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XKCD Author's Unpublished Book Has Already Become a Best-Seller
destinyland writes "Wednesday the geeky cartoonist behind XKCD announced that he'd publish a new book answering hypothetical science questions in September. And within 24 hours, his as-yet-unpublished work had become Amazon's #2 best-selling book. 'Ironically, this book is titled What If?,' jokes one blogger, noting it resembles an XKCD comic where 'In our yet-to-happen future, this book decides to travel backwards through time, stopping off in March of 2014 to inform Amazon's best-seller list that yes, in our coming timeline this book will be widely read...' Randall Munroe's new book will be collecting his favorite 'What If...' questions, but will also contain his never-before published answers to some questions that he'd found 'particularly neat.'"
http://xkcd.com/1102/
That's the comic, not What If? - which is all about things like how much power you'd need to illuminate the shadow of the moon or what happens to the Earth's geography if you drain the oceans of water.
I'm not smart enough for some of the XKCD strips...
I wished he scientifically answered the following hypothetical questions:
1. What if patents were abolished.
2. What if copyright were abolished.
3. What if programmers ran Congress.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
You about done being bitter about somebody else's success?
I write professional videogame reviews! http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/
I would love to hear how that was supposed to work. Were human beings programmed to irrationally love things created by people called Randall Munroe, or are you arguing that he owns some sort of mind-control ray?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The True Scotsman called, he wants you to know that you're a terrible human being.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You're right: you don't get it. But don't worry about it.
/. )
Is XKCD overhyped and overrated? Sure it is... like pretty much everything else with a certain level of popularity in the geek crowd. Even so, I often find XKCD funny, sometimes thought-provoking or profound, and generally interesting. And it's often applicable to everyday situations (hence the many "oblig XKCD" references here on
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
For productivity reasons, you should have constructed your critic without details, so you could reuse the reply in many other cases.
For example: "I don't like it. Therefore, it's stupid. And people who like it are stupid too."
Remember kids, don't fail, or you'll have to spend your time complaining about people who didn't.
The fact that it was badly-drawn (*) and not actually that clever in itself- so much as giving its oft-maligned (**) target audience an excuse to feel superior to others- didn't seem to matter.
As I once commented elsewhere:-
Compare that to User Friendly. Aside from its "moderately-promising 14-year-old still showing too much influence from the Teach-Yourself-Cartooning book" drawing style, User Friendly has always relied on its geek-friendly subject matter and viewpoints to flatter the audience and obscure the fact that it's neither creative nor funny.
Here's a good example:-
http://ars.userfriendly.org/ca...
There's nothing creative about this. The "news" was a real-life item reported in many tech outlets about a year back. The strip itself is just a lazy excuse to let the audience laugh again at that story- it adds nothing to it except an audience-pandering but uncreative aside.
xkcd has a long way to go before it gets *that* lazy.
(*) XKCD isn't exactly detailed in the artwork stakes either, but that comes across as an intentional style, whereas User Friendly just looks like a wannabe of better-looking cartoons.
(**) This is before it was (allegedly) cool to be a geek.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Just about anything good eventually becomes over-hyped.
Actually I don't think anything is described as exactly as good or as bad as it actually is. People either rain praise on something they like, or trash talk something they don't, and it's usually overdone.
Personally, I like xkcd. Yes, it's not consistently ground shattering. The average day to day comic tends to range somewhere from meh to mild chuckle. But for something you get 3 days a week, that's actually pretty damn good.
Then occasionally he goes all out and actually _does_ build something that lives up to hype, which then of course itself gets overhyped like everything else, so he really can't win.
Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try.
Exactly, he's just trading on his name. He would never have gained that many readers if he hadn't already been famous for... er... I'll get back to you.
Will that work if I change my name to Randall Munroe? Why is his name special?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Oh my god, it's you! Hey everyone, it's the guy whose opinion is also objectively true!
I've got a list of questions I've been saving for you, now where did I put it...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
And What If? follows Mythbusters in the sense that once the question is answered, he keeps pushing until something blows up.
Conjecture: everything that has been told by Xkcd has already been said at least once by someone on Slashdot prior to it.
By the number of "obligatory xkcd" posts we see a lot of what is said on Slashdot has already been said on xkcd. .... this could be circular!
If only Slashdot's comment form allowed input of stick-figures, it might be the case that we wouldn't need Xkcd...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I'm Spartacus.
Exactly. He build his brand off being famous for being a Physics undergrad at a small state school in south east Virginia. Yeah, a regular Paris Hilton he is. It is easy to be successful when you have that kind of background. /s
Hell - even I have my off-days when I don't manage to do any earth shattering. I am my biggest fan, but even so, I'm not always amazed at myself.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If only Slashdot's comment form allowed input of stick-figures, it might be the case that we wouldn't need Xkcd...
------->O
|Fuck| \|/
| You | |
------ / \
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
That is some pretty wide open conjecture. I have personally been reading and commenting on slashdot for more than a decade and I have skipped or missed entire articles full of comments. Slashdot has contained comments on everything from Natalie Portman to Hot Grits.
Conjecture: Most everything said on slashdot today has already been said by someone on Slashdot prior to it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Slashdot has contained comments on everything from Natalie Portman to Hot Grits.
As I understand it, there is nothing between Natalie Portman and Hot Grits. Kinda like Brooke Shields and her Calvins.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
You swear a lot for someone with such a tiny head...
no, I'm Spartacus
I'm Spartacus.
no, I'm Spartacus
We are Spartacus? What happend to Legion?
which conveniently leads to my main worry about the book - how's he going to get image hovertext on paper?
People with tiny heads tend to swear a lot.