https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Chvsanchez&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T11:38:37ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1827:_Survivorship_Bias&diff=1391501827: Survivorship Bias2017-04-23T05:07:22Z<p>Chvsanchez: Trivia</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1827<br />
| date = April 21, 2017<br />
| title = Survivorship Bias<br />
| image = survivorship_bias.png<br />
| titletext = They say you can't argue with results, but what kind of defeatist attitude is that? If you stick with it, you can argue with ANYTHING.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|More on SsB. Title text not explained.}}<br />
This comic is a parody of entrepreneurial speeches. Entrepreneurial speeches are talks, such as graduation commencements or motivational speeches. The idea behind graduation commencements is that the entrepreneur, having accumulated wisdom and experience in the process of becoming successful, will share his insights and experience to the students, in the hope that they learn lessons that will help them achieve success as well. Companies hire motivational speakers to motivate employees to work hard.<br />
<br />
A common theme in these talks is that the entrepreneur succeeded by persisting through hardship, sometimes despite other people telling them they would be better off giving up. They advise students to do the same, and to keep pursuing their dreams even through subsequent failure. While this isn't necessarily bad business advice, this can give students a biased vision of reality, and lead them to imagine that they will succeed as long as they keep trying.<br />
<br />
This comic makes a joke about survivorship bias, hence the title. {{w|Survivorship bias}}, or survival bias, is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently [[#Trivia|overlooking those]] that did not because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. The survivors may be actual people, as in a medical study, or could be companies or research subjects or applicants for a job, or anything that must make it past some selection process to be considered further. They may also have "survived" on only some of their attempts. For example, although Donald Trump had many successful businesses, he also had some that went bankrupt.<br />
<br />
In this comic [[Hairy]] is giving a talk encouraging people to "never stop buying {{w|lottery}} tickets". This is an unwise investment plan, because the chances of winning the lottery are mathematically very low and the total payout is usually less than the total ticket sales, meaning the expected return from buying a lottery ticket is ([[#Trivia|almost]]) always negative. Survivorship bias applies in this situation since people who eventually win (and, presumably, win more than they've spent on lottery tickets in the time that it took them to win) are much more likely to give inspirational speeches than someone who never won or didn't win enough to make the "investment" worthwhile.<br />
<br />
The obvious bad strategy (keep buying lottery tickets) is a metaphor for strategies that successful entrepreneurs recommend (keep persisting and putting money into your start-up); these strategies may be bad on average, but people who pursued them and succeeded are much more likely to be invited and give speeches than people who pursued them and went bankrupt (or people who pursued safer strategies and kept their money), making it appear to students that taking high risks and persisting in the face of expensive failure is the optimal strategy. And those who have done both, such as Trump, are more likely to speak about the successes than the failures and bankruptcies.<br />
<br />
[[Randall]] says in the caption below the panel that people should be informed about survivorship bias before hearing inspirational talks from successful people.<br />
<br />
The title text says "They say you can't argue with results, but what kind of defeatist attitude is that? If you stick with it, you can argue with ANYTHING." In the comic, the speaker's "result" was winning the lottery. Pointing out the survivorship bias is Randall effectively arguing with results, by pointing out that they were obtained randomly, and that it ignores all the other people who may have (foolishly) followed this same process, but never won the lottery. Taken a step further, one could use the survivorship bias to argue against the results of any process, be it research (Any given research process is bound to produce SOME good results, and since those are the only ones published, it is difficult to determine if the research process itself contributed to the good results), business decisions (Some businesses fail, and others succeed, but since only the successful ones stick around, it can be difficult to determine WHY they failed or succeeded), etc..<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Hairy, holding an arm out towards an unseen crowd, is standing on a podium with five large bags around him, each having a dollar sign on it.]<br />
:Hairy: Never stop buying lottery tickets, no matter what anyone tells you.<br />
:Hairy: I failed again and again, but I never gave up. I took extra jobs and poured the money into tickets.<br />
:Hairy: And here I am, proof that if you put in the time, it pays off!<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:]<br />
:Every inspirational speech by someone successful should have to start with a disclaimer about survivorship bias.<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
*Lottery with '''positive return''':<br />
**When item prices are donated to a lottery (for charity or advertising purposes), sometimes the value of those items may actually be larger than the total price for all of the lottery tickets, if you otherwise would be willing to pay full price for all the prizes.<br />
**In some lotteries, if the jackpot gets too big -- or goes for too many drawings -- without anyone winning it, the jackpot amount gets "rolled down" and distributed across the lower prize levels. These can have a positive return on average -- but ''only'' on the drawings where the jackpot rolls down. People have formed investment groups to buy hundreds of thousands of tickets to exploit these; several such groups repeatedly profited from Massachusetts's {{w|Massachusetts_Lottery#Cash Winfall|Cash WinFall}} game especially. (The Massachusetts State Lottery has an official report ([http://www.mass.gov/ig/publications/reports-and-recommendations/2012/lottery-cash-winfall-letter-july-2012.pdf PDF, 144 KB]) on the latter.)<br />
*'''Examples''' of survivorship bias:<br />
**Almost {{w|Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act|everyone was smoking}} back in the 1930-70s,{{Citation needed}} thus everyone above 80 probably smoked cigarettes or was at least subjected to passive smoking. Thus anyone above that age could be claimed to prove that you can live a long life while smoking. But they consist of the small group of people that survived in spite of all the smoke, where large sections of those that would have been 80 today, died from cancer or heart disease caused by smoking, long ago, maybe even before they retired. But since these people are dead and gone many years ago, they do not speak up, and are thus the silent majority that is not heard, which is the problem with survivorship bias.<br />
**During World War II, there was a study of the damage done to aircraft, and the recommendation was to add armor to the areas that showed the most damage. The statistician {{w|Abraham Wald}}+ noticed that the study didn't take into account aircraft that ''didn't'' return: the holes in the returning aircraft thus represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still return home safely.<br />
**Anything created by an Earth-human in this universe. We think it's because we're special, rather than being special because we're here/we survived.<br />
*In the title text, "defeatist" was originally misspelled as "defeatest". This was later corrected.<br />
+Wald and his wife died in an airplane crash.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]<br />
[[Category:Science]]<br />
[[Category:Public speaking]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1825:_7_Eleven&diff=1389091825: 7 Eleven2017-04-18T03:50:51Z<p>Chvsanchez: "to", not "and"</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1825<br />
| date = April 17, 2017<br />
| title = 7 Eleven<br />
| image = 7_eleven.png<br />
| titletext = Really, the only honest 24-hour stores are the ones in places like Arizona and Hawaii, and many of them are still wrong in certain years.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Basic Explanation. Needs more. Solar day vs. sidereal day? Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
This comic pokes fun at the idiosyncrasies of time keeping. Since units of time are intimately tied to a planet's rotation, and planets rotate at different, inconsistent rates, time keeping doesn't always follow a simple pattern.<br />
<br />
Many stores advertise being open 24/7, which means that they're open all day, every day. Many locations of the convenience store chain {{w|7-Eleven}} are now "open 24 hours", again meaning they are always open (despite historically being open only from 7 AM to 11 PM local time, hence its name).<br />
<br />
The main joke in the comic refers to the fact that a {{w|Timekeeping_on_Mars#Time_of_day|day on Mars}} (the time it takes for Mars to make a full revolution on its own axis) is about 24 hours and 37 minutes of Earth time. If a 7-11 store is open for literally 24 Earth hours per Mars day, then it would actually be closed for around 37 minutes each day. Of course, this is only an issue if Earth and Mars time units are mixed. Had the sign implicitly referred to 24 Mars-hours (where one Mars-hour is defined as 1/24 of a Mars day), then the store would be open for the entire Mars day.<br />
<br />
The duration for the Martian day used by [[Randall]] is the Martian {{w|sidereal day}} (how long it takes the non-Sun stars to get to the same position in the sky) of 24 hours, 37 minutes, and 22.663 seconds. However, Mars exploration missions use the Martian {{w|solar day}} (how long it takes the Sun to get to the same position in the sky) or {{w|Timekeeping_on_Mars#Sols|''sol''}} of 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. Thus in practice, the 7-11 store would be closed for 39 minutes daily instead of 37 minutes. Likewise, Earth time usually refers to solar days; a typical (mean) sidereal Earth day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.0916 seconds long.<br />
<br />
The first part of the title text refers to {{w|Daylight_saving_time|daylight saving time}} (DST), where days can be shortened or lengthened on predefined days of the year in order to maximize use of available sunlight. In the United States, most places set clocks forward by one hour on the second Sunday of March, resulting in a 23-hour day, and back again on the first Sunday of November, resulting in a 25-hour day. Thus technically, even a 7-11 in the US would not truly be open "24 hours" every day. Arizona and Hawaii are called out as exceptions because they do not observe daylight saving time (except on the Navajo reservation in Arizona). Randall has made fun of DST [[:Category:Daylight saving time|several times before]], and once again he shows his disdain for DST by saying only the two states not using DST are honest. This comic came out over a month after DST began in the US.<br />
<br />
The second part of the title text refers to {{w|leap seconds}}, which are sometimes added to the end of a month in order to synchronize time with Earth's actual rotation. Months with a leap second will see its last day being one second longer than 24 hours. Since leap seconds apply to all Earth-based clocks, any store on Earth would not technically be open for exactly 24 hours on such days. Alternatively, a negative leap second would result in a day one second shorter than 24 hours. So far, all leap seconds have been positive, and given the slowing of the Earth's rotation it is unlikely that a negative leap second will ever occur. Leap seconds have been referred to before in the title text of [[1514: PermaCal]].<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A person in a spacesuit is trying in vain to open the door to a convenience store, rattling the handle. Behind him stands a tall post with a big 7-eleven logo at the top and the opening hours on a bar below the logo.]<br />
:Sign: 7-Eleven <br />
:Bar: Open 24 hours<br />
:Door: ''Rattle rattle''<br />
<br />
:[Caption below the panel:] <br />
:I'm glad they finally opened a 7-Eleven here on Mars, but it's annoying how it closes for 37 minutes every day.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Space]]<br />
[[Category:Daylight saving time]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1784:_Bad_Map_Projection:_Liquid_Resize&diff=1336181784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize2017-01-12T05:12:01Z<p>Chvsanchez: /* Transcript */ India and Argentina suffered the biggest changes.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1784<br />
| date = January 11, 2017<br />
| title = Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize<br />
| image = bad_map_projection_liquid_resize.png<br />
| titletext = This map preserves the shapes of Tissot's indicatrices pretty well, as long as you draw them in before running the resize.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Partial -- explains a few underlying concepts but needs a lead section}}<br />
<br />
There is no perfect way to draw a map of the world on a flat piece of paper. Each one will introduce a different type of distortion, and the best projection for a given situation is sometimes very disputed. Randall previously explored different projections in [[977: Map Projections]], and expressed his disdain for some types he sees as less efficient but whose users feel superior. In this comic, he suggests a new map projection which is useless for most map applications as the size, shape, and position of most countries are quite distorted. Worse, this method needs a planar map projection as its starting point, thus compounding the problems.<br />
<br />
[https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/content-aware-scaling.html Photoshop's content aware resizing tool] resizes images by identifying what it thinks are important details and preserving these, while shrinking or stretching less detailed areas. For example, [http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/710073-content-aware-scaling when used on a face], the algorithm detects that the eyes and mouth are important details and tries to keep these in place, while stretching the skin around it. When applied to a map, this means that areas with lots of countries - and therefore lots of detail - such as Europe, West Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Central America/the Caribbean are relatively unchanged, while big countries like India, China and the US are very warped. [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/content-aware-scaling Bad content aware scaling] is a meme. This projection does do a good job, however, of making almost every country clearly visible and indicating which countries are neighbours. <br />
South America fits into Africa almost as it did in the era of the super-continent [[wikipedia:Pangaea|Pangaea]].<br />
<br />
[[wikipedia:Tissot's indicatrix|Tissot's indicatrices]] are equally sized small circles overlaid on a globe to show the distortion of a particular map projection; if the map distortion distorts the shapes or areas of countries, it will do the same to the circles. The title text suggests that the shapes of Tissot's indicatrices would be pretty well preserved by the Liquid Resize transformation, 'as long as you draw them in before running the resize'. Since drawing in the indicatrices first would be identified as details, the Photoshop filter would try not to change them. However, the rest of the map would still change around them, making them useless.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Caption at the top of the panel:]<br />
:Bad map projection #107:<br />
:<big>The Liquid Resize</big><br />
:A political map compressed using Photoshop's content-aware resizing algorithm to cut down on unused blank space<br />
<br />
:[Below the caption there is a map of the world divided and colored by political boundaries, with outlines around each continent in black and around each country in dark gray. Antarctica is colored in light gray, bodies of water in white, and countries in pale shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The map is heavily distorted, with Africa in the center and the other continents curving around it, approximating the bounds of a square with rounded corners. The oceans have been removed but also huge countries like the US, Australia, Brazil, Russia and especially India and Argentina have been heavily distorted while areas in the center with many smaller countries like Africa and Europe is almost unchanged.]<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Maps]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1757:_November_2016&diff=1305791757: November 20162016-11-10T04:41:42Z<p>Chvsanchez: Ambiguity: game/match</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1757<br />
| date = November 9, 2016<br />
| title = November 2016<br />
| image = november_2016.png<br />
| titletext = Once you've done this, make a note of how old they were. Then, when their age reaches double that, show them this chart again.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|More on the entries in the [[#Table for the guide|table]] below on how this and that ting refers to a recurring subject like Star Wars, Pokemon etc.}}<br />
This is yet another comic designed to [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|make you feel old]], following soon after the last one [[1745: Record Scratch]]. Not so long ago a comic with the very title of the largest bold letters in the caption above the panel was released: [[1686: Feel Old]]. <br />
<br />
Specifically this comic contains ''The '''November 2016''' Guide to making people feel old''. It lists ages between 16 and 41 and links each age to one or more events that happened approximately half that age ago, so 8 years ago for the 16 years old and 20 years ago for the 40 years old etc, which means that a person of that age would have had the mentioned thing in their life for the majority of their life. And then it explains that to make a person of a given [age] feel old, look up the [thing] (or things) connected to it, and say: <br />
:"Did you know [thing] has been around for the majority of your life?" <br />
As an example the '''age 21''' can be used, as it list both {{w|The Xbox 360}} as well as this comic, [[xkcd]] it self. The sentence would then be:<br />
:"Did you know that The Xbox 360 and xkcd has been around for the majority of your life?" <br />
<br />
This matches earlier attempts to make people feel old by mentioning how long ago it was that, for instance, a movie comes out as was the case in [[891: Movie Ages]]. When an event seems to have occurred recently to you, like seeing a movie when you were twenty-one (with Toy Story) and then suddenly realizing that this was 20 years ago, you will very likely feel old. Since humans' perception of time is not related to how much time has actually passed but rather to important memories, then memories like seeing the first feature-length animated movie (Toy Story) makes a big impression and may stay vivid in peoples' memories. When they then, after hearing the sentence from this comic, realize that half their life has passed since that event, they realize how much time has passed and that makes them feel old.<br />
<br />
This is why it affects a 20-year-old to hear that Twitter is ten years old, where this will not have the same impact on a 16-year-old, since they were so young when it came out that they probably feel like it has been around for ever, and you do not feel old by hearing that, for instance, the TV was invented before you were born. It thus makes sense to pick something that happened almost midway through a person's life, because they then realize they are now double as old as when they first heard of Twitter.<br />
<br />
The joke at the end is that people over 41 don't need anything to make them feel old, because they already feel old. He thus teases people above 41 years old by claiming they are old, although many people (above 40) would claim you are not old before you retire. This trick was also used to cap the above mentioned [[891: Movie Ages]] to 35 years old, stating anyone as older was already old. But that comic was also released five years ago, and now Randall is himself closing in on 35 at 32 years at the time of this comics release. So he pushed the limit 6 years further, probably for this reason. Now he no longer thinks people at 36 are too old to try to make them feel old. It may be a coincidence, but still interesting, that he stopped the list just before 42, a number Randall has referred to many times in relation to it being the "{{w|Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything}}" in the {{w|Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}}.<br />
<br />
For something to have existed for the majority of someones life, it is supposed to be older than half the persons age, but it seems [[Randall]] went for just about half the age. For instance for a 35-year-old person (born 1981), it lists the release of the movie {{w|The Matrix}}, which was released March 31, 1999 making it very close to 17.5 years ago, fitting with half of 35 years. For the 41-year-old it is slightly more than half of their life that has included the movie {{w|Toy Story}}, which was released almost exactly 21 years before this comic in November 1995, compared to the 20.5 years from half of 41 years. The only entry on the list that seems to veer more than half a year from the half age is the one for {{w|Auto-Tune|autotuned}} hit songs which seems to refer to 1998, maybe specifically starting with {{w|Cher|Cher's}} song ''{{w|Believe (Cher song)|Believe}}'' released on October 19, 1998, making it 18 years ago. But it is listed together with the age 33 years, which should thus have been connected with something around 16.5 years old (16-17 years). However, this entry is also one of the less time specific. However, the rule still applies, it's just the only one where it is such a big majority of the persons age (18 years in their life 15 years not in their life). See more in the [[#Table for the guide|table]] below.<br />
<br />
Many of the chosen events or movies relates to things that are recurring subjects in xkcd, as can be seen by the long list of categories that belongs to this comic.<br />
<br />
The title text points out that the same chart can be used for the same person once they are twice as old. So it urges the user to note down the age of the person it was used on, and then wait until their age reaches double that. So for a 16-year-old that would only be 16 more years until they are 32, but for a 41-year-old it would have to wait until they are 82 years old. When showing them this chart, they will realize that this has existed for half of their life and again have the same type of "feeling old" that this comic is supposed to instigate today.(It will work better if they still remember the joke made on them those many years ago)...<br />
<br />
