Thanks for your support!
by Mike
Hey EXKCD fans! I'm Mike, the creator of this here website. And this is Jeff, the powerhouse writer that gets all the content up. We used to have google ads up here to cover our web costs but they banned us because of click bombing and took all our money. We never wanted to ask you, the fans, for money, but I recently had to leave my job and I'm trying to raise some money for some cool new projects. So we're adding a donation button to the site. If you like what we do please feel free to throw a buck or two at us. We'd greatly appreciate it! But no pressure! Just keep enjoying the content.
Happy Friday!
Update: The donate button embedded in the post wasn't working. So you can click on the button in the sidebar over there on the right.
Thanks, Mike & Jeff
Speculation
by Berg
Image text: 'I was pretty good at skeet shooting, but was eventually kicked off the range for catching the clay pigeons in a net and dispatching them execution-style.'
Hello all, Berg here.
You might remember my goings-on from last summer around this same time, when Jeff went on sabbatical. As he has once again been lured away by the siren song of vacation, I'll be filling in for him this week. Let's get started, shall we?
I am perhaps the worst person on the planet to try to explain today's xkcd, as I don't use Google +, IRC, or even Facebook (Though I do have a profile, I've never logged in. It's a long story). Luckily, I think there's only one real joke here, and it occurs in the fourth and fifth panel. That, I can handle.
The conversation in the first three panels is fairly banal- it's a quick rumination on the nature of social networking platforms, and a brief reflection on their evolution. Whether or not everybody switches over to Google+ or stays on Facebook is of no matter, as evidenced by the fact that AOL and IRC still both have devoted (if dwindling) followings.
And then, Black Hat shoots a crossbow bolt through the basketball.
It's a symbolic gesture. When Black Hat says he's not the 'catch' type, what we're really meant to take away from the comic is that Black Hat will do what he wants to do, regardless of what his friends are doing. They're shooting hoops, he's on his phone. They're playing catch, he's got a crossbow. In the image text, we hear of another instance of him playing by his own rules at a skeet shooting range. Given how good his aim with the crossbow is, it's a bit surprising to hear he was kicked out.
The point is that Black Hat doesn't care about universal acceptance. Black Hat cares about Black Hat. The fact that he's not the catch type symbolizes that while statisticians may portray social networkers as a sort of hive mind that will gravitate towards one platform over another, at the end of the day that hive mind is made up of innumerable individuals, many of whom will share Black Hat's easily summarized world view: My way.
Thanks for reading, guys! I'll be here all week while Jeff cruises around the Pacific Northwest. See you in a few days!
Sorry!
by Jeff
Sorry for the delayed xkcd explanations. Holidays got in the way. They should be below on the dates they were posted as soon as possible.
Happy Thanksgiving
by Jeff
Happy Thanksgiving to our US-based readers.
If there is another guest week comic today and Friday, I will not be around to get to them as I will be away for the holiday. I'll fill them in this weekend. Please use this post to discuss.
Savannah Ancestry
by Berg
Image Text: She's a perfectly nice lady from a beautiful city, and there's no reason to be mean just because she thinks a quarterback is a river in Egypt.
Relatively quick one today, folks- I've got to be up in the morning and evolutionary psychology is a deep rabbit hole for a former psych major to tackle. At any rate, here goes nothin':
Evolutionary psychology is a branch of psychology that seeks to justify contemporary human behavior using forces that acted upon us during our evolutionary history. It has come under some fire from the psychology community because it frequently seems to be justifying what are seen as stereotypical gender roles. A quick example is evolutionary psychology's explanation of attraction/mate selection between males and females. Males are attracted to signs of fertility, because these are clear markers that their genes will have a higher percentage of being passed on. Thus, men like plump breasts, wide hips, and barely legal cheerleaders. Women, on the other hand, are attracted to men with resources. Thus, women like men with money, and men who are older clearly have the resources necessary to carry on a long life. This is a quick example that I'm certain my major adviser would chide me for butchering, but hopefully it still serves the purpose of outlining some of the basic philosophy behind evolutionary psychology.
In today's xkcd, Cutie jumps to the conclusion that when Cueball refers to her Savannah ancestors he means the primitive hominids living in Africa nearly 2 million years ago (probably Homo ergaster). Therefore, Cutie presumes that Cueball is invoking evolutionary psychology, and instantly launches into a withering attack on what may be fundamental biases in Cueball's line of reasoning. Cueball, however, is taken aback- he merely meant Cutie's ancestors from Savannah, Georgia (a city which was supposedly too beautiful for William Tecumseh Sherman to bear burning down). Cutie is flummoxed, naturally, in that she's now been attacked from an unforeseen angle, and in the image text struggles to defend her mother.
Here's where I'm a bit stumped- is there a river somewhere in Egypt I've been unable to track down that sounds anything like "quarterback," or is good ol' R.M. just having a bit of fun with a non-sequitur? Either way, since we know darned well that a quarterback is a kind of football player and NOT a river in Egypt, we can take Cutie's image text defense as an oblique admission to her mother's idiocy. Her defensive tone indicates that this is a bit of a sore spot for Cutie, and mayhap some of said idiocy has been passed down to her either culturally or genetically. Sure, she may be able to knock evolutionary psychology down a peg or two, but she doesn't understand abstract mathematics after all. Does anybody win? No, not really, but Savannah certainly seems to take an unnecessary beating.
