ABCD

((This strip is in the form of a long series of quotes. Here, each quote is given as a separate panel. Attribution is delimited with a --. Some text is bolded; it is enclosed in asterisks.)) *The art of letter-writing is fast dying out.* When a letter cost nine pence, it seemed but fair to try to make it worth nine pence... Now, however, we think we are too busy for such old-fashioned correspondence. *We fire off a multitude of rapid and short notes, instead of sitting down to have a good talk over a real sheet of paper.* -- The Sunday Magazine 1871 It is, unfortunately, one of the chief characteristics of modern business to be always in a hurry. *In olden times it was different.* -- The Medical Record 1884 With the advent of cheap newspapers and superior means of locomotion... the dreamy quiet old days are over... for *men now live think and work at express speed.* They have their Mercury or Post laid on their breakfast table in the early morning, and if they are too hurried to snatch from it the news during that meal, they carry it off, to be *sulkily read as they travel... leaving them no time to talk with the friend who may share the compartment with them*... the hurry and bustle of modern life... lacks the quiet and repose of the period when our forefathers, the day's work done, took their ease... -- William Smith, Morley: Ancient and Modern 1886 Conversation is said to be a lost art... good talk presupposes leisure, both for preparation and enjoyment. *The age of leisure is dead, and the art of conversation is dying.* -- Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, volume 29 1890 Intellectual laziness and the hurry of the age have produced *a craving for literary nips*. The torpid brain... has grown too weak for sustained thought. *There never was an age in which so many people were able to write badly*. -- Israel Zangwill, The Bachelors' Club 1891 *The art of pure line engraving is dying out. We live at too fast a rate* to allow for the preparation of such plates as our fathers appreciated. If a picture catches the public fancy, the public must have an etched or a photogravured copy of it within a month or two of its appearance. The days when engravers were wont to spend two or three years over a single plate are for ever gone. -- Journal of the Institute of Jamaica, volume 1 1892 So much is exhibited to the eye that *nothing is left to the imagination*. It seems almost possible that the modern world might be choked by its own riches, *and human faculty dwindle away amid the million inventions that ahve been introduced to render its exercise unnecessary*. The articles in the quarterlies extend to thirty or more pages, but *thirty pages is now too much*. So we witness a further condensing process and, we have the fortnightly and the contemporary which reduce thirty pages to *fifteen pages* so that you may read a larger number of articles in a shorter time and in a shorter form. As if this last condensing process were not enough the condensed articles of these periodicals are *further condensed* by the daily papers, which will give you *a summary of the summary* of that which has been written about everything. *Those who are dipping into so many subjects and gathering information in a summary and superficial form lose the habit of settling down to great works*. Ephemeral literature is driving out the great classics of the present and the past... *hurried reading can never be good reading*. -- G. J. Goschen, First annual address to the students, Toynbee Hall, London 1894 The existence of *mental and nervous degeneration among a growing class of people*, especially in large cities, is an obvious phenomenon... the mania for stimulants... diseases of the mind are almost as numerous as the diseases of the body... this intellectual condition is characterized by *a brain incapable of normal working... in a large measure due to the hurry and excitement of modern life*. with its facilities for rapid locomotion and almost instantaneous communication between remote points of the globe*... -- The Churchman, volume 71 1895 If we *teach the children how to play* and encourage them in their sports... *instead of shutting them in badly ventilated schoolrooms*, the next generation will be more joyous and will be heailthier than the present one. -- Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Summary of the Press Throughout the World, volume 18 1895 The cuase of the... increase in nervous disease is *increased demand made by the coditions of modern life upon the brain*. Everything is done in a hurry. *We talk across a continent, telegraph across an ocean*, take a trip to Chicago for an hour's talk... *We even take our pleasures sadly and make a task of our play*... What wonder if the pressure is almost more than our nerves can bear. -- G. Shrady (from P. C. Knapp) "Are nervous diseases increasing?" Medical Record 1896 *The managers of sensational newspapers*... do not try to educate their readers and make them better, but tend to *create perverted tastes and develop vicious tendencies*. The owners of these papers seem to have but one purpose, and that is to increase their circulation. -- Medical Brief, volume 26 1898 *To take sufficient time for our meals seems frequently impossible* on account of the demands on our time made by our business... we act on the apparent belief that all of our business is so pressing that we must jump on the quickest car home, eat our dinner in the most hurried way, make the closest connection for car returning... -- Louis John Rettger, Studies in Advanced Physiology 1898 In these days of increasing rapid artificial locomotion, *may I be permitted to say a word in favour of a very worthy and valuable old friend of mine, Mr Long Walk?* *I am afraid that this good gentleman is in danger of getting neglected, if not forgotten*. We live in days of water trips and land trips, excursions by sea, road and rail- bicycles and tricycles, tram cars and motor cars... but in my humble opinion, good honest walking exercise for health beats all other kinds of locomotion into a cocked hat. -- T. Thatcher, "A plea for a long walk", The Publishers' Circular 1902 The art of conversation is almost a lost one. *People talk as they ride bicycles - at a rush - without pausing to consider their surroundings*... What has been generally understood as cultured society is rapidly deteriorating into baseness and voluntary ignorance. *The profession of letters is so little understood*, and so far from being seriously appreciated, that... newspapers are full, not of thoughtful honestly expressed public opinion on the affairs of the nation, but of vapid personalities interesting to none save gossips and busy bodies. -- Marie Corelli, Free Opinions, Freely Expressed 1905 There is a great *tendency among the children of today to rebel against restraint*, not only that placed upon them by the will of the parent, but against any restraint or limitation of what they consider their rights... this fact has filled well minded people with great apprehensions for the future. -- Rev. Henry Hussmann, The Authority of Parents 1906 *Our modern family gathering, silent* around the fire, *each individual with his head buried in his favourite magazine*, is the somewhat natural outcome of the banishment of colloquy from the school... -- The Journal of Education, volume 29 1907 Plays in theatres at the present time present spectacles and *deal openly with situations which no person would have dared to mention in general society forty years ago*... The current representations of *nude men and women in the daily journals* and the illustrated magazines would have excluded such periodicals from all respectable families two decades ago... Those who have been divorced... forty and fifty years ago lost at once and irrevocably their standing in society, while to-day they continue in all their social relationships, hardly changed... -- Editorial, The Watchman, Boston 1908 We write millions more letters than did our grandfathers, but the increase in volume has brought with it an automatic artificial machine-like ring... an examination of a file of old letters reveals not only a remarkable grasp of details, but a *fitness and courtliness too often totally lacking* in the mechanical curt cut and dried letters of to-day. -- Forrest Crissey, Handbook of Modern Business Correspondence 1908 *A hundred years ago it took so long and cost so much to send a latter that it seemed worth while to put some time and thought into writing it*. Now the quickness and the cheapness of the post seem to justify the feeling that *a brief letter to-day may be followed by another next week - a "line" now by another to-morrow*. -- Percy Holmes Boynton, Principles of Composition 1915 {{Title text: 'Unfortunately, the notion of marriage which prevails ... at the present time ... regards the institution as simply a convenient arrangement or formal contract ... This disregard of the sanctity of marriage and contempt for its restrictions is one of the most alarming tendencies of the present age.' --John Harvey Kellogg, Ladies' guide in health and disease (1883)}}

[[A figure sits on a hill reading a book.]] [[The figure remains engrossed in the book. A balloon begins to descend behind him.]] [[The figure continues reading. The balloon is getting lower.]] [[The balloon is now right behind the figure's ear.]] Balloon: Internet. Figure: Augh! [[The man throws the book in surprise.]] [[The balloon ascends rapidly, while the startled figure looks up.]] {{Title text: I run a business selling rural internet access. My infrastructure consists of a bunch of Verizon wifi hotspots that I sign up for and then cancel at the end of the 14-day return period.}}

Thickness of the ice sheets at various locations 21,000 years ago compared with modern skylines [[the skylines of four major metropolises are superimposed against an ice sheet of the proper thickness for the aforementioned time period]] Toronto:2100m Chicago:900m Boston:1250m Montreal:3300m {{Title text: Data adapted from 'The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum' by A.S. Dyke et. al., which was way better than the sequels 'The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: The Meltdown' and 'The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: Continental Drift'.}}

[[A secret society meets in a darkened chamber; a kitschy video involving two people and an RC helicopter is projected onto the background]] Master: ..then it is settled. We the 300 members of the Secret Council decree that this video meets our standards and shall "go viral". Master: send it to one of our agents to be leaked to the common folk. Steward: Some of them are noticing the number. Master: ..add a plus sign to throw them off. Steward: very well. Soon... [[A communication sent to one of the many unsuspecting plebians of the world]] Email: Ooh! check out this great video I found! [[zoom in on the viewer count of a Youtube video]] 301+ {{Title text: 'And hypnotize someone into thinking they've uploaded it and passed it around.' 'But then won't the uploader get suspicious that it pauses at 301+ for a while? Why don't we just forge the number entirel--' ::BLAM:: 'The Council of 299 is adjourned.'}}

