Bookshelf
by Jeff
Image text: I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone.'
Again, I'm late. Sorry. Life getting in the way of my explaining.
This is a play off the typical "hidden door" in which you pull down the right book and suddenly a wall of books turns into a hidden door. In this case, the book is Atlas Shrugged and instead of a secret passage, the wall swings around and takes you to a message "You Have Terrible Taste".
Atlas Shrugged by Ayrn Rand is a novel described like this in wikipedia:
The book explores a dystopian United States where many of society's most productive citizens refuse to be exploited by increasing taxation and government regulations and disappear. They are led by John Galt. Galt describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing the minds that drive society's growth and productivity. In their efforts, these people "of the mind" hope to demonstrate that a world in which the individual is not free to create is doomed, that civilization cannot exist where every person is a slave to society and government, and that the destruction of the profit motive leads to the collapse of society. The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry.
...
The story of Atlas Shrugged dramatically expresses Rand's philosophy of Objectivism: Rand's ethical egoism, her advocacy of "rational selfishness", is perhaps her most well-known position.
Sharing
by Jeff
Image text: In the new edition of The Giving Tree, the tree uses social tools to share with its friend all the best places to buy things.
The Giving Tree is a book by Shell Silverstein. Wikipedia has all the spoiler alert you could want. Essentially, the tree gives a boy everything it has throughout the tree and the boy's lives. Hence "The Giving Tree".
The tree in this comic, has a file share with the eBook "The Giving Tree" in Amazon Kindle format. (Also, how has Cueball never heard of The Giving Tree?)
But of course, Megan has not purchased the book from Amazon and the tree somehow did not enable lending of the book, so they could not read it. This comic is a contrast to the book in which the tree gives whatever it has to the child, but in our current times, the tree is not even able to share a book because of DRM.
The last frame is very telling because when the tree cannot share, Megan and Cueball leave the tree very alone, when it is unable to share anything with them.
The image text is also a comment on our current times as every site or new application these days is all about "social" and recommendations to your friends on what and where to buy so the companies can make money on you.
Fairy Tales
by Jeff
Image text: Goldilocks' discovery of Newton's method for approximation required surprisingly few changes.
Classic xkcd here, with math and fairy tales mixed together.
The eigenvectors of a square matrix are the non-zero vectors which, after being multiplied by the matrix, remain proportional to the original vector (i.e. change only in magnitude, not in direction). For each eigenvector, the corresponding eigenvalue is the factor by which the eigenvector changes when multiplied by the matrix. (Thanks Wikipedia!) So, in this way, the prince would have used a eigenvector and corresponding eigenvalue to match the shoe to its owner.
I'm not sure why it makes sense to change out Inductive for "Snow" in Snow White. But, inductive reasoning is the process of making an educated guess. The mom also replaces 7 in 7 Dwarves with N-1, which obviously is another common math term.
In the next fairy tale, The Three Little Pigs becomes "The Limit of x as it approaches infinity Little Pigs".
In the image text, Newton's method for approximation is a method for finding successively better approximations to the zeroes (or roots) of a real-valued function. In Goldilocks, if you remember, she finds successively better porridge and appropriately sized chairs in a house where three bears lived. In the same way, in the Mom's version of the fairy tale, she would find successively better approximations to zeroes instead of porridge and chairs instead of successively better bowls of porridge.
Commenter quiz: which fairy tale was the mom reading in frame 2? I've got an ant gathering food and a grasshopper, but I'm not sure which fairy tale that is.
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.
Five-Minute Comics: Part 2
by Jeff
Image text: Dear Wiccan readers: I understand modern Wiccans are not usually all about the curses and hexes. But Darth Vader was recently converted from Episcopalianism and he's still figuring it all out.
Top Comic - This is a parody of the frequent conspiracy theories that have come about since the events of September 11, 2001. The use of the "grassy knoll" is a reference to the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a US President on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Some people say they saw another or different shooter over on a "grassy knoll" by the road where JFK was shot.
Middle Left - Some people say that when women are pregnant, they have a certain glow about them, whether it is just their general happiness or something else. In this case, the woman is really pregnant and then promptly gives birth.
Middle - In this comic, the character says "Cogito Ergo Cogito" instead of the traditional phrase "Cogito Ergo Sum". The traditional phrase is Latin for I think therefore I am, which was said by René Descartes. In this comic, the character is playing it safe by just saying I think therefore I think.
Middle Left - This comic is a pun on the phrase "Bail out!" When it is used by fighter pilots, it means for them to hit their ejector seats and parachute to safety. In this comic, the pilots are using the phrase as would two people in a boat that is filling up with water.
Lower Middle - This is a joke on how in Star Wars they have lightsabers. In this case, they created black-lightsabers which use black light bulbs. Black lights just make every thing seem really eerie and you are able to see dust and dirt particles on everything.
Right - I think that one is pretty self explanatory and pretty gross.
Lower Middle Left - I'm not sure what is up with the sandwich making one, but it appears to be an inside joke somehow.
