Debate Drinking Game, New Yorker, Burlington Vermont
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.
October 16th, 2008 at 1:18 am
There’s no way this is the first post.
Did the Cartoon-Off actually happen? I’m guessing it was just a literary conceit but I can’t risk missing out.
October 16th, 2008 at 1:19 am
The triple space before “Why” (in the first paragraph) indicates that you are extremely drunk.
October 16th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Any plans to visit India soon? :)
October 16th, 2008 at 1:36 am
mmm.. Drinking games..
too bad it’s thursday.
October 16th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Ahh, 1999. Beautiful picture of it, had me laughing out loud for real.
October 16th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Just read the New Yorker article. I cannot begin to describe how amazing that 1999 comic is. It’s simultaneously hilarious for its pointlessness yet awesome for the achievement. You just dissed these guys in the *New Yorker*, man. Geeks everywhere envy you.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:21 am
You’re my hero. Just thought you should know.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:32 am
Congrats on officially being part of python!
http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Lib/antigravity.py?rev=66902&view=markup
But i’m sure you’ve already reddit.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:58 am
excellent work in the cartoon-off, both of you.
I’m not sure who won.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:27 am
No, you’re right. The arctan of pi/2 is a silly thing to ask for. You can get the answer using (of course) Google, or any other calculator, and it turns out to be just slightly more than 1. But the only way you would get even close just by thinking about it is to realize that pi/2 is about 3/2, then picture a right triangle that… oh nevermind. It’s a weird question. Presumably the idea is that if you’re drunk, you’ll give the answer to tan(pi/2).
Whatever.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:47 am
I wonder how these anwers are going to fit in the short input fields.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:12 am
hmm my school’s email wouldn’t let me email you.
damn you!
(the email. not you)
i’ll try from a diff. one.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:21 am
haha okay so email got sent twice. sorry i’m irritating like that. i’ll stop bothering this now.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:41 am
How would you sum between n=1 and n=89pi? It seems you could only solve this drunk…
October 16th, 2008 at 5:21 am
I didn’t realise it until I read the comments, but the draw off is seen by clicking the Next Slide button or whatever it was above the title Cartoon Off slide.
1999:
http://mtblog.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonlounge/1999XKCD.jpg
Magic.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:56 am
The second question on the sobriety test is actually a good test of sobriety. The sum is from n=1 to 89pi, but there is no n in the equation. So the answer is just going to be 89pi(x(x^3+4)(x^{-3/2} ln(x)))!.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Yes, definitely drunk. You linked to the Cartoon Lounge blog, but not the specific post:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonlounge/2008/10/cartoonoff-xkcd.html
October 16th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Totally off topic, but I can see the influence of your comic does not stop with youtube. Just check out http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081015
Congratulations!
October 16th, 2008 at 9:12 am
…which seems to be referring to:
http://xkcd.com/419/
Yes!
October 16th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I tried this last weekend in an experiment with my spouse but instead of asking about arctan, she asked me what was the tangent of pi/2 when I was absolutely soused. I must have slurred my words, because she wrote down “undefined” as the answer.
Damn, I’m good!
October 16th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I drink whenever McCain raises his right hand — it was a sober night.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I enjoyed the cartoon-off. I think you won, but hovering TITLE text would have sealed the deal.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Alternative drinking game rules: drink whenever McCain blinks excessively.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I ended up with Joe the Plumber in the debate drinking game. I’m really hungover.
The cartoon-off was really fun.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
By far, the best read of my day.
Both the blog and the article :P
October 16th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Excellent cartoon-off. Your 1999 seemed to be quite a bit like my 1999, except for the part about getting cartoon-related revenge. I would love to go kite-flying in Vermont, but I am very far away.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Every pronoun? Damn.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I wonder who was more drunk, Randall or Jeph Jacques?
October 16th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
If you’re looking for a good place in Burlington, go to Waterfront Park. It should be sunny, but cool here tomorrow. Just, um, don’t drift too far east from the lake. Power lines + kite = hospital. Just head down Main Street in Burlington until you hit the lake.
There are some other places that aren’t quite as scenic, but a little harder to find.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
“… pulled a Palin …”
rofl
thankyouthankyouthankyou
October 16th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Dude, Katz schooled you. The only one you won was string theory.
By the way, Ron Paul would kick your ass.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
[...] [From xkcd.com] [...]
October 16th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
The second one would appear to be 6.10742389e9. Google told me so.
http://www.google.com/search?q=89pi((89pi)^3%2B4)((89pi)^(-3%2F2)ln(89pi))!
