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XKCD Author's New Unpublished Book Becomes Scientific Best-Seller
An anonymous reader writes: XKCD cartoonist Randall Munroe will be publishing a new book in November, but it's already become Amazon's #1 best-seller in two "Science & Math" subcategories, for mechanics and scientific instruments. Inspired by a cartoon describing NASA's Saturn V rocket as "the up-goer V", Randall's created a large-format collection of blueprints describing datacenters, tectonic plates, and even the controls in an airplane cockpit — using only the thousand most common English words. "Since this book explains things, I've called it Thing Explainer," Randall writes on the XKCD blog, trying to mimic the humorously simple style of his book. Randall's previous book of scientific hypotheticals — published one year ago — is still Amazon's #1 best-selling book in their "Physics" category, ranking higher than Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time."
"Technology for Pakleds" (they are smart)
http://xkcd.org/
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
If you want to cultivate a positive image for science, you'll want to cultivate fans. They'll always outnumber the real scientists. The reason is rather simple: popularity -idealized- determines policy. So you want as many fans as possible for things concerning ecology (fossil fuels, global climatology), economy (less recessions, better investments, smarter spending savings debt management), immunology (Jenny McCartney is merely the tip of the festering social pus that is willful ignorance), technological advancements (take some time to compare what NASA is funded with per tax dollar vs. how much the solutions of space problems had saved in normal R&D when they release the data for free constantly without having pay patents). And so on.
I agree with Maddox about how annoying fans are versus real science; but only someone blind cannot see the advantage of having popular (and populist) opinion in your corner.
A book written in only a thousand words, I thought, would be cool for people learning English. But it's not. The whole thing is shot through with Millennial cultural references, so much as to make it incomprehensible. Hell, I can barely understand parts of the sample page. People who had different life experiences from the author as well as non-native English speakers will be totally lost. Sad, I had such high hopes.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
There's lots of high quality, popular stuff. xkcd isn't.
"... but I won't go into detail about what that is, mainly because if you start liking it I'll have to find something even more obscure to like so I can maintain my superiority!"
Nerd hipsterism is a sad thing to behold.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, taking you seriously for a moment here: You've been double-bluffed.
Randall knows that the methodology is flawed. He's posting it as a self-referential deconstruction of the methodology that led to false beliefs, intentionally using junk science to discredit non-science secure in the knowledge that his science savvy readers will understand this and admire the inherent contradiction in what he's posting.
None of which detracts from the sheer common bloody sense insight that he's included for the benefit of those that missed the nuance above.
Somehow you fell through the cracks. Perhaps you should read a different web comic.