Atheists
by Berg
Image Text: 'But you're using that same tactic to try to feel superior to me, too!' 'Sorry, that accusation expires after one use per conversation'
Evenhandedness is an important conversational tool. When an opinion is presented, demonstrating how broadly it can be applied implies that said opinion was reached logically and given thought, rather than being the result of some impassioned rant. In today's xkcd, Cueball deftly dances around taking sides with either Atheists or fundamentalist Christians by disparaging them both equally.
'Annoying' is a subjective term. Whether or not something is annoying can not always be agreed upon by two different observers, in that the state of annoyingness depends as much on the observers themselves as it does on the observos (no, that's not a real word, but I think you get what I mean and it's fun to say). However, by claiming that two groups as philosophically opposed as Atheists and fundamentalist Christians both exhibit the trait of annoyingness, the suggestion is made that annoyingness isn't correlated with any particular stance. Instead, annoyingness must be some fundamental property of both of the observos in question, not merely an artifact of a mismatch of philosophies between the observers and the observos. Cueball has now taken his stance on annoyingness from the hazy, uncertain world of subjectivity and placed it in the magical land of objectivity, where science is king and every question has a correct answer. Point: Cueball.
But then, Cutie reveals Cueball's ruse of objectivity to still be subjective at it's core, thus drop-kicking his stance on annoyingness all the way back to the world of subjectivity, where The Secret built a sprawling condominium complex. Annoyingness isn't an objective quality that Cueball measured in both groups, Cueball's subjective criteria for annoyingness are merely broad enough to engulf both groups entire. Presuming that Cueball isn't annoyed by himself, we can infer that Cueball must not exhibit the property of annoyingness as defined by Cueball. Given that annoyingness is a negative quality (4th Ed: CHA 8, no training in diplomacy), Cueball must be better than an observo exhitbiting annoyingness. Point: Cutie. Win: Cutie.
In the image text, Cueball tries to steal victory from Cutie, but Cutie points out that the argument for superiority can have only one use per conversation. Otherwise, a feedback loop of potentially infinite length would derail the conversation about the observos to a back and forth exchange of arguments of superiority. Using Gricean conversational maxims to help derive meaning and intent from utterances, we can see how Cutie's investment in the conversation at hand as a participant wouldn't lead her to say something that would create a conversation destroying feedback loop. In order for the argument for superiority to be conversationally relevant, it must be being used in such a way that a feedback loop would not be created, which can only happen if it is used only once. Extra Point: Cutie.
University Website
by Berg
Image Text: People go to the website because they can't wait for the next alumni magazine, right? What do you mean, you want a campus map? One of our students made one as a CS class project back in '01! You can click to zoom and everything!
First off, an apology- this post should have gone up 24 hours ago, but I've been distracted by a wedding. Some advice- if you ever get married, just get married. Don't ever have a wedding. From my experience, the actual ceremony is more trouble than it's worth. Or, stay single. That's even easier.
Secondly- yesterday's xkcd. Pretty easy one this time, so hopefully you haven't been going too crazy trying to figure it out. This comic is all about the vast gulf between what people who design university websites think is wonderful about their university, and what people who visit university websites think is relevant information. Naturally, this information is best presented in the form of a Venn diagram, so that we can see what (if any) is the overlap between these two groups.
In the case of university websites, it's simple- the full name of the university. Folks who design the website think it's a piece of information that is interesting, and it's also a piece of information that people who visit the website are interested in finding. Sadly for prospective college students and their parents, that's where the similarities end. I would go through and list the reasons why each item is useful or useless and the philosophies behind them, but as I said- weddings are more trouble than they're worth, and I've got some trouble to attend to.
Ah- the image text, and then trouble. It's clearly written from the point of view of one of the folks who design the website, singing the praises of their well-laid out and helpful site. Clearly, they are wrong, and the folks who design the website are just drooling morons who, apparently, have never tried to use a website to find anything.
One last thing- I'm aware that the folks who design the website are often not the same as the folks who decide what information goes on the website, and that many a web designer has made an awful web page because they've been instructed to do that and nothing else. However, for ease of reference, I made the two one up above. Web designers, please accept my apology.
And now, off to help a distressed sibling/bride find a missing piece of her wedding dress. Cross your fingers for me.
Desert Island
by Mike
Image Text: Telescopes and bathyscapes and sonar probes of Scottish lakes, Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse explained with abstract phase-space maps, some x-ray slides, a music score, Minard's Napoleonic war: the most exciting new frontier is charting what's already here.
This comic is making the point that there is a wonderful world waiting to be explored in the ocean. From above it seems so plain, endless, and boring. But underneath the surface lies the most unexplored area on the planet. We know more about the surface of Mars than we know about the ocean floors on our own planet. This comic is a commentary on the need to head below the waves and start exploring.
iPad
by Mike
Image Text: Maybe we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in *really cool ways*.
Kind of puts iPads in persepective. Monkeys ARE controlling robot arms. But I'm sure soon there will be an app for that.
Off Topic: Display Problems
by Jeff
UPDATE: And we are back to the middle, thanks everyone!
We'll get you back to your regularly scheduled explanations in a second, but just wanted to see if anyone is having display problems with the site.
i.e. - is the content showing on the far right?
If you are having trouble, please fire your browser and version into the comments.
Many apologies if it is not looking right for you and we are currently trying to get it fixed, so hopefully you will not see that much longer.