XKCD's Randall Munroe Announces What If? 2 (theverge.com) 49
XKCD creator Randall Munroe has announced his latest science book: What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, which will delve into new out-of-the-box questions that Munroe attempts to answer with hard scientific facts and research. From a report: What If? 2 follows 2014's original What If? book -- which itself was borne out of an XKCD spinoff blog -- that saw Munroe examine absurd questions (like whether you could build a jetpack that ran off downward-facing machine guns or if there's enough paint to cover the entire surface of the earth) with rigorous scientific accuracy, accompanied by Munroe's signature stick figure comics. The new volume will continue in What If?'s absurd scientific footsteps, attempting to answer new questions from readers like how you'd ride a fire pole from the moon to Earth, or what would happen if you tried to build a billion-story-high building or solve global warming by having everyone on earth open their freezer doors.
That's more than 6 month away (Score:3, Insightful)
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Given his obsessions over the past year, I hope this is the COVID edition.
XCKD? Fat Finger any editor? (Score:4, Insightful)
But TFS (probably NOT written by the editor) has the correct name: XKCD
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The "Editors" don't need to accept responsibility, they need to DO THEIR JOBS.
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"Adults"? "Responsibility?" You're probably a (ptui!) colonialist white person.
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Silly strawman, we can see the hay poking out of your sleeves.
Who do you think you're fooling, anyway?
Re: XCKD? Fat Finger any editor? (Score:2)
Yeah I know the R word is a bad word amongst the populace of this society, but all of this kind of thinking is doing is destroying society.
Maybe people need to fucking learn to take some "responsibility" for their actions. You will be surprised how much better things will get.
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Just looking at your signature is enough to tell us you have a room temperature IQ. I'd take typos in every single headline in exchange for purging the trolls and right wing shills from this site. Useless cretin.
Room temperature IQ, and still I can speak 3 langueges.
I'd take a wager any day that my English is better than your Spanish.
Re: XCKD? Fat Finger any editor? (Score:2)
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It is in honour of lysdexia.
I have a slight dyslexia myself. One of the reasons I did not choose a career as editor :-P
Thing Explainer (Score:3)
Re:Thing Explainer (Score:4, Informative)
You'd think that given that criticism he'd pursue an actual science education, but no.
. . . He has a degree in physics. . .
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sometimes seems sketchy.
I know this is a bad pun, but you accidentally said something true. If things seem a bit off, that's because Randell himself doesn't actually understand basic science. His own forums have pointed this out to him repeatedly.
You'd think that given that criticism he'd pursue an actual science education, but no. He lives in a strange world where his ability to read and access to wikipedia gets him a lot of praise because he's saying things that his audience agrees with, even when he drifts pretty heavily into pseudoscience.
Find better heroes.
The rage against Randall Munroe is very strange. He has a degree in physics and briefly worked for NASA at Langley. Worst of all, he is actually married to a human female. He draws comics, some of which show liberal sentiments.
The far-right community publishes long screeds refuting some comic or another of his with a fury and long-winded analysis that that makes you sadly shake your head because what they're wetting their pants over a four-panel comic of stick figures.
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"Randell himself doesn't actually understand basic science"
[citation needed]
Is existential enough? (Score:4, Funny)
I loved "Lethal Neutrinos" (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that gravitational waves have been detected, I would love to see "Lethal Gravitational Waves" in the same kind of setting...
Muon Collider Better Example (Score:2)
If you want a better example of lethal neutrino radiation then prototype designs for muon colliders are a far more likely future hazard. Such a collider would have to have insane numbers of high-energy muons in the beams due to the fact that muons decay releasing two neutrinos. This means t
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Lethal neutrinos from a supernova is a silly example...
If that's not your wheelhouse then these books are not for you (which is fine, of course).
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Lethal neutrinos from a supernova is a silly example
The title is "What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions"...
If you want a better example of lethal neutrino radiation then prototype designs for muon colliders are a far more likely future hazard. Such a collider would have to have insane numbers of high-energy muons in the beams due to the fact that muons decay releasing two neutrinos. This means there is a significant danger from the sheer number of neutrinos that are produced.
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The two key differences with a collider vs a SN that amplify its impact are that the beams are highly collimated so the neutrinos are produced in a very tight beam along the arms of the accelerator (assuming an oval design to get a rapid initial acceleration to reduce decays) and not emitted in all dir
Fermi estimation (Score:5, Informative)
the first 'What If' book introduced me to Fermi estimation, which I've grown to love. It's an excellent tool for a quick approximation of how large a problem is or how plausible a claim is.
Re:Fermi estimation (Score:5, Insightful)
As a physicist, I understand the value of being precise. I also recognize there are instances where precision isn't required. Plenty of questions can be settled with a Fermi estimate.
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At least these people are willing to openly say that they like XKCD. They don't hide behind an AC posting talking smack just to talk smack.
Estimation Essential (Score:4, Interesting)
Couldn't hack a real education, eh?
Actually, if you could have hacked a real education then you would understand the value of estimation. When evaluating potential explanations for phenomena we see in data you almost always run a quick back-of-the-envelope estimation to see if the explanation is plausible BEFORE you do the long, detailed and far more precise calculation. If you don't do that you'll waste a lot of time doing detailed calculations for things that don't work.
The ability to make quick estimates, particularly in physics, is critical.
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Couldn't hack a real education, eh? Here's a clue: Don't trust whatever the hell is in that guys books. Get a proper text book and work through it start to finish. If that's too hard for you, well, I can see why you'd want pop crap like this to make you feel like you're an expert. Just be very keenly aware that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about 100% of the time. (This isn't that far removed from the conspiracy nuts drinking their own urine. Morons pretending they know something.)
If you still want to pretend you're an expert, make a badly drawn comic strip about "sciency things" and millions of morons will sing your praises. That's all without any actual knowledge or insight!
how plausible a claim is
Oh, wow, you *really* got fed a load of bullshit. I'm sorry about that.
So did this guy. Sad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Couldn't hack a real education, eh? Here's a clue:
OK, now look up Fermi.
Good on him. (Score:2)
Probably one of my top 10 claims to fame is he used one of my questions in his first book.
But what he does takes a hell of a lot of energy and I always wondered how long he could keep it up. He hasn't updated his web site more than once a year for a half decade now. Glad to see him back up on the horse.
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And the other nine? (Score:2)
Probably one of my top 10 claims to fame is he used one of my questions in his first book.
Apropos of nothing, what are the other nine?
And if the XKCD question is not #1, what is?
September 13? (Score:3)
Best strategy is for me to forget I ever saw this and then be pleasantly surprised when the reviews start being written.
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Who says he's explaining anything to me? Your use of the word comedic in quotes says it all, I think. Random page from "How To" (1): using butterflies to send someone the internet. Incongruous juxtaposition. Sorry if that's too tried-and-true for you.