As a side note to the whole idea about feeling old, the chosen release day might not have been the most relevant to post such a comic. This comic was released just past midnight on the day that the result of the {{w|2016 United States presidential election}} was determined (i.e. the day after the election on November 8th 2016), so before anything was determined but likely at a time when the first polls showed which way it might end. In the previous comic [[1756: I'm With Her]] from Monday, the day before the election, Randall had {{w|Political endorsement|endorsed}} {{w|Hillary Clinton}} from the {{w|US Democratic Party|Democratic Party}}. Thus a 600 days election campaign finished on this day. It was a very controversial election and the {{w|US Republican Party|Republican}} nominee {{w|Donald Trump}} became {{w|President-elect of the United States}} after winning the election. This result had been feared to happen by half of the people of the united states, and the other half had feared that Clinton would win. And many people thus stayed up to follow the election all night. And now the whole thing is over, and the headache starts. And on this day Randall tries to make people feel old... It seems likely he did not need to try so hard, as lots of people probably felt much older than their years after all this!<br />
<br />
==Table for the guide==<br />
*Explanation of table:<br />
**Persons age as given in the comic.<br />
**Persons birth year. 2016 minus persons age.<br />
**Date of things. For instance a release date, the year that a thing began/happened or a year where it became a phenomenon (in the US that is, in case if was already a phenomenon somewhere else first).<br />
**Things as given in the comic. There can be more than one "thing" for each age, so it should be things in plural form.<br />
**Half age - Persons age divided by two, so either an integer or a half integer (10 or 10.5). This number should never be higher than the last column, which is also the case, when taking release dates into account.<br />
**Years ago - the number of years since the things became "a thing". In order for this thing to have been in a persons life for the majority of their life this need to be larger (or at least equal) than half that persons age. So this number should be larger than the column before. If there are more than one thing for a given age, the average year for these things are taken and used to calculate the number of years. This number should be given with a decimal, and not necessarily in half years. Only one of the entries are more than one year higher than the half age. This has been highlighted in '''bold'''.<br />
<br />
{| class = "wikitable"<br />
! Age<br />
! Birth year<br />
! Date of things<br />
! Things<br />
! Explanation<br />
! Half age<br />
! Years ago<br />
|-<br />
| 16<br />
| 2000<br />
| April 29, 2008<br />
| ''{{w|Grand Theft Auto IV}}''<br />
| Popular video game published by {{w|Rockstar Games}}; the 11th title in the ''{{w|Grand Theft Auto}}'' series<br />
| 8<br />
| 8.5<br />
|-<br />
| 17<br />
| 1999<br />
| May 2007<br />
| {{w|Rickrolling}}<br />
| A prank and internet meme involving an unexpected appearance of the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "{{w|Never Gonna Give You Up}}". A type of bait and switch.<br />
| 8.5<br />
| 9.5<br />
|-<br />
| 18<br />
| 1998<br />
| April 13, 2007<br />
| ''{{w|Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters}}<br />
| American Flash animated surreal comedy film based on the {{w|Adult Swim}} animated series ''{{w|Aqua Teen Hunger Force}}''. This seems to be a joke, as both this movie and the one it was based on is for adults, and the person this targets would only have been 9 when it was released, and will thus not even recognize the reference. And then the joke will fail as they will not feel old. <br />
| 9<br />
| 9.5<br />
|-<br />
| 19<br />
| 1997<br />
| November 19, 2006<br />
| The {{w|Nintendo Wii}}<br />
| From 2006 onwards is the time when the Nintendo Wii brand (Wii - Wii U) was released, with the Wii dominating 2006-2012 and the Wii U being *a small* part of 2012-2016.<br />
| 9.5<br />
| 10<br />
|-<br />
| 20<br />
| 1996<br />
| March 2006<br />
| {{w|Twitter}}<br />
| 2006 was a big year, in that it lead to the creation of Twitter, a social networking service that is still used to this day.<br />
| 10<br />
| 10<br />
|-<br />
| 21<br />
| 1995<br />
| November 22, 2005 (Xbox),<br>September 2005 (xkcd)<br />
| The {{w|Xbox 360}},<br>{{w|xkcd}}<br />
| 2005 led to the creation of the Xbox 360, another successful console. [[Randall]] also decided to throw in a 'reference joke', referring to the fact that xkcd was also created in 2005 and fits the criteria of the comic (and as a call back to the recent [[1750: Life Goals]] he has two x words in the same sentence, which where also both used in that comic).<br />
| 10.5<br />
| 11<br />
|-<br />
| 22<br />
| 1994<br />
| 2005<br />
| {{w|Chuck Norris Facts}}<br />
| Satirical factoids about martial artist and actor {{w|Chuck Norris}} which began to appear on the Internet in early 2005.<br />
| 11<br />
| 11<br />
|-<br />
| 23<br />
| 1993<br />
| January 25, 2004<br />
| {{w|Opportunity (rover)|Opportunity}}'s Mars Exploration<br />
| {{w|Opportunity (rover)|Opportunity}} is a Mars rover that landed on Mars on January 25, 2004<br />
| 11.5<br />
| 12<br />
|-<br />
| 24<br />
| 1992<br />
| February 4, 2004<br />
| {{w|Facebook}}<br />
| Facebook was a social networking service created in 2004 as a competitor to {{w|Myspace}} and quickly dominated as the #1 most used social networking service of all time.<br />
| 12<br />
| 12<br />
|-<br />
| 25<br />
| 1991<br />
| April 1, 2004 (Gmail),<br>July 9, 2003 (''Pirates of the Caribbean'')<br />
| {{w|Gmail}},<br>''{{w|Pirates of the Caribbean}}''<br />
| Gmail is an email service created by Google as a replacement to {{w|Hotmail}}. ''Pirates of the Caribbean'', a popular movie franchise, had its first movie {{w|Curse of the Black Pearl}} debut in 2003.<br />
| 12.5<br />
| 12.5<br />
|-<br />
| 26<br />
| 1990<br />
| January 7, 2003<br />
| {{w|In da Club}}<br />
| Rap song by {{w|50 Cent}}<br />
| 13<br />
| 13<br />
|-<br />
| 27<br />
| 1989<br />
| September 20, 2002<br />
| ''{{w|Firefly (TV series)|Firefly}}''<br />
| ''{{w|Firefly (TV series)|Firefly}}'' is a space western drama TV series created by Joss Whedon, that became a cult classic<br />
| 13.5<br />
| 14<br />
|-<br />
| 28<br />
| 1988<br />
| October 7, 2001<br />
| The {{w|War in Afghanistan}}<br />
| The United States of America invaded Afghanistan shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, in an effort to eliminate the terrorist group {{w|al-Qaeda}}.<br />
| 14<br />
| 15<br />
|-<br />
| 29<br />
| 1987<br />
| 2001<br />
| The {{w|iPod}}<br />
| The iPod was a music playing device created by {{w|Apple Inc.}} in 2001 as a replacement for MP3 players.<br />
| 14.5<br />
| 15<br />
|-<br />
| 30<br />
| 1986<br />
| May 18, 2001 (''Shrek''),<br>January 15, 2001 (Wikipedia)<br />
| ''{{w|Shrek}}'',<br>{{w|Wikipedia}}<br />
| ''Shrek'' is a popular parody film about fairy tales based on the book of the same name. It quickly gained a cult following and became a mega-hit, earning it 3 sequels and a franchise. Wikipedia is a website dedicated to looking up information based on specific topics, created in 2001.<br />
| 15<br />
| 15<br />
|-<br />
| 31<br />
| 1985<br />
| July 14, 2000<br />
| Those X-Men movies<br />
| The {{w|X-Men (film series)|X-Men}} film series, probably only referring to the first trilogy (''{{w|X-Men (film)|X-Men}}, {{w|X2 (film)|X2}}, {{w|X-Men: The Last Stand}}'') The release date refers to the first of these three movies.<br />
| 15.5<br />
| 16<br />
|-<br />
| 32<br />
| 1984<br />
| February 4, 2000<br />
| ''{{w|The Sims}}''<br />
| ''The Sims'' is a video game created by Maxis in 2000 as a simulation game where you build homes, cities, and families. It was an immediate success upon launch.<br />
| 16<br />
| 16<br />
|-<br />
| 33<br />
| 1983<br />
| 1998<br />
| Autotuned hit songs<br />
| 1998 was the time period when people realized the capabilities of {{w|Auto-Tune|autotuning}} songs. {{w|Cher|Cher's}} song ''{{w|Believe (Cher song)|Believe}}'' from October 1998 {{w|Auto-Tune#In_popular_music|may be the first time}} that people really noticed this effect. This is the only entry where there seems to be more than one year between the age of the ting and the half age of the person. But it is also one of the entries where specific dating is difficult to place.<br />
| 16.5<br />
| '''18'''<br />
|-<br />
| 34<br />
| 1982<br />
| May 19, 1999<br />
| The {{w|Star Wars Prequels}}<br />
| The Star Wars prequel trilogy (''{{w|Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace}}, {{w|Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones}}, {{w|Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith}}''). The date refers to the release of the first movie.<br />
| 17 <br />
| 17<br />
|-<br />
| 35<br />
| 1981<br />
| March 31, 1999<br />
| ''{{w|The Matrix}}''<br />
| Action film created by {{w|The Wachowskis}} (formerly known, at the time of ''The Matrix, as The Wachowski Brothers).<br />
| 17.5<br />
| 17.5<br />
|-<br />
| 36<br />
| 1980<br />
| 1998 (outside Japan)<br />
| {{w|Pokemon Red & Blue}}<br />
| A popular video game franchise<br />
| 18<br />
| 18<br />
|-<br />
| 37<br />
| 1979<br />
| April 29, 1997 (Netflix),<br>June 26, 1997 (Harry Potter),<br>September 15, 1997 (Google)<br />
| {{w|Netflix}},<br>{{w|Harry Potter}},<br>{{w|Google}}<br />
| All three are major things still today 19 years later. "Harry Potter" refers to the original publishing date of ''{{w|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone}}''. Google refers to the date that the Google domain name was registered.<br />
| 18.5<br />
| 19<br />
|-<br />
| 38<br />
| 1978<br />
| May 11, 1997<br />
| Deep Blue's Victory<br />
| {{w|Deep Blue (chess computer)|Deep Blue}} was a {{w|chess computer}}, who defeated {{w|Garry Kasparov}}, the reigning chess champion, in a match in 1997. It was the first chess computer to defeat a world champion under tournament conditions.<br />
| 19<br />
| 19<br />
|-<br />
| 39<br />
| 1977<br />
| September 13, 1996<br />
| Tupac's Death<br />
| {{w|Tupac Shakur}} was an American rapper, record producer, and actor. He was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting in 1996.<br />
| 19.5<br />
| 20<br />
|-<br />
| 40<br />
| 1976<br />
| December 31, 1995<br />
| The [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/12/31 last ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip]<br />
| ''{{w|Calvin and Hobbes}}'' is a comic strip by {{w|Bill Watterson}} that ran from November 18, 1985 to December 31, 1995.<br />
| 20<br />
| 21<br />
|-<br />
| 41<br />
| 1975<br />
| November 22, 1995<br />
| ''{{w|Toy Story}}''<br />
| The {{w|Pixar}} animated film ''Toy Story'' was the first feature length animation film to be released theatrically (and also Pixar's first feature film)<br />
| 20.5<br />
| 21<br />
|-<br />
| >41<br />
| Before 1975<br />
| N/A<br />
| [Don't worry, they've got this covered]<br />
| This joke is that people who are legitimately old already feel old. This could also be a reference to the number 42, Randall having stopped when this number was supposed to occur, 42 being the "{{w|Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything}}" in the {{w|Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}}. He has referenced this number more than once before, for instance in [[1213: Combination Vision Test]] and in the [[1608#Messages_in_Play_Area|messages in the ''Play Area'']] of [[1608: Hoverboard]].<br />
| >20.5<br />
| N/A<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Caption above the panel:]<br />
:The November 2016<br />
:<big>Guide to making people</big><br />
:<big><big>'''feel old'''</big></big><br />
<br />
:[A chart with a list of items to be put into the two first lines above the chart. First there are a line using the first column, then there are two lines using the second column. Below those lines are the two columns with underlined captions above. Between the columns are a long line connecting the two.]<br />
:If they're [age], you say:<br />
:<big>"Did you know</big> <u>[thing]</u> <big>has been around for the majority of your life?"</big><br />
<br />
:{| class = "wikitable"<br />
! <u>Age</u><br />
! <u>Thing</u><br />
|-<br />
| 16<br />
| Grand Theft Auto IV<br />
|-<br />
| 17<br />
| Rickrolling<br />
|-<br />
| 18<br />
| ''Aqua Teen Hunger Force <br> Colon Movie Film for Theaters'''<br />
|-<br />
| 19<br />
| The Nintendo Wii<br />
|-<br />
| 20<br />
| Twitter<br />
|-<br />
| 21<br />
| The Xbox 360, xkcd<br />
|-<br />
| 22<br />
| Chuck Norris Facts<br />
|-<br />
| 23<br />
| Opportunity's Mars Exploration<br />
|-<br />
| 24<br />
| Facebook<br />
|-<br />
| 25<br />
| Gmail, ''Pirates of the Caribbean''<br />
|-<br />
| 26<br />
| In da Club<br />
|-<br />
| 27<br />
| ''Firefly''<br />
|-<br />
| 28<br />
| The War in Afghanistan<br />
|-<br />
| 29<br />
| The iPod<br />
|-<br />
| 30<br />
| ''Shrek'', Wikipedia<br />
|-<br />
| 31<br />
| Those X-Men movies<br />
|-<br />
| 32<br />
| ''The Sims''<br />
|-<br />
| 33<br />
| Autotuned hit songs<br />
|-<br />
| 34<br />
| The ''Star Wars'' prequels<br />
|-<br />
| 35<br />
| ''The Matrix''<br />
|-<br />
| 36<br />
| ''Pokémon Red&Blue''<br />
|-<br />
| 37<br />
| Netflix, ''Harry Potter'', Google<br />
|-<br />
| 38<br />
| Deep Blue's Victory<br />
|-<br />
| 39<br />
| Tupac's Death<br />
|-<br />
| 40<br />
| The last ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip<br />
|-<br />
| 41<br />
| ''Toy Story''<br />
|-<br />
| >41<br />
| [Don't worry, they've got this covered]<br />
|}<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Charts]]<br />
[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]<br />
[[Category:Music]]<br />
[[Category:Video games]]<br />
[[Category:Pokémon]]<br />
[[Category:Rickrolling]]<br />
[[Category:Social networking]] <br />
[[Category:Mars rovers]]<br />
[[Category:Fiction]]<br />
[[Category:Firefly]]<br />
[[Category:Wikipedia]]<br />
[[Category:Star Wars]]<br />
[[Category:Chess]]<br />
[[Category:Calvin and Hobbes]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1670:_Laws_of_Physics&diff=118434Talk:1670: Laws of Physics2016-04-21T06:09:27Z<p>Chvsanchez: Contact</p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~--><br />
<br />
This was demonstrated nicely by Neil deGrasse Tyson in episode six of the new Cosmos. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVSYA1RnSMQ] [[User:.42|.42]] ([[User talk:.42|talk]]) 15:18, 20 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Another demonstration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UkUHC8hlL8] ;) --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.240|198.41.242.240]] 16:06, 20 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
: This youtube video with Neil deGrasse Tyson has been modified heavily from 6 secs to the end and no longer represents true psychics. Is this video here as a joke or should it be removed? --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.214.197|108.162.214.197]] 22:19, 20 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I believe that the line about having faith is also supposed to be a dig at magical thinking in science. Cueball may "know" that the experiment works because he's seen it done, but he hasn't thought it through enough to realize that it doesn't work from the other direction. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.252|173.245.54.252]] 16:32, 20 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
:I concur. "if you really believe in the laws of physics, you won't flinch" seems like Black Hat teaching a very important lesson to Cueball about trusting appeals to science. Not kindly. {{unsigned ip|162.158.255.103}}<br />
<br />
Could it also be interpreted that Black Hat is talking to himself, instead of Cueball?<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.221|108.162.237.221]] 17:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC) Brian<br />
: Black Hat being Black Hat, I very much doubt that. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.150.219|162.158.150.219]] 19:53, 20 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
: He could be reassuring the ball. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 03:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The comic is in 2d. Are we sure that Black Hat will release the ball in a plane that actually runs through the volunteer? If the plane is actually just in front of the volunteer's nose, then he will not be hit (okay, there may be {{w|Foucault_pendulum|precession}}, but that will only come into play after a while).<br />
In that interpretation, the volunteer still needs trust, but not only in physics, but also in Black Hat's ability to release the ball in a suitable plane. --[[User:Markus|Markus]] ([[User talk:Markus|talk]]) 17:47, 20 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
: There's slack in the line. Assuming the ball swings, a rough measurement seems to position it below Cueball's chin. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 03:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Around [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/64:_Solar_Plexus this location] actually; I bet that smarts. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 05:11, 21 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Possible reference to #755? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.143|108.162.222.143]] 03:27, 21 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
: It does seem his head is tilted towards the ball. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 03:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This experiment is in the novel "Contact" by Carl Sagan. [[User:Chvsanchez|Chvsanchez]] ([[User talk:Chvsanchez|talk]]) 06:09, 21 April 2016 (UTC)</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1628:_Magnus&diff=109129Talk:1628: Magnus2016-01-12T01:48:12Z<p>Chvsanchez: App precision is likely</p>
<hr />
<div>Attempted to write the transcript. Hope I did an okay job... {{unsigned ip|198.41.235.41}}<br />
:It was great. I just added some descriptions of the panels. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:01, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Actually it is an election against JFK, not an eating contest (panel 3)[[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.162|108.162.249.162]] 18:46, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Might Ronda Rousey being knocked unconsious be a reference to her recent loss to Holly Holm, where Rousey indeed was knocked unconcious? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.141|162.158.202.141]] 10:27, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:The word reference means "a thing you say or write that mentions somebody/something else; the act of mentioning somebody/something". Since the comic doesn't mention Holly Holm, there is no reference. I think there isn't even an allusion (something that is said or written that refers to or mentions another person or subject in an indirect way). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.17|108.162.221.17]] 13:46, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Besides, the phrasing is "knocked out". That needn't be a combat/contact-sport 'KO' in which Rousey was rendered actually unconscious in an intentional/explicable manner, according to the activity, but could just be telling us which of the two passed through to the next round of a bracketed competition of some other kind. (Either of a form that remains unspecified or, as the most recently mentioned competition, in an earlier iteration the hot-dog-eating contest. Either way, 11yo Stewart wasn't highly ''expected'' to win, whatever the match conditions, but the outcome needn't be so against form as it might have in a pugilistic match.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.227|162.158.152.227]] 15:13, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
::Since nothing is mentioned about which sport and Rousey is mentioned for the first time and it is a surprise she looses (on a KO) it is obvious to me that it refers to her fighting skill and a real KO. And if it was one of her first KO in that match is could easily be a reference especially if it was not expected. These two last things I do not know anything about though... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:41, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Magnus' App is available here: http://www.playmagnus.com/. There are also numerous youtube videos of him playing against himself at various ages. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.240|198.41.242.240]] 10:33, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
JFK was not 10 in 1961 as that is when he became President and you have to be at least 35 to do that. [[User:Momerath|Momerath]] ([[User talk:Momerath|talk]]) 15:26, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Whops. That went to fast, thanks for correcting it. ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:39, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Maybe I misunderstood some special reference or way to put it here, because as it links to the correct wiki page, it seems the author knew what he was talking about but:<br />
" Michael Phelps who is the most decorated Olympian competitor of all time, with a total of 22 medals in three Olympiads." is still a very strange formulation imo. As correctly linked an Olympiad is the time span between two Olympic Games (aka 4 years). First of all Phelbs won the Medals from 2004 to 2012 so if one really would want to write that in olympiads it would be closer to two. Even so I think it very strange to ever talk about the olympic medals over the course of such a timespan as they were won at three distinct events, while countless other medals were won in the time span. I would rather change it to "olympic games" or something. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.91.139|141.101.91.139]] 15:51, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Does anyone else actually kind of want this to exist? I mean, it would certainly settle a lot of playground discussions. :P [[User:Hammy2211|Hammy2211]] ([[User talk:Hammy2211|talk]]) 15:55, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Ronda Rousey is a former Judo Olympian and current MMA fighter, not a boxer. Holly Holmes (who she lost to) is an ex-boxing champion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.19|108.162.236.19]] 16:32, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Ok, changed Rousey from "boxer" to "fighter". [[User:Jimmbo|Jimmbo]] ([[User talk:Jimmbo|talk]]) 16:38, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Does Randall Munroe know of a world outside of his own little country? Or is this comic ironic? It's very much one person from not-USA (aka “the world”) versus a lot of people from the USA. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.49.27|173.245.49.27]] 18:46, 11 January 2016 (UT<br />
<br />
Hmm. It appears somebody really wants to use this page to detail Ms. Rousey's recent triumphs. I don't want an editing war, so I'll leave it be, but I don't believe that's the purpose of our undertaking here.[[User:Jimmbo|Jimmbo]] ([[User talk:Jimmbo|talk]]) 20:01, 11 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I believe the current explanation misunderstands parts of the comic. It says: “But it claims to do so with an unlikely precision which Randall is mocking; e.g. that Cueball could have beaten Magnus when he was 8½-year-old, but not a half-year later.” The age is probably referring to the virtual Magnus' age, not Cueball's age; you can set the app's skill level in half-year increments (at least for the earlier years). So this is not Randall mocking the app, it's merely setup for the rest of the joke. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.160|162.158.91.160]] 01:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
