat beef, pork, .. -- and yes some people _do_ eat dogs (and cats) [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]]) 13:48, 17 July 2015 (UTC)<br />
:At least in my state (Utah) ''the law'' supports euthanasia of (non-human) animals so long as it is performed in a humane manner (which is a very different standard than applies to humans). Cruelty is punishable in the law, but one could make an argument that so long as the killing of the animal was done in a humane way, it may not be punishable by the cruelty statutes. The judgment of law enforcement officers, officers of a court with jurisdiction, juries, and perhaps the court of public opinion in some extra-legal context would all come into play if a question of whether euthanasia was cruel were to be raised. [[User:CasaDeRobison|CasaDeRobison]] ([[User talk:CasaDeRobison|talk]]) 14:17, 17 July 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Amusingly, Air Bud is also wrong because the basketball rules say that a team consists of five men, and dogs are not men. --[[User:AndyZ|AndyZ]]<br />
:That can be argued, if Air Bud is a male dog. Besides, "baseball is a game of two teams of 9 players each", but then they go and use the Designated Hitter. So Air Bud is just the Designated Dog. [[User:PsyMar|PsyMar]] ([[User talk:PsyMar|talk]]) 07:22, 17 July 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I'm reminded of what Paul said to the Galatians: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law." Life is meant to be lived in this positive way, where the more of these "fruits" we express, the better we make the world. ''&mdash; [[User:Tbc|tbc]] ([[User talk:Tbc|talk]]) 12:48, 17 July 2015 (UTC)''<br />
<br />
:Here endeth the lesson. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 13:04, 17 July 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I'm not convinced this is related to Pluto at all. In the Air Bud movie, the dog's jersey reads K on one side, and 9 on the other. I think the 9 is in reference to this, and not a veiled commentary on planet definitions.<br />
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Huh? Pluto?? Come on, let's remove that. I know some people are really traumatized about the whole Pluto thing, but there's no need to see ghosts everywhere... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.5|141.101.104.5]] 15:05, 17 July 2015 (UTC)</div>141.101.104.5https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1337:_Hack&diff=872951337: Hack2015-03-29T00:15:42Z<p>141.101.104.5: /* Explanation */ typo</p>
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<div><noinclude>:''"1337", this comic's number, redirects here. For the 2007 storyline of the same name, starting with [[341|comic 341]], see [[:Category:1337]].''</noinclude><br />
{{comic<br />
| number = 1337<br />
| date = March 3, 2014<br />
| title = Hack<br />
| image = hack.png<br />
| titletext = HACK THE STARS<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
This comic is an imagined project to re-position the {{w|International Cometary Explorer|ISEE-3/ICE}} probe, and a parody of the 1995 movie ''{{w|Hackers (film)|Hackers}}''. The first row (four panels) explain the history of the probe, and the true story about how the probe was coming back into signal range and seemed capable of being controlled. NASA declined to attempt to regain control of the probe, but a group of enthusiasts assembles the equipment and attempts to re-purpose the probe. This project since [http://spacecollege.org/isee3/ became reality], as [[Randall]] noted in a [http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/05/30/isee-3/ blog post].<br />
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The following two rows (eight panels) set up a fictional scenario the enthusiasts have been locked out of the system, the probe is being controlled by someone else, and the message "Mess with the best, die like the rest" is communicated from the probe. This is a catch phrase of the protagonist, Crash, from ''Hackers''.<br />
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The final row is a reference to the ending of the movie, where Crash romances Burn, his romantic interest, in a rooftop pool. In the movie, while Crash and Burn swim in a rooftop pool, several buildings light up with the words "CRASH AND BURN". This is their friends' latest hack, and an attempt to provide romance for the new couple. In the comic the transmitter being used to communicate with ISEE-3 was hacked by Burn to burn up over Crash and Burn swimming in the pool providing a "shooting star" for romantic effect.<br />
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The comic number is 1337, which stands for "leet", short for "elite hacker" and "leetspeek" in {{w|leetspeak}}. Leetspeak is a form of symbolic writing that substitutes various numbers and {{w|ASCII}} symbols for letters. It originates from the hacker subculture, where words were converted to leetspeek e.g. to avoid filters and triggers on chat rooms. "1337" for "leet" can most likely be explained as {{w|calculator spelling}}.<br />
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The title text "Hack the stars" is also an allusion to ''Hackers'', where the phrase "Hack the planet!" is used on multiple occasions.<br />
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==Transcript==<br />
:[Panel 1 shows an image of the ISEE-3/ICE spacecraft.]<br />
:Narration: The ISEE-3/ICE probe was launched in 1978. Its mission ended in 1997 and it was sent a shutdown signal.<br />
:Narration: In 2008, we learned-to our surprise-that the probe didn't shut down. It's still running and it has plenty of fuel. ...and in 2014, its orbit brings it near earth.<br />
:[Panel 3 shows Megan and Ponytail talking to each other.]<br />
:Megan: We could send it on a new mission... Except we no longer have the equipment to send commands to it.<br />