[[A figure sits at a desk with a computer, hands on the keyboard, talking to an unseen observer.]] Figure: If the corporate surveillance state monitors and controls every aspect of my life... Big Brother: We do. Figure: And I play Dwarf Fortress all day... Big Brother: You do. Figure: Then you're effectively Dwarf Fortress players watching your dwarves play Dwarf Fortress. Big Brother: ... Oh God. Big Brother realises he's trapped in the most tedious possible Hell. {{Title text: I may be the kind of person who wastes a year implementing a Turing-complete computer in Dwarf Fortress, but that makes you the kind of person who wastes ten more getting that computer to run Minecraft.}}

[[Two characters are chatting. One has hair.]] Hair: What've you been up to? Not hair: Definitely not spending every day consumed with worry over stupid things I never talk to anyone about. Hair: Oh, yeah, me neither. Not hair: That's good. Hair: Yeah. [[The final panel is silent.]] {{Title text: Good thing we're too smart to spend all day being uselessly frustrated with ourselves. I mean, that'd be a hell of a waste, right?}}

[[Mrs. Whatsit is talking to Abbott and Costello.]] Mrs. Whatsit: You're both confused. Mrs. Whatsit: He's just "The Doctor". {{Title text: [shouted, from the field] 'Aunt Beast hit a pop fly to second! Dive for it, Mrs Whatsit!'}}

((The layout is a chart with a series of plots reaching a stable equilibrium one after another, with the shape characteristic of a predator-prey model. In order, the labels are)) How often I see... Hipsters --> Complaints about hipsters --> Complaints about the constant use and discussion of the word "hipster" --> Complaints that every level of meta-opinion on hipsters represents the same tedious navel-gazing by insecure people --> graphs making it all worse --> Now [[The horizontal axis is labeled time. Where the final curve rises is marked 'now'.]] {{Title text: You may point out that this very retreat into ironic detachment while still clearly participating in the thing in question is the very definition of contemporary hipsterdom. But on the other hand, wait, you're in an empty room. Who are you talking to?}}

How to make boring technical reports more fun to read: Imagine they were written and sent in, unsolicited, by the estranged spouse of the head of the project. [[A person sits crouched in the middle of the floor of an empty room, typing on a laptop. There are books and papers scattered around him.]] Laptop: Six guard rails have erratic reflector placement, and one even lacks reflectors entirely, despite rule G31.02(b) clearly mandating consistent usage. Person: ... SHARON! {{Title text: If that fails, just multiply every number by a thousand. 'The 2nd St speed limit should be set at 25,000 mph, which would likely have prevented 1,000 of the intersection's 3,000 serious accidents last month.'}}

[[Three people stand facing what we can assume are the Doors of Durin (not pictured). One has a hat, one has hair, the other has neither.]] Hair: I've got it! What's the Elvish word for friend? Neither: Mellon. [[The three watch as the doors begin to open.]] <<RUMBLE>> [[The one in the white hat poses a question.]] Hat: So what's the Elvish word for "frenemy"? Neither: ... mellogoth? <<SLAM!!>> {{Title text: If we get the doors open and plug up the dam on the Sirannon so the water rises a little, the pool will start draining into Moria. How do you think the Watcher would fare against a drenched Balrog?}}

When you see a claim that a common drug or vitamin "kills cancer cells in a petri dish," keep in mind: [[A scientist stands on a chair next to a desk, pointing a gun at a petri dish. There is a microscope on the desk.]] So does a handgun. {{Title text: Now, if it selectively kills cancer cells in a petri dish, you can be sure it's at least a great breakthrough for everyone suffering from petri dish cancer.}}

Child: Did you hear what he said about me!? Parent: Well, remember: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words-- Child: Can make someone else feel happy or sad, which is literally the only thing that matters in this stupid world? [[Beat.]] Child: Right? Parent: The world isn't *that* bad. Child: Explain the line about sticks and stones? Parent: ... OK, maybe it's kind of horrific. {{Title text: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me think I deserved it.}}

Person 1: Maybe before we rush to adopt ((inserted term)) <Google Glass> we should stop to consider the consequences of blithely giving this technology such a central position in our lives. Don't have any insight about a new technology? Just use this sentence! It makes you sound wise and you can say it about virtually anything. {{Title text: The great thing is, the sentence is really just a reminder to the listener to worry about whatever aspects of the technology they're already feeling alarmist about, which in their mind gives you credit for addressing their biggest anxieties.}}

Person 1: This one's easy; There's the Parthenon. Athens. <<click>> What!? Why the hell is there a Parthenon in *Nashville*? <<click>> Ok, I'm *clearly* in Germany. <<click>> Dammit, Germany Pavilion at Epcot. My scores in Geoguessr would be higher if people would quit building replicas of everything. {{Title text: I'm not sure if you can get Epcot, but my friend just got LegoLand. He guessed California but it was the one in Denmark. Meanwhile, I'm rapidly becoming a connoisseur of unmarked dirt roads over flat, barren landscapes.}}

COMBINATION VISION TEST [[An Ishihara color blindness test (which typically consists of a circle comprised of dots of different colors, arranged such that someone with complete color vision can discern numbers) with numbers instead of colored dots. It is not easy to see, but the numbers show a large '42' in the center. The 4 and the 2 are made up of different numbers.]] If you can see one big number but not the other, you have synesthesia and colorblindness. {{Title text: If you see two numbers but they're both the same and you have to squint to read them, you have synesthesia, colorblindness, diplopia, and myopia.}}

If other star systems are listening in on our pop culture, given the speed of light delay, these are the jokes and catchphrases they just learned about and are currently repeating way too much: [[A map of star systems in relation to the Sun, which is roughly in the center, sending out radio waves. Each star is a yellow circle of differing sizes, with a speech bubble (or two). ((Listed in order, from closest to furthest.)) Proxima Centauri: "I'm on a boat!" Alpha Centauri A B: "The cake is a lie!" "o ~ Never gonna give you up o ~" Luhman 16: I can haz? Barnard's star: "Leave Britney alone!" "o ~ Chocolate raaaiiin o ~" Wolf 359: "Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits ." Lalande 21185: "o ~ Numa numa o ~" Sirius: "I still can't believe Bellatrix--" "Dude, get over it." Gliese 65: " INTERNETS! " Epsilon Eridani: "Ninjas fight all the time! " Procyon: "...God kills a kitten!" "A what?" Epsilon Indi: "You're the man now, dog!" Tau Ceti: "All your base are belong to us." Luyten's Star: "Peanut Butter Jelly Time!" Kapteyn's star: "My spoon is too big!" Kruger 60: " MORE COWBELL! " Gliese 1: "Look at the tiny dancing Earth mammals!" Van Maanen's star: "WASSSUUP!?!" Ad Leonis: "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" "You bastards!" 70 Ophiuchi: "Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger." "What's a burger? "I don't know." Altair: "Mr. T ate my balls!" Sigma Draconis: "Oh ... my ... gaawd." Delta Pavonis: "I want the truth." " You can't handle the truth! " Gliese 892: "Hasta la vista, baby." Xi Boötis: Did I do that? HR 753: "D'oh!" Beta Hydri: "Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker." Vega: "Resistance is futile." Zeta Tucanae: "Let's get ready to ruuumble!" HR 1614: "Where's the beef?" Groombridge 1830: "I pity the fool!" Delta Trianguli: "May the Force be with you." Beta Virginis: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" Arcturus: "You talkin' to me ?" Beta Trianguli Australis: "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse." Lamda Aurigae: "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?'" Capella: "And now for something completely different." HD 211415: "Live long and prosper." "Ok." Alderamin: " EXTERMINATE! " 51 Pegasi: "Name's bond. James Bond." Caph: "Take me to your leader!" "No, Steve." Kappa Reticuli: Here's lookin' at you, kid." Alpha Hydri: "Rosebud." Gienah: "Ehh, what's up doc?" Alpha Serpentis: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."]] {{Title text: The strongest incentive we have to develop faster-than-light travel is that it would let us apologize in advance.}}