"But it claims to do so with an unlikely precision which Randall is mocking": the '''precision''' of the app '''is in fact credible'''. Carlsen was gaining 100 Elo points every six months until he was 15, and a chess-playing program can emulate, roughly, a human Elo performance. --[[User:Chvsanchez|Chvsanchez]] ([[User talk:Chvsanchez|talk]]) 01:48, 12 January 2016 (UTC)</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1628:_Magnus&diff=1091261628: Magnus2016-01-12T00:44:18Z<p>Chvsanchez: /* Explanation */ Carlsen is the world champion, besides he is the no. 1 player</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1628<br />
| date = January 11, 2016<br />
| title = Magnus<br />
| image = magnus.png<br />
| titletext = In the latest round, 9-year-old Muhammad Ali beat 10-year-old JFK at air hockey, while Secretariat lost the hot-dog-eating crown to 12-year-old Ken Jennings. Meanwhile, in a huge upset, 11-year-old Martha Stewart knocked out the adult Ronda Rousey.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
[[Cueball]] shows [[Megan]] an {{w|mobile app|app}}, [http://magnuscarlsen.com/playmagnus Play Magnus] ([https://itunes.apple.com/app/play-magnus/id808138395?mt=8 iOS], [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.mw.playmagnus Android]) which claims to simulate playing {{w|chess}} against {{w|Magnus Carlsen}} at various ages. Carlsen was a {{w|chess grandmaster}} who was the world champion when this comic was released.<br />
<br />
The idea behind the app is that as Carlsen grows up he becomes better at chess and thus it become exceedingly difficult to beat him as he gets older. But it claims to do so with an unlikely precision which Randall is mocking; e.g. that Cueball could have beaten Magnus when he was 8½-year-old, but not a half-year later.<br />
<br />
Taking the mocking a step further, Megan wants such an app for other sports {{w|tennis}} and {{w|Swimming (sport)|swimming}}, where skill couldn't imaginably be simulated via an app at all. She wants to compare herself to an 8-year-old {{W|Serena Williams}}, a top-ranked professional tennis player. Or to a 6-year-old {{W|Michael Phelps}}, the {{w|List_of_multiple_Olympic_medalists#List_of_most_Olympic_medals_over_career|most decorated Olympian competitor}} of all time. <br />
<br />
Cueball expands beyond sport, wishing to determine if he could cook better than an 11-year-old {{W|Martha Stewart}} (author of several cookbooks). Megan wonders if she'd have won an election against a 12-year old JFK ({{W|John F. Kennedy}}, the 35th American President). Obviously, cooking and politics were skills acquired later in life for both figures.<br />
<br />
Cueball and Megan continue speculating about an app simulating the skills of random celebrities (or animals) at various ages, even beyond the talents that made them famous. They finally end up comparing 8-year-old Magnus's swimming skill against 9-year-old Martha's (he wins). But they'd both lose a {{w|hot dog}}-{{w|Competitive eating|eating contest}} against the championship race horse {{W|Secretariat (horse)|Secretariat}}. At this point even Megan realizes (with considerable understatement) their project "has gotten weird".<br />
<br />
The title text extends the point to even greater absurdity, e.g. the ludicrous prospect of a young Martha Stewart knocking an adult {{W|Ronda Rousey}} unconscious, or 9-year-old {{W|Muhammad Ali}} beating a 10-year-old JFK in {{w|air hockey}}. The horse also gets re-mentioned in the title text, losing in a hot dog eating contest against 11-year-old {{W|Ken Jennings}}. Ronda Rousey is an Olympic bronze medalist judoka and MMA fighter; when this comic was released Ronda Rousey had just lost to {{w|Holly Holm}} in a major upset. Muhammad Ali is one of the all-time great boxers. At the time of this comic Ken Jennings is the record-holder for his winning streak on ''{{W|Jeopardy!}}''.<br />
<br />
Chess was previously compared to {{w|basketball}} in [[1392: Dominant Players]], which also mentioned Magnus. This is the tenth [[:Category:Chess|comic about chess]] on {{xkcd}}.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Cueball walks from the right towards Megan while holding up his smartphone.]<br />
:Cueball: Magnus Carlsen has an app where you can play chess against a simulated version of him at different ages. <br />
:Cueball: I can beat the 8½-year-old, but lose to him at 9.<br />
<br />
:[While Megan talks to Cueball he lifts his hand to his chin, while holding the smartphone down.]<br />
:Megan: I want that, but for other games. Can I beat 8-year-old Serena Williams at Tennis? Swim laps faster than a 6-year-old Michael Phelps?<br />
:Cueball: We should make a simulator.<br />
<br />
:[Cueball walks out left and Megan follows him. He must have pocketed his phone as it is not in his hand.]<br />
:Cueball: ...Why limit it to games? Can I cook a better chicken than 11-year-old Martha Stewart?<br />
:Megan: Win an election against 12-year-old JFK?<br />
<br />
:[At the top frame of this panel there is a small frame with a caption. Below lies Megan on the floor to the left in front of her laptop, while Cueball sits on the floor to the right facing her in front of his own laptop. Between them are some heavy books.]<br />
:Soon...<br />
:[Cueball and Megan sitting at laptops in the bottom of the panel.]<br />
:Megan: Looks like 8-year-old Magnus Carlsen can swim faster than 9-year-old Martha Stewart.<br />
:Cueball: But they both lose a hot-dog-eating contest to 2-year-old Secretariat.<br />
:Megan: This project has gotten weird.<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
The app they are talking about is called [http://magnuscarlsen.com/playmagnus Play Magnus].<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring John F. Kennedy]]<br />
[[Category:Chess]]<br />
[[Category:Sport]]<br />
[[Category:Animals]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1584:_Moments_of_Inspiration&diff=1026811584: Moments of Inspiration2015-10-01T01:47:37Z<p>Chvsanchez: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1584<br />
| date = September 30, 2015<br />
| title = Moments of Inspiration<br />
| image = moments_of_inspiration.png<br />
| titletext = Charles, I just talked to John and Mildred, who run that company selling seeds and nuts, and their kids with MOUTHS are starving!<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{w|Isaac Newton}}'s original examples describing the {{w|Newton's law of universal gravitation|force of gravity}} show an apple falling from a tree in order to explain why the apple falls toward the Earth, instead of the Earth falling toward the apple. He was indeed inspired by a {{w|Isaac_Newton#Apple_incident|falling apple}} but over time this developed into the legend that he was originally inspired from being actually struck by an apple. The first part of this comic retells that famous legend. The later panels depict similar (but more implausible) legends that could emerge if we were to assume that other scientists' most famous examples and discoveries were based on actually observing some mundane everyday event taking place. <br />
<br />
In the first situation we not only see the apple fall on Newton's head, we also see the Moon. This was one of the first astronomical objects on which he used his theory of gravity. He calculated its orbit around the Earth and found that it fit with the theory.<br />
<br />
In the second situation Cueball throws a baseball towards {{w|Lise Meitner}}, but when she fails to catch the ball it hits one of her porcelain model-atoms. In this way Meitner discovered a way to split the atom. Cueball may represent {{w|Otto Hahn}}, since they were part of the Hahn-Meitner-Strassmann team that worked on this problem. Hahn was later awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, where Meitner was overlooked. Throwing something at someone and asking them to [http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/think-fast-throwing-something.1984437/ think fast] is a common "joke", where the receiver rarely has a chance to actually catch the object. But in this case it could also be a reference to the fact that she then thought fast then made a major discovery. Or if it is Hahn, then he thought faster and got the award instead of her. The porcelain models might also be a reference to {{w|Meissen porcelain}}, in German called "Meißner Porzellan", where "Meißner" is phonetically very similar to "Meitner". (Meitner has previously been mentioned in the comic [[896: Marie Curie]], which more or less explains why [[Randall]] did not choose the more famous {{w|Marie Curie}} as the female example in this comic. Meitner is not very well known in the public, compared to the three men or Curie, but this may exactly be the point for choosing her. She should have been just as famous considering what splitting the atoms has been {{w|Nuclear weapon|leading to}}!)<br />
<br />
In the third situation it is indicated that half of {{w|Charles Darwin}}'s children had {{w|beaks}}. This would make it very difficult for them to drink soda from a glass or through a straw, compared to his normal children with mouths. Based on this assumption he developed his ideas about natural selection and {{w|evolution}}. (The comic is unclear on whether this makes them more or less fit to survive and reproduce). This is a reference to Darwin's initial findings on the {{w|HMS Beagle}} on how {{w|Galapagos}} {{w|finches}} with differently shaped beaks are better suited for specific types of food, and therefore are better selected for in environments where those foods are available. (The title text furthers this, see below). After having learned about genes from Mendel's works, Darwin later in life regretted having married his cousin, as consanguinity would increase the chances that his children would be born with birth defects, as it ultimately happened. <br />
<br />
In the fourth situation {{w|Albert Einstein}} remarks to a man that it's annoying that the man's twin brother keeps flashing a light from a train when Einstein is trying to check his clock. He then comes to a sudden revelation. This references several of Einstein's (separate&mdash;it makes little sense together in this manner) thought experiments on {{w|special relativity}}, such as the {{w|twin paradox}} (the twin on the train should be younger after decelerating to a stop), the time between separate flashes of light, and the {{w|time dilation}} experienced by the observer in the moving {{w|frame of reference}}.<br />
<br />
In the title text there is a description of how beaks rather than mouths are more useful when the foods have shells that need to be cracked open like nuts and seeds. Here it is though clear than in the John and Mildred family you starve if you cannot eat this bird food, and thus here it would be an advantage to have a beak for survival. "John" and "Mildred" may be Mildred and {{w|John T. Scopes}} of the famous 1925 "{{w|Scopes Trial|monkey trial}}" in which John was fined $100 for teaching evolution in a Tennessee school.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Isaac Newton, with curly long hair, sits under a tree. A waning crescent moon can be seen. An apple falls and hits him on the head. There is a caption in a frame that breaks the top border of the main frame:]<br />
:Isaac Newton<br />
:Apple falling: Bonk<br />
:Isaac Newton: ''Ow!''<br />
<br />
:[Isaac Newton rubs his sore head.]<br />
:Isaac Newton: Aha!<br />
<br />
<br />
:[Cueball throws a baseball towards Lise Meitner with short dark hair. (The ball can be seen in the next frame). She turns towards him too late to react and completely fails to even try catching the ball. There is a caption in a frame that breaks the top border of the main frame:]<br />
:Lise Meitner<br />
:Cueball: Hey Lise! Think fast!<br />
:Ball hitting something (off-screen): Crash<br />
<br />
:[Lise takes her hands to her mouth and she watches the broken porcelain atom lying in two pieces on the floor where it has fallen of a desk. On the desk three other intact atoms can be seen. The baseball lies behind her.]<br />
:Lise Meitner: Oh no! My collection of porcelain atoms! <br />
:Lise Meitner:...Hmm.<br />
<br />
<br />
:[Four kids are standing in front of Megan and Charles Darwin (with a big beard and hair behind the ears). All the kids are trying to drink a glass of soda with a straw in them. The first kid is a boy with dark flat hair and sips soda through the straw with his mouth. The next kid is a boy with standing black hair, he tries in wain to drink with his beak open on each side of the glass. The third kid is a girl with her hair in a bun. She tries to get her beak into the glass which she has put on the floor. The last kid is a boy version of Cueball who slurps his soda through the straw. There is a caption in a frame that breaks the top border of the main frame:]<br />
:Charles Darwin<br />
:Megan: I gave our kids soda, but the ones with beaks always have trouble drinking it.<br />
:Charles Darwin: I've noticed that...<br />
:Boy with flat dark hair: Sip sip<br />
:Boy with standing black hair and a beak: Crunch<br />
:Girl with her hair in a bun and a beak: Peck peck<br />
:Cueball like kid: Sluurp<br />
<br />
<br />
:[A hairy guy is standing in front of Albert Einstein (with wild hair and a moustache), who is holding one hand to his head and has a clock in his other hand. Behind them is a train, with a locomotive at the front and a wagon behind that stretches beyond the frame. Another hairy guy has his head out of the front window of the wagon and is flashing a light towards the other two. In the next three windows can be seen passengers, two with Cueball like heads and one with hair. There is a caption in a frame that breaks the top border of the main frame:]<br />
:Albert Einstein<br />
:Albert Einstein: I wish your twin brother would stop shining lights at us from that train. I can barely see my clock! <br />
:Albert Einstein: ...Wait!<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]<br />
[[Category:Science]]<br />
[[Category:Physics]]<br />
[[Category:Biology]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=482:_Height&diff=99010482: Height2015-08-03T19:50:49Z<p>Chvsanchez: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 482<br />
| date = September 29, 2008<br />
| title = Height<br />
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]<br />
| image = height.png<br />
| titletext = Interestingly, on a true vertical log plot, I think the Eiffel Tower's sides would really be straight lines.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
The comic is a companion piece to [[485: Depth]]. Where ''Depth'' uses a {{w|logarithmic scale}} to depict the Earth at progressively greater magnification, from Earth's surface to the interior of a single proton, ''Height'' uses a logarithmic scale to depict the contents of the universe at progressively smaller distances, from the edge of the observable universe to the grass beneath our feet.<br />
<br />
Starting from the top, as one often does when reading comics, we begin with the top of the observable universe, described as being 46 billion {{w|light years}} out from the Earth. Randall is stating that this is the longest distance that a ray of light has ever traveled to reach Earth, which implies that the universe is about 46 billion years old. As of 2015, the universe is estimated to be about 14 billion years old. [http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2014/11/aa21529-13/aa21529-13.html Planck 2013 results] To the right of the text, [[Black Hat]] stands atop the comic, having just dropped a cat off the edge; he may be testing if cats always land on their feet, or may just be being a jerk, per his usual character. As one scrolls down, the depicted distances become less compressed, until arriving at the surface of Earth, all the while approaching a 1:1 scale with real-life distances. As shown in [[1162: Log Scale]], if Randall didn't do this, the comic would be much, MUCH longer.<br />
<br />
In this comic, most objects that are grounded on Earth are scaled logarithmically on the vertical axes and linearly on the horizontal axes (some are scaled linearly on both axes). Displaying objects in this manner noticeably distorts their shape; the Great Pyramid, for instance, looks not like a pyramid but like a bullet. In the title text, Randall muses on how the inwardly-curved sides of the Eiffel Tower might actually become perfectly straightened when subjected to this logarithmic distortion, although it is shown to bulge in the comic proper, meaning Randall probably doesn't fully believe his own musings. The actual shape of the Tower approximates an {{w|Exponential function|exponential curve}}, which would indeed give a straight line on a log scale, although it was actually designed by {{w|Gustave Eiffel}} to minimize wind resistance rather than to be mathematically exact (the design is so perfect that the amount the Tower sways in the wind is less than the amount it is distorted due to thermal expansion of the sunlit side).<br />
<br />
Outside of the Earth's atmosphere, the objects are placed at their actual distances from Earth on the log scale, but their shapes are not subjected to the logarithmic scaling of Earth objects, instead appearing as they would be seen (otherwise, round objects like the sun would appear more egg shaped, with the flatter side facing upward). However, objects are still much larger or much smaller than they would be in real life, in order to allow them to be properly seen.<br />
<br />
===Objects===<br />
All objects are sorted from bottom to top by their maximum distance from earth for objects in a solar orbit, and their current distance for others.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
! Distance<br />
! Object<br />
! Description<br />
|-<br />
| 435&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| Black Hat and cat<br />
| Black Hat kicking a cat off the top of the comic, presumably to determine whether it will land on its feet.<br />
|-<br />
| 435&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Top of observable universe<br />
|-<br />
| 11.3&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Hubble Deep Field}} objects<br />
| Objects of extremely distant galaxies found in a long-exposure photograph by of the Hubble telescope, 12 billion light-years away. The right most object is probably intended to be a pulsar, schematically shown from the side.<br />
|-<br />
| 9.46&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | One billion light years<br />
|-<br />
| 3.1&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pulsar}}<br />
| A highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation.<br />
|-<br />
| 2.36&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Great Attractor}}<br />
| An unusual concentration of intergalactic mass.<br />
|-<br />
| 425&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Antennae Galaxies}} (colliding)<br />
| A pair of colliding galaxies.<br />
|-<br />
| 23.6&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Andromeda Galaxy}}<br />
| A sibling to our Milky Way. It is the nearest spiral galaxy to ours.<br />
|-<br />
| 9.46&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | One million light years<br />
|-<br />
| 2.38&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cat-on-a-keyboard-in-space Cat on a keyboard in space]<br />
| An internet meme featuring a picture of a cat sitting on a musical keyboard, superimposed on an image of space.<br />
|-<br />
| 1.56&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Magellanic Clouds}}<br />
| These clouds are a pair of nearby dwarf galaxies.<br />
|-<br />
| 263&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| Edge of Galaxy<br />
| The edge of the {{w|Milky Way}} galaxy, the galaxy in which we reside.<br />
|-<br />
| 245&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Galactic Center}}<br />
| The center of the Milky Way galaxy.<br />
|-<br />
| 61.5&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Crab Nebula}}<br />
| Nebula are supernova remnants<br />
|-<br />
| 14.2&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Horsehead Nebula}}<br />
| A dark nebula that is part of the Orion Constellation.<br />
|-<br />
| 12.7&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Orion Nebula}}<br />
| A nebula that is part of the Orion Constellation, just south of Orion's Belt.<br />
|-<br />
| 8.14&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Rigel}}<br />
| The brightest star in the Orion Constellation it is actually a triple star system known alternatively as Beta Orionis<br />
|-<br />
| 6.08&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Betelgeuse}}<br />
| The star Betelgeuse is displayed along with the location of {{w|Ford_Prefect (character)|Ford Prefect}} on his home planet which orbits Betelgeuse. Ford Prefect is a fictional character from the science fiction parody {{w|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 4.20&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pleiades}}<br />
| The Pleiades also have a derogatory remark, as per [[66: Abusive Astronomy]]<br />
|-<br />
| 2.90&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| The [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Romulan_Neutral_Zone Romulan Neutral Zone]<br />
| This marks the edge of the {{w|Star Trek}} Federation.<br />
|-<br />
| 931&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | The first radio broadcast was in January 1910. Since radio waves travel at the speed of light, and this was published in September of 2008 this the radio waves traveled about 98.5 light years. See {{w|Contact (1997 film)}} for a depiction of this. This is also referenced in [[1212: Interstellar Memes]].<br />
|-<br />
| 350&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Arcturus}}<br />
| An orange giant star that is part of the Boötes constellation.<br />
|-<br />
| 320&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pollux}}<br />
| One of the most distinct stars in the Gemini Constellation it is large Orange Giant with an apparent visual magnitude of 1.1<br />
|-<br />
| 242&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| The edge of {{w|Federation Sector 0-0-1}}<br />
| The sector of space assigned to Earth in {{w|Star Trek}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 224&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Iraq and weapons of mass destruction|"missing WMDs"}}<br />
| A reference to the alleged weapons of mass destruction that were used as a pretence to mobilize the world population against Iraq, and start the Iraq war.<br />
|-<br />
| 81.3&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Sirius}}<br />
|Also known as Alpha Canis Majoris, the Dog Star, or the North Star it is actually a binary system of Stars consisting of a main sequence white star and a small white dwarf.<br />
|-<br />
| 56.6&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Barnard's Star}}<br />
| Barnards star is a very small red giant that is of great interest to astronomers as an achievement in the SIM (Space Interforometry Mission) to find a celestial object out of solar system that is a s small as 3 earth masses<br />
|-<br />
| 41.3&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Alpha Centauri}}<br />
| Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to our planet.<br />
|-<br />
| 30.9&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | One parsec.<br />
|-<br />
| 9.46&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | One light-year.<br />
|-<br />
| 15.0&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Oort cloud}}<br />
| A halo of ice balls surrounding our solar system, but missing the {{w|Kupier belt}} between Neptune and the Oort cloud.<br />
|-<br />
| 350&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Bupkis}}<br />
| Yiddish for "nothing". Only a handful of objects are known to orbit between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.<br />
