Toby, Dave & Ian Explain XKCD

In the world of academic research, the disconnect between the work you do on a hypothetical product for a paper and the actual creation of a consumer-ready product is vast and well documented (especially by this comic strip).

The Author finds this disconnect to be particularly humorous, as he has spent much of his adult life commenting on it. Rather than duplicating much of his previous work, he has decided to summarize his findings in a chart. This will, hopefully, conclude his multi-year study into the difference between academia and business.

A hovering male and a female verbally deduce that a beret wearing man is an asshole since he is driving an SUV, which they believe is bad for the environment. Upon hearing this, the beret man exchanges his SUV for a hybrid vehicle, in the hopes that this new vehicle will relinquish him of the “asshole” title. But, humorously, this new vehicle still garners him ridicule, this time for appearing “smug.” The man then exchanges his car for a second time, but now for a large tractor - which he uses to to kill the two people who have been mocking his vehicle choices.

The Author, sitting at a desk by himself, lists the high-level layers of abstraction describing the inner-workings of his computer as he is using it to perform a task.

At this point, the Reader can barely contain his excitement over the large quantity of technical nomenclature being displayed before him. He is excited about the things he is aware of, and is opening new tabs in Firefox to look up those that he isn’t. As the Reader’s excitement is rising, the Author reveals that the task requiring this incredible amount of technology is the viewing of a humorous cat video. The Reader is now joyous. He too has seen videos of cats on the internet, and can now relate to the Author. The Author is just like him, they are best friends. The peak of excitement approaches.

In a triumphant finale, the Author elevates himself (and the Reader) to God-like status for commanding such a complex machine to carry out frivolous tasks. With this the Reader suddenly reaches an explosive climax with hot threads of excitement and joy spilling across his keyboard. He is now satisfied.

In classic XKCD style, this Work details the processes of a scientifically literate individual trying to explain the finer points of the theory and/or process to a scientifically illiterate individual (in this case, a philosophy major with a goatee). In this case, the Author rails against people who do not understand special relativity and yet try to refute it based of intuitive notions such as “a racecar on a train” both moving at relativistic speeds.

In an unusual decision, a less abstract joke is tagged on the end of the comic to make it more accessible to those readers who have not had this experience, positing the absurdity of the “President of Physics.” The goatee-d man’s beligerent tone helps to reinforce perception of general disdain that the Author feels Philosophers who dare venture into the realm of science richly deserve.

The two characters are concerned because they have just procreated and do not know how to be parents. One of them suggests that they “just do what comes naturally.” In a humorous turn of events, what “comes naturally” is to fornicate - leading to yet another child they cannot properly raise.

It’s also funny that the last panel says “Soon:”, even though making a baby takes approximately 9 months.

It appears that the Author has been contemplating adulthood and the responsibilities involved with supporting a family. We may see a lot more of these in the near future, followed by the abrupt cancelation of the comic.

In a departure from the normal XKCD format, this Work presents a movie proposal in the vein of blockbuster, scientifically-illiterate “disaster porn” movies whose plots are a thinly veiled excuse for massive displays of special effects. The most recent example of this type of movie would be “2012”, in which the nature of elementary particles suddenly changes just for the Earth’s interior, thus causing a collapse of the entire planet.

The 2003 movie, “The Core” [imdb], a quintessential movie in this style, used the premise of a scientific experiment to stop the earth’s core to motivate a special effects illustrated romp to the center of the molten earth. This and other similar movies are practically redolent with classic 90’s and 80’s movie stereotypes such as:

1. The “good scientist”, who is very humble and grounded, typically dressed like a truck driver or sales clerk at The Gap. During the 90’s it became popular to cast this character as a woman, but we will use the masculine pronoun for the sake of expediency. He typically works by seeming random acts of inspiration rather than a more realistic and focused process. Typically such characters are proposing a theory or explanation that is poorly accepted by the mainstream scientific establishment. He is inevitably always right.
2. The “bad scientist”. Elitist, smug, and typically dressed like a salesman from The Men’s Warehouse. His (it is almost never a woman filling this role) primary role in the plot is to oppose the “good” scientists or technicians by claiming “things are impossible.” He frequently demands proof and is considered an asshole for being skeptical. He almost never meets a good end in the movie, unless he has a profound epiphany and starts accepting things on faith and trust rather than fact and science.
3. The “doer.” Typically a character that is closely connected to the good scientist, the doer is the only way the plot drags itself ponderously through its course. Usually the only character who can deal with any non-scientific crisis, the doer and his cohorts are the only physically competent people in the entire universe. There is often a mistake or black event in the doer’s past that brings artificial conflict to the character. In “The Core”, the doer was Hilary Swank’s character, Rebecca Childs.
4. The Bomb. It is almost inevitable that a nuclear bomb is set off in these movies, typically for positive effect. In “The Core”, nuclear bombs were used to restart the spin of the Earth’s core.