October 16th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
I missed out on the debates, so instead I’m drinking now and posting on the Internet.
I liked the New Yorker cartoons, but I do have a question. In the last panel, is that a horse at a weird angle or an immature unicorn with a stubby horn? And what did the squirrel do that was so awesome that he deserves two hats? (OK, two questions…)
October 17th, 2008 at 12:41 am
I will most definitely send you 20 dollars.
October 17th, 2008 at 2:07 am
I’m horribly frustrated that you come to my home state (which is small enough that I can call any area in Chittenden county roughly my hometown), while I’m away to school in NYC.
I would agree with the Waterfront, it would be absolutely amazing if you could maybe get on a parking garage roof near Church street and take photos of the main part of Burlington, over the buildings and what not (since none of them go up very high.)
Alternatively if you’re feeling adventurous, you could head up to Essex Jct, and maybe go to the Inn at Essex, where there are some fields outside of the inn. From there you could get images over the Inn itself, some of the golf course across the road, potentially some of the forests surrounding the whole area and maybe the Lang Farms little suburb area (which is nicer than the normal flat and samely suburbs you see everywhere else because the topography is very active as well as being much more densely enshrouded in trees.)
Though I feel like I may be a day late in these recommendations, (and that there might be enough construction around the Inn by now that those fields would be inaccesible.) Good luck with the photos though, I’d love to see some images of home during my dire stay in the dismal urban jungle.
October 17th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Remember kids, don’t drink and debate. It’s hard to see the issues when you can’t see straight.
Of course, you can watch a debate hammered all you want.
October 17th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Whoa. Just realize those first two rhymed.
October 17th, 2008 at 2:11 am
When I saw the cartoon-off, I looked for alt-text and was seriously surprised not to find any. Then I remembered…
October 17th, 2008 at 4:02 am
Hope you can feature some of the cartoon-off comics in the weekends version of xkcd!
October 17th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I might suggest Mad River Glen, the ski resort. I’m not from Vermont, but I go skiing up there numerous times every winter, and while it may be a little out of the way from where you were thinking, it’s completely open to wander around in the off-season, and the beauty of it is unmatched by anywhere else I’ve seen in VT.
Just a tip… I’ll be interested to hear where you went.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:47 am
How can you be asking for a recommendation of a location in Vermont when you’re the inventor of the xkcd geohash?
October 17th, 2008 at 10:34 am
the 1999 comic is so awesome! ah the taste of sweet revenge.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I would package up a cougar (in your honor of course). And $20 for your trouble.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Yeah, Randall, I bet a bunch of people would be mailing you $20 except your address isn’t anywhere! I’d ask for it except now the creep-you-out factor is gone. Also I don’t have any large cats.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Waterfront park is nice, though there’s a chance if the camera winds up facing west you’ll see nothing but water. (How much control over that do you have with the kite?) You could also go up the hill and try flying the kite somewhere on campus at UVM. There’s got to be a decent sized plot of tree-free, powerline-free land around there somewhere. It’d be cool to see pictures taken over Church St., but it’s probably too built up to fly a kite, though the suggestion of flying a kite on top of a parking garage could be interesting.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
There are some nice open fields next to the UVM skating rink that should be perfect for kite flying.
October 17th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I’m about an hour and fifteen from Burlington on the NY side, sadly. But if you can somehow manage it, getting your kite up and flying over the street mall (whose name escapes me at the moment, but it’s right on the main road into town, past Fletcher Allen) might give you some fascinating shots.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Is it your birthday?! Happy Birthday!
October 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
My friends and I were planning on having a drinking game to go along with the debate, but forgot to make up rules until it actually started. So we just drank anytime either of them looked funny or made us laugh. Needless to say, the post-debate debate amongst friends turned out better than the one on TV
October 17th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
So, are you counting SNL’s debates? You’ll get more “my friends” and “Looks” in that way.
Saw the comic-off. It was great, but I didn’t quite get your first comic, were they watching a tv? Anyway, i’m pretty sure you won, if only for refrencing Palin in a comic about animals.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
OMG! Randall Monroe! Here? Today? ZOMG!
I have been reduced to “ZOMG”s and the such by this news. If I had known earlier, I could have gotten my autograph book, tranquilizer darts and miniature gps tracking device ready.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
munroe. I’m a bad fanboy.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Wow.
The google sobriety test is harsh.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
ufkufyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
October 17th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, we Alaskans are just as smart and sophisticated as anybody. We just have trouble keeping the least intelligent of us off the television. Between the vapid Governor, indicted Congressmen, killer strippers-turned-soccer-moms, and Jewel, I fear there’s no redemption for our fair state.