|-<br />
| 55.0&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| A comet which will destroy earth in late 2063 <br />
| To coincide with the latest biblicaly based prophesy for the [http://www.askelm.com/prophecy/p971105.htm end of the world].<br />
|-<br />
| 19.5&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Voyager 1}}<br />
| An early space probe. Distance correct as of 20th Nov 2014, click [http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/ here] to see NASA's live distance counter.<br />
|-<br />
| 16.7&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pioneer 10}}<br />
| Listed distance is an estimate based on {{w|Pioneer_10#Current_status|this information}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 17.7&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pioneer 11}}<br />
| By the similarity in appearance to Pioneer 10 this unlabeled probe must be Pioneer 11. Listed distance is an estimate based on {{w|Pioneer_11#Current_status|this information}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 14.5&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Eris (dwarf planet)|Eris}}<br />
| One of a pair of {{w|Trans-Neptunian object}}s now classified as {{w|dwarf planet}}s. The "All hail Discordia!" after Eris is a reference to {{w|Discordianism}}, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek religion based around the goddess Eris. The distance is the maximum distance from earth.<br />
|-<br />
| 7.50&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pluto}}<br />
| One of a pair of {{w|Trans-Neptunian object}}s now classified as {{w|dwarf planet}}s. Pluto was originally classified as the 9th planet of the Solar system. Many people was appalled when it was suddenly degraded to dwarf planet. Obviously Randall does not think much of these people thus the comment: ''Not a planet. Neener neener''. The distance is the maximum distance of Pluto from Earth.<br />
|-<br />
| 4.70&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Neptune}} <br />
| Neptune is displayed here with its moons. Neptune is the eighth and final planet in our solar system.<br />
|-<br />
| 3.20&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Uranus}} <br />
| Uranus is dispayed here with its moons. Uranus is the seventh planet in our solar system.<br />
|-<br />
| 1.67&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Saturn}} <br />
| Saturn is displayed along with its moons. One of Saturn's moons, most likely Titan, is labeled as a potential location to find life. Titan is the only known moon to have an atmosphere and oceans. The oceans cannot be filled with liquid water, as it is far too cold, but are instead filled with liquid methane and ethane. Some hypothisize that life could have formed in such oceans.<br />
|-<br />
| 928&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Jupiter}} <br />
| Jupiter is displayed along with its moons. One of Jupiter's moons, most likely Europa, is labeled as a potential location to find life. Europa may be covered by a deep ocean of water found under a layer of ice many kilometers thick. Some hypothisize that life could have formed in such oceans.<br />
|-<br />
| 222&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| Asteroids<br />
| The {{w|Asteroid|Asteroid belt}} contains a spaceship from {{w|Asteroids (video game)}}<br />
|-<br />
| 133&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Mars}}<br />
| Note the path, reflecting the fact that their distances from Earth vary as the planets move in their orbits with a maximum distance of 261 million km and a minimum of 54.6 million km.<br />
|-<br />
| 114&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Venus}}<br />
| Note the path, reflecting the fact that their distances from Earth vary as the planets move in their orbits with a maximum distance of 401 million km and a minimum of 37.7 million km.<br />
|-<br />
| 138&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Mercury}}<br />
| Mercury is the first planet in out solar system. The distance shown is the maximum distance from Earth.<br />
|-<br />
| 149&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Sun}}<br />
| The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system, around which the Earth orbits.<br />
|-<br />
| 16.3&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Discovery One}}<br />
| The Discovery One from {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey}}, referring to the quote "open the pod bay door, HAL." Also may be a reference to [[375: Pod Bay Doors]].<br />
|-<br />
| 9.43&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| Planet Express<br />
| The spaceplane is most likely the Planet Express from {{w|Futurama}}, where Fry once discussed "a big heaping bowl of salt." <br />
|-<br />
| 400&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| Human Altitude Record <br />
| Achieved by the team of {{w|Apollo 13}} approximately 100km higher than the remaining Apollo missions.<br />
|-<br />
| 384&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Moon}} <br />
| The Moon is the Earth's only natural satellite.<br />
|-<br />
| 90.4&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Snoop Dogg}}<br />
| A tongue-in-cheek reference to a rapper notorious for smoking marijuana, shown as having the second-highest altitude record. Someone who is taking drugs is said to be getting high.<br />
|-<br />
| 60.5&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Space elevator}}<br />
| A proposed method of transporting cargo or people into orbit, consisting of a large mass beyond geosynchronous orbit, a station at the geosynchronous point, a cable connecting it to the Earth, and a climber that can scale the cable. Space elevators are also seen in [[697: Tensile vs. Shear Strength]] and [[536: Space Elevators]].<br />
|-<br />
| 42.1&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | {{w|Geosynchronous orbit|Geosynchronous Orbit}}<br />
|-<br />
| 20.2&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|GPS (satellite)|GPS Satellites}}<br />
| GPS satellites are used for global positioning.<br />
|-<br />
| 3.94&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Lunar Lander}} <br />
| The quote is a reference to {{w|Contact (1997 film)}} where the main character Ellie Arroway after witnessing a celestial light show up close says "Poetry! They should've sent a poet.".<br />
|-<br />
| 800&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Space debris|Space Junk}}<br />
| There is a large quantity of defunct objects in orbit around the earth. Amongst other things, this includes old satellites, rocket stages and fragments from collisions or disintegration. Space junk is also referenced in [[1242: Scary Names]] under the title {{w|Kessler syndrome}}<br />
|-<br />
| 422.5&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|International Space Station}}<br />
| The ISS (International Space Station) is a multinational effort to put a research vessel in space. It is currently the largest artifical object in Earth's orbit, as well as the location of the longest continuous human presence in space.<br />
|-<br />
| 100&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | The {{w|Edge of space|official edge of space}} as defined by the {{w|Kármán line}}<br />
|-<br />
| 76.0&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Meteors}}<br />
| Meteors are chunks of rock (usually asteroids) that burn up in the atmosphere, producing the bright light associated with them. If the are large enough to hit the ground, they become meteorites, which is why Munroe labeled them only in the upper atmosphere.<br />
|-<br />
| 25.0&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|High-altitude balloon|High-altitude balloons}}<br />
| Unmanned balloons, typically filled with helium or hydrogen. The current altitude record was set in 2002 by a balloon named BU60-1 which reached 53,000m.<br />
|-<br />
| 16.1&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 1/10 ATM = 0.1 {{w|Atmospheric pressure|atmosphere of pressure}}<br />
|-<br />
| 12.0&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Airliner|Airliners}}<br />
| This is a typical cruising altitude of jet aircraft, equating to roughly 40,000 feet. (Aircraft altitude tends to be specified in feet rather than metres (yay!) ) <br />
|-<br />
| 8.84&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Mount Everest}} <br />
| The Earths highest mountain, located in the {{w|Himalayas|Himalayan mountain range}} in South Asia.<br />
|-<br />
| 8.00&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Cory Doctorow}} <br />
| Cory Doctorow in a balloon, a reference to comic [[239: Blagofaire]].<br />
|-<br />
| 6.34&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Space Shuttle Columbia disaster}} <br />
| The {{w|Space Shuttle Columbia}} and its seven crew were lost when it disintegrated at [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6v16AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA7&ots=LDKQ3nsNHs&dq=shuttle%20columbia%20altitude&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q=shuttle%20columbia%20altitude&f=false approximately 63,400m] in 2003. This number is inconsistent with the height of the graph by a factor of 10 probably a mistype by Randall.<br />
|-<br />
| 6.00&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Helicopter}} <br />
| Though the record for helicopter altitude (without payload) is 12,442m, normal flying is usually performed much lower. In the US, 6000m is into {{w|Class A airspace}}, which is restricted and requires flight under {{w|Instrument Flight Rules}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 6.00&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Cloud}} <br />
| Though not actually labelled there are a couple of clouds shown. While different cloud types vary in height, 6000m is roughly in the middle of the height range for clouds in temperate regions [http://weatherfaqs.org.uk/node/21]<br />
|-<br />
| 5.49&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 1/2 ATM = 0.5 {{w|Atmospheric pressure|atmosphere of pressure}}<br />
|-<br />
| 1.78&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| [[Cueball]] <br />
| Apparently still using Python as shown in comic [[353: Python]].<br />
|-<br />
| 800&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 800 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 800&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Burj Khalifa|Burj Dubai}} <br />
| Now known as the Burj Khalifa, is the tallest building in the world.<br />
|-<br />
| 500&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 500 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 400&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 400 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 325&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Eiffel Tower}} <br />
| A famous landmark in Paris, France.<br />
|-<br />
| 300&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 300 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 200&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 200 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 150&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| Kite <br />
| Kite string is commonly sold in large spools; a nice thick spool will probably hold 150 meters.<br />
|-<br />
| 140&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Great Pyramid of Giza}} <br />
| One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It is located in Egypt.<br />
|-<br />
| 120&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Baseball|Pop Fly}} <br />
| In Baseball a 'Pop Fly' is when the batter mis-hits the baseball, which then follows a tall arc deep into the infield where it's easy picking for the other team to catch on its way down. The highest recorded pop fly, not including those that landed in foul territory, was 172 meters.<br />
|-<br />
| 115&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Redwood Tree|Redwood trees}} <br />
| The tallest trees in the world. At 115.61m (379.3ft) {{w|Hyperion (tree)|Hyperion}}, a Coast Redwood, holds the record for the tallest tree in the world.<br />
|-<br />
| 100&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 100 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 20.0&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Oak}} <br />
| While oaks may grow to be in excess of 40m in height, heights of around 20m are more typical. The person in the tree saying, "Hey, squirrels!" is a reference to [[167: Nihilism]].<br />
|-<br />
| 16.4&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| Tallest stilts <br />
| The tallest {{w|stilts}} recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records (as of November 2006) were 16.4 meters, or nearly 54 feet.<br />
|-<br />
| 13.0&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Brachiosaurus|Brachiosaur}}<br />
| A large genus of dinosaur.<br />
|-<br />
| 8.00&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Giraffe}} <br />
| The tallest living terrestrial animal, with fully grown adults reaching in excess of 5 m. While labelled 8m in the comic, the [http://www.big-animals.com/the-giraffe-the-worlds-tallest-animal/ record] for height is reported at 5.8m.<br />
|-<br />
| 1.70&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Human height|Folks}}<br />
| Determining an average height of the world population is fraught with complications, but as a ballpark figure 1.7m is fairly accurate.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:'''Top of observable universe'''<br />
:[Black Hat is standing on top, throwing a black kitty down.]<br />
:Black Cat: Mrowl!<br />
:[Map of the universe from observable universe to Earth. Each area of item is labeled. Labels left to right, up to down:]<br />
:(46 billion light years up)<br />
::Hubble Deep Field Objects<br />
:-One billion light years-<br />
::Great Attractor<br />
::Antennae Galaxies (colliding)<br />
::Andromeda<br />
::Holy crap lots of space<br />
:-One million light years-<br />
::Magellanic Clouds<br />
::Edge of galaxy<br />
::Galactic center<br />
::Crab Nebula<br />
::Orion Nebula<br />
::Horsehead Nebula<br />
::Romulan neutral zone<br />
::The Pleiades, duh!<br />
::Rigel<br />
::Betelgeuse<br />
::Ford Prefect<br />
:[Three arrows are pointing up above three lines with the following label:]<br />
:-Expanding shell of radio transmissions-<br />
::[Above a dotted line:]<br />
::Edge of federation sector 0-0-1<br />
::Pollux<br />
::Arcturus<br />
::Missing WMDs<br />
::Sirius<br />
::Barnard's Star<br />
::Alpha Centauri<br />
:-One parsec-<br />
:-One light year-<br />
::Oort Cloud (?)<br />
::Bupkis<br />
::Comet which will destroy Earth in late 2063<br />
::Pioneer 10<br />
::Voyager I<br />
::Eris (All hail Discordia!)<br />
::Pluto (Not a planet. Neener neener.)<br />
::Neptune<br />
::Uranus<br />
::Saturn<br />
::[Two arrows point to two moons, one next to each of the planets aboe and below.]<br />
::<-- Life --><br />
::Jupiter<br />
::Asteroids<br />
::Mars<br />
::Venus<br />
::Sun<br />
::Mercury<br />
::Spaceship Planet Express: Hey, a heaping bowl of salt!<br />
::Spaceship Discovery One: Open the fridge door, Hal.<br />
::Moon<br />
::Human altitude record (Apollo 13)<br />
::2nd place: Snoop Dogg<br />
::Space elevator - One of these days, promise!<br />
::Geosynchronous Orbit<br />
::GPS satellites<br />
::Lunar lander: In retrospect, they <u>shouldn't</u> have sent a poet. I have no idea how to land.<br />
::International Space Station<br />
::Space junk<br />
:-Official edge of space (100 km)-<br />
::Meteors<br />
:-1/10 ATM-<br />
::High altitude balloons<br />
::Airliners<br />
::Shuttle Columbia lost<br />
:-1/2 ATM-<br />
::Cory Doctrow<br />
::Everest<br />
::Helicopters (6000 m)<br />
::Cueball: Woo Python!<br />
::[A vertical scale is drawn along the right side of the picture, starting at 1 km and getting progressivly smaller and smaller.]<br />
:1 km<br />
:-800 m-<br />
::Burj Dubai (~800 m)<br />
:500<br />
:400<br />
::Eiffel Tower (325 m)<br />
:200<br />
::Kites<br />
::Great Pyramid (140 m)<br />
::Pop fly<br />
::Redwood (115 m)<br />
:100m<br />
::Oak (20 m)<br />
::A person in the oak: Hey squirrels!<br />
::Tallest stilts<br />
::Brachiosaur (13 m)<br />
::Giraffe (8 m)<br />
::[Megan and Cueball holding the kite are labeled:] <br />
::Folks<br />
:'''The observable universe, from top to bottom''''<br />
::~On a log scale~<br />
::Sizes are not to scale, but heights above the Earth's surface are accurate on a log scale (that is, each step up is double the height.)<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Charts]]<br />
[[Category:Large drawings]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]] <br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Baseball]]<br />
[[Category:Animals]]<br />
[[Category:Dinosaurs]]<br />
[[Category:Giraffes]]<br />
[[Category:Space]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=482:_Height&diff=99009482: Height2015-08-03T19:47:22Z<p>Chvsanchez: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 482<br />
| date = September 29, 2008<br />
| title = Height<br />
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]<br />
| image = height.png<br />
| titletext = Interestingly, on a true vertical log plot, I think the Eiffel Tower's sides would really be straight lines.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
The comic is a companion piece to [[485: Depth]]. Where ''Depth'' uses a {{w|logarithmic scale}} to depict the Earth at progressively greater magnification, from Earth's surface to the interior of a single proton, ''Height'' uses a logarithmic scale to depict the contents of the universe at progressively smaller distances, from the edge of the observable universe to the grass beneath our feet.<br />
<br />
Starting from the top, as one often does when reading comics, we begin with the top of the observable universe, described as being 46 billion {{w|light years}} out from the Earth. Randall is stating that this is the longest distance that a ray of light has ever traveled to reach Earth, which implies that the universe is about 46 billion years old. As of 2015, the universe is estimated to be about 14 billion years old. [http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2014/11/aa21529-13/aa21529-13.html Planck 2013 results] To the right of the text, [[Black Hat]] stands atop the comic, having just dropped a cat off the edge; he may be testing if cats always land on their feet, or may just be being a jerk, per his usual character. As one scrolls down, the depicted distances become less compressed, until arriving at the surface of Earth, all the while approaching a 1:1 scale with real-life distances. As shown in [[1162: Log Scale]], if Randall didn't do this, the comic would be much, MUCH longer.<br />
<br />
In this comic, most objects that are grounded on Earth are scaled logarithmically on the vertical axes and linearly on the horizontal axes (some are scaled linearly on both axes). Displaying objects in this manner noticeably distorts their shape; the Great Pyramid, for instance, looks not like a pyramid but like a bullet. In the title text, Randall muses on how the inwardly-curved sides of the Eiffel Tower might actually become perfectly straightened when subjected to this logarithmic distortion, although it is shown to bulge in the comic proper, meaning Randall probably doesn't fully believe his own musings. The actual shape of the Tower approximates an {{w|Exponential function|exponential curve}}, which would indeed give a straight line on a log scale, although it was actually designed by {{w|Gustave Eiffel}} to minimize wind resistance rather than to be mathematically exact (the design is so perfect that the amount the Tower sways in the wind is less than the amount it is distorted due to thermal expansion of the sunlit side).<br />
<br />
Outside of the Earth's atmosphere, the objects are placed at their actual distances from Earth on the log scale, but their shapes are not subjected to the logarithmic scaling of Earth objects, instead appearing as they would be seen (otherwise, round objects like the sun would appear more egg shaped, with the flatter side facing upward). However, objects are still much larger or much smaller than they would be in real life, in order to allow them to be properly seen.<br />
<br />
===Objects===<br />
All objects are sorted from bottom to top by their maximum distance from earth for objects in a solar orbit, and their current distance for others.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
! Distance<br />
! Object<br />
! Description<br />
|-<br />
| 435&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| Black Hat and cat<br />
| Black Hat kicking a cat off the top of the comic, presumably to determine whether it will land on its feet.<br />
|-<br />
| 435&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Top of observable universe<br />
|-<br />
| 11.3&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Hubble Deep Field}} objects<br />
| Objects of extremely distant galaxies found in a long-exposure photograph by of the Hubble telescope, 12 billion light-years away. The right most object is probably intended to be a pulsar, schematically shown from the side.<br />
|-<br />
| 9.46&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | One billion light years<br />
|-<br />
| 3.1&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pulsar}}<br />
| A highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation.<br />
|-<br />
| 2.36&nbsp;×10<sup>24</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Great Attractor}}<br />
| An unusual concentration of intergalactic mass.<br />
|-<br />
| 425&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Antennae Galaxies}} (colliding)<br />
| A pair of colliding galaxies.<br />
|-<br />
| 23.6&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Andromeda Galaxy}}<br />
| A sibling to our Milky Way. It is the nearest spiral galaxy to ours.<br />
|-<br />
| 9.46&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | One million light years<br />
|-<br />
| 2.38&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cat-on-a-keyboard-in-space Cat on a keyboard in space]<br />
| An internet meme featuring a picture of a cat sitting on a musical keyboard, superimposed on an image of space.<br />
|-<br />
| 1.56&nbsp;×10<sup>21</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Magellanic Clouds}}<br />
| These clouds are a pair of nearby dwarf galaxies.<br />
|-<br />
| 263&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| Edge of Galaxy<br />
| The edge of the {{w|Milky Way}} galaxy, the galaxy in which we reside.<br />
|-<br />
| 245&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Galactic Center}}<br />
| The center of the Milky Way galaxy.<br />
|-<br />
| 61.5&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Crab Nebula}}<br />
| Nebula are supernova remnants<br />
|-<br />
| 14.2&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Horsehead Nebula}}<br />
| A dark nebula that is part of the Orion Constellation.<br />
|-<br />
| 12.7&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Orion Nebula}}<br />
| A nebula that is part of the Orion Constellation, just south of Orion's Belt.<br />
|-<br />
| 8.14&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Rigel}}<br />
| The brightest star in the Orion Constellation it is actually a triple star system known alternatively as Beta Orionis<br />
|-<br />
| 6.08&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Betelgeuse}}<br />
| The star Betelgeuse is displayed along with the location of {{w|Ford_Prefect (character)|Ford Prefect}} on his home planet which orbits Betelgeuse. Ford Prefect is a fictional character from the science fiction parody {{w|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 4.20&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pleiades}}<br />