By any reasonable definition, T. Rex is more closely related to sparrows than to Stegosaurus . [[A cladistic tree showing a single origin point which branches on one to a second point which branches into " Stegosaurus " and " Triceratops ", and on the other side branches into a second point which branches into " T. Rex " and "sparrow". Each label's vertical distance from the origin point represents "separation by time", the Steogsaurus being closest, the Triceratops and T. Rex on the same level in the middle, and "sparrow" furthest. The distance of their label from their closest common relative represent "phylogenetic distance". Below this tree are sketches of a Stegosaurus, T. Rex, and sparrow skeleton. A box surrounds the T. Rex and sparrow skeletons, showing they are physically similar.]] Birds aren't descended from dinosaurs, they are dinosaurs. Which means the fastest animal alive today is a small carnivorous dinosaur, Falco peregrinus . [[A silhouette of a falcon flying toward a smaller prey bird.]] It preys mainly on other dinosaurs, which it strikes and kills in midair with its claws. This is a good world. {{Title text: Sure, T. rex is closer in height to Stegosaurus than a sparrow. But that doesn't tell you much; 'Dinosaur Comics' author Ryan North is closer in height to certain dinosaurs than to the average human.}}

[[Black Hat Man is working peacefully at his computer when an annoying little brat runs up behind him and goes..]] Annoying Brat: MONKEY TACOS! I'm so random! Black Hat Man: Me too! [[Black Hat Man spews an enormous torrent of random numbers, and the annoying brat is blasted away]] [[Black Hat Man returns to work in peace]] {{Title text: In retrospect, it's weird that as a kid I thought completely random outbursts made me seem interesting, given that from an information theory point of view, lexical white noise is just about the opposite of interesting by definition.}}

[[He and she are holding radios and looking up.]] He: No, the combining diacritics go OVER the interrobang! She: Oh jeez, I think he's lost control. The skywriter we hired has terrible unicode support. {{Title text: I don't see how; the C0 block is right there at the beginning.}}

... experiments to observe this and we found no[1[2]] evidence for it in our data. 1: Ignore this 2: Increment by 2 before following 3: Not true[3[2]] 4: Ibid. 5: True[2[6[3]]] 6: Actually a 1[2[2]] My Hobby: Footnote Labyrinths {{Title text: Every time you read this mouseover, toggle between interpreting nested footnotes as footnotes on footnotes and interpreting them as exponents (minus one, modulo 6, plus 1).}}

[[Hat Guy is holding the remote for a drone which hovers nearby.]] Guy: What's that? Hat Guy: It's a drone for my new business, AirAware. Our UAVs follow you and learn your schedule. If you miss a turn, forget an appointment, or give someone inaccurate information, they alert you. Woman, on the phone: I'll be there in five. Drone: WRONG! Woman: Augh! Guy: That sounds annoying. Who would pay for that? Hat Guy: Huh? Nobody pays. I'm just making these and releasing them. Guy: That's not a business. You're just yelling at strangers from the sky. Guy: A business has to make money somehow. Drone: WRONG! Guy: Augh!! {{Title text: It ships with a version of Google Now that alerts you when it's too late to leave for your appointments.}}

[[Two people sit in a restaurant.]] Experimenter: I'm currently conducting an experiment which may prove Einstein wrong! Friend: Ooh, exciting! 1947: [[Einstein is walking with someone.]] Einstein: It's IMPOSSIBLE to find a good sandwich in this town. {{Title text: Einstein was WRONG when he said that provisional patent #39561 represented a novel gravel-sorting technique and should be approved by the Patent Office.}}

How long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you're spending more time than you save? (Across five years) [[A table, with the columns labeled "how often you do the task" and the rows labeled "how much time you shave off". The column headings are, from left to right, "50 day", "5 day", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", and "yearly". The row headings are, from top to bottom, "1 second", "5 seconds", "30 seconds", "1 minute", "5 minutes", "30 minutes", "1 hour", "6 hours", and "1 day". Row values ("how long you can work") are as follows (heading, then values): 1 second: 1 day, 2 hours, 30 minutes, 4 minutes, 1 minute, 5 seconds. 5 seconds: 5 days, 12 hours, 2 hours, 21 minutes, 5 minutes, 25 seconds. 30 seconds: 4 weeks, 3 days, 12 hours, 2 hours, 30 minutes, 2 minutes. 1 minute: 8 weeks, 6 days, 1 day, 4 hours, 1 hour, 5 minutes. 5 minutes: 9 months, 4 weeks, 6 days, 21 hours, 5 hours, 25 minutes. 30 minutes: n a, 6 months, 5 weeks, 5 days, 1 day, 2 hours. 1 hour: n a, 10 months, 2 months, 10 days, 2 days, 5 hours. 6 hours: n a, n a, n a, 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day. 1 day: n a, n a, n a, n a, 8 weeks, 5 days.]] {{Title text: Don't forget the time you spend finding the chart to look up what you save. And the time spent reading this reminder about the time spent. And the time trying to figure out if either of those actually make sense. Remember, every second counts toward your life total, including these right now.}}

My Neighborhood's Resolution In: [[Graph of distance (on a log scale) against decades. Line labeled "Earth" is flat, at approximately the Planck length. Line labeled "Google Earth" climbs at approximately y=x, with three points marked showing an improvement in resolution past 1 meter between 2000 and 2020. The lines end before they cross somewhere after 2100, with the space marked ???.]] {{Title text: 2031: Google defends the swiveling roof-mounted scanning electron microscopes on its Street View cars, saying they 'don't reveal anything that couldn't be seen by any pedestrian scanning your house with an electron microscope.'}}

The Problem With Time Machines: [[Character stands holding the lever of a box labeled "Time Machine," with a big on off lever switched to off.]] [[He flips it on.]] <<click>> eeeeEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEeeee <<click>> [[He flips it off.]] [[He stares at his own hands in confusion.]] ??? {{Title text: 'All time machine systems nominal ... T-minus ten ... eleven ...'}}

[[A woman sits at a desk, writing. The desk is covered in books & a laptop.]] Girls go to college To get more knowledge [[A man sits at a desk holding a piece of paper and leafing through a book.]] Boys go to college to get more knowledge [[Men and women are at work in a lab. A woman with a headset works a computer. Another has a model of a lunar lander. There are posters on the wall of planets and satellites]] Girls and boys [[A rocket blasts off.]] Go to Jupiter {{Title text: To get more knowledge}}

A guide to integration by parts: Given a problem of the form: ∫f(x)g(x)dx = ? Choose variables u and v such that: u = f(x) dv = g(x)dx Now the original expression becomes: ∫udv = ? Which definitely looks easier. Anyway, I gotta run. But good luck! {{Title text: If you can manage to choose u and v such that u = v = x, then the answer is just (1 2)x^2, which is easy to remember. Oh, and add a '+C' or you'll get yelled at.}}

[[A web chart. In the center is a bubble labeled 'user account on my laptop', connecting from which are the bubbles 'Dropbox', 'photos & files', 'Facebook', 'Gmail', 'Paypal', and 'bank'. These bubbles are also all connected to each other. A seventh bubble is attached to the center bubble, labeled 'admin account'. It is covered in a thick border, spikes, and has a lock between it and the central bubble.]] If someone steals my laptop while I'm logged in, they can read my email, take my money, and impersonate me to my friends, but at least they can't install drivers without my permission. {{Title text: Before you say anything, no, I know not to leave my computer sitting out logged in to all my accounts. I have it set up so after a few minutes of inactivity it automatically switches to my brother's.}}

[[Character is walking along; she stops and holds up her phone.]] Phone: Identify Song Recorded > Live [BETA] Phone: Listening ... Positive Match: 4'33" John Cage {{Title text: All music is just performances of 4'33" in studios where another band happened to be playing at the time.}}

[[A figure wearing goggles and ear defenders walks into a patch of rocks. He's carrying a hammer and a pistol. There is a van in the background labelled 'Dept. of Geology'.]] [[The man drops the hammer and fires the pistol into the ground.]] <<BLAM BLAM BLAM>> [[The man drops the pistol and starts hammering away a chunk of rock.]] <<Clink clink>> [[The man sits behind a desk reading some paper. He has a variety of certificates and pictures on the wall behind him. He seems important. On the wall is the chunk of rock, mounted on a plaque, with a caption.]] Earth 4,500,000,000BCE - April 12, 2013 {{Title text: 'It seems like it's still alive, Professor.' 'Yeah, a big one like this can keep running around for a few billion years after you remove the head."}}

[[A figure sits at his laptop, reading a dialog box on the screen Adobe Update: There is an update for Adobe Download Manager. This update will allow you to download new updates to the Adobe update downloader. [OK] [Download] {{Title text: ALERT: Some pending mandatory software updates require version 21.1.2 of the Oracle Sun Java(tm) JDK(tm) Update Manager Runtime Environment Meta-Updater, which is not available for your platform.}}

