Here’s yesterday’s xkcd web comic published in honor of the New Horizon probe’s Bastille Day fly-by of the (dwarf) planet: See the wiki explainxkcd.com for more information, including jokes you might otherwise miss (or at least I did). by … Continue reading
One more thing about the politics of the historic June 26 Supreme Court decision and then I’ll try to shut up about it for a while: By early May of this year, several weeks before the Supreme Court decision, Gallup … Continue reading
It takes a minute to figure out what you’re looking at on this graph, but once you get the point it’s quite interesting. A title’s horizontal position represents how long ago the story (novel, movie, or whatever) first appeared, with … Continue reading
The XKCD web comic offers not just comic strips but often some quite interesting and informative graphics. Here’s yet another example: The associated title text (what you see if you hover your mouse pointer over the image) reads, “People often … Continue reading
Update: For more information about the graphic, see http://explainxkcd.com/1040/ The XKCD online comic strip frequently has some interesting graphics. Below is one illustrating the relative depths (and some heights) of places on Earth. The depths and ship lengths show are … Continue reading
The eternal debate on when decades start In the comic above, Ponytail accuses White Hat of being pedantic. Hah. I’ll show you pedantic. The 21st century began on the first day of 2001. This has nothing whatsoever to do with … Continue reading
If you’re anywhere near the path of Monday’s solar eclipse in the United States, you’ll want to check out Vox’s eclipse page (link) to get an idea what the eclipse will look like where you live. Just enter your zip … Continue reading
The Boston Public Schools have embraced a bad map projection, specifically Gall-Peters. The so-called Peters projection is promoted as “more accurate,” but this is at best misleading. Even The Boston Globe, in most respects a pretty good newspaper, neglects to … Continue reading
Below is yet another notable installment of the XKCD web comic that is very much worth a look. It addresses the far-too-common misconception that since the world’s temperature has changed before, global warming is no big deal and possibly just … Continue reading
The latest XKCD web comic: Link: http://xkcd.com/1686/ In more or less the same vein, consider this: Below courtesy of YouTube are the first two episodes of the Buck Rogers Saturday matinee serial starring Bust Crabbe, which premiered in 1939, the … Continue reading