| The Pleiades also have a derogatory remark, as per [[66: Abusive Astronomy]]<br />
|-<br />
| 2.90&nbsp;×10<sup>18</sup>m<br />
| The [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Romulan_Neutral_Zone Romulan Neutral Zone]<br />
| This marks the edge of the {{w|Star Trek}} Federation.<br />
|-<br />
| 931&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | The first radio broadcast was in January 1910. Since radio waves travel at the speed of light, and this was published in September of 2008 this the radio waves traveled about 98.5 light years. See {{w|Contact (1997 film)}} for a depiction of this. This is also referenced in [[1212: Interstellar Memes]].<br />
|-<br />
| 350&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Arcturus}}<br />
| An orange giant star that is part of the Boötes constellation.<br />
|-<br />
| 320&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pollux}}<br />
| One of the most distinct stars in the Gemini Constellation it is large Orange Giant with an apparent visual magnitude of 1.1<br />
|-<br />
| 242&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| The edge of {{w|Federation Sector 0-0-1}}<br />
| The sector of space assigned to Earth in {{w|Star Trek}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 224&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Iraq and weapons of mass destruction|"missing WMDs"}}<br />
| A reference to the alleged weapons of mass destruction that were used as a pretence to mobilize the world population against Iraq, and start the Iraq war.<br />
|-<br />
| 81.3&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Sirius}}<br />
|Also known as Alpha Canis Majoris, the Dog Star, or the North Star it is actually a binary system of Stars consisting of a main sequence white star and a small white dwarf.<br />
|-<br />
| 56.6&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Barnard's Star}}<br />
| Barnards star is a very small red giant that is of great interest to astronomers as an achievement in the SIM (Space Interforometry Mission) to find a celestial object out of solar system that is a s small as 3 earth masses<br />
|-<br />
| 41.3&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Alpha Centauri}}<br />
| Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to our planet.<br />
|-<br />
| 30.9&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | One parsec.<br />
|-<br />
| 9.46&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | One light-year.<br />
|-<br />
| 15.0&nbsp;×10<sup>15</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Oort cloud}}<br />
| A halo of ice balls surrounding our solar system, but missing the {{w|Kupier belt}} between Neptune and the Oort cloud.<br />
|-<br />
| 350&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Bupkis}}<br />
| Yiddish for "nothing". Only a handful of objects are known to orbit between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.<br />
|-<br />
| 55.0&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| A comet which will destroy earth in late 2063 <br />
| To coincide with the latest biblicaly based prophesy for the [http://www.askelm.com/prophecy/p971105.htm end of the world].<br />
|-<br />
| 19.5&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Voyager 1}}<br />
| An early space probe. Distance correct as of 20th Nov 2014, click [http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/ here] to see NASA's live distance counter.<br />
|-<br />
| 16.7&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pioneer 10}}<br />
| Listed distance is an estimate based on {{w|Pioneer_10#Current_status|this information}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 17.7&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pioneer 11}}<br />
| By the similarity in appearance to Pioneer 10 this unlabeled probe must be Pioneer 11. Listed distance is an estimate based on {{w|Pioneer_11#Current_status|this information}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 14.5&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Eris (dwarf planet)|Eris}}<br />
| One of a pair of {{w|Trans-Neptunian object}}s now classified as {{w|dwarf planet}}s. The "All hail Discordia!" after Eris is a reference to {{w|Discordianism}}, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek religion based around the goddess Eris. The distance is the maximum distance from earth.<br />
|-<br />
| 7.50&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Pluto}}<br />
| One of a pair of {{w|Trans-Neptunian object}}s now classified as {{w|dwarf planet}}s. Pluto was originally classified as the 9th planet of the Solar system. Many people was appalled when it was suddenly degraded to dwarf planet. Obviously Randall does not think much of these people thus the comment: ''Not a planet. Neener neener''. The distance is the maximum distance of Pluto from Earth.<br />
|-<br />
| 4.70&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Neptune}} <br />
| Neptune is displayed here with its moons. Neptune is the eighth and final planet in our solar system.<br />
|-<br />
| 3.20&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Uranus}} <br />
| Uranus is dispayed here with its moons. Uranus is the seventh planet in our solar system.<br />
|-<br />
| 1.67&nbsp;×10<sup>12</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Saturn}} <br />
| Saturn is displayed along with its moons. One of Saturn's moons, most likely Titan, is labeled as a potential location to find life. Titan is the only known moon to have an atmosphere and oceans. The oceans cannot be filled with liquid water, as it is far too cold, but are instead filled with liquid methane and ethane. Some hypothisize that life could have formed in such oceans.<br />
|-<br />
| 928&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Jupiter}} <br />
| Jupiter is displayed along with its moons. One of Jupiter's moons, most likely Europa, is labeled as a potential location to find life. Europa may be covered by a deep ocean of water found under a layer of ice many kilometers thick. Some hypothisize that life could have formed in such oceans.<br />
|-<br />
| 222&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| Asteroids<br />
| The {{w|Asteroid|Asteroid belt}} contains a spaceship from {{w|Asteroids (video game)}}<br />
|-<br />
| 133&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Mars}}<br />
| Note the path, reflecting the fact that their distances from Earth vary as the planets move in their orbits with a maximum distance of 261 million km and a minimum of 54.6 million km.<br />
|-<br />
| 114&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Venus}}<br />
| Note the path, reflecting the fact that their distances from Earth vary as the planets move in their orbits with a maximum distance of 401 million km and a minimum of 37.7 million km.<br />
|-<br />
| 138&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Mercury}}<br />
| Mercury is the first planet in out solar system. The distance shown is the maximum distance from Earth.<br />
|-<br />
| 149&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Sun}}<br />
| The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system, around which the Earth orbits.<br />
|-<br />
| 16.3&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Discovery One}}<br />
| The Discovery One from {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey}}, referring to the quote "open the pod bay door, HAL." Also may be a reference to [[375: Pod Bay Doors]].<br />
|-<br />
| 9.43&nbsp;×10<sup>9</sup>m<br />
| Planet Express<br />
| The spaceplane is most likely the Planet Express from {{w|Futurama}}, where Fry once discussed "a big heaping bowl of salt." <br />
|-<br />
| 400&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| Human Altitude Record <br />
| Achieved by the team of {{w|Apollo 13}} approximately 100km higher than the remaining Apollo missions.<br />
|-<br />
| 384&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Moon}} <br />
| The Moon is the Earth's only natural satellite.<br />
|-<br />
| 90.4&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Snoop Dogg}}<br />
| A tongue-in-cheek reference to a rapper notorious for smoking marijuana, shown as having the second-highest altitude record. Someone who is taking drugs is said to be getting high.<br />
|-<br />
| 60.5&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Space elevator}}<br />
| A proposed method of transporting cargo or people into orbit, consisting of a large mass beyond geosynchronous orbit, a station at the geosynchronous point, a cable connecting it to the Earth, and a climber that can scale the cable. Space elevators are also seen in [[697: Tensile vs. Shear Strength]] and [[536: Space Elevators]].<br />
|-<br />
| 42.1&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | {{w|Geosynchronous orbit|Geosynchronous Orbit}}<br />
|-<br />
| 20.2&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|GPS (satellite)|GPS Satellites}}<br />
| GPS satellites are used for global positioning.<br />
|-<br />
| 3.94&nbsp;×10<sup>6</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Lunar Lander}} <br />
| The quote is a reference to {{w|Contact (1997 film)}} where the main character Ellie Arroway after witnessing a celestial light show up close says "Poetry! They should've sent a poet.".<br />
|-<br />
| 800&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Space debris|Space Junk}}<br />
| There is a large quantity of defunct objects in orbit around the earth. Amongst other things, this includes old satellites, rocket stages and fragments from collisions or disintegration. Space junk is also referenced in [[1242: Scary Names]] under the title {{w|Kessler syndrome}}<br />
|-<br />
| 422.5&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|International Space Station}}<br />
| The ISS (International Space Station) is a multinational effort to put a research vessel in space. It is currently the largest artifical object in Earth's orbit, as well as the location of the longest continuous human presence in space.<br />
|-<br />
| 100&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | The {{w|Edge of space|official edge of space}} as defined by the {{w|Kármán line}}<br />
|-<br />
| 76.0&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Meteors}}<br />
| Meteors are chunks of rock (usually asteroids) that burn up in the atmosphere, producing the bright light associated with them. If the are large enough to hit the ground, they become meteorites, which is why Munroe labeled them only in the upper atmosphere.<br />
|-<br />
| 25.0&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|High-altitude balloon|High-altitude balloons}}<br />
| Unmanned balloons, typically filled with helium or hydrogen. The current altitude record was set in 2002 by a balloon named BU60-1 which reached 53,000m.<br />
|-<br />
| 16.1&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 1/10 ATM = 0.1 {{w|Atmospheric pressure|atmosphere of pressure}}<br />
|-<br />
| 12.0&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Airliner|Airliners}}<br />
| This is a typical cruising altitude of jet aircraft, equating to roughly 40,000 feet. (Aircraft altitude tends to be specified in feet rather than metres (yay!) ) <br />
|-<br />
| 8.84&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Mount Everest}} <br />
| The Earths highest mountain, located in the {{w|Himalayas|Himalayan mountain range}} in South Asia.<br />
|-<br />
| 8.00&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Cory Doctorow}} <br />
| Cory Doctorow in a balloon, a reference to comic [[239: Blagofaire]].<br />
|-<br />
| 6.34&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Space Shuttle Columbia disaster}} <br />
| The {{w|Space Shuttle Columbia}} and its seven crew were lost when it disintegrated at [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6v16AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA7&ots=LDKQ3nsNHs&dq=shuttle%20columbia%20altitude&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q=shuttle%20columbia%20altitude&f=false approximately 63,400m] in 2003. This number is inconsistent with the height of the graph by a factor of 10 probably a mistype by Randall.<br />
|-<br />
| 6.00&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Helicopter}} <br />
| Though the record for helicopter altitude (without payload) is 12,442m, normal flying is usually performed much lower. In the US, 6000m is into {{w|Class A airspace}}, which is restricted and requires flight under {{w|Instrument Flight Rules}}.<br />
|-<br />
| 6.00&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Cloud}} <br />
| Though not actually labelled there are a couple of clouds shown. While different cloud types vary in height, 6000m is roughly in the middle of the height range for clouds in temperate regions [http://weatherfaqs.org.uk/node/21]<br />
|-<br />
| 5.49&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 1/2 ATM = 0.5 {{w|Atmospheric pressure|atmosphere of pressure}}<br />
|-<br />
| 1.78&nbsp;×10<sup>3</sup>m<br />
| [[Cueball]] <br />
| Apparently still using Python as shown in comic [[353: Python]].<br />
|-<br />
| 800&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 800 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 800&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Burj Khalifa|Burj Dubai}} <br />
| Now known as the Burj Khalifa, is the tallest building in the world.<br />
|-<br />
| 500&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 500 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 400&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 400 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 325&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Eiffel Tower}} <br />
| A famous landmark in Paris, France.<br />
|-<br />
| 300&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 300 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 200&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 200 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 150&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| Kite <br />
| Kite string is commonly sold in large spools; a nice thick spool will probably hold 150 meters.<br />
|-<br />
| 140&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Great Pyramid of Giza}} <br />
| One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It is located in Egypt.<br />
|-<br />
| 120&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Baseball|Pop Fly}} <br />
| In Baseball a 'Pop Fly' is when the batter mis-hits the baseball, which then follows a tall arc deep into the infield where it's easy picking for the other team to catch on its way down. The highest recorded pop fly, not including those that landed in foul territory, was 172 meters.<br />
|-<br />
| 115&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Redwood Tree|Redwood trees}} <br />
| The tallest trees in the world. At 115.61m (379.3ft) {{w|Hyperion (tree)|Hyperion}}, a Coast Redwood, holds the record for the tallest tree in the world.<br />
|-<br />
| 100&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | 100 meters<br />
|-<br />
| 20.0&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Oak}} <br />
| While oaks may grow to be in excess of 40m in height, heights of around 20m are more typical. The person in the tree saying, "Hey, squirrels!" is a reference to [[167: Nihilism]].<br />
|-<br />
| 16.4&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| Tallest stilts <br />
| The tallest {{w|stilts}} recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records (as of November 2006) were 16.4 meters, or nearly 54 feet.<br />
|-<br />
| 13.0&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Brachiosaurus|Brachiosaur}}<br />
| A large genus of dinosaur.<br />
|-<br />
| 8.00&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Giraffe}} <br />
| The the tallest living terrestrial animal, with fully grown adults reaching in excess of 5m. While labelled 8m in the comic, the [http://www.big-animals.com/the-giraffe-the-worlds-tallest-animal/ record] for height is reported at 5.8m.<br />
|-<br />
| 1.70&nbsp;×10<sup>0</sup>m<br />
| {{w|Human height|Folks}}<br />
| Determining an average height of the world population is fraught with complications, but as a ballpark figure 1.7m is fairly accurate.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:'''Top of observable universe'''<br />
:[Black Hat is standing on top, throwing a black kitty down.]<br />
:Black Cat: Mrowl!<br />
:[Map of the universe from observable universe to Earth. Each area of item is labeled. Labels left to right, up to down:]<br />
:(46 billion light years up)<br />
::Hubble Deep Field Objects<br />
:-One billion light years-<br />
::Great Attractor<br />
::Antennae Galaxies (colliding)<br />
::Andromeda<br />
::Holy crap lots of space<br />
:-One million light years-<br />
::Magellanic Clouds<br />
::Edge of galaxy<br />
::Galactic center<br />
::Crab Nebula<br />
::Orion Nebula<br />
::Horsehead Nebula<br />
::Romulan neutral zone<br />
::The Pleiades, duh!<br />
::Rigel<br />
::Betelgeuse<br />
::Ford Prefect<br />
:[Three arrows are pointing up above three lines with the following label:]<br />
:-Expanding shell of radio transmissions-<br />
::[Above a dotted line:]<br />
::Edge of federation sector 0-0-1<br />
::Pollux<br />
::Arcturus<br />
::Missing WMDs<br />
::Sirius<br />
::Barnard's Star<br />
::Alpha Centauri<br />
:-One parsec-<br />
:-One light year-<br />
::Oort Cloud (?)<br />
::Bupkis<br />
::Comet which will destroy Earth in late 2063<br />
::Pioneer 10<br />
::Voyager I<br />
::Eris (All hail Discordia!)<br />
::Pluto (Not a planet. Neener neener.)<br />
::Neptune<br />
::Uranus<br />
::Saturn<br />
::[Two arrows point to two moons, one next to each of the planets aboe and below.]<br />
::<-- Life --><br />
::Jupiter<br />
::Asteroids<br />
::Mars<br />
::Venus<br />
::Sun<br />
::Mercury<br />
::Spaceship Planet Express: Hey, a heaping bowl of salt!<br />
::Spaceship Discovery One: Open the fridge door, Hal.<br />
::Moon<br />
::Human altitude record (Apollo 13)<br />
::2nd place: Snoop Dogg<br />
::Space elevator - One of these days, promise!<br />
::Geosynchronous Orbit<br />
::GPS satellites<br />
::Lunar lander: In retrospect, they <u>shouldn't</u> have sent a poet. I have no idea how to land.<br />
::International Space Station<br />
::Space junk<br />
:-Official edge of space (100 km)-<br />
::Meteors<br />
:-1/10 ATM-<br />
::High altitude balloons<br />
::Airliners<br />
::Shuttle Columbia lost<br />
:-1/2 ATM-<br />
::Cory Doctrow<br />
::Everest<br />
::Helicopters (6000 m)<br />
::Cueball: Woo Python!<br />
::[A vertical scale is drawn along the right side of the picture, starting at 1 km and getting progressivly smaller and smaller.]<br />
:1 km<br />
:-800 m-<br />
::Burj Dubai (~800 m)<br />
:500<br />
:400<br />
::Eiffel Tower (325 m)<br />
:200<br />
::Kites<br />
::Great Pyramid (140 m)<br />
::Pop fly<br />
::Redwood (115 m)<br />
:100m<br />
::Oak (20 m)<br />
::A person in the oak: Hey squirrels!<br />
::Tallest stilts<br />
::Brachiosaur (13 m)<br />
::Giraffe (8 m)<br />
::[Megan and Cueball holding the kite are labeled:] <br />
::Folks<br />
:'''The observable universe, from top to bottom''''<br />
::~On a log scale~<br />
::Sizes are not to scale, but heights above the Earth's surface are accurate on a log scale (that is, each step up is double the height.)<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Charts]]<br />
[[Category:Large drawings]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]] <br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Baseball]]<br />
[[Category:Animals]]<br />
[[Category:Dinosaurs]]<br />
[[Category:Giraffes]]<br />
[[Category:Space]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1552:_Rulebook&diff=980241552: Rulebook2015-07-19T08:03:07Z<p>Chvsanchez: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1552<br />
| date = July 17, 2015<br />
| title = Rulebook<br />
| image = rulebook.png<br />
| titletext = It's definitely an intentional foul, but we've decided it's worth it.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{Incomplete|first draft}}<br />
<br />
This comic is a reference to the film ''{{w|Air Bud}}'' and to a lesser extent, the other films in its {{w|Air Bud (series)|series}}. In the film, a golden retriever becomes the star player on a basketball team. The opposing team contests the legality of having a dog as a player, but the referee, having reviewed the rulebook, responds "Ain't no rules says a dog can't play basketball." The same scenario is parodied in [[115: Meerkat]].<br />
<br />
Here, the opposing team uses the rulebook logic against the first team. Rulebooks are considered the final arbiter of decisions in many games. However, the flawed reasoning that anything not prohibited in the rules is therefore permitted would allow any number of activities that are not specifically discussed in the rule book, such as killing the opponent's dog and eating it, as [[Ponytail]] suggests in this comic. By the same logic, Ponytail is suggesting it would be permitted for her team to do so.<br />
<br />
The title text acknowledges that this would probably contravene the general language regarding "{{w|technical foul}}s" (rules about interfering with other players), but the penalty for a foul is, in the opponents' view, worth the benefit of eliminating the presumably very adept basketball-playing dog. This ignores other rules that may cover the proposed killing, such as the laws of the jurisdiction where the game takes place.<br />
<br />
Given the title text, possibly Randall is poking fun at the practice of intentional fouls, which is especially common in basketball. Although a foul is by definition against the rules, a team will deliberately violate the rules (and accept the penalty) as a strategy to gain some perceived advantage--especially a team that is behind in the late minutes of a basketball game.<br />
<br />
Rule books are also mentioned in <br />
<br />
:* [[330: Indecision]]<br />
:* [[393: Ultimate Game]]<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
<br />
:[Cueball and Megan are standing with a dog wearing jersey number 9, Ponytail and Hairy are facing them holding a rulebook. The horizon is visible behind them.]<br />
<br />
:Ponytail: There's nothing in the rulebook that says we can't kill and eat your dog.<br />
<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Rulebook]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1509:_Scenery_Cheat_Sheet&diff=892571509: Scenery Cheat Sheet2015-04-10T03:21:07Z<p>Chvsanchez: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1509<br />
| date = April 8, 2015<br />
| title = Scenery Cheat Sheet<br />
| image = scenery cheat sheet.png<br />
| titletext = At the boundary between each zone, stories blend together. Somewhere in the New Mexico desert, the Roadrunner is pursued by a tireless Anton Chigurh.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{Incomplete|Explanation required.}}<br />
In this comic [[Randall]] jokes that large areas of the United States (mainland) can be characterized by the locations of a single movie. Especially in the mid-west there are several very large areas that he describes with just one film. The map is the most detailed in the {{w|Northeastern United States|northeast}}, which is where Randall lives.<br />
<br />
The map is divided into the 48 states of the mainland by thin gray lines. On top of these are drawn black lines that divide the map into 50 sections. (A 51st section is located in the Atlantic Ocean). Inside each section is at least one reference that is supposed to describe the entire area encompassed by the section. In most cases it is the title of a movie (or two to three titles), but it could also be more general specter of movies (all movies with a big budget, or those with whose title is a east coast city name) or it could even be a book/song that describes the relevant area.<br />
