19Dec/1167

Mnemonics

by Jeff

Image text: 'Sailor Moon's head exploded once' and 'Some men have explosive orgasms' both work for the Great Lakes from west to east (Paddle-to-the-Sea order).

Here we have six different science mnemonics.  A mnemonic is (thanks Wikipedia!) any learning technique that aids memory. Mnemonics rely on associations between easy-to-remember constructs which can be related back to the data that are to be remembered. This is based on the observation that the human mind much more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual or humorous or otherwise meaningful information, as compared to retrieving arbitrary sequences. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier.

The category is listed at the top of the box, the members are listed below that.  Then there is the traditional mnemonic that children are usually taught in school to help them remember.  Below the comic is one or two options for new mnemonics suggested by Randall.  The top one is illustrated in the frame.

I'm going to pick out a few items and references in each one to explain.

SI Prefixes are the prefixes for the systems of units from large to small and since there are so many, the mnemonic needs two lines. Karl Marx, as he is seen in the comic, (Wiki'ed for full explanation) was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.  Microsoft's Zune was a failed mp3 player that Microsoft brought to market and never "caught on".

Taxonomy is is the science of identifying and naming species. Katy Perry is an America pop music singer, who's popular songs are ones like "Fireworks" or "I Kissed A Girl".  And that is the stick figure of her in the illustration.

In the geologic periods frame, the illustration is of a month's worth of "the pill" a common contraceptive.

In Resistor Color Codes, Glenn Beck is in the illustration.  Beck is a far-right conservative commentator in the US, who used to have a show on the Fox News Network.

In the Planets frame, the illustration is of Mary and Joseph, who in the story of the Birth of Jesus in the Bible, were mother and father to Jesus.  However, Mary's conception of Jesus was from God and Mary was still considered a virgin.  This mnemonic shows Joseph not really believing that story.  (That part wasn't in the Bible, obviously)

Filed under: Word Play, science 67 Comments
31Oct/1156

Alternative Literature

by Jeff

Image text: I just noticed CVS has started stocking homeopathic pills on the same shelves with--and labeled similarly to--their actual medicine. Telling someone who trusts you that you're giving them medicine, when you know you’re not, because you want their money, isn’t just lying--it’s like an example you’d make up if you had to illustrate for a child why lying is wrong.

This comic means nothing without the image text, so make sure you read it.  Well, not nothing, but the image text gives it context.

Homeopathy is scientifically similar to a placebo because the medicine is so diluted.  Xkcd has worked on this subject before, here's comic 765.

In this comic, the money quote in the actual comic that is not about books but about medicine is  "Holding a book prompts the mind to enrich itself".

Filed under: science 56 Comments
26Aug/1128

Empirical

by Jeff

Image text: I'm as surprised as you!

In this comic, when faced with the question "Will you marry me?", Cueball approaches it in an empirical way.  The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experiments. Thanks Wikipedia!  So, in this comic, Cueball completes the "Will you marry me?" experiment, by as you see in frame 3, actually getting married and the results are "yes".

Filed under: science 28 Comments
27Jun/1134

Hofstadter

by Jeff

Image text: "This is the reference implementation of the self-referential joke."

Douglas Hofstadter is an American and to quote Wikipedia: "is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics."

So, the one line autobiography is meta because it is also an acronym which reads "IS META".

In the image text, reference implementation is a reference (sorry, it is early, I couldn't think of a synonym of "reference") to the standard implementation during a software development process.

That's as much as I can draw from it.  Is there anything else you can get from it?

Filed under: Physics, science 34 Comments
17Jun/1126

Core

by Jeff

Image text: If you're a geologist or geophysicist and you don't introduce yourself by saying your name, then gesturing downward and saying "... and I study that", I don't know what you're doing with your life.

This one is honestly very self-explanatory.  The first frame a cross-section of the Earth's interior.  The second frame is zoomed into the orange and red sections of the first frame.  And the third frame is Cueball looking down as all of that is directly below him.

Filed under: Color, science 26 Comments
9May/1116

Marie Curie

by Jeff

Image text: Although not permanently.

In this comic, the female character is standing (possibly by herself and talking to herself) and looking at a picture of Marie Curie.  When she mentions Marie Curie's name, Zombie Marie Curie come forth to give some life lessons and inspiration.

Marie Curie pioneered research on radioactivity and as it says in the comic she earned two nobel prizes.  She died from from aplastic anemia contracted from exposure to radiation.  (Although in the image text it says that it does not kill you permanently, because you come back as a zombie...)

Everything thing that Zombie Marie Curie says about Emmy Noether and Lise Meitner above are true as well.

Filed under: Math, science 16 Comments
29Apr/1119

Null Hypothesis

by Jeff

Image text: Hell, my eighth grade science class managed to conclusively reject it just based on a classroom experiment. It's pretty sad to hear about million-dollar research teams who can't even manage that.

In science, the null hypothesis corresponds to a general or default position.  So, in every experiment, the experimenter will either disprove the null hypothesis or accept the null hypothesis.

In this comic, the joke is in the fact that Cueball does not understand what the null hypothesis is.  He believes that it is as general as a over-arching theory, but instead it is a hypothesis for each experiment that needs to get proved or disproved individually each time.

Cueball read a study that did disprove the null hypothesis, but just for that specific study, which does not affect other million dollar studies or even science projects in schools.

Filed under: science 19 Comments
6Apr/1132

Significant

by Jeff

Image text: 'So, uh, we did the green study again and got no link. It was probably a--' 'RESEARCH CONFLICTED ON GREEN JELLY BEAN/ACNE LINK; MORE STUDY RECOMMENDED!'

In this comic, Megan and Cueball come to see some scientists to investigate their theory that jelly beans cause acne.  The scientists of course do not want to stop playing the addictive game Minecraft (which has been referenced in previous xkcds).  I can attest to the fact that it is impossible to stop playing that game.

When the scientists come back and say there is no link between jelly beans and acne, Megan and Cueball have heard that it is specific colors that cause acne.  So, the scientists tear themselves away from Minecraft again and study each and every color (including mauve and turquoise - I didn't know those were real colors for jelly beans).  Green is the only color that has any link.  So, obviously the news blows the coverage out of control, even though as we see in the image text that the green jelly beans study may have been a coincidence.

But, of course, the news coverage in all caps in the image text blows it out of proportion again.

EDIT: Commenters Marco and Aron B. have the real joke in the comments, hit the link and check them out.

14Feb/1116

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.

Filed under: Biology, science 16 Comments
9Feb/1115

Milk

by Jeff

Image text: It's not hard when you have the same thought like 40 or 50 percent of the time.

This xkcd is a little odd, but self-explanatory.

Filed under: science, sex 15 Comments

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