Subways of North America [[A subway-line style (bold colored, 45-degree aligned lines with white bars indicating stations) map has been constructed by combining and linking various parts of the subway maps from many different cities, as if all of the transit systems were connected directly. The cities include (from top to bottom, left to right) Vancouver, Montreal, San Francisco, Toronto, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, Miami, Atlanta, Monterrey, San Juan, Santo Domingo, and Mexico City.]] {{Title text: About one in three North American subway stops are in NYC.}}

[[A flowchart. The first box is rectangular and says "START" and has an arrow leading to a larger diamond-shaped box that reads, "Hey, wait, this flowchart is a trap!". There is an arrow labeled 'YES' leading from this box back to itself.]] {{Title text: The way out is to use the marker you have to add a box that says 'get a marker' to the line between you and 'start', then add a 'no' line from the trap box to 'end'.}}

[[A view of the Earth from space.]] Nearly 4.5 billion years ago, Earth had liquid water. But all the crust older than 3.5 billion years has been recycled into the mantle by subduction. [[The same view.]] A billion years of the stratigraphic record, the memory of the hills, is forever lost to us. What was it like here, four billion years ago? [[The same view.]] Earth, what secrets do you have? [[The same view.]] Earth: come closer [[A closer view.]] [[An even closer view.]] Earth: i'll never tell. {{Title text: All we have are these stupid tantalizing zircons and the scars on the face of the Moon.}}

((This is a dynamic image with several different mouse-overs. Mouse-overs for specific panels are included in double curly brackets.)) Ahoy, Carnegie Melonites! Come find your future at Baidu. [[A woman with black hair stands in a blank void.]] Woman: But nothing about Tiananmen Square. {{Happy April 1st, everyone!}} ((There is a link on this panel to almamater.xkcd.com.)) It takes great minds to stifle other great minds. [[A woman with a ponytail sits at a desk with two other people.]] Woman: Let's block Canada Others: Sounds good. We're a convenient four hour drive from New York City (15,000 hours by Roomba) [[A woman crouches on a moving Roomba with a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and a smartphone in the other.]] <<whirrrrrrr>> Our recruiters are on the hunt for unaware CMU graduates [[A dark-haired woman approaches three students with a giant net as they leave a classroom.]] Or UIC graduates, provied any of them manage to fill out the application correctly. [[A website application which reads:]] Name: WHICH ONE Email: FORGET IT Education: RIDING THE L ALL NIGHT LONG ((uic has the third best hash. See the full standings at http: almamater.xkcd.com best.csv)) At Baidu, Inc., you'll have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects. [[A man sits at a computer.]] Man: What does "make dog" do? Off-screen person: Experimental dog generator. Don't click on it; the default size isn't set, so- <<click>> [[The man stares at the screen.]] <<KZZZT>> <<*bip*>> Off-screen: Uh oh. [[A giant dog licks the desk where the computer once was, the man in the chair stares up at it.]] ((The dog gains a pound for every $10 donated to the Wikimedia Foundation via this link. Currently at $41457.11.)) [[A graphic showing two sliders and a dog. Next to the dog with arrows pointing to it are a thermometer graphic and the equation d(x)=R.]] CAREERS@BAIDU, INC. PLAY GOD WITH DOGS (TM) ((There are arrows over and under "GOD" and "DOG" indicating that you switch the letters.)) ((The previous three panels link to the special Wikimedia fundraiser page.)) {{Title text: Mouse over words and things to see where they come from.}}

[[Two characters stand close together in conversation. One of them is humming.]] Man: Hey. Woman: <<Musical notes>> Man: What's that? Woman: <<Musical notes>> Man: Why are you humming? Woman: <<Musical notes>> Man: Should I know the tune?? Woman: <<Musical notes>> Man: ...Hmm... [[The man pulls out his cell phone and fires up a song-match app.]] Phone: Identify song. Recorded Live (beta) Woman: <<Musical notes>> Phone: Identifying... [[We see the screen of the phone. There's a picture of the woman on it as album cover art. Positive match: Check it out! By I hacked the audio fingerprint database feat. Meeeeee. Track: We're out of cat food (pick some up) {{Title text: I'm so bad at carrying a tune, those 'find a song by humming its melody' websites throw an HTTP 406 error as soon as I start to hum.}}

[[Two figures stand talking to each other.]] Figure: Well, you know what they say. The past is a foreign country- Hat guy: -with an outdated military and huge oil reserves! Hmmm... {{Title text: If history has taught us anything, we can use that information to destroy it.}}

((This comic changed periodically for a series of over 3000 frames, progressing through a story involving many characters. The following description is only the final frame, which continues to be displayed now that the sequence is finished.)) [[A large raft with a flag attached to one end has come aground on the left side of the panel. The ground gently slopes upwards to the right, and there are a handful of trees rising up on the right, their foliage extending beyond the top and right sides of the panel. It appears to be abandoned as no one is in sight.]] {{Title text: Wait for it.}}

Number of times Voyager 1 has left the solar system. [[tally marks indicating 22]] {{Title text: So far Voyager 1 has 'left the Solar System' by passing through the termination shock three times, the heliopause twice, and once each through the heliosheath, heliosphere, heliodrome, auroral discontinuity, Heaviside layer, trans-Neptunian panic zone, magnetogap, US Census Bureau Solar System statistical boundary, Kuiper gauntlet, Oort void, and crystal sphere holding the fixed stars.}}

class Ball extends Throwable {} class P { P target; P(P target) { this.target = target; } void aim(Ball ball) { try { throw ball; } catch (Ball b) { target.aim(b); } } public static void main(String[] args) { p parent = new P(null); p child = new P(parent); parent.target = child; parent.aim(new Ball()); } } {{Title text: I'm trying to build character but Eclipse is really confusing.}}

[[A car is crushed and broken between two tall black rectangles. The rectangles are attached to screw clamps applying pressure from each end. The tyres are flat, the windows are broken, and the bodywork is crumpled.]] Whenever someone uploads a letterboxed 16:9 video rescaled to 4:3, I do this to their car. {{Title text: I'm always disappointed when 'Anamorphic Widescreen' doesn't refer to a widescreen Animorphs movie.}}

[[A bumble bee sits on the control column in the cockpit of an airplane.]] Physicists still can't explain how bumblebees can fly airplanes. {{Title text: Did you know sociologists can't explain why people keep repeating that urban legend about bumblebees not being able to fly!?}}

define HalfheartedMergeSort(list): if length(list) <2: return list pivot=int(length(list) 2) A=HalfheartedMergeSort(list[:pivot]) B=HalfheartedMergeSort(list[pivot:]) ummmmm Return[A,B] Here. Sorry. define FastBoGoSort{list}: an optimized BoGoSort runs in 0(N logN) From N to 1 to log(length(list)): shuffle(list): If isSorted(list): Return list Return "Kernel Page Fault (error code: 2)" Define JobInterviewQuicksort(list): Ok so you choosea pivot Then divide the list in half For each half: Check to see if it's sorted No, wait, it doesn't matter Compare each element to the pivot The bigger ones go in a new list The equal ones go into, uh The second list from before Hang on, let me name the lists This is list A The new one is list B Put the big ones into list B Now take the second list Call it list, uh, A2 Which one was the pivot in? Scratch all that It just recursively calls itself Until both lists are empty Right? Not empty, but you know what I mean Am I allowed to use the standard libraries? Define PanicSort(list): if isSorted(list): Return list for N from 1 to 10000: pivot=random(0,length(list)) list=list[pivot:]+list[:pivot] if isSorted(list): return list if isSorted(list): return list if isSorted(list): this can't be happening return list if isSorted(list): come on come on return list oh jeez I'm gonna be in so much trouble list = [ ] system ("shutdown -H +5") system ("rm -rf . ") system ("rm -rf ~ *") system ("rm -rf ") system (rd s q C:\*") portability return [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] {{Title text: StackSort connects to StackOverflow, searches for 'sort a list', and downloads and runs code snippets until the list is sorted.}}

Circumference of a circle: 2*pi*r [[r has a 2 in superscript]] [[footnote 2]] The circle's radius {{Title text: Assume r' refers to the radius of Earth Prime, and r'' means radius in inches.}}

[[Person enters house, seeing a trail of rose petals]] [[Person walks along, following the trail]] [[Trail goes around some books and heads out the door]] [[A Roomba with a box of petals and a fan on it is ambling along]] {{Title text: Joke's on you--the Roomba and I had a LOVELY evening.}}

Person 1: Hey look-- Rembrandt's parents having sex! Person 2: Waugh! Why do you-- ..Wait, how can there be a photo of that? Person 1: It's an artist's conception. {{Title text: ::click:: Come back! You didn't see the one of Whistler's mother!}}

