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xkcd

The blag of the webcomic


Some ListsDecember 3 2008

After a hectic few months, I finally have some projects that are in the early stages.  But since nothing is worth posting about yet, here instead is a list of phrases that (at the time of this posting) turn up no hits on Google:

  • “ate a violin”
  • “driver-side bidet”
  • “unlike normal furries,”
  • “Sarah, plain and tall and a cyborg”
  • “people are too civil on the internet”
  • “his penis shattered my world”
  • “more like LAME-arkian theory”
  • “my little horse must think it gay”
  • “it turned out her bottom half was a robot”
  • “Aww, a baby hooker!”

Here are some phrases that I had hoped were original when I typed them in but was disappointed:

  • “full-body glissando”
  • “passenger-side bidet”
  • “underwater Linux”
  • “Nu-Polka”
  • “erotic colonoscopy”
  • “Spocktoberfest”
  • “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a frack.”
  • “my bologna has a first name, it’s A-D-O-L-F”

And lastly, here’s a fun bash export I stumbled on:

  • export PS1='C:${PWD//\//\\\}>'
Debate Drinking Game, New Yorker, Burlington VermontOctober 16 2008

I am currently at the tail end of the Debate Drinking Game, wherein you take a drink every time McCain says “my friends” and Obama starts a response with “Look,”.   Since both candidates had their verbal tics under control, I just took a drink every time someone said a pronoun.  I am not in a good state.  Fortunately Google’s sobriety test has not yet extended to the WordPress default implementation.   Why would you ask for the arctan of pi/2?  Maybe it will make sense when I’m sober.

I did an interview with the New Yorker Cartoon Blog.  It’s available here.

I will be in Burlington, Vermont tomorrow, to try kite photography.  Thanks to the excellent (albeit poorly-organized) CHDK project, I’ve picked up a cheap Canon Powershot A720 and modified it to do time-lapse photography.  This makes kite photography much simpler than it’s been in the past.

If there are any readers in the Burlington area who are interested in kite flying and know of a good location, email me at xkcd@xkcd.com.  I will send out an email containing plans to anyone who contacts me, sometime soon after noon.  If you know someone in Burlington (e.g. at UVm,) let them know!  Thanks.

Youtube Audio PreviewOctober 8 2008

Wow. It seems someone at YouTUBE took this comic seriously and decided to add an “Audio Preview” feature. Now you can hear your comments read aloud to you.

Of course, it’s an optional button using speech synth rather than a mandatory dramatic reading, so it’ll just be used for entertainment by people who haven’t played with a speech synthesizer before:

But then, after a little more browsing around, I see this:

So maybe there’s hope after all.

Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short StorySeptember 23 2008

(Written after sitting in a car for five hours listening to financial news stories.)

——-

Damn these subprime lenders, thought Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, barely keeping his balance on the wobbling skateboard.We can’t afford more debt.He snapped a grappling-hook-tipped quarrel into his crossbow as the skateboard slowed.When the country owes trillions and is asking for more, its shadowy creditors start calling in favors.

The crossbow twanged, carrying his climbing rope up the side of the Federal Reserve building.As he began his ascent, he reflected on the years past.I inherited a broken system, he insisted to himself.We’re simply doing what’s required to prevent a catastrophe.It’s not my fault.

He tossed his skateboard over the parapet and hauled himself over. He dropped six feet to the roof, landed heavily on the board, and trundled on into the night.

——-

From her perch in a tree across the street, the blogger watched through her blogoscope as Bernanke disappeared over the wall.She spoke quietly into her radio: “Subject is in the haybarn.The chickens are in danger of roosting.”

“Roger that,” came the reply.“Deploying Agent Harpsichord.”

——-

Inside, Bernanke moved along the wall like a shadow, elongating and contracting as the l

The Goddamn Airplane on the Goddamn TreadmillSeptember 9 2008

Sorry for the forum/blog downtime today. Many things went wrong during davean’s heroic upgrade. (I blame the LHC.)

Feynman used to tell a story about a simple lawn-sprinkler physics problem. The nifty thing about the problem was that the answer was immediately obvious, but to some people it was immediately obvious one way and to some it was immediately obvious the other. (For the record, the answer to Feynman problem, which he never tells you in his book, was that the sprinkler doesn’t move at all. Moreover, he only brought it up to start an argument to act as a diversion while he seduced your mother in the other room.)

The airplane/treadmill problem is similar. It contains a basic ambiguity, and people resolve it one of a couple different ways. The tricky thing is, each group thinks the other is making a very simple physics mistake. So you get two groups each condescendingly explaining basic physics and math to the other. This is why, for example, the airplane/treadmill problem is a banned topic on the xkcd forums (along with argument about whether 0.999… = 1).

The problem is as follows:

Imagine a 747 is sitting on a conveyor belt, as