<br />
The idea behind the map is that if you know this and the relevant movies, you can use it to determine where you are by comparing your knowledge of the movies with the sceneries you can see from where you stand. This is what the heading above the map clearly states.<br />
<br />
Below this are given the two groups of people who will have most use for this sheet: First there are the "GeoGuessrs." {{w|GeoGuessr}} is a game using {{w|Google Street View}} images, which drops the player in a random location and challenges them to work out where they are. (This game was already referenced in [[1214: Geoguessr]]). Secondly there are the "Crash-landed astronauts."<br />
<br />
Some entries (for instance, ''{{w|Groundhog Day (film)|Groundhog Day}}'') reflect the locations where the stories are set, and others (like ''{{w|Dances with Wolves}}'') reflect where they were filmed. Others are even more detached, as it is the sceneries from the movie that resembles a given place, even though it is neither filmed there or takes place there. It could also be a cartoon, which is of course only set in an imaginary world that may resemble the real world. <br />
<br />
The title text references {{w|Anton Chigurh}} (portrayed by {{w|Javier Bardem}}), who is the main antagonist of the film ''{{w|No Country For Old Men}}.'' In this case he would have taken over the role of {{w|Wile E. Coyote}}, and would thus hunt down {{w|Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner|The Road Runner}} at the boundary between the sections for these two movies, which would be somewhere in the {{w|New Mexico}} desert.<br />
<br />
==Table==<br />
*In this table all the movies (and others) from the map are mentioned from top to bottom and (when possible) by going through the columns that seems to appear in the sections when going from left to right. <br />
*The setting for the movie vs. the actual filming locations will be given to be compared to the section of the map where the titles are written. <br />
*Explanations will be given in the Notes section.<br />
*The {{w|State Postal Codes}} will be used when referring to the states covered by each section. <br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! Movie Title<br />
! Setting for Movie<br />
! Actual Filming Location(s)<br />
! Section on map<br />
! Notes<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Goonies}}<br />
| <br />
| Cannon Beach, and Astoria, OR<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Twilight (2008 film)| Twilight}}<br />
| Forks, WA<br />
| Portland, OR<br />
| rowspan="2" | {{w|Washington (state)|WA}}, {{w|Oregon|OR}} and most northern part of {{w|California|CA}} except for the part taken up by The Goonies.<br />
| Same sections as 50 Shades of Grey<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Fifty Shades of Grey (film)|50 Shades of Grey}}<br />
| Seattle, WA<br />
| Vancouver, BC<br />
| Same sections as Twilight which is clear from this fact: The Fifty series was originally a {{w|fan fiction}} version of Twilight, but then developed into three full novels.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Zodiac (film)|Zodiac}}<br />
| San Francisco Bay Area<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Rock (film)|The Rock}}<br />
| {{w|Alcatraz Island}}<br />
| {{W|Alcatraz Island}}<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Dances with Wolves}}<br />
| Fort Sedgwick, CO<br />
| South Dakota and Wyoming<br />
| rowspan= "2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Starship Troopers (film)|Starship Troopers}}<br />
| Planet Klendathu<br />
| Hell's Half Acre, WY<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Napoleon Dynamite|Napoleon Dynamite}}<br />
| Preston, Idaho<br />
| Preston, Idaho<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Sandlot|The Sandlot}}<br />
| Suburban Los Angeles <br />
| Salt Lake City, Utah<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Wild Wild West|Wild Wild West}}<br />
| The southwest area<br />
| Tuscon, Arizona; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Pierce, Idaho<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Top Gun|Top Gun}}<br />
| NAS Miramar, San Diego, CA<br />
| Nevada, NAS Miramar, San Diego, CA<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Independence Day (1996 film)|Part of Independence Day}}<br />
| Grand Canyon & Area 51<br />
| Utah / Nevada<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Sideways|That movie about wine & talking}}<br />
| {{w|Santa Ynez Valley}}<br />
| {{w|Santa Ynez Valley}}<br />
|<br />
| He clearly means ''Sideways''. Mapped area does not include the Santa Ynez Valley wine country, but instead shows the {{w|Central_Valley_(California)|California Central Valley}}.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|List of most expensive films|Every movie with a big budget...}}<br />
| <br />
|Hollywood, CA<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Brokeback Mountain|Brokeback Mountain}}<br />
| Wyoming<br />
| Southern Alberta<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Oregon Trail (video_game)|Oregon Trail}}<br />
| {{w|Platte River|Platte}}, {{w|Snake River|Snake}}, and {{w|Columbia River|Columbia}} river valleys<br />
|Video Game, not a film<br />
|<br />
| Could also refer to the film ''{{w|The Oregon Trail (1936 film)|The Oregon Trail}}''.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner|Roadrunner cartoons}}<br />
| {{w|Southern Arizona}}<br />
|Animated, not filmed<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Truman Show|The Truman Show}}<br>but with desert in the background<br />
| <br />
|<br />
|<br />
| If it were filmed in Las Vegas ...<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Tombstone (film)|Tombstone}}<br />
| {{w|Tombstone, Arizona|Tombstone, AZ}}<br />
| Arizona<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Mask of Zorro|The Mask of Zorro}}<br />
| California<br />
| Mexico<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|No Country for Old Men (film)|No Country for Old Men}}<br />
| (West) Texas<br />
| Texas, New Mexico<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}<br />
| Fargo ND, Brainerd MN, Minneapolis MN<br />
| Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN area, Hallock MN, Bathgate, ND<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Interstellar (film)|Interstellar}} (Earth parts)<br />
| {{w|Northeast_megalopolis|BosWash}} (converted to farmland), probably near former NYC<br />
| Alberta<br />
| rowspan="3" |<br />
| "Earth Parts"<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Star Trek (film)|Star Trek (2009)}} (Earth parts)<br />
| Iowa<br />
| Iowa<br />
| "Earth Parts"<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Field of Dreams|Field of Dreams}}<br />
|<br />
| Dyersville, IA<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Music Man (1962 film)|The Music Man}}<br />
| River City, IA<br />
| Warner Bros Studio, Burbank, CA<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)|The Wizard of Oz}}<br />
| Kansas, Oz<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| The Judy Garland version, presumably. The earth parts.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Twister (1996 film)|Twister}}<br />
| Oklahoma<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|True Grit (1969 film)|True Grit}}<br />
| Arkansas<br />
|New Mexico<br />
|<br />
| Obviously the {{w|True Grit (2010 film)|2010 version}}<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Office Space|Office Space}}<br />
| <br />
| Austin, TX<br />
| rowspan="3" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Dazed and Confused (film)|Dazed and Confused}}<br />
| Austin, TX<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Kill Bill|Kill Bill}}<br />
| El Paso, TX<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Blues Brothers (film)|Blues Brothers}}<br />
| Chicago<br />
| Chicago and Milwaukee<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|8 Mile (film)|8 Mile}}<br />
| Wayne County, Michigan<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|A Christmas Story|A Christmas Story}}<br />
| Indiana<br />
| Cleveland, OH<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Jack & Diane|That song about Jack and Diane}}<br />
|<br />
| Lake Monroe, IN<br />
| "In the Heartland"<br />
|-<br />
| Anything by {{w|Mark Twain}}<br />
| Hannibal, MO<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| The mapped area doesn't quite include Twain's home town of Hannibal, MO.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Walk the Line|Walk the Line}}<br />
| Tennessee<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Big Fish|Big Fish}}<br />
| <br />
| Wetumpka and Montgomery, AL<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|O Brother, Where Art Thou?|O Brother Where Art Thou}}<br />
| Parchman Farm, MS<br />
| Canton, MS; Florence, SC<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Duck Dynasty|Duck Dynasty}}<br />
| {{w|West Monroe, Louisiana|West Monroe, LA}}<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Princess and the Frog|Princess and the Frog}}<br />
| New Orleans<br />
|Animated, not filmed<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|All Dogs Go to Heaven|All Dogs go to Heaven}}<br />
| New Orleans<br />
|Animated, not filmed<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Beasts of the Southern Wild|Beasts of the Southern Wild}}<br />
| Louisiana<br />
| Montegut, LA<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Groundhog Day (film)|Groundhog Day}}<br />
| {{w|Punxsutawney,_Pennsylvania|Punxsutawney, PA}}, {{w|Pittsburgh|Pittsburgh}}<br />
| Woodstock, IL<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Dirty Dancing|Dirty Dancing}}<br />
| {{w|Catskill Mountains|Catskill Mountains}}<br />
| {{w|Mountain_Lake_(Virginia)|Mountain Lake, VA}} and {{w|Lake_Lure,_North_Carolina|Lake Lure, NC}}<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|October Sky|October Sky}}<br />
| Coalwood, WV<br />
| East Tennessee<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind}}<br />
| Tara, near {{w|Jonesboro, Georgia|Jonesboro, GA}}<br />
|<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Forrest Gump|Forrest Gump}}<br />
| Alabama<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Truman Show|The Truman Show}}<br />
| Los Angeles area<br />
| {{w|Seaside, Florida|Seaside, FL}}<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Adaptation (film)|Adaptation}}<br />
| Everglades, FL and surrounding areas<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| Very loosely based on the book "The Orchid Thief" by Susan Orlean, which chronicles the lifestyle of orchid thief and dealer John Laroche. The movie is about a screenwriter who struggles to adapt the book into a movie, turning himself into a main character in his own story.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Miami Vice|Miami Vice}}<br />
| Miami<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| Or the {{w|Miami Vice (film)|film}}<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Super Troopers|Super Troopers}}<br />
| Vermont, NY ("Somewhere near the border")<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|My Side of the Mountain|My Side of the Mountain (book)}}<br />
| Adirondack Mountains, NY<br />
| Catskill mountains, near Delhi, NY<br />
|<br />
| The area shown on the map includes the Adirondacks, as well as the Tug Hill Plateau and the Finger Lakes. The Catskills appear to be excluded.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|War of the Worlds (2005 film)|War of the Worlds (2005)}}<br />
| Massachusetts <br />
| California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia<br />
|<br />
| Also referenced in [[556: Alternative Energy Revolution]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Signs (film)|Signs}}<br />
| {{w|Doylestown, Pennsylvania|Doylestown, PA}}<br />
|<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Village (2004 film)|The Village}}<br />
| Covington, PA<br />
| {{w|Chadds Ford Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania|Chadds Ford, PA}}<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| [Generic City]<br />
| Washington DC, Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia<br />
| N/A<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Deep Impact (film)|Deep Impact}}<br />
| Atlantic Coast<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| The Mega-tsunami<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Pet Semetary|Pet Semetary}}<br />
| Ludlow, Maine<br />
|Hancock, Maine<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|What About Bob?|What about Bob}}<br />
|Lake Winnipesaukee, NH<br />
|Smith Mountain Lake, VA<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Departed|The Departed}}<br />
| Boston, MA<br />
| Boston & New York<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Jaws (film)|Jaws}}<br />
| Amity Island (stand-in for Martha's Vineyard)<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Hunt for Red October (film)|The Hunt for Red October}}<br />
| Atlantic Ocean<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Above the frame is the following text.]<br />
:'''A cheat sheet for'''<br />
:figuring out where in the US you are<br />
:by recognizing the background from movies<br />
:(for use by GeoGuessr players and crash-landed astronauts)<br />
<br />
:[In the frame is a map of the mainland USA with the 48 mainland states lined out in thin gray lines. All areas on the map have been enclosed in sections divided by curved black lines. These sections sizes goes from encompassing several states down to just a small section of a single state. The sections cover the entire USA without any holes. There is also one section in the Atlantic Ocean. All sections are labeled. If the section is large enough the text stands inside, if it is too small, the text is outside and an arrow will point to the relevant section <br />
<br />
:[Here below all the text on the map (mainly film titles) will be transcribed from top to bottom and (when possible) by going through the columns that seems to appear in the sections when going from left to right. The {{w|State Postal Codes}} will be used when referring to the states covered by each section]<br />
<br />
:[Small section on the west coast around the state border between WA and OR, which is surrounded on three sides by the next section mentioned below. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:The Goonies<br />
:[Large section covering WA, OR and top of CA. The section has two titles, with the second one standing with smaller font below the first:]<br />
:Twilight<br />
:50 Shades of Grey<br />
:[Small section around San Francisco, CA:]<br />
:Zodiac<br />
:[Very tine section covering only Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco, CA. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:The Rock<br />
:[ Large section covering most of MT as well as part of WY, SD and NE. The section has two titles:]<br />
:Dances with Wolves<br />
:Starship Troopers<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of ID and part of MT:]<br />
:Napoleon Dynamite<br />
:[Medium section section covering part of OR, ID, NV and UT:]<br />
:The Sandlot<br />
:[Medium section section mainly covering the top part of NV:]<br />
:Wild Wild West<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of NV and small part of CA. The section has two titles, with the second one standing with smaller font below the first plus description:]<br />
:Top Gun <br />
:& the part of Independence Day where Will Smith crashes<br />
:[Small section covering central CA:]<br />
:That movie about wine & talking<br />
:[Medium section section covering a large part of the southern part of CA around Hollywood, Los Angeles:]<br />
:Every movie with a big budget, explosions or someone who says "cool!"<br />
:[Medium section section covering half of WY and small parts of UT and CO:]<br />
:Brokeback Mountain<br />
:[Medium section section covering part of WY, CO and NE. The part in parenthesis in a smaller font:]<br />
:Oregon Trail<br />
:(the only part I ever got to)<br />
:[Large section covering small part of UT and the half bottom of UT and CO and top half of AZ and NM:]<br />
:Roadrunner cartoons<br />
:[Medium section section covering a small part of the southern CA and small part of AZ. The part beneath the title in a smaller font:]<br />
:The Truman Show,<br />
:but with desert as the background<br />
:[Small part at the bottom of AZ. The section has two titles:]<br />
:Tombstone<br />
:& The Mask of Zorro<br />
:[Large section covering the a small part of AZ, the bottom half of NM as well as a third of TX:]<br />
:No Country for Old Men<br />
:[Large section covering all of ND, most of MN, half of SD and a small part of MT:]<br />
:Fargo<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of NE and small parts of MN and IA. The section has three titles. The top two are marked with a square bracket to the left. The text of this given before the third title:]<br />
:Interstellar<br />
:Star Trek (2009)<br />
:] Earth parts<br />
:Field of Dreams<br />
:[Medium section section covering large parts of IA, MO and IL:]<br />
:The Music Man<br />
:[Medium section section covering mainly KS, but also a small part of Co and OK:]<br />
:The Wizard of Oz<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of OK and small part of MO and AR:]<br />
:Twister<br />
:[Covering the top part of TX and small parts of OK and AR:]<br />
:True Grit<br />
:[Large section covering a third of TX (the eastern part all the way down) and small parts of AR and LA. The section has three titles:]<br />
:Office Space<br />
:Dazed and Confused<br />
:Kill Bill<br />
:[Small section around and below Chicago, IL, which is surrounded on three sides by the next large section mentioned below. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Blues Brothers<br />
:[A small circle centered around Detroit, MI completely inside the section here below. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:8 Mile<br />
:[Large section covering all of WI, MI, IN and OH as well as parts of IL and KY. That is except for the two small sections described above, which are inlaid in this one. There are two items in this section. The one below is in smaller font:]<br />
:A Christmas Story<br />
:&That song about Jack and Diane<br />
:[Medium section section covering half of AR, small parts of IL and MO as well as bits of KY, TN and MS:]<br />
:Anything by Mark Twain<br />
:[Medium section covering half of TN and part of KY:]<br />
:Walk the Line<br />
:[Large section covering all of AL most of MS and half of GA. There are two titles in this section:]<br />
:Big Fish<br />
:O Brother Where Art Thou<br />
:[Small section covering top of LA and small part of MS:]<br />
:Duck Dynasty<br />
:[Medium section covering the bottom half of LA and the very bottom of MS. There is a very small section at the bottom of LA that are not included in this but in the next. There are two titles in this section:]<br />
:Princess and the Frog<br />
:All Dogs go to Heaven<br />
:[Small section covering the very eastern end of the bottom of LA – maybe including New Orleans. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Beasts of the Southern Wild<br />
:[Medium section section covering half of PA and western part NY:]<br />
:Groundhog Day<br />
:[Small section covering the middle part of VA as well as small parts of PA, MD and WV:]<br />
:Dirty Dancing<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of WV, half of TN, a small parts of KY as well as tiny bits of VA, NC and GA:]<br />
:October Sky<br />
:[Large section covering all of SC, most of NC as well as half of VA and GA. There are two titles in this section:]<br />
:Gone with the Wind<br />
:Forrest Gump<br />
:[Large section covering most of FL except the bottom part which are covered by the next two sections:]<br />
:The Truman Show<br />
:[Small section covering the very bottom of FL except the east coast. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Adaptation<br />
:[Small section covering the very bottom the east coast of FL. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Miami Vice<br />
:[Small section covering most of the top of VT and a small part of NY. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Super Troopers<br />
:[Small section covering the central part of NY.]<br />
:My Side of the Mountain (book)<br />
:[Small section covering the eastern part of NY, western part of MA, top part of CT as well as bits of VT and RI.:]<br />
:War of the Worlds (2005)<br />
:[Small section covering the eastern part of PA and small bits of NY and MD. There are two titles in this section:]<br />
:Signs<br />
:& The Village<br />
:[Medium section section covering several large cities of the east coast including New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. It covers most of DE and NJ and large parts of MD (with DC) and the bit of NY with the city. The text is not a title and the it is written in square brackets…:]<br />
:[Generic city]<br />
:[Small section covering the east coast along VA and NC, but also with small bits of MD and DE at the top:]<br />
:Deep Impact<br />
:[Medium section section covering all of ME, the top tip of NH and eastern top of VT:]<br />
:Pet Semetary<br />
:[Small section covering the most of the bottom parts of NH and VT:]<br />
:What about Bob<br />
:[Very small section surrounding Boston in MA. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:The Departed<br />
:[Small section covering the east coast along MA, RI, CT and NJ:]<br />
:Jaws<br />
:[Large section off the east coast in the Atlantic Ocean:]<br />
:The Hunt for Red October<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
<br />
Not everything {{w|Mark Twain}} wrote was really set on the {{w|Mississippi River}}. For instance, he first gained attention as a fiction writer with "{{w|The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County}}," which is about {{w|Northern California}}. Indeed, during his lifetime, Twain was known mostly as a travel writer, not a novelist.<br />
<br />
Kill Bill doesn't take place in southern or eastern Texas. The wedding chapel scene takes place in {{w|El Paso}}, around the same area No Country for Old Men takes place.<br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[https://geoguessr.com/ GeoGuessr's official website]<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Maps]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1509:_Scenery_Cheat_Sheet&diff=892561509: Scenery Cheat Sheet2015-04-10T03:12:36Z<p>Chvsanchez: Typo</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1509<br />
| date = April 8, 2015<br />
| title = Scenery Cheat Sheet<br />
| image = scenery cheat sheet.png<br />
| titletext = At the boundary between each zone, stories blend together. Somewhere in the New Mexico desert, the Roadrunner is pursued by a tireless Anton Chigurh.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{Incomplete|Explanation required.}}<br />
In this comic [[Randall]] jokes that large areas of the United States (mainland) can be characterized by the locations of a single movie. Especially in the mid-west there are several very large areas that he describes with just one film. The map is the most detailed in the {{w|Northeastern United States|northeast}}, which is where Randall lives.<br />
<br />
The map is divided into the 48 states of the mainland by thin gray lines. On top of these are drawn black lines that divide the map into 50 sections. (A 51st section is located in the Atlantic Ocean). Inside each section is at least one reference that is supposed to describe the entire area encompassed by the section. In most cases it is the title of a movie (or two to three titles), but it could also be more general specter of movies (all movies with a big budget, or those with whose title is a east coast city name) or it could even be a book/song that describes the relevant area.<br />