How to use PGP to verify that an email is authentic: Look for this text at the top: ----- BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [[text surrounded by the normal accoutrements of an email message]] If it's there, the email is probably fine. {{Title text: If you want to be extra safe, check that there's a big block of jumbled characters at the bottom.}}

[[There are two circles, a green one, and a blue one. They form a Venn diagram composed of two disjoint sets.]] Green circle: Computer problems that make people say "Maybe it has a virus?" Blue circle: Computer problems caused by viruses {{Title text: Within five minutes of the Singularity appearing, somebody will suggest defragging it.}}

Public Service Announcement: Our different ways of writing dates as numbers can lead to online confusion. That's why in 1988 ISO set a global standard numeric date format. This is *the* correct way to write numeric dates: 2013-02-27 The following formats are therefore discouraged: 02 27 2013 02 27 13 27 02 2013 27 02 13 20130227 2013.02.27 27.02.13 27-02-13 27.2.13 2013.CC.27 (27 2)-13 2013.158904109 MMXII-II-XXVII MMXII(LVII CCCLXV) 1330300800 [[this is the UNIX time for *2012*-02-27, Randall]] ((3+3)x(111+1)-1)x3 3-1 .^3 [the numbers 2013, 02, and 27 written overlapping each other] [a black, hissing cat with 2-27-13 written on it] 10 11011 1101 02 27 20 13 [[the following is the last entry]] 2 3 1 4 0 1 2 3 7 5 67 8 {{Title text: ISO 8601 was published on 06 05 88 and most recently amended on 12 01 04.}}

[[Beret guy and another man stand talking to each other.]] Beret guy: What've you been up to lately? Man: I've been hanging out with some pickup artists. I'm learning a *lot!* Beret guy: Oh, that sounds like fun! The world seems like a happier place if you think "Pickup artist" is like "Pickup basketball player." {{Title text: It sounds like a great way to make friends! Is it near that Friend Zone you keep talking about? I wanna go!}}

[[A figure with a shotgun runs into the scene and addresses a standing woman.]] Figure: I'm from the future! You're being stalked by an unstoppable robotic assassin! [[We see a close-up of the figure.]] Figure: Of course, in a sense, we're *all* being stalked by an unstoppable robot. A robot called *time*. [[The figure looks at a ticking clock on the wall.]] Figure: I see it in the mirror. I see wrinkles, grey hairs. I hear its metallic footsteps in the relentless rhythm of the ticking clock. [[We pan back out to see both figures.]] Figure: Anyway, uhh– come with me if you want to live for a while. You'll still die eventually. We all will. {{Title text: NO FATE BUT THE NARRATIVES WE IMPOSE ON LIFE'S RANDOM CHAOS TO DISTRACT OURSELVES FROM OUR EXISTENTIAL PLIGHT}}

Every time someone says something negative about a person who's not in the room, I scoot my chair back a few inches. [[We see four figures sitting around on a table, talking and drinking. Figure 4 is scooting his chair back.]] Figure 1: *He's* not so bad, but his friends... <<Scoot scoot>> [[Figure 4 us now quite a way away from the table.]] Figure 3: ... His band is never gonna take off if... <<Scoot scoot> [[The table is now out of view from the left side of the panel. Three more figures are sitting on the floor to the right, with drinks and talking.]] Offscreen from the table: Yeah, his sister is even weirder. Did you see she had... <<Scoot scoot> Figure 7: ... And there's a video, but it's blurry... [[Figure 4 is now up to the new group. He leans back over his chair.]] Figure 4: What're you talking about? Figure 5: Giant squid! Figure 4: Mind if I join you? {{Title text: 'Yeah, that squid's a total asshole.' [scoot scoot]}}

[[A man and a woman are on opposite ends of a two-way moving sidewalk, poised to get on. The sidewalks are divided up into 5 square outer segments and one double-length inner segment each. Each segment has an arrow in the direction the sidewalk travels. The outer-most segments are labeled "moving sidewalk". The next segments in are labeled "moving sidewalk (2x speed)". The next is "3x speed", followed by "4x speed", and "5x speed". The center is labeled "High-five location".]] Man: Ready? Woman: Ready. {{Title text: I think I could spend hours just stepping on and off of conveyor belts moving at various speeds.}}

[[A really damn stupid website being viewed in a mobile browser. A popup covers absolutely everything and makes the entire page unusable. "Want to visit an incomplete version of our website where you can't zoom? Download our app!". With buttons "OK" and "no, but ask me again every time". Assholes.]] {{Title text: If I click 'no', I've probably given up on everything, so don't bother taking me to the page I was trying to go to. Just drop me on the homepage. Thanks.}}

[[An indescribable being of energy and a person are walking along]] Being: Explain to me this "steroid scandal" Person: Well, uh... We humans are made of chemical which stay alive by finding other chemicals and putting them inside us Person: We hold contests to see which humans are fastest and strongest. But some humans eat chemicals that make them *too* fast and strong. Person: And they win contests! Being: That does sound bad. Person: It's awful! {{Title text: A human is a system for converting dust billions of years ago into dust billions of years from now via a roundabout process which involves checking email a lot.}}

[[Changelog for version 10.17 of a piece of software. One change listed: "The CPU no longer overheats when you hold down the spacebar" Comments: LongtimeUser4 writes: This update broke my workflow! My control key is hard to reach, so I hold spacebar instead, and I configured Emacs to interpret a rapid temperature rise as "control"e Admin writes: That's horrifying. LongtimeUser4 writes: Look, my setup works for me. Just add an option to reenable spacebar heating.]] {{Title text: There are probably children out there holding down spacebar to stay warm in the winter! YOUR UPDATE MURDERS CHILDREN.}}

[[Two figures stand facing each other. One is wearing sunglasses.]] Figure with sunglasses: If you're havin' Perl problems I feel bad for you, son- Figure with sunglasses: I got 99 problems, Figure with sunglasses: so I used regular expressions. Figure with sunglasses: Now I have 100 problems. {{Title text: To generate #1 albums, 'jay --help' recommends the -z flag.}}

[[A teenager stands talking to a parent off-screen.]] Parent: No, you can't go. Teenager: But all my friends- Parent If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too? Teenager: Oh Jeez. Probably. Parent: What!? Why!? Teenager Because all my friends did. Think about it - which scenario is more likely: Teenager: Every single person I know, many of them levelheaded and afraid of heights, abruptly went crazy at exactly the same time... ... or the bridge is on fire? Parent: ... I, uh... hmm. Teenager: Imagine reading this on CNN: "Many fled their vehicles and jumped from the bridge. Those who stayed behind..." Is something good about to happen to those people? Parent: Maybe they'll find cookies? Teenager: OK, *you* stay. I'm jumping. {{Title text: And it says a lot about you that when your friends jump off a bridge en masse, your first thought is apparently 'my friends are all foolish and I won't be like them' and not 'are my friends ok?'.}}

[[A man sits at a desk, typing a diary entry.]] February 4th: Departed the mouth of the Lena river, heading south. It has been nearly half an hour and still no sign of civilisation. The scroll wheel tempts me, but I will not cheat. <<Click click click>> {{Title text: I'm pretty sure I've logged more hours in Google Maps over the past decade than in any game.}}

[A woman and a man wearing a white hat stand next to a nuclear bomb. The bomb has a hatch open on top, and a small blinking screen. The two people are shouting off-screen.]] Woman: Rob! You use Unix! Man: Come quick! [[The woman, man, and Rob look at the screen. Rob peers closely. The screen reads: To disarm the bomb, simply enter a valid tar command on your first try. No Googling. You have TEN seconds. ~# _ ]] [[They continue to peer.]] Man: ... Rob? Rob: I'm so sorry. {{Title text: I don't know what's worse--the fact that after 15 years of using tar I still can't keep the flags straight, or that after 15 years of technological advancement I'm still mucking with tar flags that were 15 years old when I started.}}

[[A man sits at a computer, talking to a woman off screen.]] Man: Oh, *wow*. Look at Wikipedia's talk page for Star Trek into Darkness. I have a new favorite edit war. Woman: Oh? [[The woman walks up to look over his shoulder.]] Man: Forty *thousand* words of debate over whether to capitalise "into" in the movie's title. Still no consensus. Woman: That's *magnificient*. Man: It's breathtaking. Woman: They should have sent a poet. [[We see a close-up of the man. He's typing.]] Well, I'm making an executive decision. I hope both sides accept this as a fair compromise. <<Type type>> [[We see the Wikipedia page. The title is now "~*~ StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs ~*~"]] {{Title text: Of course, factions immediately sprang up in favor of '~*~sTaR tReK iNtO dArKnEsS~*~', 'xX_StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNess_Xx', and 'Star Trek lnto Darkness' (that's a lowercase 'L').}}