:Ponytail: Can't we...<br />
:Megan: NASA won't rebuild it. "Too Expensive"<br />
:Ponytail: Seriously?<br />
:Megan: I know, right? So the Internet found the specs and we went to work.<br />
:[Panel 5 shows Megan and Ponytail have walking into an area where a girl and Cueball both are sitting at desks looking at laptops.]<br />
:Narration: We've convinced them to give us time on the Madrid DSN transmitter and hacked the maser to support the uplink. And today's the big day.<br />
:Cueball: Transmitting... We have a signal! We have control!<br />
:Megan: OK, transmit the new comet rendezvous maneuver sequen-<br />
:[Cueball, off panel]: What the hell?<br />
:Megan: What?<br />
:Cueball: My console went dead!<br />
:Girl: Mine too!<br />
:Megan: What's happening?!<br />
:Cueball: There's a new signal going out over the transmitter!<br />
:[Megan, off panel]: A bug?<br />
:Cueball: Someone else is in the system!<br />
:Girl: Kill the connection!<br />
:[Cueball, off panel]: I can't find it!<br />
:Girl: They're firing the probe's engines!<br />
:[Cueball, off panel]: NO!<br />
:[Megan, off panel]: Who's doing this?? Stop them!<br />
:[Girl, off panel]: I'm trying!<br />
:Cueball, pointing to his screen: Look! My screen!<br />
:[Text, on Cueball's laptop screen]: M-E-S-S-W-I-T-H-T-H-E-B-E-S-T D-I-E-L-I-K-E-T-H-E-R-E-S-T<br />
:[Panel 13 shows two people in a pool at night.]<br />
:[Panel 14 zooms out to reveal the pool is on top of a skyscraper in a vertically developed, downtown setting.]<br />
:Burn: Crash?<br />
:Crash: Yeah, Burn?<br />
:Burn: Make a wish.<br />
:[Panel 16 shows the spacecraft streaking across the sky, indistinguishable from a meteoroid.]<br />
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==Trivia==<br />
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===Background for ISEE-3/ICE===<br />
The {{w|International Cometary Explorer|ISEE-3/ICE}} probe was launched in August 12, 1978 and tasked to study Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind. Before completing its original mission the probe was repurposed on June 10, 1982 to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere. By flying through the comet {{w|21P/Giacobini–Zinner|Giacobini-Zinner}}'s tail, it became the first probe to do so. This put ISEE-3 in a {{w|heliocentric orbit}}. Its trajectory will bring it close to Earth on August 2014.<br />
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The Deep Space Network (DSN) detected the probe again in 2008 because NASA mistakenly left its transmitters on. However, the probe was only transmitting the carrier signal at that time. A status check of the spacecraft has revealed that many of its instruments are still working and that it contains plenty of fuel.[http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/02070836-isee-3.html]<br />
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It was reported that the hardware to communicate with ISEE-3/ICE had been decommissioned. The Madrid DSS complex still has the special filter required to communicate with the ICE satellite, but because of frequency conflicts S-band uplink is not supported.[http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsndocs/810-005/101/101E.pdf]<br />
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On March 1st and 2nd, 2014 radio amateurs were able to detect the beacon signal from the retired NASA deep space probe ICE (International Cometary Explorer) using the 20m radio telescope at the Bochum Observatory (Germany).[http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/09/radio-amateurs-receive-nasa-isee-3ice-spacecraft/]<br />
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===Updates for ISEE-3/ICE===<br />
After this comic was published, it was established that an 18-meter satellite dish at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory does still have the right hardware.<br />
*April 4th 2014: Volunteers started a crowdfunding project on RocketHub to contact the probe and put it back into a {{w|halo orbit}} orbit around {{w|Lagrangian point}} L1.[http://www.rockethub.com/42228 "ISEE-3 reboot"]<br />
*May 23, 2014: First contact to the probe was established.<br />
*May 29, 2014: NASA gave them approval to try to achieve contact.<br />
*May 30, 2014: The project, led by [http://www.rockethub.com/profiles/68340-dennis-wingo Dennis Wingo] and {{w|Keith Cowing}}, had taken control of the spacecraft.<br />
*July 2, 2014: The reboot project successfully fired the thrusters for the first time since 1987. The engines on ISEE-3 performed a successful spin-up burn. The spin rate was changed to 19.76 rpm which is inside of the original mission specifications at 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm.<br />
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Further attempts to change the trajectory into an earth bound orbit did fail. Despite the effort from experts and amateurs via the internet [http://spacecollege.org/isee3/we-are-borg-crowdsourced-isee-3-engineering-and-the-collective-mind-of-the-internet.html] it was determined that the spacecraft had run out of nitrogen pressurant.<br />
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Since the device was still communicating, and many of the instruments were still working, the ISEE-3 was intended to be used for the first citizen science, crowd funded, crowd sourced, interplanetary space science mission.[http://spacecollege.org/isee3/announcing-the-isee-3-interplanetary-citizen-science-mission.html]<br />
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See [http://spacecollege.org/isee3/ Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives] for the coverage of this amazing project.<br />
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{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Astronomy]]<br />
[[Category:Computers]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]</div>141.101.104.5