Drinking Fountains
by Jeff
Image text: I've always wondered whether you could drink slowly enough, and eliminate fast enough, that you just sort of peed continuously. But I'm afraid to try because I worry someone might call while I'm doing it and ask what I'm up to, and I won't be able to think of a lie.
Here, we see Cueball, using the restroom, as the image text indicates, he is eliminating the liquid waste from his body, or peeing. (I love the use of the past tense "peed" there. Great word.) Anyway, he says that he avoids the use of the drinking fountain right after peeing, because he is afraid that he will be forced into immediately peeing again. And as in the image above, he would be stuck in a loop. A loop is a computer science term, but also used elsewhere, to indicates going through the same steps over and over again. In this case, the bathroom, drinking fountain loop looks like an endless one.
A few questions however, most people do not have the problem that they immediately have to pee after drinking water. Cueball does not, I guess it is just his fear. Maybe it is the speed of light stick figure metabolism?
Also, what is that stray "Water" doing to the bottom left of the comic? Not sure what it is supposed to mean.
Privacy
by Jeff
Image text: Eventual headline: 'University Researchers Create Life in Lab! Darkness, Faulty Condoms Blamed.'
Sorry this post was late, but I was still travelling back from Thanksgiving. Thanks for your patience!
This comic is about a couple, let us call them "Cueball and Megan" attempting to find some privacy to "hook up", which is slang for engage in sexual activity. Some people argue that "hook up" means to have sex, but I would argue it means any sort of sexual activity, although "to have sex" is still a subset of "hook up". In the image text, it seems to indicate that sex was indeed assumed in the phrase "hook up".
In the second frame, the female roommate of Megan is currently in a raid, which is a phrase used in World of Warcraft and other Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or MMORPGs. A Raid is a large gathering of players that work together to defeat a difficult enemy.
The Rare book collection in the library (frame 3) is usually deserted, so it would be perfect for sexual activity, but instead a tour is going through the area instead. It is unclear if the tour is visiting Nelson Mandela in the rare book section or Nelson Mandela is visiting the school and is getting a tour through the rare book section. Is that a stick figure Nelson Mandela with the white hair?
Next they try an accelerator tunnel that is in use, a beaver lodge (pun on the word "beaver", which is slang for the vagina is I assume intended by Randall). I'm not sure why the current understanding of physics rules out privacy in hyperspace. Any of our awesomely helpful commentors know?
In the image text, it indicates that the two found privacy for sex in the lab, but inadvertently got Megan pregnant. The image text is a pun on news titles about scientists who have created synthetic life in the lab.
Beauty
by Jeff
Image text: The best hugs are probably from hagfish, which can extrude microscopic filaments that convert a huge volume of water around them to slime in seconds. Instant cozy blanket!
In this comic, Blondie is the girly girl and Megan is the nerdy girl. Blondie's statement in the first is proved wrong by Megan's actions throughout the comic and the statement in the image text.
Wikipedia has this on the hagfish - "Their unusual feeding habits and slime-producing capabilities have led members of the scientific and popular media to dub the hagfish as the most "disgusting" of all sea creatures."
Herpetology
by Jeff
Image text: Birds are Aves, which is part of the clade Theropoda, which is in Saurischia, which is in Dinosauria. Those birds outside our windows are dinosaurs. We can clear out the rest of our brains because we now have the best fact.
Ornithology is the branch of zoology that studies birds. In the ornithology conference, they think that reptiles should be folded in under the ornithology umbrella as well.
Herpetology is the branch of zoology that studies amphibians. Rather than strike back with their own reptiles chart, they strike back with an "Assholes" chart to insult Ornithologists.
In the image text, birds are class Aves which is a subset of the claude Theropoda which is a subset of the order Saurischia and the taxon Dinosauria. This is obviously an oversimplification, but interesting fact none the less. I wouldn't suggest clearing out the rest of your brain as you will be running from birds for the rest of your days.
Never Do This
by Jeff
Image text: I call Rule 34 on The Secret House.
In this comic, Cueball and Megan or "Cutie" are looking at things with their pocket microscope. And it is all fun and games until they look under their fingernails, which on a very clean day can be a very disgusting place to look at even without a microscope. Once they look under their fingernails, they are disgusted and want to do nothing more than sit as far away from each other as possible and say "Oh God, Oh God".
Rule 34 is a 4chan derived rule that says something to the effect of "If it exists, there is Porn about it". And The Secret House is a book by David Sedaris Bodanis (Edit: Corrected. Thanks TJ. I'm not sure why my brain saw Bodanis and thought it was Sedaris.) that contained microscopic photographs of everyday items.
Five-Minute Comics: Part 3
by Jeff
Image text: Resulting in The Little Rock 9x + C.
Top: Reference to the Japanese attack on the American base of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii that brought the US into World War II.
High Middle: I believe this is a reference to perl scripting language. And the comic is also a reference to how much more persuasive you can be if you say that you saw a study defending your argument.
High Left: Don't know why women try to breastfeed anyone on the bus. I haven't seen that happening on all the buses I've been on. Maybe I've been on the wrong buses?
High Right: Coke and pop rocks makes a crazy foaming explosion in your mouth, but I'm not sure where the phone and creepy girls comes from.