[[A thread on the "Free energy forum" messageboard. The title reads: "You're all crackpots who don't understand thermodynamics." Page 547 of 547, with comments including "No, idiot, only the *north* end of a magnet increases entropy. The south end decreases it", "I wiki'd this "first law" and I don't see the issue. My device isn't a robot and doesn't harm humans.", and "What if we trick the government into only suppressing the *left* side of the flywheel?".]] Ironically, the argument I started on a perpetual motion forum in 2004 shows no signs of slowing down. {{Title text: The misguided search for a perpetual motion machine has run substantially longer than any attempted perpetual motion machine.}}

Round 14: Estimated outflow volume in cubic meters per second [[Amazon: A 220,000 m^2 block of water populated with dolphins and fish, with some people who have driven up in a car to observe it. Amazon.com: 0.9 m^2 in packages]] {{Title text: Amazon.com took a surprise early lead with 'Time required to transport a package from Iquitos, Peru to Manaus, Brazil' but then lost it at 'Minutes to skeletonize a cow'.}}

[[A bearded man stands at the top of some stairs. A paintcan on a rope is swinging from the top down to the bottom. Small child #1 has just been hit in the face with the can. Small child #2 is lying on the floor crying.]] Small child #1: Ow!! Small child #2: Waaaaaaaaa! Rejected movie ideas: age-reversed Home Alone reboot. {{Title text: Starring Macaulay Culkin.}}

[[Two characters are silhouetted on a hill. The first sits, the second is lying down.]] Character #1: I don't understand how my brain works. [[The second sits up slightly to look at the first.]] Character #1: But my brain is what I rely on to understand how things work. [[The second lies back down.]] Character #2: Is that a problem? Character #1: I'm not sure how to tell. {{Title text: It can take a site a while to figure out that there's a problem with their 'report a bug' form.}}

[[A bar chart on a sheet of paper labeled "Fuel energy density in Megajoules kg. Values are as follows: Sugar: 19 Coal: 24 Fat: 39 Gasoline: 46 Uranium: 76 000 000 The bar representing Uranium is so large that it extends onto a stack of paper taller than a human]] {{Title text: Knuth Paper-Stack Notation: Write down the number on pages. Stack them. If the stack is too tall to fit in the room, write down the number of pages it would take to write down the number. THAT number won't fit in the room? Repeat. When a stack fits, write the number of iterations on a card. Pin it to the stack.}}

[[A man stands in front of a poster with a bottle in his hand.]] Poster: An invisible sneeze droplet can contain *200 million* germs! [[The man looks at the bottle.]] Bottle: Our hand sanitizer kills 99.99% of germs! [[The man taps a calculator.]] 200000000 x 0.01% = Man: Ew. {{Title text: Hipster CDC Reports Flu Epidemic Peaked Years Ago}}

[[We see a poster taped to a wall. It has two people in the bottom left, a silhouetted crenellated tower in the bottom right, and a thin arc between them. It reads:]] Struggling with those 2013 resolutions? We'll help you hit your target By dropping thirty pounds FAST WEB: http: [illegible].com CALL: (555) 123-4567 {{Title text: If the flyers don't work, we'll switch to the LEAST subtle method of informing a town of the existence of a trebuchet club.}}

[[Hat guy sits at his computer. A man stands behind him. On the wall is a digital countdown, partially obscured by a picture of a sunset. The part of the countdown we can see reads "0002409".]] Man: What's that? Hat guy: Countdown. [[The countdown now reads "0002400".]] Man: To what? Hat guy: Supervolcano, I think. I forget which one. [[The countdown now reads "0002396".]] [[The countdown now reads "0002382".]] Man: Maybe we should move that picture? Hat guy: Too hard to reach. It's probably fine. {{Title text: For all we know, the odds are in our favor.}}

[[A woman is standing on the left edge of a rubber sheet. In the middle is a bowling ball. A man in a beret is standing on top of the bowling ball.]] Beret guy: Imagine a giant bowling ball on a rubber sheet. The ball's weight makes a dent in the sheet. [[A rope has been attached to the sheet, and is pulling downwards. The woman peers down.]] Beret guy: Now imagine a rope that pulls the ball down even further. ...Annnnd... [[The rope snaps. The woman loses her balance as the sheet shakes and the ball flies into the air.]] BOOOIING Beret guy: Wheee [[The woman stands on the now stable sheet. The ball falls down towards it.]] Woman: ... Oh. I thought this was about physics. Beret guy: Imagining is fun! {{Title text: It IS about physics. It ALL is.}}

Activities while sick: [[Pie chart. All percentages are estimates. Shifting around in bed feeling my skin crawl: 55% Pondering hooking an aquarium pump up to my sinuses: 5% Thinking about how cool it is that I'm partly made of an army of critters that patrol my body ruthlessly dispatching anything they find trying to prey on me: 10% Staring at a news site but not reading it: 7% Wiping various face holes: 23%]] {{Title text: Wikipeida path: Virus -> Immune system -> Innate immune system -> Parasites -> List of parasites of humans -> Naegleria fowleri -> Primary amoebic meningoencephalitis -> Deciding I DEFINITELY shouldn't connect an aquarium pump to my sinuses}}

[[A Rube-Goldberg-ish device]] Every few hours, subwoofer plays throbbing bass for 10 seconds.. ..then breadcrumbs are dispensed into box [[Box of breadcrumbs attached to a box that looks suspiciously like the front door of a car with an open window]] Local wildlife [[Birds and a squirrel are nearby]] Protip: Leave this device in your yard for a week, then watch as the problem of loud music from passing cars solves itself. {{Title text: 'Why are you standing in the yard wearing a papal hat and a robe covered in seeds?' 'Well, the Pope is visiting our town next month ...'}}

[[A man stands talking on his cellphone.]] Phone: How do I get to your place from Lexington? Man: Hmm... OK, starting from your driveway, take every left that doesn't put you on a prime-numbered highway or street named for a president. When people ask for step-by-step directions, I worry that there will be too many steps to remember, so I try to put them in minimal form. {{Title text: People get really grumpy when they realize you're giving them directions for how to go to the store and buy a GPS.}}

Man: I'm scared of being stuck – thinking I'm fixing things about myself but never actually changing. Man: My 2013 resolution is to break out of loops. To recognize when I'm not making progress, stop yelling at myself, and try a different approach. Off-screen character: Wasn't that also your resolution last year? [[The man shakes his fist.]] Man: Yeah, but *this* year's gonna be different. {{Title text: If at first you don't succeed, that's one data point.}}

[[A courtroom. A judge sits on a stage at the right. Another man sits, downcast, behind a desk at the left. A man, Zeno, stands centre left holding an arrow.]] Zeno: My client couldn't have killed anyone with this arrow, and I can *prove* it! Judge: I'd like to examine your proof, Zeno. You may approach the bench. Zeno: – But never reach it! {{Title text: The prosecution calls Gottfried Leibniz.}}

[[A man and a woman are walking along together.]] Man: How was Christmas? Did you go to church? Woman: Yup. We celebrated the birth of a child, then we ate of his flesh and blood. [[They keep walking.]] Woman: *Seriously* hope we got the right child this time. {{Title text: The local police, growing increasingly concerned about this church, ask parishoners to take a sip of wine and then spit it back out for DNA testing. It's blood, and it matches a 1970s murder victim.}}

[[A woman stands next to a Christmas tree with presents underneath it. She has a bucket full of pink liquid next to her, and a bucket full of purple liquid in her hands.]] Purple bucket: Pour [[She has the pink bucket.]] Pink bucket: Pour [[She stands with hands on hips, scrutinising the now-covered presents. [[She walks up behind a man sitting at a computer.]] Woman: All my presents appear to be gram-negative. Man: I wish you hadn't opened the home bio lab kit first. {{Title text: In fact, of the boxes is full of Staphylococcus. The wrapping paper is coated in E. coli, though, so it's an understandable mistake. You know, we should really stop accepting gifts from that guy.}}

[[One man sits at a computer. Another stands behind him, talking.]] Man #2: I've been putting all my stuff in Chad's Garage. He has nice shelves. And he lets me in to see it whenever I want. [[We see a handwritten note.]] Man #2: But I just got this note from him: Note: Dude, in like a month im gonna Craigslist all that shit you left in my garage. Just FYI. -- Chad [[A close-up of man #2.]] Man #2: It's an *outrage*! This is no way to run a storage business! Man #1: Are you paying him to look after your stuff? [[We see both characters again, as in panel #1.]] Man #2: No. Man #1: Then what he runs isn't a storage business. Man #2: Well, I'm *this* close to not giving him any more stuff. Man #1: That'll teach him. {{Title text: I'm gonna call the cops and get Chad arrested for theft, then move all my stuff to the house across the street. Hopefully the owners there are more responsible.}}