– A.
Oh, and apparently Joe the Plumber used to live here too.
http://www.adn.com/politics/story/558835.html
Captcha: studying fail, a.k.a. my life since I discovered WoW.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Wait… Arctan of pi/2?
I’m pretty sure that even if i were drunk i would look at it, think undefined, then realize it’s not.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Nooes, I go to UVM, and it looks like I missed you… *sad face*
October 18th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Did you know that your cartoon-off got linked on Neil Gaiman’s blog?
October 18th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
HOLY CRAP YOU’RE COMING TO YALE.
I’m skipping Chem lab to come, so you better be worth the hit to my grade. No pressure, though. You should’ve come to TD instead, much better than Pierson (Ask them about their Intramural standings).
October 19th, 2008 at 1:14 am
you will be the greatest thing that ever happened to yale. i can’t wait!
October 19th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Why wasn’t their Alt-text in the cartoon off? That’s one of the things that makes your comics hilarious.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
When are you coming to Yale? A Master’s Tea at Pierson? Sweet.
October 19th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Infinitely sexy dino guest strip. (Friday)
http://www.qwantz.com/
October 20th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Apropos of #491:
Burma Shave verses canonically have six signs, not five.
I should apologize for nitpicking. Fortunately for our artist, I am the only chronic nitpicker who reads this strip.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:05 am
To change the direction suddenly…
…I have an A720 and was disappointed it didn’t have timelapse functionality, even over USB, just some wierd mode on the self timer that waited for a certain period (1-60s) then took a set of pictures (1-10) asfastasitpossiblycould.
Sooooo… how did you mod it to work right? Did it involve warranty invalidation? cuz I’ve got like 14 months left of that still :-/
October 20th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Randall! :-)
You should come to Australia. Particularly Adelaide. Particularly Flinders University…Ok, just Adelaide will do.
Awesome landscapes for kite photography…
Come soooon
October 20th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Apropos of #491’s title text:
While Firefox 3 tooltips display the entire text, they have an annoying timeout which also prevents one from reading the entire message in one go. Has anyone a resolution for this?
This is not such a problem for xkcd, but moreso for other comics which routinely have longer titles.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Why didn’t you tell us earlier? I didn’t check the blag in time. I’m a terrible stalker. :(
October 20th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Per the comments I get on my blag, it appears I must disabuse you of your cherished illusion. ;-)
October 20th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Just wanted to say that i’ve been reading your strip for quite a while, and now just discovered the blog. Oh so much to catch up on!
My days at work will no longer be filled with awful boredom!
October 20th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Did this with some helium balloons in Porter Square and Cambridge Common. Results here: http://flickr.com/photos/briannnnnnnnnnnna/sets/72157608029538895/
October 21st, 2008 at 2:38 am
You know I’m in the mood to get totally drunk, too. It’s a shame I cannot afford alcohol.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am
Are you sure you want Google to see this: http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/googlecopy.jpg ? It’s just that I’m highly terrified of anything that has to do with math, and if they implement that check, it’s your ass on the line. :D
October 21st, 2008 at 11:24 am
Randall, I just wanted to say that I actually stumbled upon the cartoon-off on the New Yorker blog before seeing it here and was delighted/shocked/slightly alarmed to see you getting your props under that hallowed URL… And you totally pwned that Katz guy. Well done!
October 21st, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I should be working or sleeping this afternoon, but instead I am attending your Master’s Tea, because, seriously. Is not going even an option? Obviously not!
October 21st, 2008 at 4:14 pm
could someone explain to me the burma-shave comic? i…dont get it at all.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Ok, now I’m stuck with this Time lapse stuff too. I got CHDK working, got time lapse working (some useful scripts at that site, but damn is it difficult to find your way around). Now, I’m curious, what do other use for compiling those stills into frames for a movie? I’ve been searching around and can’t figure it out.
Damn this addiction to trying weird new things!
October 21st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
dem, it’s a reference to an old and longstanding (1925 - 1963) advertising campaign by the makers of shaving cream Burma-Shave.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave
Burma-Shave’s ads capitalized on America’s highway expansion in the post-WWII period, and thus entrenched themselves in mid-20th-Century American nostalgia. (see Wikipedia for an extensive list of pop culture references.)
Bill Higgins is correct; authentic Burma-Shave ads used six signs (five forming a clever saying plus the final “Burma-Shave”), but pop culture references almost always employ a five-sign structure. Motorists, whizzing by in their cars, had mere seconds to read each sign, so they had to be short and easy to read. Comics can get away with four longer sentences, which also work better with our assumptions about the poem’s cadence.
