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xkcd To Be Released In Book Form
History's Coming To writes "xkcd creator Randall Munroe has revealed on his blag that the acclaimed stick-figure comic will be produced in real dead-tree book form. Fantastic news for all fans of comedy, maths, science, and relationship screw-ups — especially given that the book will be sold in aid of the charity 'Room To Read.' Rumors that the book contains a joke in the ISBN remain unconfirmed." The NY Times article that Munroe links (registration may be required) is from April of this year, and I am amazed that this community didn't note the story at that time. The book will be published by breadpig, which was created by Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of reddit.
Of course, Randall has to support himself and repay student loans, as he doesn't actually have a job. His only real job was working at NASA for a few years before and after graduating. He wrote somewhere that he wasn't launching rockets or anything, but rather just writing little programs when something unusual needed to be calculated. Something like that. I raged at the alt text to http://www.xkcd.com/564/ because he's never been a physics researcher. He just writes a web comic and lets his worshippers give offerings...
It's kdawson. The summary somehow has to create outrage and be worded in needlessly inflammatory language.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
From TFA: The title text will appear where the tiny copyright notice would appear on a traditional strip.
The carbon content of paper is around 40%. Therefore, each paperback takes... what, maybe a fourth to a half a kilo? out of the atmosphere, for the duration of the lifespan of the book... which I'm sure is probably measured in decades.
http://www.reddit.com/search?q=xkcd+nytimes
Yes, we noticed on Reddit and talked about it when it was NEWs.
The latest Slashdot meme.
How does XKCD work as a book? Half of the joke is only seen when you hover over the cartoon. Sometimes the material is only understanable if you happen to understand the context, usually some obscure subject in mathematics, science, or tech.
Brings up a good point. Just how are you supposed to link to a book? I can see it now, There's an xkcd for that (page 30).
The standards compliant way.
Randall attaches a text comment to each comic that appears as a tooltip when you leave your cursor sitting on the image for a few seconds. It's almost always directly related to the comic, although it may or may not be directly related to the story presented.
--- Mr. DOS
http://xkcd.com/55/