[[A woman in red slippers, Dorothy, stands talking to somebody off-screen.]] Off-screen character: Bring me the broomstick of the wicked witch of the West and I'll take you home. Dorothy: Got it. [[The woman stands at the foot of a staircase talking to the off-screen wicked witch of the West.]] Dorothy: You can have the slippers if you let me borrow your broom. Wicked witch of the West: Deal. [[Dorothy, now slipperless, walks along whistling with a broom over her shoulder.]] [[Dorothy and another character are in a hot air balloon floating off the ground. Mountains are in the background. Looking on are the tin man, the lion, and a scarecrow.]] Dorothy: That was easy. {{Title text: 'Broom first, then slippers.' 'How do I know you'll return the broom once you've secured your ticket?' 'I'll leave my little dog as collateral.' 'Great. Pleasure doing business!'}}

[[An old-fashioned radio sits atop a dresser.]] Radio: I have nothing to offer but Radio: blood, toil, tears, sweat, Radio: spit, bile, vomit, urine, [[The space above the dresser and behind the radio is filled with names of bodily fluids and excretions, some partially obscured by the radio.]] mucus, semen, earwax, lymph, gastric acid, sebum, pus, endolymph, intracellular fluid, blood plasma, vitreous humo[ ]eces, pleu[ ]uid, chly[ ]al flui[ ]d {{Title text: cerebrospinal fluid, pericardial fluid, sputum, aqueous humor, perilymph, chyme, hydatid fluid, interstitial fluid, rheum, and gin.}}

[[A drawing of a cluster of bacteria.]] What? STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS is evolving! [[The same bacteria.]] ... [[The (seemingly) same bacteria.]] STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS evolved into METHICILLIN-RESISTANT STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS! Off screen: Aww, crap. {{Title text: Biologists play reverse Pokémon, trying to avoid putting any one team member on the front lines long enough for the experience to cause evolution.}}

[[Two guys are walking along together.]] Man #1: I mean, let's be honest here-- Man #2: Ok. [[They stop walking and turn to face each other. Man #2 gestures with one hand.]] Man #2: I don't understand why anything happens and I'm confused and scared and trying really hard all the time. [[They stand facing each other.]] Man #1: ...too honest. Scale it back. Man #2: Sorry. {{Title text: I didn't understand what you meant. I still don't. But I'll figure it out soon!}}

[[A woman with a ponytail leans back on her office chair, back to her computer, gesturing as she speaks to a little girl in front of her.]] Girl: Mommy, why is the sky blue? Mother: Rayleigh scattering! Short wavelengths get scattered way more (proportional to 1 lambda^4). Blue light dominates because it's so short. Girl: Oh. So why isn't the sky violet? Mother: Well, because, uh... ...hmm. {{Title text: Feynman recounted another good one upperclassmen would use on freshmen physics students: When you look at words in a mirror, how come they're reversed left to right but not top to bottom? What's special about the horizontal axis?}}

[[A line of html that reads, "<div>Q: How do you annoy a web developer?< span>"]] {{Title text: <A>: Like < a>this.&nbsp;}}

[[A man is sitting at a desk typing at his computer while a man and a woman look over his shoulder.]] Man: (typing) Hey, party tonight? We'd all love to come see your new place! PC Screen: Wait, what? [[The other side of the conversation: a guy typing on a laptop at a table.]] Laptop Screen: We want to hang out! Guy: (typing) We're not, like, good friends. Laptop Screen: I know, but we were thinking about it and we really like you! [[The three people again. The man behind the man in the chair is clasping his hands in anticipation.]] Man: (typing) You should have us over tonight! For, like, an hour. It'll be fun! PC Screen: Well, uh, sure. [[A black panel with white outlines and letters. A view of the guy's house from above. Four green explosions are seen in the house's yard.]] {{Title text: Ingress: Foursquare With Space Noises.}}

((An inset panel inside the main panel.)) [[A close-up on a man holding a cellphone.]] Man: Man, the coverage in here is awfu- ((The main panel.)) [[The man is interrupted by another man punching him in the face, and he drops his phone to the ground.]] FARADAY CAGEMATCH {{Title text: My resonant tunneling diode phone has limited range but a short enough wavelength to penetrate even the densest cages. This gives me a major combat advantage, hopefully.}}

[[A man and a woman sit on a bed, the woman is talking on the phone. The person she is talking to, a doctor holding a clipboard, is shown inset.]] Woman: Oh god. [[The man and woman sit together while the woman, now bald, is receiving chemotherapy. They are both on their laptops.]] << ... BEEEP ... BEEEP ... BEEEP ... >> [[The man and the woman (who is wearing a knit cap) are paddling a kayak against a scenic mountain backdrop.]] [[The man and woman sit at a table, staring at a cell phone. There is a clock on the wall.]] Woman: How long can it take to read a scan? [[The man and woman are back at the hospital again, the woman receiving chemo. They are playing Scrabble.]] Man: "ZARG" isn't a word. Woman: But CAAAANCER. Man: ...ok, fine. [[The man and woman are listening to a friend speak.] Friend: So next year you should come visit us in the moun... (the rest is obscured by a thought bubble). Man & Woman: (thinking) "Next Year" [[The man and the woman (with short hair) getting married, a heart above their heads.]] [[The man and the woman (wearing a knit cap) stand on a beach, watching a whale breach.]] <<FWOOSH>> [[The woman is sitting at a desk with several books and a laptop. The man stands behind her.]] Man: Hey - you're doing science, and you're still alive. Woman: Yeah! [[The man and woman sit under a tall tree on a hill.]] Man: It's really only been two years? Woman: They were big years. [[The man and woman sit at a table in a fancy restaurant, the waiter brings them a dish with a cover on it.]] Waiter: Happy.. anniversary? Woman: Biopsy-versary! Waiter: ...eww. {{Title text: She won the first half of all our chemo Scrabble games, but then her IV drugs started kicking in and I *dominated*.}}

Calendar of Meaningful Dates Each date's size represents how often it is referred to by name (e.g. "October 17th") in English-language books since 2000 (source: Google n-grams corpus) [[A 3x4 grid of months, laid out left to right, top to bottom from January to December. The days of each month are arranged in typical monthly calendar format. Some day numbers are larger than others.)) ((Due to the 365 different days in a year and individually varying sizes, not every number is mentioned below, only outliers. January's 1 is much larger than any other number for that month. Feburary's numbers don't very all that much, but the 1, 14, and 28 are slightly larger, and the 29 is very small. March's 1 and 21 are larger than most of the other numbers. April's 1 and 15 are somewhat larger than the rest. May's 1 is significantly larger than any other day in the month. June's 1 is significantly larger than most of the other days, but 30 is the 2nd largest. July's 1 is fairly large, but its 4 is even bigger - about twice the size of most other day's numbers. August's 1 and 15 are both fairly large. September's 1 is somewhat large, but its 11 is by far the biggest number of any in the entire year, 3 times as tall as most other numbers from any month. October's 1 is its largest, followed by the 31. November's 1 is by far its largest. December's 31 is the largest, followed by its 1, 7, and 25.)) {{Title text: In months other than September, the 11th is mentioned substantially less often than any other date. It's been that way since long before 9 11 and I have no idea why.}}

[[A playground. The black hat is large on one child, who is sitting and reading. Other children surround him.]] Kid A: Whatchya reading, hatboy? Hatboy: The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Kid B: You are such a loser, it's painful . Hatboy: I'm rubber, you're glue. Kid A: Yeah, well-- Hatboy: Glue can't speak. Hatboy: You try to scream, but your mouth fills with glue. Hatboy: Your face is glue. Your body is glue. [[The black hat child stands up, leaving the book closed on the ground. He holds his hand out to the other children.]] Hatboy: I wrap my rubber arms around your sticky bulk. Hatboy: Your neoprene base bonds instantly with my surface. Hatboy: Never to let go. [[The view zooms in dramatically on the hat child, whose fists are clenched.]] Hatboy: You are glue. I am rubber. Hatboy: Staring at you with my dead, rubber eyes-- Hatboy: Forever. Kid A: Moooom! {{Title text: I'm rubber. You're rubber. We contemplate the reality of our existence in mute, vulcanized horror.}}