– A.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Thanks so much for coming to visit us today! It was one of the most informative Master’s Teas I’ve been to.
And I only asked the question about the unglamorous part of the job just so I could get the often overlooked side of the coin; didn’t mean to bring the mood down…
Anyway, thanks again!
Reuxben
October 21st, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I would just like to note that only the burma shave jingle made me realize that firefox 3 doesn’t cut off tooltips. No more opening safari just to read xkcd!
October 21st, 2008 at 9:00 pm
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October 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 am
re. the tooltip in the scrabble comic: are you kidding!?! ‘ostrich’ is all of, what, 13 points?
as this isn’t facebook scrabble and i wouldn’t know to play ‘lictors,’ i’d probably gamble opening up two other triple words and settle for ‘historic’ for 42 points…
ostrich!?! open up two strings of 2x word tiles, waste a perfectly good S…for 13 points?
that’s umm…this…i…but…i i think i’m speechless!
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:18 am
Speechless am I! So much so that I don’t decide to babble on with facebook ramblings of incoherance?
but sometimes I also like to just talk and talk incessantly about nonsense, kinda like the whole principle of scrabble itself. One time I took all the words spelled on the Scrabble board and put them together in a short-story-fan-fic about Boba Fett…
random?!? similarly I will give random advice to people about things that are not that significant to… the world?
here’s where… i… break down… and… stop… t…a…l…k…i…n…………g. BIG PHRASES!
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:34 am
you’d want to play the word, regardless of which school of scrabble you subscribe to. playing for points, you want the bingo. playing for cool words, you have it as well. clitoris is way cooler than ostrich.
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:57 am
holy balls!
as a math major (third year),
http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/googlecopy.jpg
is pig-disgusting… I mean honestly, omgwtfbbq.
honestly, though, a slightly complex truth table problem would work well as such a verification system
eg -
x relates to at most 20 y, at least 10 y, and not 15 y.
rewrite as a truth statement using only:
‘and’ and ‘or’ operators
‘for all’ and ‘for some’ quantifiers
then again, mine is probably (or certainly) worse.
also, nice interview with the new yorker
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:19 am
You could play TROCHILS through the H, but most people I know would play LICTORS making CHI. But I don’t know many people who aren’t expert Scrabble players.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 am
I’m taking the fifth of November off of work, not to remember remember but in order to play a new game. Every four years, you get to play the Electoral College drinking game! Since a lot of people (D or R) will be watching the election results saying, “oh god oh god please no” - I decided that I’d just drink every time the other guy won a state.
I figure, win or lose, I’m going to be slobbering drunk. Maybe that’ll save me if the results spark a nationwide civil war… o_o
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Re: the Scrabble comic.
This happened to my girlfriend and I playing Scrabble a few years ago. I’d put down something, first word of the game, then she went “YES!” and laid out Clitoris, across the double word score. And because she got rid of all her letters in one go, she got bonus points (can’t remember the rule now, but I think it’s an extra 50 bonus points for that).
It was an early lead I was unable to close.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:06 am
Nice idea with the drinking game. but take it from my experience… never do this if your the only person drinking :P and i don’t know about u but i prefer drinking when the person says something like “like”, “umm” “uh” “and another thing” “the thing to look out for” otherwise your drunk in the first 10mins :D
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:44 am
@ Jim & Steelwool:
Love it, and be sure to add “too close to call” if you don’t plan on driving for the rest of the week.
– A.
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Maker’s Mark! My favorite! Great cartoon off!
October 24th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Some other options:
COISTRIL, HISTORIC (already mentioned), ORCHITIS, TROCHILI, TROCHILS.
I also played the Debate Drinking Game. I drank when I laughed. I managed to somehow blow a 0.471
October 26th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
If there ever had been a “mail Randall $20″ comic, there’s a good chance (like 80%) that I would have done so. Not sure that’s still the case after bringing up the idea in advance, but you never know.
(It would have to be a case of physically posting banknotes, though - some crappy PayPal site would just never be the same.)
October 27th, 2008 at 1:38 am
I don’t know if you noticed, but youtube now has the “Audio Preview” option, where a voice reads your comment back to you. I like think it was because of XKCD. Cheers.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:32 am
“It’s the Tubes sir. They’r e clogged.”
I’m affraid that will became real soon… and, I expect the Mr. Hat comes out from xkcd to save the world. Or not.
October 27th, 2008 at 8:19 am
“[...] stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It’s about three-fourths autobiographical.”
I wonder which three.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“I am not in a good state.”
