Talk:1717: Pyramid Honey

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 04:36, 10 August 2016 by GrayJay (talk | contribs) ("a hill to die on" comes from Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls")
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Seems like this could be the Smithsonian reference! --Kynde (talk) 13:53, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Anyone know what the counter source or argument is? 141.101.98.16 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)


This looks like it could be the source that inspired the strip:

http://irna.lautre.net/Honey-in-the-pyramids.html 173.245.54.53 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Looks like a place to start digging for references: http://bumblehive.com/honey-was-not-found-in-pharaohs-tombs/ -- JourneymanWizard (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Did Randall draw the wrong colored hat?? jameslucas (" " / +) 15:09, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Nah, I think it's just IRL trolling. 173.245.54.80 15:34, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Could this be the ned of Black Hat? The end of xkcd?! 173.245.54.51 16:06, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Correction: this doesn't put "Megan unwillingly into the same camp as conspiracy theorists" it puts Black Hat there. 108.162.246.111 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

No. Black hat is very much willing to join the conspiracy theorist camp. Rather, he creates it. Megan isn't a conspiracy theorist, her scepticism towards Cueballs honey claims are perfectly valid. But to an outside observer, she promotes the same viewpoint as Black hat. Indeed, Black hat even refers to Megan for "evidence". So Megan is forever assosiated with the Pyramid Honey truthers, despite having nothing to do with them. --141.101.80.70 09:35, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

This Reddit thread cites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Preservation and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Ancient_times 172.68.35.71 18:58, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

The phrase "a weird hill to die on" could probably use an explanation, too, as I'd never heard of that (or its apparent source phrase "Is this the hill you want to die on?", based on some quick googling) before. 199.27.133.101 23:04, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

"Is this the hill you want to die on?" sounds to me like a line from a war movie, e.g. this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_Hill. Maybe its origin is indeed something military, as some sources suggest: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/162813/what-is-the-origin-of-the-phrase-a-mountain-im-willing-to-die-on Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 06:49, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

I have a possible source for the "weird hill to die on" reference, saw it on BBC a while back: Body on the Moor; http://www.bbc.com/news/resources/idt-e8c6cbab-da44-4a3c-8f9b-c4fccd53dd24. 108.162.244.85 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Every particle physicist knows that the shelf life of honey is at most 1042 years, just like everything else. --108.162.215.129 00:51, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Only if you assume nucleon decay. If Earth doesn't get absorbed into a black hole and then Hawking Radiated out, the honey would just continue to cool long into the heat death of the universe, eventually cold-fusioning via quantum-tunnelling into Iron-56 by 101500 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Future_without_proton_decay. Ehryk (talk) 02:23, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

re: tooltip - I thought it was a floating giant eye? --173.245.54.28 00:59, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

The "weird hill to die on" phrase could mean a point of view Black Hat will defend to the last, regardless the sense of it (which makes sense with the militarian source). He might find such a thing worth to find because it would give his entire life a (though in general maybe and in this case definitely unuseful) purpose. furthermore, by simply spreading Megan's claim without considering the nuances of her point and questioning it thouroughly he does basically the same as ll the people who claim honey's shelf life to be infinite (who apparently never thought of asking for further information where exactly the honey was found and by whom).

162.158.83.228 (talk)  (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
when the explanation for "weird hill to die on" as a phrase gets settled the explanation should probably also reference Black Hat's mixing of the metaphorical use (a debate position or principled stand) and a literal hill ("[A]ll the real ones are too far from my house.") 108.162.237.242 12:24, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

So, the "hill to die on" expression does relate back to the military some. Hills are good defensive places (ask any Civilization player). It's much easier to defend yourself when the other army is trying to run up a hill. Hence why lots of forts and military battles are associated with hills. The hill you die on, then, is that area of contention that you'll stubbornly defend to the very end. And of course Black Hat is making something like a zeugma when he mixes the metaphorical and literal meanings. 108.162.216.152 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"a hill to die on" appears in chapter 27 of the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls", by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1940, about the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War in which many non-Spanish volunteers joined the fight on one side or the other for ideological reasons. The book ends with the American protagonist, alone and wounded, preparing to ambush the enemy to buy time for the escape of his comrades; he will probably not survive. GrayJay (talk) 04:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)--

Some facts about honey Honey: Bacteria's Worst Enemy --162.158.92.207 14:27, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

"While some conspiracy theories turn out to be true, most, like the two mentioned here, are fake": while it's completely clear that the Moon landing not happening theory is false, we can't be 100% sure about the 9/11 theories at the moment (of course, the one mentioned is highly unlikely, but it's not refuted to the level of the moon landing conspiracy theories at the moment). I suggest correcting this statement into something weaker. 198.41.242.75 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)