Bottom Left - This is a lawyer who is going to make a defense that will offend women and he prepared an opening statement incorrectly thinking there would be both men and women on the jury. This comic is an extension of the stereotypical lawyer opening "Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury...".
Bottom Right - From the start this is a full quote from Star Wars in which Conan Antonio Motti rips Darth Vader's ancient religion, which in the movie is The Force. Vader proceeds to force choke Motti until Moff Tarkin tells him to stop. In this comic, Vader's ancient religion is of course Wiccan.
Beautiful Dream
by Jeff
Image text: Lucky. In MY dream, all the people who grew up loving The Giving Tree paired up with all the students who had weird dreams after reading The Metamorphosis. That one was more confusing.
Alright, let's start from the beginning with all of these literary references. In this case, the main joke in the comic is in the image text.
The Rules is a reference to the book that is pretty clear when you read the sub-title: "Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right". And naturally, The Game is also given away by the sub-title: "Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists". There is some social commentary there about how the men's book is about pickup artists and the women's book is about "finding Mr. Right. But, I'll let you find that out on your own because that has nothing to do with the comic.
As is it's purpose, the image text takes the comic one step further as it is what Cueball responds (or would respond) to BedHead Cutie. The Giving Tree is a children's book by Shell Silverstein about the relationship between a tree and a young boy who grows to be an old man. The Metamorphosis is a work of fiction by Franz Kafka in which a travelling salesman wakes up to find that he has been turned into a fly. Those two books have obviously no connection to each other, just which is why the image text has the joke of the comic.
The Tell-Tale Beat
by Jeff
Image text: You fancy me mad. Could a madman have outsmarted the greatest electronica/techno artists of our era? Next to fall will be Roderick Usher's house/trance band.
This is a reference to the Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe in which the character in the short story kills and buries a body underneath the floorboards in his house. He is haunted by the sound of a beating heart from under the floorboards until he admits his guilt.
"You fancy me mad" in the image text is a direct reference to Poe's story in which he says "If you still think me mad..."
Daft Punk is as it says in the image text is an "electronica/techno"artist. When the character in the comic buries Daft Punk under his floorboards, all he hears is the typical "Unn-Tss" sound that makes the back-beat for most techno and electronica songs.
In the image text, Roderick Usher is a reference to "The Fall of the House of Usher", another short story by Edgar Allen Poe. And the pun is on the word "fall" where it is used to mean die but is also a reference to the title of the short story "The Fall of the House of Usher".
Flatland
by Jeff
Image text: Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.
Flatland is a short story by Edwin Abbott Abbott. Yes, that is really his name. In Flatland, women are represented by lines, and the more important a man is, the more sides he has. The least important male would be a triangle and the priest, in Flatland, has so many sides, he looks like a circle. So, the image text is a reference to how an xkcd stick figure would look to the members of Flatland. The text for Flatland is on Wikisource here, if you feel like browsing on your Wednesday morning.
Miegakure is an actual game in development that will allow the player to move in 4 dimensions. The website is here, with a screen shot that looks eerily similar to panel 2.
And if you didn't realize, Spongebob is a reference to Spongebob Squarepants, the Nickelodeon cartoon about a sponge named Spongebob. Spongebob is a square (as his name implies) - so that is why the character in the comic is able to draw arms and legs on the square to make him look like Spongebob Squarepants.
Prudence
by Jeff
Image text: Moments later, the White Witch rolls up and, confused, tries to tempt the probe with a firmware upgrade.
This comic is a reference to the book The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis and later made into a movie. The children in the book are playing "hide and seek" in an unfamiliar house when one child hides in a wardrobe. They then find a entire world known as Narnia behind (or inside) the wardrobe.
The comic is making a play on the Narnia tale, by instead of the child exploring the new world herself, she sends a probe. This is similar and possibly a reference to the probes that NASA deploys to gather information about new worlds. It also may be a reference to Stargate, in which the Stargate Command sends a probe to new worlds to gather information about the world.
EDITED TO ADD: The title appears to be a reference to the fact that the child in the comic does not run blindly into the new world, like in the book, but instead she deploys the probe to gather information first, which would be seen as "prudent".
Collections
by Jeff
Image meta text: You know what really helps an existential crisis? Wondering how much shelf space to leave for a Terry Pratchett collection.
Existentialism is a philosophy revolving around the individual and trying to understand and derive meaning through society and the world at large is an impossible task. The Existential girl in this comic in speaking about the struggles of the individual and the other character is talking about his Kindle.
Kindle is a eBook reader sold by Amazon.com.
Discworld is a fantasy series by Terry Pratchett, there are 36 novels in total. Because there are so many books in the ever-expanding universe created by Terry Pratchett, the image text mentions that one can never have enough space on the shelf because there will always be more novels written.
DRM is short for Digital Rights Management, which is a way for content providers to protect their content. The use of DRM is widely criticized by consumers.
What do you think? Am I right about Existentialism? Do you hate DRM or love Terry Pratchett?