<br />
The idea behind the map is that if you know this and the relevant movies, you can use it to determine where you are by comparing your knowledge of the movies with the sceneries you can see from where you stand. This is what the heading above the map clearly states.<br />
<br />
Below this are given the two groups of people who will have most use for this sheet: First there are the "GeoGuessrs." {{w|GeoGuessr}} is a game using {{w|Google Street View}} images, which drops the player in a random location and challenges them to work out where they are. (This game was already referenced in [[1214: Geoguessr]]). Secondly there are the "Crash-landed astronauts."<br />
<br />
Some entries (for instance, ''{{w|Groundhog Day (film)|Groundhog Day}}'') reflect the locations where the stories are set, and others (like ''{{w|Dances with Wolves}}'') reflect where they were filmed. Others are even more detached, as it is the sceneries from the movie that resembles a given place, even though it is neither filmed there or takes place there. It could also be a cartoon, which is of course only set in an imaginary world that may resemble the real world. <br />
<br />
The title text references {{w|Anton Chigurh}} (portrayed by {{w|Javier Bardem}}), who is the main antagonist of the film ''{{w|No Country For Old Men}}.'' In this case he would have taken over the role of {{w|Wile E. Coyote}}, and would thus hunt down {{w|Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner|The Road Runner}} at the boundary between the sections for these two movies, which would be somewhere in the {{w|New Mexico}} desert.<br />
<br />
==Table==<br />
*In this table all the movies (and others) from the map are mentioned from top to bottom and (when possible) by going through the columns that seems to appear in the sections when going from left to right. <br />
*The setting for the movie vs. the actual filming locations will be given to be compared to the section of the map where the titles are written. <br />
*Explanations will be given in the Notes section.<br />
*The {{w|State Postal Codes}} will be used when referring to the states covered by each section. <br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! Movie Title<br />
! Setting for Movie<br />
! Actual Filming Location(s)<br />
! Section on map<br />
! Notes<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Goonies}}<br />
| <br />
| Cannon Beach, and Astoria, OR<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Twilight (2008 film)| Twilight}}<br />
| Forks, WA<br />
| Portland, OR<br />
| rowspan="2" | {{w|Washington (state)|WA}}, {{w|Oregon|OR}} and most northern part of {{w|California|CA}} except for the part taken up by The Goonies.<br />
| Same sections as 50 Shades of Grey<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Fifty Shades of Grey (film)|50 Shades of Grey}}<br />
| Seattle, WA<br />
| Vancouver, BC<br />
| Same sections as Twilight which is clear from this fact: The Fifty series was originally a {{w|fan fiction}} version of Twilight, but then developed into three full novels.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Zodiac (film)|Zodiac}}<br />
| San Francisco Bay Area<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Rock (film)|The Rock}}<br />
| {{w|Alcatraz Island}}<br />
| {{W|Alcatraz Island}}<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Dances with Wolves}}<br />
| Fort Sedgwick, CO<br />
| South Dakota and Wyoming<br />
| rowspan= "2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Starship Troopers (film)|Starship Troopers}}<br />
| Planet Klendathu<br />
| Hell's Half Acre, WY<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Napoleon Dynamite|Napoleon Dynamite}}<br />
| Preston, Idaho<br />
| Preston, Idaho<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Sandlot|The Sandlot}}<br />
| Suburban Los Angeles <br />
| Salt Lake City, Utah<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Wild Wild West|Wild Wild West}}<br />
| The southwest area<br />
| Tuscon, Arizona; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Pierce, Idaho<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Top Gun|Top Gun}}<br />
| NAS Miramar, San Diego, CA<br />
| Nevada, NAS Miramar, San Diego, CA<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Independence Day (1996 film)|Part of Independence Day}}<br />
| Grand Canyon & Area 51<br />
| Utah / Nevada<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Sideways|That movie about wine & talking}}<br />
| {{w|Santa Ynez Valley}}<br />
| {{w|Santa Ynez Valley}}<br />
|<br />
| He clearly means ''Sideways''. Mapped area does not include the Santa Ynez Valley wine country, but instead shows the {{w|Central_Valley_(California)|California Central Valley}}.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|List of most expensive films|Every movie with a big budget...}}<br />
| <br />
|Hollywood, CA<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Brokeback Mountain|Brokeback Mountain}}<br />
| Wyoming<br />
| Southern Alberta<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Oregon Trail (video_game)|Oregon Trail}}<br />
| {{w|Platte River|Platte}}, {{w|Snake River|Snake}}, and {{w|Columbia River|Columbia}} river valleys<br />
|Video Game, not a film<br />
|<br />
| Could also refer to the film "{{w|The Oregon Trail (1936 film)}}".<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner|Roadrunner cartoons}}<br />
| {{w|Southern Arizona}}<br />
|Animated, not filmed<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Truman Show|The Truman Show}}<br>but with desert in the background<br />
| <br />
|<br />
|<br />
| If it were filmed in Las Vegas ...<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Tombstone (film)|Tombstone}}<br />
| {{w|Tombstone, Arizona|Tombstone, AZ}}<br />
| Arizona<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Mask of Zorro|The Mask of Zorro}}<br />
| California<br />
| Mexico<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|No Country for Old Men (film)|No Country for Old Men}}<br />
| (West) Texas<br />
| Texas, New Mexico<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Fargo (film)|Fargo}}<br />
| Fargo ND, Brainerd MN, Minneapolis MN<br />
| Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN area, Hallock MN, Bathgate, ND<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Interstellar (film)|Interstellar}} (Earth parts)<br />
| {{w|Northeast_megalopolis|BosWash}} (converted to farmland), probably near former NYC<br />
| Alberta<br />
| rowspan="3" |<br />
| "Earth Parts"<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Star Trek (film)|Star Trek (2009)}} (Earth parts)<br />
| Iowa<br />
| Iowa<br />
| "Earth Parts"<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Field of Dreams|Field of Dreams}}<br />
|<br />
| Dyersville, IA<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Music Man (1962 film)|The Music Man}}<br />
| River City, IA<br />
| Warner Bros Studio, Burbank, CA<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)|The Wizard of Oz}}<br />
| Kansas, Oz<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| The Judy Garland version, presumably. The earth parts.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Twister (1996 film)|Twister}}<br />
| Oklahoma<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|True Grit (1969 film)|True Grit}}<br />
| Arkansas<br />
|New Mexico<br />
|<br />
| Obviously the {{w|True Grit (2010 film)|2010 version}}<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Office Space|Office Space}}<br />
| <br />
| Austin, TX<br />
| rowspan="3" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Dazed and Confused (film)|Dazed and Confused}}<br />
| Austin, TX<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Kill Bill|Kill Bill}}<br />
| El Paso, TX<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Blues Brothers (film)|Blues Brothers}}<br />
| Chicago<br />
| Chicago and Milwaukee<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|8 Mile (film)|8 Mile}}<br />
| Wayne County, Michigan<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|A Christmas Story|A Christmas Story}}<br />
| Indiana<br />
| Cleveland, OH<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Jack & Diane|That song about Jack and Diane}}<br />
|<br />
| Lake Monroe, IN<br />
| "In the Heartland"<br />
|-<br />
| Anything by {{w|Mark Twain}}<br />
| Hannibal, MO<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| The mapped area doesn't quite include Twain's home town of Hannibal, MO.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Walk the Line|Walk the Line}}<br />
| Tennessee<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Big Fish|Big Fish}}<br />
| <br />
| Wetumpka and Montgomery, AL<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|O Brother, Where Art Thou?|O Brother Where Art Thou}}<br />
| Parchman Farm, MS<br />
| Canton, MS; Florence, SC<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Duck Dynasty|Duck Dynasty}}<br />
| {{w|West Monroe, Louisiana|West Monroe, LA}}<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Princess and the Frog|Princess and the Frog}}<br />
| New Orleans<br />
|Animated, not filmed<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|All Dogs Go to Heaven|All Dogs go to Heaven}}<br />
| New Orleans<br />
|Animated, not filmed<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Beasts of the Southern Wild|Beasts of the Southern Wild}}<br />
| Louisiana<br />
| Montegut, LA<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Groundhog Day (film)|Groundhog Day}}<br />
| {{w|Punxsutawney,_Pennsylvania|Punxsutawney, PA}}, {{w|Pittsburgh|Pittsburgh}}<br />
| Woodstock, IL<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Dirty Dancing|Dirty Dancing}}<br />
| {{w|Catskill Mountains|Catskill Mountains}}<br />
| {{w|Mountain_Lake_(Virginia)|Mountain Lake, VA}} and {{w|Lake_Lure,_North_Carolina|Lake Lure, NC}}<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|October Sky|October Sky}}<br />
| Coalwood, WV<br />
| East Tennessee<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind}}<br />
| Tara, near {{w|Jonesboro, Georgia|Jonesboro, GA}}<br />
|<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Forrest Gump|Forrest Gump}}<br />
| Alabama<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Truman Show|The Truman Show}}<br />
| Los Angeles area<br />
| {{w|Seaside, Florida|Seaside, FL}}<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Adaptation (film)|Adaptation}}<br />
| Everglades, FL and surrounding areas<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| Very loosely based on the book "The Orchid Thief" by Susan Orlean, which chronicles the lifestyle of orchid thief and dealer John Laroche. The movie is about a screenwriter who struggles to adapt the book into a movie, turning himself into a main character in his own story.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Miami Vice|Miami Vice}}<br />
| Miami<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| Or the {{w|Miami Vice (film)|film}}<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Super Troopers|Super Troopers}}<br />
| Vermont, NY ("Somewhere near the border")<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|My Side of the Mountain|My Side of the Mountain (book)}}<br />
| Adirondack Mountains, NY<br />
| Catskill mountains, near Delhi, NY<br />
|<br />
| The area shown on the map includes the Adirondacks, as well as the Tug Hill Plateau and the Finger Lakes. The Catskills appear to be excluded.<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|War of the Worlds (2005 film)|War of the Worlds (2005)}}<br />
| Massachusetts <br />
| California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia<br />
|<br />
| Also referenced in [[556: Alternative Energy Revolution]]<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Signs (film)|Signs}}<br />
| {{w|Doylestown, Pennsylvania|Doylestown, PA}}<br />
|<br />
| rowspan="2" |<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Village (2004 film)|The Village}}<br />
| Covington, PA<br />
| {{w|Chadds Ford Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania|Chadds Ford, PA}}<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| [Generic City]<br />
| Washington DC, Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia<br />
| N/A<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Deep Impact (film)|Deep Impact}}<br />
| Atlantic Coast<br />
|<br />
|<br />
| The Mega-tsunami<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Pet Semetary|Pet Semetary}}<br />
| Ludlow, Maine<br />
|Hancock, Maine<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|What About Bob?|What about Bob}}<br />
|Lake Winnipesaukee, NH<br />
|Smith Mountain Lake, VA<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Departed|The Departed}}<br />
| Boston, MA<br />
| Boston & New York<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|Jaws (film)|Jaws}}<br />
| Amity Island (stand-in for Martha's Vineyard)<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|-<br />
| {{w|The Hunt for Red October (film)|The Hunt for Red October}}<br />
| Atlantic Ocean<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Above the frame is the following text.]<br />
:'''A cheat sheet for'''<br />
:figuring out where in the US you are<br />
:by recognizing the background from movies<br />
:(for use by GeoGuessr players and crash-landed astronauts)<br />
<br />
:[In the frame is a map of the mainland USA with the 48 mainland states lined out in thin gray lines. All areas on the map have been enclosed in sections divided by curved black lines. These sections sizes goes from encompassing several states down to just a small section of a single state. The sections cover the entire USA without any holes. There is also one section in the Atlantic Ocean. All sections are labeled. If the section is large enough the text stands inside, if it is too small, the text is outside and an arrow will point to the relevant section <br />
<br />
:[Here below all the text on the map (mainly film titles) will be transcribed from top to bottom and (when possible) by going through the columns that seems to appear in the sections when going from left to right. The {{w|State Postal Codes}} will be used when referring to the states covered by each section]<br />
<br />
:[Small section on the west coast around the state border between WA and OR, which is surrounded on three sides by the next section mentioned below. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:The Goonies<br />
:[Large section covering WA, OR and top of CA. The section has two titles, with the second one standing with smaller font below the first:]<br />
:Twilight<br />
:50 Shades of Grey<br />
:[Small section around San Francisco, CA:]<br />
:Zodiac<br />
:[Very tine section covering only Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco, CA. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:The Rock<br />
:[ Large section covering most of MT as well as part of WY, SD and NE. The section has two titles:]<br />
:Dances with Wolves<br />
:Starship Troopers<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of ID and part of MT:]<br />
:Napoleon Dynamite<br />
:[Medium section section covering part of OR, ID, NV and UT:]<br />
:The Sandlot<br />
:[Medium section section mainly covering the top part of NV:]<br />
:Wild Wild West<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of NV and small part of CA. The section has two titles, with the second one standing with smaller font below the first plus description:]<br />
:Top Gun <br />
:& the part of Independence Day where Will Smith crashes<br />
:[Small section covering central CA:]<br />
:That movie about wine & talking<br />
:[Medium section section covering a large part of the southern part of CA around Hollywood, Los Angeles:]<br />
:Every movie with a big budget, explosions or someone who says "cool!"<br />
:[Medium section section covering half of WY and small parts of UT and CO:]<br />
:Brokeback Mountain<br />
:[Medium section section covering part of WY, CO and NE. The part in parenthesis in a smaller font:]<br />
:Oregon Trail<br />
:(the only part I ever got to)<br />
:[Large section covering small part of UT and the half bottom of UT and CO and top half of AZ and NM:]<br />
:Roadrunner cartoons<br />
:[Medium section section covering a small part of the southern CA and small part of AZ. The part beneath the title in a smaller font:]<br />
:The Truman Show,<br />
:but with desert as the background<br />
:[Small part at the bottom of AZ. The section has two titles:]<br />
:Tombstone<br />
:& The Mask of Zorro<br />
:[Large section covering the a small part of AZ, the bottom half of NM as well as a third of TX:]<br />
:No Country for Old Men<br />
:[Large section covering all of ND, most of MN, half of SD and a small part of MT:]<br />
:Fargo<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of NE and small parts of MN and IA. The section has three titles. The top two are marked with a square bracket to the left. The text of this given before the third title:]<br />
:Interstellar<br />
:Star Trek (2009)<br />
:] Earth parts<br />
:Field of Dreams<br />
:[Medium section section covering large parts of IA, MO and IL:]<br />
:The Music Man<br />
:[Medium section section covering mainly KS, but also a small part of Co and OK:]<br />
:The Wizard of Oz<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of OK and small part of MO and AR:]<br />
:Twister<br />
:[Covering the top part of TX and small parts of OK and AR:]<br />
:True Grit<br />
:[Large section covering a third of TX (the eastern part all the way down) and small parts of AR and LA. The section has three titles:]<br />
:Office Space<br />
:Dazed and Confused<br />
:Kill Bill<br />
:[Small section around and below Chicago, IL, which is surrounded on three sides by the next large section mentioned below. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Blues Brothers<br />
:[A small circle centered around Detroit, MI completely inside the section here below. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:8 Mile<br />
:[Large section covering all of WI, MI, IN and OH as well as parts of IL and KY. That is except for the two small sections described above, which are inlaid in this one. There are two items in this section. The one below is in smaller font:]<br />
:A Christmas Story<br />
:&That song about Jack and Diane<br />
:[Medium section section covering half of AR, small parts of IL and MO as well as bits of KY, TN and MS:]<br />
:Anything by Mark Twain<br />
:[Medium section covering half of TN and part of KY:]<br />
:Walk the Line<br />
:[Large section covering all of AL most of MS and half of GA. There are two titles in this section:]<br />
:Big Fish<br />
:O Brother Where Art Thou<br />
:[Small section covering top of LA and small part of MS:]<br />
:Duck Dynasty<br />
:[Medium section covering the bottom half of LA and the very bottom of MS. There is a very small section at the bottom of LA that are not included in this but in the next. There are two titles in this section:]<br />
:Princess and the Frog<br />
:All Dogs go to Heaven<br />
:[Small section covering the very eastern end of the bottom of LA – maybe including New Orleans. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Beasts of the Southern Wild<br />
:[Medium section section covering half of PA and western part NY:]<br />
:Groundhog Day<br />
:[Small section covering the middle part of VA as well as small parts of PA, MD and WV:]<br />
:Dirty Dancing<br />
:[Medium section section covering most of WV, half of TN, a small parts of KY as well as tiny bits of VA, NC and GA:]<br />
:October Sky<br />
:[Large section covering all of SC, most of NC as well as half of VA and GA. There are two titles in this section:]<br />
:Gone with the Wind<br />
:Forrest Gump<br />
:[Large section covering most of FL except the bottom part which are covered by the next two sections:]<br />
:The Truman Show<br />
:[Small section covering the very bottom of FL except the east coast. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Adaptation<br />
:[Small section covering the very bottom the east coast of FL. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Miami Vice<br />
:[Small section covering most of the top of VT and a small part of NY. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:Super Troopers<br />
:[Small section covering the central part of NY.]<br />
:My Side of the Mountain (book)<br />
:[Small section covering the eastern part of NY, western part of MA, top part of CT as well as bits of VT and RI.:]<br />
:War of the Worlds (2005)<br />
:[Small section covering the eastern part of PA and small bits of NY and MD. There are two titles in this section:]<br />
:Signs<br />
:& The Village<br />
:[Medium section section covering several large cities of the east coast including New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. It covers most of DE and NJ and large parts of MD (with DC) and the bit of NY with the city. The text is not a title and the it is written in square brackets…:]<br />
:[Generic city]<br />
:[Small section covering the east coast along VA and NC, but also with small bits of MD and DE at the top:]<br />
:Deep Impact<br />
:[Medium section section covering all of ME, the top tip of NH and eastern top of VT:]<br />
:Pet Semetary<br />
:[Small section covering the most of the bottom parts of NH and VT:]<br />
:What about Bob<br />
:[Very small section surrounding Boston in MA. It is labeled with an arrow:]<br />
:The Departed<br />
:[Small section covering the east coast along MA, RI, CT and NJ:]<br />
:Jaws<br />
:[Large section off the east coast in the Atlantic Ocean:]<br />
:The Hunt for Red October<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
<br />
Not everything {{w|Mark Twain}} wrote was really set on the {{w|Mississippi River}}. For instance, he first gained attention as a fiction writer with "{{w|The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County}}," which is about {{w|Northern California}}. Indeed, during his lifetime, Twain was known mostly as a travel writer, not a novelist.<br />
<br />
Kill Bill doesn't take place in southern or eastern Texas. The wedding chapel scene takes place in {{w|El Paso}}, around the same area No Country for Old Men takes place.<br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[https://geoguessr.com/ GeoGuessr's official website]<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Maps]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1392:_Dominant_Players&diff=71366Talk:1392: Dominant Players2014-07-11T05:11:33Z<p>Chvsanchez: Original graph</p>
<hr />
<div>This may be related to the recent MOBA segregation controversy: http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/2014/07/02/hearthstone-tournament/ {{unsigned ip|108.162.229.25}}<br />
<br />
What is the significance of the line colors? {{unsigned ip|108.162.215.78}}<br />
:I think the red lines are those players that were undisputed #1 for a significant period. [[Special:Contributions/103.22.201.239|103.22.201.239]] 08:02, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
: But Petrosian has no colored line, although he was world champion. Maybe he did not have the highest ELO rating despite being WC?[[User:Jkrstrt|Jkrstrt]] ([[User talk:Jkrstrt|talk]]) 09:23, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
:Ya, this line colouring thing is bugging me. :P [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 14:22, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