You shouldn’t have left Massachusetts.
-mike
October 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Emily - either I’m being horrifically trolled, or you didn’t read the blag post that preceded this one.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Aaron A, I am old enough to remember seeing Burma-Shave signs, particularly on a 1963 trip across the Great Plains. They disappeared shortly afterward.
Like so much of our vanished culture, their traces are preserved in old Warner Brothers cartoons. Case in point: “Rabbit Seasoning,” 1952.
October 28th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Ralph, you’re an idiot. Why in god’s name did you break rules 1 & 2? /b/ might be shit today, but its faggots like you that caused the shit in the first place by constantly breaking the rules.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Is there a good reason that my comment from eight days ago is still awaiting moderation? I just wanted to know why Firefox 3 tooltips have a timeout.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I won’t mail you $20.00, but maybe I’ll give you $20.00 worth of gold, that way it’ll still be worth something when Ron Paul and I are the only survivors of the financial apocalypse.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Am I hallucinating, or did today’s comic (10/28) originally say ‘nascent memes’ and has since become ‘nacient memes’? Is this in itself some nascent/nacient meme wherein the proper spelling becomes nacient for reasons I haven’t researched yet?
October 29th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Fuck. I’m always 12 days late for kite flying.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:42 am
While I understand what you were going for, drawing the American flag backwards isn’t a good thing, and should not be associated with Tron Paul. :P
October 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
look at all you snarky folks, correcting each other and pretending that you have a life.
such nerds.
… and yet i find it strangely arousing…
October 30th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
eitje Says:
While I understand what you were going for, drawing the American flag backwards isn’t a good thing, and should not be associated with Tron Paul. :P
What do you mean “isn’t a good thing”? Do you understand what a backwards flag represents? It fits perfectly in the context.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
You should just stop drawing regular comics and devote yourself to political fan-fiction all day every day. It’s both entertaining and slightly surreal.
October 31st, 2008 at 12:40 am
The flag is forwards in the sense that the vehicle represents the flagpole.
I was more interested in the orientation of the stars, the number of stripes, and the rare use of colour in xkcd.
October 31st, 2008 at 4:03 am
Man, I wish politics really worked like that.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Marry me.
Please.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:31 am
Vegeta:
http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagetiq.html
“Military guidelines specify that in support of joint or multi-national operations (as in Iraq), the “right” flag is worn on the right sleeve (see picture), 1/4″ below the shoulder seam or 1/8″ below any required unit patches. (Class A uniform excepted.)”
http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title4/chapter1_.html
Section 8. Respect for flag
Subsections G, I, and J.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Hey, came across this, and thought you’d like (or hate) it:
http://www.asylum.com/2008/10/29/eight-ways-to-make-a-raptor-even-more-deadly/
October 31st, 2008 at 10:20 pm
vt? that’s almost canada. hey, wait, you do know that c.d. is a canadian, right?
November 1st, 2008 at 3:42 am
nice Legolas move by the man in the hat :D
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:55 pm
i’m telling you! RANDALL MUNROE MUST BE STOPPED.
he is getting too powerful! do you even believe for one second that he doesn’t perfectly realise the power he is wielding?! he is going to impose tyrannical rule upon the internet! Citizens of the internet. NOW is the great war of our time! he must be stopped at all costs! The next time he makes some inane suggestion like attacking Wikipedia’s articles or nominating a secretary of the internet, please see through his blasphemous falsehoods!!!
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but Wikipedia and Berkley Breathed’s sites are not loading.
Could “Secretary” be coming true?
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
You, like, really need to name Mr. Hat. Make it something cool. :)
November 4th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
He has a name.
At least, in my group of people-I-know-who-read-XKCD-and-live-around-here
We just call him the Classhole, since http://xkcd.com/72/
November 4th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
loved the 1999 comic… but you forgot to illustrate all of your “magic: the gathering” cards falling out of your collector binder.
November 5th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Well, if the html address is anything to go by… Happy 500th, XKCD!
November 5th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
HAPPY #500, XKCD!!