The Author proposes a movie whose name puns the increasingly controversial practice of turning clocks to match the expected dawn hours with the changing daylight hours as the seasons change. An inexplicable scientific dilemma (the Sun’s fusion is nowhere near running out, and the idea that it could anytime soon is almost entirely ruled out by modern physics), leads to a group of “doers” taking a ship to the Sun to presumably launch a nuclear bomb into it, thus adding a tiny fraction of the star’s energy in presumably “the perfect place” calculated by the good scientist to save the human race.

Throughout the course of this Work, the Author seems unable to “play it straight” and places jabs against the genre in each panel. For example, the good scientist (see note below) points out the “Sun’s fusion is failing” to the immediate resigned out-of-character commentary by assistants. Likewise it is pointed out that a team of the “hottest” astronauts should be the ones assembled, which is an observation that it is rare that astronauts look like movie models whose profession is being attractive.

The Work culminates in a panel which shows a proposed movie poster, which follows the typical “people walking away purposefully” meme which so pervades action movie promotions in the 1990’s. Not only is the title a pun as described, but the tagline “Never Fall Back” puns on the cliché of war and disaster drama movie tag lines, which frequently expound the indomitable spirit of survival and stubbornness that such movies speak to.

This comic strip references one of the newer features on Facebook.com, which offers that you “reconnect” with your friends on the site in a variety of ways. This feature has garnered heavy criticism from users who feel that a website need not instruct them on the details of their social or love lives.

The Author, seen here as a male sitting in front of a computer, is presented with a series of increasingly specific Facebook reconnect messages. These messages first urge him to reconnect with a female named Susie. From there they become more graphic, explaining in detail why he should sleep with her and even going so far as to suggest that Facebook.com watch the fornication via webcam.

The important part part of this comic is the Author’s conflicted responses to the website’s suggestions. While he desires to have sex on this particular female, he worries to great lengths about hurting her frail emotions. This conflict between natural urges and emotional sensitivity is indicative of the self-inflicted emasculation found in many male geeks. The cause for this emasculation is a natural reaction to the combination of a strong desire for sexual activity and a lack of confidence, forcing the male to cater to the emotional needs of the female in order to touch her naked body.

In a parody of the film “Roger & Me” by Michael Moore, in which Moore attempts to meet with the CEO of GM (Roger Smith), we see two characters attempting to meet with Stephen Odell, the CEO of Volvo. When they finally do meet him they point out that the name of his company, Volvo, sounds like “vulva,” the external genital organs of a female.

Most premises for the Author’s comic strips fall into one of two categories: “geek joke or concept transposed into real life” or “how geeks handle life situations differently.” Amazingly, this particular strip’s premise fits into both of these categories. This “mashup” of two well known, battle-tested concepts is sure to delight the reader to the point of asthma-inducing fits of laughter.

Now, for an explanation. One of the most commonly used geek-recognition joke is a quote from the movie Spinal Tap: “these go to eleven.” The character, Nigel, is referencing the power of his amplifier, which has knobs that go to 11 rather than the standard 10. This movie-quote-turned-cliche is often used by geeks to describe how great or powerful something is in a humorous fashion. It can be related to the usage of the number 42, which is a reference to the book A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Cliches such as these are an easy and guaranteed way to cause a group of geeks to laugh hysterically.

The second part of this comic is an attempt to answer the question, “what if this fictional situation happened in real life, and how would geeks and non-geeks respond to it?” As we can see, the “normal person” responds with the common sense question that makes the joke funny. The engineer thinks of it more technically and becomes frustrated. The “smart engineer” capitalizes on the situation by offering to make a knob that goes to 12, a task that would require no work, for money.

A man wakes up confused in a room with a laptop. Following a loud, wind-like sound the man loses the ability to speak which causes him to panic even further. We then see him run in-place and fall over. The camera then pans out, revealing two characters on the outside of a chamber that is holding the panicking man. It is then revealed that the man inside the chamber is a physics professor, and the two other characters had put him in a frictionless vacuum to see how he would work.

The joke here is that physics professors very commonly use a “frictionless vacuum” as the environment for problems and experiments given to their students. This is done to greatly simplify the work needed to solve the problem, as one can ignore the forces of friction and air resistance.

It’s also funny that they murdered a person.