:The lack of explanation of the red lines bugs me too. Makes me think this comic was rushed, or never finished. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.216|108.162.250.216]] 22:18, 10 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Dashed lines are apparently for the period before ELO ratings existed, taking 1965 as a start point (midway between the point in time when ELO rating was adopted by USCF and FIDE, respectively. There seems to be an exception for Alekhine -or is that a very long dash? [[User:Jkrstrt|Jkrstrt]] ([[User talk:Jkrstrt|talk]]) 09:23, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Naughty Randall, always label your axes! [[User:Kaa-ching|Kaa-ching]] ([[User talk:Kaa-ching|talk]]) 08:00, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The comment in the women's rankings about Kira Zvorykina is a little odd. One would hope she continued playing in tournaments into the 20th century, given that the first 81 years of her life were in the 20th century. {{unsigned ip|108.162.250.220}}<br />
<br />
While at the time, the V-1 was called a "Flying Bomb", wikipedia indeed calls it an early pulse-jet ancestor of the modern cruise missile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb . I built a model of one in an 8th grade rocketry club, replacing the pulse jet with an Estes D-6-0. Mine took off, but sure enough, yes, the stubby wings stalled easily, the flight path was a weird s curve as the wings stalled out twice while under thrust.[[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 09:03, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Link to the game against Deep Blue, anybody? Also, shouldn't the title text be at least mentioned? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.71|199.27.128.71]] 09:13, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Kasparov-Deep Blue Games: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014770 {{unsigned ip|141.101.64.131}}<br />
<br />
The explanation says in the first sentence that for chess there's an overall rating and a woman's rating in the comic. All I see is a men's rating and a woman's rating, no overall rating, however. {{unsigned ip|108.162.254.24}}<br />
: As Judith Polgar is present in the first chart, it appears to be an overall, not specifically a men's chart.[[User:Jkrstrt|Jkrstrt]] ([[User talk:Jkrstrt|talk]]) 11:37, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
:: My impression is that the above is the Men's Chart but with Judit added (hence the note), because (although unsure because of the curse of unlabelled axes) some of the other top-ranking-women-but-not-top-ranking-overall would still earn a position on the above 'graph'.<br />
:: (Also, something in me wanted a reference to Chess-Boxing, but it appears that was not the aim.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.233|141.101.99.233]] 13:16, 10 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
:There is no "woman" ranking.[[User:Chvsanchez|Chvsanchez]] ([[User talk:Chvsanchez|talk]]) 05:11, 11 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Anyone knows why Viswanathan Anand is not included (or am I blind?) Marty / [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.43|141.101.104.43]]<br />
I had the exact same question. It appears that this is a West and Russian centric view of the world [[User:Indianrediff|Indianrediff]] ([[User talk:Indianrediff|talk]]) 13:23, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
:No. Koneru Humpy is mentioned. He's a big Carlson fan and I think he doesn't like Anand. One of his old comics suggested that. Probably never realised Anand met and beat Carlson back in 2008. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.78|108.162.222.78]] 16:37, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
:Out of pure curiosity, could anyone please upload an image/link of how Anand's curve might look, if it was added to the graph? I'm not a huge chess fan, but I am interested in seeing the extent of Randall's possible bias in this regard. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.62.62|173.245.62.62]] 05:21, 10 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
For me it feels weirder to see Stefanova there, but not Topalov. Then again, for some reason Bulgarian media keep a low profile of her. {{unsigned ip|141.101.104.107}}<br />
It's Julius Erving not Irving. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.151|173.245.54.151]] 13:27, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The choice of basketball and chess is something to think about. This mostly is about chess, and basketball represents the physical sports. It immediately stands out that chess players have much longer careers than basketball players. [[User:Jim E|Jim E]] ([[User talk:Jim E|talk]]) 15:55, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Something else I think someone needs to look at is the line of best fit. For basketball it's basically horizontal, but for chess it tends to curve upwards. I'd add it myself, but I feel like there's more than just that and I'm missing something. [[User:Athang|Athang]] ([[User talk:Athang|talk]]) 16:53, 9 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I haven't seen any mention of this interpretation, so it might be just me, but I immediately read the juxtaposition of basketball to chess as a contrast of how skill at the top level of basketball is essentially stagnant, whereas the best chess players have been outstripping their predecessors for decades. {{unsigned ip|173.245.52.157}}<br />
<br />
The y-axis is unlabelled, that's annoying --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.93.222|141.101.93.222]] 19:53, 10 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
A couple points;<br />
1) I would interpret the Basketball vs. Chess dichotomy as a slam against basketball, with the (largely) serious comments about chess vs. pointing out movies on BB. There are a jillion things he could have chosen to comment on - why highlight the embarassing career moves of BB players?<br />
(2) The rating system for BB has an (essentially) static upper limit, whereas these chess rating systems have larger upper bounds as the player pool grows, so comparisons of upper bounds are unfair. That may be part of the point, or a dishonest comparison. Not sure of Randall's motivations. (not that I like BB anyways...)<br />
(3) No comparison to women's BB is made - so this further inclines me to think that there are two separate agendas here: (i) physical BB vs. mental chess and (ii) women's rights in chess. An honest comparison would include women's BB as well.<br />
(4) The vertical axis on the graphs do not start at zero, so the scaling could be correct... just somewhat deceiving by violating fundmental rules of creating graphs (no labels, inconsistent scales and they have non-zero bases).<br />
(5) Red lines are *generally* the top person at some point in their career for more than 5(?) years (David Robinson seems like the tell)<br />
<br />
All in all, rather disappointed in the seemingly conflicting political agendas and poorly represented graphs.<br />
[[User:Chorb|Chorb]] ([[User talk:Chorb|talk]]) 21:36, 10 July 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Statistician Jeff Sonas produced his famous research in 2005. You can find his graph here: http://www.chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/Summary.asp.[[User:Chvsanchez|Chvsanchez]] ([[User talk:Chvsanchez|talk]]) 05:11, 11 July 2014 (UTC)</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1392:_Dominant_Players&diff=713621392: Dominant Players2014-07-11T04:50:10Z<p>Chvsanchez: Chess corrections</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1392<br />
| date = July 9, 2014<br />
| title = Dominant Players<br />
| image = dominant_players.png<br />
| titletext = When Vera Menchik entered a 1929 tournament, a male competitor mocked her by suggesting that a special 'Vera Menchik Club' would be created for any player who lost to her. When the tournament began, he promptly became the first member of said club, and over the years it accumulated a large and illustrious roster.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
A [http://xkcd.com/1392/large larger version] of this image can be found by clicking the image at xkcd - which can be reached easily from here as always, by clicking on the comic number above.<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Why are some of the players paths red and some gray? Why compare basketball to chess?}}<br />
The comic shows the rise and fall of players' strengths in two games, {{w|basketball}} and {{w|chess}}. For chess, there is an overall chart, and a women's chart.<br />
<br />
For basketball, it uses a {{w|Player_efficiency_rating|player efficiency rating}}.<br />
<br />
For chess, it uses the {{w|Elo rating}}. It explains that since Elo is relatively new (it was adopted by the World Chess Federation, FIDE, in 1970), the rating is extrapolated backwards in time and are thus shown as dashed lines before it was generally adopted. <br><br />
Interestingly it can be {{w|Elo_rating#Elo_ratings_beyond_chess|read on the Elo wiki page}} that {{w|Sports Reference|Sports-reference.com}} uses the Elo rating system to rate the best professional players in '''basketball''', football, baseball and hockey .<br />
<br />
*There are several references at given times of a career path. These can either be noted with:<br />
**A node on the path. An arrow will point to the note and state a fact. <br />
**Dashed path (not including chess player paths from before 1970 where they were all dashed as explained above). An arrow will point to the dashed part and state a fact. (Only for basketball)<br />
**The {{w|Starburst (symbol)|starbursts}} at the end (or beginning) of a path. A fact will be stated next to the node. These are references to a player disappearing (or reappearing) in unusual circumstances. (only for either Chess panel)<br />
*Some of these are intended to provide context (such as "Loses to Deep Blue"), while others are tangents or jokes. <br />
*These references are listed below in order of appearance. If it is a dashed line or a starburst it will be mentioned:<br />
<br />
'''Basketball'''<br />
* {{W|Wilt Chamberlain}} - Becomes the first and so far only player to score {{w|Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game|100 points in a game}}. (In 1962)<br />
* {{w|Jerry West}} - The Guy in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NBALogo.svg The NBA logo] from 1969. (Read 5th paragraph in this {{w|National_Basketball_Association#Celtics.27_dominance.2C_league_expansion.2C_and_competition|wiki section}})<br />
* {{w|Kareem Abdul-Jabbar}} - {{w|Airplane (film)|Airplane}}. (A comedy film from 1980 where he played the co-pilot Roger Murdock)<br />
* {{w|Magic Johnson}} - {{w|Magic_Johnson#HIV_announcement_and_Olympics_.281991.E2.80.9392.29|HIV announcement}}. This part of his path is dashed. (The line is dashed from 1991 to 1995 - where the fear of Aids forced him to retire)<br />
** He {{w|Magic_Johnson#Return_to_the_Lakers_as_coach_and_player_.281994.2C_1996.29|returned to play once more}} in the season from 1995-1996<br />
* {{w|Michael Jordan}} - {{w|Michael_Jordan#First_retirement_and_baseball_career_.281993.E2.80.931994.29|Baseball career}}. This part of his path is dashed. (from 1993-1994 he played Baseball - i.e. his first retirement)<br />
* Michael Jordan - {{w|Space Jam}}. (An animated comedy film from 1996 starring {{w|Bugs Bunny}} and Jordan - who was the only live character during most of the movie)<br />
* Michael Jordan - {{w|Michael_Jordan#Second_retirement_.281999.E2.80.932001.29|Second retirement}}. This part of his path is dashed. (He retired again from 1999–2001)<br />
** He then {{w|Michael_Jordan#Washington_Wizards_comeback_.282001.E2.80.932003.29|came back}} to play two more years from 2001-2003...<br />
* {{w|LeBron James}} - {{w|The Decision (TV special)|The Decision}} (a television special from 2010 about a heavily hyped decision as to which team he would play for the next season)<br />
<br />
'''Chess'''<br />
* {{w|José Raúl Capablanca|José Capablanca}} - Terrifying chess God. An arrow points to the left of the panel with his name and the note beneath it. (Considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. As he died in 1942 this lies just outside of the chart. Anyway he had his best years all the way back in 1921-1927 where he became world chess champion seven years in a row)<br />
* {{w|Alexander Alekhine}} - This is the first starburst. There is no text except his name. (He {{w|Alexander_Alekhine#His_final_year|died in 1946}} in Portugal) <br />
* {{w|Bobby Fischer}} - Vanished... The second Starburst. (He did not actually vanish, but he did {{w|Bobby_Fischer#Sudden_obscurity|stop playing competitively}} for about 20 years starting in 1972. This is probably a reference to the 1993 film {{w|Searching for Bobby Fischer}}, which is not actually about Fischer, but about a player who partly models his career on Fischer's. The name ''Searching for Bobby Fischer'' may lead people to believe Fischer literally vanished, but that is not the case)<br />
* Bobby Fischer - ...Reappeared then vanished again. He had problems. This is written below a double starburst with a short line between. (This is another reference to Fischer - there is no name or clear correlation, except the text that relates to the first reference. He {{w|Bobby_Fischer#1992_Spassky_rematch|resumed playing competitively}} in 1992 for a match. ''{{w|Bobby_Fischer#Life_as_an_.C3.A9migr.C3.A9|He had problems}}'' is a simplistic description of issues and controversies in Fischer's later life, including an arrest warrant (because he violated a U.S. embargo against Yugoslavia), unpaid taxes, controversy about his statements (including {{w|Antisemitism|anti-semitism}}), mental problems. The U.S. eventually revoked his passport, and he was jailed for eight months in Japan. He then received Icelandic citizenship, and lived out the rest of his life there.)<br />
* {{w|Garry Kasparov}} - Loses to {{w|Deep Blue (chess computer)|Deep Blue}}. (In 1997 Deep Blue became the first computer to {{w|Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov#1997_rematch|beat the current chess world champion}})<br />
* {{w|Judit Polgar}} - (see below). The text in the brackets is written beneath her name. (She is the strongest woman chess player ever and can be seen rising from the gender-defined ranks of women's chess (below). She is the only women shown on this part of the chart. Below in the womans chart, there are several notes - see below... :)<br />
<br />
'''Chess (women)'''<br />
* {{w|Vera Menchik}} - Died in a missile attack on London. This is the Last starburst. (She was killed by an early guided missile - a {{w|V-1 flying bomb}} - launched by the Germans in {{w|World War II}}. For some reason her path does not seems to be dashed, as it should have been before 1970.)<br />
* {{w|Sonja Graf}} - Rating particularly uncertain. This is written above her name, with an arrow pointing there. As a matter of fact, she was clearly the second best woman and her path should be parallel to Menchik's from 1930's. (The path is already dashed indicating that it is a rough estimate, but there were probably very few data for woman chess players before 1960 explaining the note)<br />
* {{w|Kira Zvorykina}} - Kira Zvorykina (born 1919) continued playing in tournaments into the 21st century. (Zvorykina was never very high on the list, but can be seen twice centered on 1960 and 1980. She played her [http://ratings.fide.com/individual_calculations.phtml?idnumber=13500392&rating_period=2008-01-01&t=0 last game] rated by the {{w|World Chess Federation}} in October 2007 aged 88. She was still alive when this comic was released and will turn 95 if she lives until September this year 2014)<br />
* Judit Polgar, {{w|Susan Polgar}} and {{w|Sofia Polgar}} - Sisters. (These three chess playing sisters are linked by a thin dashed line, snaking between their names on the chart. Judit is the youngest, Susan the oldest. Judit has now overtaken her sisters, Sofia never reaching the other two sisters level.)<br />
* Judit Polgar - {{w|Judit_Polgar#Making_history|Wins a game against Kasparov}}, making her the first woman to beat the world #1. (It took some attempts and some {{w|Judit_Polgar#Kasparov_touch-move_controversy|controversy}} before she managed to beat Kasparov in 2002, in a tournament that was played under rapid rules with 25 minutes per game and a 10 second bonus per move.)<br />
* Judit Polgar - Becomes first woman to rank in the overall top 10. (She is so far the only woman to break into the top 10 in the {{w|FIDE World Rankings}}. She ranked as high as {{w|Judit_Polgar#Combining_family_and_chess|eighth in the world}} in 2005) <br />
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In general not all possible players are included in these charts. For instance it is mentioned that Judit Polgar was the first woman ranked in the over all top 10. But only six players are shown on the over all chart around 2005, where she was ranked 8th. This is a general trend for all three charts. So this is [[Randall|Randall's]] subjective list of players that he has deemed to be ''Dominant Players'' and not a full list of the best ranked players during the time period.<br />
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Another example of the above for Basketball would be the 2008–2009 season which was unique in that it was the only season in which more than one player posted an efficiency ratings of over 30.0 on the Player efficiency rating (see at the bottom of {{w|Player_efficiency_rating#Reference_guide|this section}} on Wikipedia). In that season three players broke this barrier: LeBron James (31.76), {{w|Dwyane Wade}} (30.46), and {{w|Chris Paul}} (30.04). LeBron is shown to top that season, But Dwayne is far below (thus the scale does not fit?) and Chris is not on the list (i.e. he was not deemed to be a dominant players according to Randall).<br />
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It is thus on Randall's whim that some NBA players have been left out of the chart in favor of players with lower career and yearly efficiency ratings. Example: {{w|Tim Duncan}}, {{w|Charles Barkley}}, {{w|Oscar Robertson}}, {{w|Kobe Bryant}}, and Chris Paul could all have been included.<br />
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A similar reason would explain why former World Champion Chess Grandmaster {{w|Viswanathan Anand}} has not been included in the Chess Chart. Anand is one of six players in history to break the 2800 mark on the FIDE rating list. He occupied the number one position in several rating lists between 2007 and 2011. It is possible that Randall is a huge fan of {{w|Magnus Carlsen}} and biased against Anand as evinced by the comic [[1287:_Puzzle]] (Chess in a 'Go' board - there are no alternate colored squares as required by chess), though the interpretation of the comic and its comment appear to be a double-edged matter of debate.<br />
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Chess players {{w|Vladimir Kramnik}} and {{w|Levon Aronian}}, who have faced each other on multiple occasions in the 2010s, are shown as having their career paths entwined. It is a general trend observed every time two players paths cross each other more than once (the one on top the first time, will be below the second time and so forth. It is just more clear with these two than anywhere else).<br />
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==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
'''Dominant Players over Time'''<br />
<br />
[Chart 1]<br />
*Basketball (NBA/ABA)<br />
:Player Efficiency Rating<br />
<br />
[Chart 2]<br />
*Chess<br />
:Elo Rating<br />
<br />
[Chart 3]<br />
*Chess (Women)<br />
:Elo Rating<br />
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==Trivia==<br />
* The [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/4/45/20140710201235!dominant_players.png original comic] said about Kira Zvorykina "Continued playing in tournaments into the 20th century". The 20th century is the 1900's in which Zvorkina was born (on September 29, 1919 according to Wikipedia). Randall has corrected the notation to say "into the 21st century." <br />
* The names of three NBA players have been misspelled: {{w|Neil Johnston}} (misspelled as "Neal"), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (missing hyphen), and {{w|Julius Erving}} (misspelled "Irving".)<br />
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[[Category:Large drawings]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Charts]]<br />
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{{comic discussion}}</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=63:_Valentine_-_Heart&diff=6147463: Valentine - Heart2014-03-02T06:45:23Z<p>Chvsanchez: /* Explanation */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 63<br />
| date = February 13, 2006<br />
| title = Valentine - Heart<br />
| image = valentine.jpg<br />
| titletext = Just pretend you're kidding.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
<br />
The comic shows a Valentines card that starts off nicely, but then quite fast becomes very unromantic and probably very honest, that the only purpose of this card is getting the receiver into bed. It says that if this is not the case, if she (or he) doesn't want to go naked after receiving this card, then it is not really meant (i.e. their heart is not in it). <br />
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The title text implies that this is being offered as a Valentine that someone might give and then "pretend" that they were kidding. Which seems to imply that they would not, in fact, be kidding, that this represents their real feelings. <br />
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A funny thing is also that the text on the card implies that if the card indeed does get the receiver naked, that the action of giving it was truly meant. In that case, the giver would always deny that it was not meant and claim he/she is truly in love. Of course this cannot be true, since getting laid was the main motivation of appreciating the 'loved' one.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:I want to wish you a '''''Happy Valentine's Day''''' but unless this card is going to finally get you naked, I have to admit my heart's not really in it.<br />
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{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Valentines]]</div>Chvsanchezhttps://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:4:_Landscape_(sketch)&diff=61464Talk:4: Landscape (sketch)2014-03-01T23:54:26Z<p>Chvsanchez: Rivers and seas</p>
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<div>Interesting... when I first saw this sketch years ago, I assumed that the body of water was frozen and the "river" was a crack in the ice. -- mwburden <br />
[[Special:Contributions/70.91.188.49|70.91.188.49]] 22:41, 13 December 2012 (UTC)<br />
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More likely the dark areas are the watery areas. That would explain the original comment: people asking "why the river?" were only making it too clear to Randall how he missed to convey what he meant. The confusion largely comes from the land being completely flat.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/78.192.177.101|78.192.177.101]] 18:27, 30 September 2013 (UTC)<br />
:Since he's changed the title text to say that the river is running through the ocean, you seem to be incorrect. [[User:Grahame|Grahame]] ([[User talk:Grahame|talk]]) 06:26, 18 October 2013 (UTC)Grahame<br />
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However, a river is made of ''fresh'' water and the sea is made of ''salt'' water. The Amazon river entering the ocean is an example.<br />
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Besides, some sea currents are called ''rivers''. --[[User:Chvsanchez|Chvsanchez]] ([[User talk:Chvsanchez|talk]]) 23:54, 1 March 2014 (UTC)</div>Chvsanchez