November 5th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Well, there was no comic #404, so we’re not technically at 500 yet, ladies and gents. ;)
November 6th, 2008 at 11:39 am
That Google sobriety test looks interesting, I’ll have to try it next time I drink any type of alcohol.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
So yesterday I get sent a xkcd comic (friend was helping me resolve my depression over a late literary criticism paper (see impostor)), and end up reading all of them in 1 night. Today I find out your in Burlington… coincidence? Anyway, for good kite flying you have some options. If you want a nice quite open area, there is a big park off of Dorset street about 1.6 miles from Williston road (google earth has the details). I think that place has enough room to fly a kite, another smaller park is next to Locus street called Callahan Park. I must say Vermont has too big of an obsession with trees, so kite flying is possible but not optimal unless you search hard.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
oh forgot to check the date never mind…but next time
November 6th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Don’t drink and derive…alcohol and calculus don’t mix. (Granted, you’re looking for integrals and not derivatives, but it gets the point across)
November 6th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Funny thing about the “Scantron” comic (#499) is that a #1 pencil would have worked just fine.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
GOD my cock is so hard right now. Would everyone like to see it?
I am getting it out now so you can all have a look!
Sorry, my 16yo gf walked in, she went to change into something more comfortable.
So, whaddya think everyone .. jealous? Also, I am on a boat, relatively speaking.
“Mudkips? I LUUUUUUUUUUUUVE MUDKIPS.”
November 7th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Thanks for explaining the joke.
First I thought you were being serious about the sobriety test but then I clicked on the link to the picture of it…haha, fool me once shame on you, fool me 89? times, shame on me.
are you even allowed to have a non-integer number on the top of a summation sign??
November 8th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Gah. I wish I’d read this when it was new. I live an hour from Burlington.
November 8th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Is it just me, or has the websites formatting exploded? I’m getting everything left-aligned, without those fancy sorting box thingies. Or a background. It’s kind of like an early 90’s website, except somebody tilted the server so all the data fell to one side.
November 8th, 2008 at 5:31 am
Also, Recently I accidentally filled out a scantron form with a #2.5 pencil.
It didn’t explode, but it did burn constantly.
November 8th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Well, either you work really fast really early or the problem fixed itself.
I vote miracle. THANK YOU LAWD FOR THIS BOUNTY.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I was playing around with the audio feature.
And instead of saying “I am” it says “I A-M”.
It made me giggle.
November 10th, 2008 at 12:56 am
If it’s already been mentioned, I apologize, but I wasn’t about to read 134 comments to check.
As far as political drinking games are concerned, every time Palin says, “Maverick” often gets you pretty drunk pretty fast.
November 10th, 2008 at 2:54 am
All matter is lonely, and the observed force called gravity is Love in action.
(And this is why scientists will never spot a graviton.)
November 10th, 2008 at 6:17 am
the person who managed to plant the fear from velociraptors into the collective subconscious of our generation, has passed away. :(
November 10th, 2008 at 9:55 am
…Scott McNeil is dead?
Oh my god. I– I didn’t know. Wow.
The rest is silence.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Actually, Michael Crichton.
Pretty crappy, nonetheless.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Does anybody know if Randall Munroe is single?
November 12th, 2008 at 1:54 am
…Because, you know, I’d TOTALLY go down on that smart/sexy science stud SO HARD he’d turn stupid.
November 12th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Well the “East-West” map is only confusing if you make the mistake of thinking America is the centre of the world (it isn’t), but the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in it’s appropriate place in the centre and it all fits perfectly!
November 12th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
>…Because, you know, I’d TOTALLY go down on that smart/sexy science stud SO HARD he’d turn stupid.
That would be a shame if it worked. Why would you want to deprive the rest of us?
Re: “Terminology”
Wheeeee, Eurocentrism!
November 12th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
>I understand what you were going for, drawing the American flag backwards isn’t a good thing, and should not be associated with Tron Paul. :P
http://www.flagandbanner.com/fab/flag.asp?cpage=etiquette1#4
November 13th, 2008 at 12:16 am
jewlz, ye-ah!
November 13th, 2008 at 12:20 am
just to point out, on the east west thing, new zealand is more like a broken italy
November 13th, 2008 at 11:30 am
No Secretary of the Internet yet, but the internet now has staff on Obama’s transition team!
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/obama_transition_team_staffs_u.php
November 13th, 2008 at 11:54 am
@jeremiah
Also, Egypt looks like a fat Georgia (the state, not the country)
November 13th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/rolerball/index.html
November 13th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Completely unrelated to your blog post, but Japan and New Zealand are the semi colons to end the code of the hemispheres.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:05 am
“just to point out, on the east west thing, new zealand is more like a broken italy”
Actually I’d argue that Italy is a lot like a broken Italy, but then I’m just bitter ;-)
On a different note, New Zealand is actually pretty much exactly on the opposite side of the world to the UK and shares a very simmilar climate (although they have an actual North-South divide, whereas ours is purely sociological (Sociopathic?) and runs roughly through Birmingham
November 14th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Is it so hard to believe that some women actually prefer Nerds?