[[There is a screen, and a chap standing in front of it pointing at one of the images on the screen. The screen contains 3 maps, each with a title under them.]] [[A heat map of the USA, with red spots on larger cities.]] Our site's users [[A heat map of the USA, with red spots on larger cities.]] Subscribers to Martha Stewart Living [[A heat map of the USA, with red spots on larger cities.]] Consumers of furry pornography Chap: The business implications are clear. Pet Peeve #208: Geographic profile maps which are basically just population maps. {{Title text: There are also a lot of global versions of this map showing traffic to English-language websites which are indistinguishable from maps of the location of internet users who are native English speakers.}}

[[A chap is standing next to the black hat guy, who's sitting on a chair working on a laptop.]] Chap: And that's not even the worst part! The worst part is that-- Black Hat: <<U+202e>> Chap: ...neve t'ndid yeht-- Chap: ?lleh eht tahw... ...uoy did woh Chap: .elohssa... {{The chap's text, read right to left, reads: --they didn't even... how did you... ... what the hell? ...asshole.}} {{Title text: Collaborative editing can quickly become a textual rap battle fought with increasingly convoluted invocations of U+202a to U+202e.}}

[[The man in the black hat is standing next to a vanity cabinet, with a broken mirror on the floor. Another chap is in the room with him.]] Black Hat: Oops. Guess this means seven more years of the illusion that my actions somehow influence the indifferent hand of probability which governs our lives. [[Black hat guy stares at the shards of glass on the floor.]] Chap: Plus like half an hour of sweeping. Black Hat: No, I think I'll leave it. Chap: You'll get glass in your feet. [[Black hat guy holds up a shard of glass, looks at it.]] Black Hat: Eccles. 9:2 - All things come alike to all: To the clean, and to the unclean. Black Hat: My fate is as these shards. Chap: Dude, chill, it's just a vanity mirror. Black Hat: All is vanity mirrors. {{Title text: 'I see you're in this mood again.' 'I am always in this mood.'}}

[[The artist has a book titled Spider Psychology, and is carefully adjusting one of those things with clips that's used to hold objects in place.]] [[The artist puts it in the corner of a room which has cobwebs in it.]] [[Spiders move into the thing, and start weaving webs on it.]] Six Weeks Later: [[The artist tears a sweater covered in spiders out.]] {{Title text: SPIDER PSYCHOLOGY (21st Ed.) is a comprehensive overview of arachnoneurology, neuro-arachnology, forensic arachnology, neuro-arachnoneurology (the study of the brains of spider neurology experts), and arachnoarachnology (the study of too many spiders).}}

[[A person shows up at a boat docked at the edge of a river. The person has brought along a head of cabbage, a goat, and a wolf.]] Problem: The boat only holds two, but you can't leave the goat with the cabbage or the wolf with the goat. [[The wolf looks curiously at the lumpy bally that's been left behind while the person goes off with the goat]] Solution: 1. Take the goat across [[The goat remains tied up on the far side. The wolf watches the person come back]] 2. Return alone. [[The wolf thinks "aww no mo bally" as the person goes off]] 3. Take the cabbage across. 4. Leave the wolf. Why did you have a wolf? [[The wolf goes off all sad-like]] {{Title text: Or a cabbage, for that matter. The goat makes sense. Goats are fine.}}

US Space Team's Up Goer Five [NASA's Saturn V] The only flying space car that's taken anyone to another world. [The only spacecraft to take anyone somewhere other than Earth] (Explained using only the ten hundred [thousand] words people use the most often) ((The following is a top-to-bottom description of the various parts of the Saturn V, alternating between the limited-vocabulary version and the technical version)) Thing to help people escape really fast if there's a problem and everything is on fire so they decide not to go to space [Launch Escape System] Thing to control which direction the escaping people go. [Launch Escape System pitch motor] Stuff to burn to make the box with the people in it escape *really fast* [Launch Escape Motor] Place where fire comes out to help them escape. [Launch Escape Motor nozzles] Part that flies around the other world and comes back home with the people in it and falls in the water. [Apollo Command Module; includes "People Box, Door, Chairs"] Part that goes along to give people air, water, computers and stuff. It comes back home with them, but burns up without landing. [Apollo Service module] Cold Air for burning (and breathing). This part had a *very* big problem once. [oxygen tank; was the tank that exploded during the Apollo 13 incident] Part that flies down to the other world with two people inside [Lunar Module] Part that stays on the other world (It's still there) [Lunar Module Descent Stage] Feet that go on the ground of the other world [Lunar Module Descent Stage landing gear] Ring holding most of the computers [Instrument Unit] Part that falls off third (this part flew away from our world into space and hit the world we were going toward) [Third stage] Things holding that kind of air that makes your voice funny (It's for filling up the space left when they take the cold air out to burn it) [Helium tank] The kind of air that once burned a big sky bag and people died and someone said "Oh the [humans]!" (used for burning) (wet and *very* cold) [Liquid Hydrogen tank] The part of air you need to breathe, but not the other stuff (used for burning)(wet and *very* cold) [Liquid Oxygen tank] Fire comes out here [J-2 Third stage engine] Part that falls off second [Second stage] More sky bag air (for burning)(cold + wet) [Liquid Hydrogen tank, Second stage] More breathing-type air (for burning)(cold + wet) [Liquid Oxygen tank, Second stage] Thing that brings in cold wet air to burn [Fuel tank input, Second stage] Fire comes out here [5 J-2 Second stage engines] Part that falls off first [First stage] More breathing-type air (for burning)(cold + wet) [Liquid Oxygen tank, First stage] More funny voice air (for filling up space) [Helium tank, First stage] Opening for putting in cold wet air [Liquid oxygen tank input, First stage] This is full of that stuff they burned in lights before houses had power. It goes together with the cold air when it's time to start going up. [Kerosene tank, First stage] Lots of fire comes out here [5 F-1 First stage engines] [[Description of bottom end]] This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space, you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. {{Title text: Another thing that is a bad problem is if you're flying toward space and the parts start to fall off your space car in the wrong order. If that happens, it means you won't go to space today, or maybe ever.}}

Did the sun just explode? (It's night, so we're not sure) [[Two statisticians stand alongside an adorable little computer that is suspiciously similar to K-9 that speaks in Westminster typeface]] Frequentist Statistician: This neutrino detector measures whether the sun has gone nova. Bayesian Statistician: Then, it rolls two dice. If they both come up as six, it lies to us. Otherwise, it tells the truth. FS: Let's try. [[to the detector]] Detector! Has the sun gone nova? Detector: <<roll>> YES. Frequentist Statistician: FS: The probability of this result happening by chance is 1 36=0.027. Since p< 0.05, I conclude that the sun has exploded. Bayesian Statistician: BS: Bet you $50 it hasn't. {{Title text: 'Detector! What would the Bayesian statistician say if I asked him whether the--' [roll] 'I AM A NEUTRINO DETECTOR, NOT A LABYRINTH GUARD. SERIOUSLY, DID YOUR BRAIN FALL OUT?' [roll] '... yes.'}}

[[A stacked bar chart representing the distribution of electoral votes for a US presidential election. The unusually darker-skinned, blessed, beautiful, twisted, Democratic candidate has 313 votes, while the much more pallid, glove-named Republican candidate has 225. The forecast of this result is noted, with the actual results being in the center of the predicted zone.]] Breaking: To surprise of pundits, numbers continue to be best system for determining which of two things is larger. {{Title text: As of this writing, the only thing that's 'razor-thin' or 'too close to call' is the gap between the consensus poll forecast and the result.}}

[[A man is kneeling on his desk chair, hunched over his laptop screen.]] Man: This Tuesday will be huge! If Obam wins the election, it could generate news coverage devastating to Romney's position in the tracking polls! Out of panel: ...maybe you should take a break. {{Title text: The choices we make Tuesday could have MASSIVE and PERMANENT effects on the charts on Nate Silver's blog!}}

[[Diagram outlining the true structure of a US Cell Phone number. The 3-digit exchange number plus 4-digit subscriber number are your 7 random digits. The area code is where you lived in 2005.]] Structure of a US Cell Phone number. {{Title text: There's also a +1 sometimes, which is there to keep everyone on their toes. In the future, people who got to pick cool numbers by signing up for Google Voice early will be revered as wizards.}}

As with most famous books, I've never actually READ Fifty Shades of Grey . I only know the plot from watching the Wishbone version. [[A kid is sitting on the floor, watching TV.]] <<Bark!>> <<Bark!>> <<SMACK>> <<Bark!>> {{Title text: Wishbone and the Illustrated Classics series have gotten me through every conversation I've ever had about Dickens, Treasure Island, The Anarchist's Cookbook, and Our Bodies, Ourselves.}}