Lower High Middle: This is a reference to the Billy Joel song called "We Didn't Start the Fire". But, I guess, the police suspected him anyway.
Middle Left: In 1957, Eisehower ordered the Little Rock Arkansas Schools integrated, which means that there were no longer black schools and white schools, there were just schools. But, of course integrate can also have a math meaning and in this comic, the police are putting up an integration symbol next to the school. The image text is also a reference to this.
Middle Right: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Typical horror movie set up, this time with smart phones.
Lower Middle Left: This is a reference to the children's story, the 3 Little Pigs. As the story progresses, each pig builds his house out of stronger material to try to fend off the Big Bad Wolf. In this comic, there is a lot more pigs, and a lot more increasingly strong materials. The elements in the comic is strontium which is (thanks Wikipedia!) is a chemical element with the symbol Sr and the atomic number 38. An alkaline earth metal, strontium is a soft silver-white or yellowish metallic element that is highly reactive chemically.
Lower Middle: The phrase "Fastest gun in the west" is usually reserved for how fast a cowboy can draw. In this case, this is a pun on that and the gun actually "runs" races.
Lower Right: Scientists use centrifuges to separate elements. In this comic, the pun is on the phrase "separate the men from the boys", which is a typical American (at least I think it's just American) phrase for a hard task that is forces you to see who is capable and who is not.
Bottom Left: Typical xkcd. SETI and Narnia in one comic. If you have seen the movies or read the Narnia series by CS Lewis, time works differently once you go through the wardrobe to get to Narnia. Time passes much more quickly in Narnia. So, Cueball is capitalizing on that by putting his computer in Narnia to be able to do more work in less "real" time. SETI@home is the search for extraterrestrials by using extra processing power of computers that go to the screeensaver. Foldilng@home is a similar idea, but this is with protein folding.
Bottom Right: This is a reference to the old TV show, the Honeymooners in which the male character, Ralph always threatens his wife by saying "One of these days, Alice, Pow right in the kisser". Which is an old-timey threat of him hitting her in the mouth. In this comic, instead of the "pow" sound effect, all the waterslide sounds are used.
The Economic Argument
by Jeff
Image text: Not to be confused with 'making money selling this stuff to OTHER people who think it works', which corporate accountants and actuaries have zero problems with.
Ok, let's see if I can get this one right.
1) Some people are arguing that the crazy phenomenon on the left exist.
Remote viewing - the ability to see far away things by the use of paranormal activity.
Dowsing - a type of divination that is used to find water, metals or gems underground.
Auras - the reading of some persons aura which gives some indication of his or her ailment or health based on the color, shape and clarity.
Homeopathy - the practice of diluting medicine for increased effect. There was a previous xkcd that made fun of this theory as well.
Remote prayer - the practice of lots of people getting together to pray for a person far away.
Astrology - the act of reading the stars and planets to predict the future.
Taurot - the act of reading cards to predict the future.
Crystal Energy - this is based on the theory that crystals produced energy when compressed.
Curses and hexes and relativity are pretty straightfoward, so I'm going to skip those two.
Quantum Electrodynamics - describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved.
2) If all the things on the right actually do exist, then capitalism is not totally ruthless because they are not taking advantage of all these potential money-making opportunities.
3) Some people are making money selling the things on the left, but not major corporations in America and abroad except where the box on the right is checked.
This begs a question if all the phenomenon on the left do not exist, then is capitalism is ruthless with all the things on the left that do actually exist?
Natural Parenting
by Jeff
Image text: On one hand, every single one of my ancestors going back billions of years has managed to figured it out. On the other hand, that's the mother of all sampling biases.
This comic is saying that sex "comes naturally".
Sampling bias is a non-random sample of participants in a study. In this case, all of the participants were self-selected to be parents. And of course there is a pun in "mother of all sampling biases".
Conversations
by Mike
Image Text: If the dysentery graph looks historically inaccurate it's because I got all my data from Oregon Trail.
Dysentery is a disease that causes fatal diarrhea. Frequently caused by an infectious bacteria, virus, or parasite, this disease was a common way to die in the computer game Oregon Trail. This comic suggests that it is spread more easily while on the toilet and with the rise in laptop sales (and rise in people are "conversing" over the internet while on the toilet) we will see a new rise in cases of dysentery.
UPDATE: "There are three graphs. It doesn’t imply that “we will see a new rise in cases of dysentery.”, it implies more conversations will take place with someone on the toilet due to using a laptop, when in the past it was due to dysentery." - Thanks Dave!
Date
by Mike
Image Text: Well, the kid's definitely getting the biology geek phenotype.
Punnett squares are simple diagrams used to determine the odds of a particular offspring genotype (genetic make up) given the genotypes of the parents. The phenotype is the physical manifestation of the genes in the organism and doesn't always correlated directly to strict genotypes. Some genetic characteristics (like color blindness and eye color) can be easily traced using Punnett squares because they are the result of one clearly dominant gene and one clearly recessive. Other traits like height are a blend of multiple genes.
An interesting thing to note:
The male's parents were both colorblind but that is a recessive gene on the X chromosome. For his mother to be colorblind she must have had two copies of the gene. This man now carries the gene on his X chromosome so he will only pass it on to his daughter. She will be a carrier but will have normal color vision so long as this woman is not colorblind.