November 14th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
>”Is it so hard to believe that some women actually prefer Nerds?”
As a nerd, yes. It is very hard to believe :(
I have been single a LONG time… lol
November 14th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I am a woman & I am proud to say I am a nerd (SF) & I have a bachelor’s in CS & plan on getting a Master’s.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
I totally support women preferring nerds! A fine choice in this modern world. :)
November 17th, 2008 at 1:08 am
This infinite desert comic was absolutely awesomeness
November 17th, 2008 at 1:29 am
Funny thing, your rule 34 thing is sending people to my blog as I have you on an RSS feed. So, thanks for the few hundred extras that have been there AS OF NOW
November 17th, 2008 at 5:24 am
And here I thought it was Rule 34 on (the same) Rule 34, thereby creating recursive pornography. Darn.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:47 am
This rule 34 is creating quite a storm!
But I don’t see it. I’ve found Wolfram’s rule 32 and 37R, and none in between?
November 17th, 2008 at 11:53 am
found it!
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-55
not one of the more exciting ones!
November 17th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
I like how the sand and rocks comic is a universe simulator, possibly the largest imaginable practical quantity of rocks, and the title of the comic is simply “A bunch of rocks”
November 17th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I did a search on “Wolfram Rule 34″ and kept finding articles on how searches for “Wolfram Rule 34″ have suddenly started appearing on Google’s Web trends because of this strip.
I don’t know how weird that is, but I think the prefix “meta” needs to be used to describe it.
November 18th, 2008 at 1:54 am
I do believe this is it 9squirrels!
however, as I’m not a computer scientist, it’s terribly cryptic
http://atlas.wolfram.com/01/01/34/01_01_1_34.html
here’s a site providing brief (and also cryptic) information…
http://ready2beat.com/educational/wolfram-rule-34-properties-wolfram-description
if anyone can explain what’s up here, I’d like to know… so please post it here… though as best as I can tell, it’s a rule for a class of function…
November 18th, 2008 at 7:39 am
But I have infinite time and space.
And rocks.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Thread Change!
Anybody watch “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS?
November 18th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Okay, this internet thing is getting way more recursive than is healthy.
I just found myself googling “google trends wolfram rule 34″.
Whiskeytangofoxtrot.
November 18th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Just told us. This wolframs rule 34 is a premeditated joke? Because it was funny to see me googling this term and found that a lot of people was doing the same.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:02 am
So, then, when will the blag be updated again?
November 19th, 2008 at 4:48 am
I hadn’t heard of a Roomba before todays comic, but now I want one SOOOOO much!
Alas having just been fined €500 for speeding fear can’t quite justify that kind of expense (let alone the dueling harness)
November 19th, 2008 at 6:12 am
i don’t know whether I should be proud or ashamed that I knew about Wolfram’s rule 34 (though rule 30 was the interesting one, if I recall correctly) years before I knew about the other rule 34.
Also, Guy (trapped in Italy), it just so happens that I’m from New Zealand (not far from the divide) and I ran roughly through Birmingham a couple of weeks ago (I always run roughly, I’m in too much of a hurry to do it properly.) There must be something profound about that.
November 19th, 2008 at 8:40 am
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-55 and next page show wolfram’s 256 rules. and of course explains what they are for the uninitiated :)
November 19th, 2008 at 11:18 am
And now featured (for a second time) on strangemaps…
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/331-east-and-west-never-the-twain-shall-meet/
November 19th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Hey hey xkcd geeks. I started up a site that aggregates a bunch of good comics into one place… it’s in early early beta (alpha?) so there’s still plenty of room to grow (letting users pick which comics they want to view, for example, will let me add a ton of webcomics to the list, right now they’re just ones I think are good). Alright blah blah blah, just check it out, XKCD is on it of course:
http://kablam-o.com
thanks! please bookmark it too if you can and check back every once in a while for new stuff!
November 19th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
>I hadn’t heard of a Roomba before todays comic, but now I want one SOOOOO much!
woot.com sells them pretty frequently, and they’re almost always stupidly cheap.
Of course, I don’t know if they ship to Europe. And if they did, considering how long it takes them just to ship stuff within the U.S., you might not want it anymore by the time it gets there. :P
November 20th, 2008 at 12:07 am
You have a lot of pawns here. When are you going to use them for your own pleasure like a normal insane man should?
November 20th, 2008 at 3:42 am
“woot.com sells them pretty frequently, and they’re almost always stupidly cheap.
Of course, I don’t know if they ship to Europe. And if they did, considering how long it takes them just to ship stuff within the U.S., you might not want it anymore by the time it gets there. :P”
Well as I’m in Italy, even getting stuff shipped from the UK takes weeks (I would wind up in the country with the worst postal system in Europe) so an extra few weeks probably won’t make any difference (anything to relieve the boredom)
November 20th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
This blag, it NEEDS MORE BLAGGING!
November 20th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I don’t understand such enthusiasm for a robotic vacuum cleaner. I mean, sure, it’s a robot of sorts, but it’s a vacuum cleaner! How often do you people vacuum? Often enough that it would make a difference? I can’t remember the last time I vacuumed, I’d much rather have a robot that could do something other than suck.
Anyway, Felis, it doesn’t need more blagging, it just needs people to leave comments about comics on the forums instead of on the blag.
I’m afraid to join the forums in case I get addicted.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
@ Angelastic:
Perhaps you would vacuum more often if the chore required merely pushing a button on a robot?
November 21st, 2008 at 3:30 am
“How often do you people vacuum? Often enough that it would make a difference?”
No, which is exactly why I now want one, it’d also encourage me not to leave random piles of crap all over the floor, not to mention scare the (afforementioned) crap out of any burglar that happened to enter while it started it’s cleaning cycle.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:44 am
Maybe it’s time you americans understand that tangent to the power -1 means 1 over tangent, not arctangent :)
November 21st, 2008 at 8:24 am
@Konstantin: Yeah, I’ll agree with you on that one, but what does it have to do with the pseudo-conversation going on? Sounds like science-obsessive Tourette’s to me. You should go get checked…
@Angelastic: No, I seriously meant that the blag NEEDS MORE BLAGGING. This is one of the few blags, let alone webcomics, that I thoroughly enjoy reading. Plus it gives us a chance for us to lobby for Randall to create an xkcd physics textbook.
On another note, this thread is now about bats. What’s up with that crazy echolocation of theirs?
November 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm
In regards to this garbage: http://xkcd.com/503/
America is not the world you fucking cunt.
Go back to wanking yourself to tears over your inner loneliness
November 21st, 2008 at 2:25 pm
The change in the mouseover-text for http://xkcd.com/507 has made me realise I’ve been using “sigma” incorrectly all this time.
November 21st, 2008 at 3:05 pm
@Felis:
I’m just kidding :) But hey, maybe I _am_ a science freak?
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:02 am
i actually thought the problems on mail goggles looked like http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/googlecopy.jpg until tonight when i tried the thing after 4-5 drinks. silly me. i was all excited!
November 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
MORE BLAG PLEASE!!!
November 24th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
^ - I found this blag 2 months ago - I want more blag!
November 24th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I like how interviews with the New Yorker blogs have become the new profiles in the New Yorker.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
:o What’s with the colour? That’s not right..
November 26th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
MOAR BLAG PLX KTHXBAI
Also - cuntmachine: yes, it’s cynicism. that’s why it’s funny. If you don’t like it, go back to…damn… I can’t think of any countries besides the U.S…..
November 27th, 2008 at 10:47 am
@Kugo you’re assuming he’s in the States? surely you know the rest of the world (over here in this tent called “abroad”) also have internet ;-)
Oh dear, I should’ve spotted the rollover text problem from last Friday (bad me) oh well, I never can seem to understand when I’m meant to use standard deviation and when to use standard error
November 30th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Randall is a remarkably articulate drunk.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Another vote for the ‘More Blag’ crew…
@ cuntmachine: I’m hardly a ‘fan’ of the US, and yet here I sit embarrassed by your overwhelming stupidity… 503 has to do with relative frame of reference, not some egomaniacal obsession with the US at the centre of the universe. Go find something actually worth complaining about for once in the pathetically depressing pit of despair that is your life. You’ve single-handedly caused me to doubt my faith in humanity. I hope you’re happy.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Oooh, I remember the egg drop!!!
This comic made me laugh out loud. With all the physics and programming language comics that come out of this site, I often feel like I’m on the outside looking in, even though I love the comic no matter what. But I really felt for the guy in this one. A perfect moment of of incredulous disappointment captured in stick-figure form.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:34 am
Yay Battlestar Galactica
though I’m watching it online and am only half-way through series three… No Spoilers
GOD HELP YOU IF I FIND SPOILERS!!!!!!
December 1st, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I can has blag?
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Officially no blag for the month of November… I am thoroughly depressed… /sigh. XKCD you have broken my heart… :(
December 5th, 2008 at 4:26 am
cuntmachine: if you put it that way, i think actually Randall lampshades that Europe isn’t “the world” either. so yeah.
December 26th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Dude, xenocide is totally better.