XKCD: It's more than a comic

If I remember what the guest lecture told me in college, if she succeeds then lightning should strike the room and shell gain all the power of her continuing comity.

It's been a while since we saw a "My Hobby."

Hehe.

Sometimes I do wish I had one of these.

Looks complicated.

So... which cables lead into the device?

The ones on the left all have the "input" end of their respective interfaces. (I didn't catch it at first either, don't worry.)

But it comes with a 50-pound sack of male/female adapters so you can switch sides as desired.

I think standard USB has what passes for female in USB, but that's it.

that gas pump's either really small, or everything else is quite oversized.

I'm glad he remembered SCART; as a Yank, I only recently learned about its very existence a few years back, when retrogamers started getting heavy into RGB video signals. I understand it's commonplace as hell in Europe (and Japan has JP21, a cable with the same connectors, but different pin layouts), but you'd never find a SCART cable in the US.

Took me a while to figure out which cable was the RF cable, though (basically the opposite extreme of video quality; RGB being best, RF being worst).

edited 11th Aug '14 6:33:02 PM by ShadowHog

Uh, is any of this going to be on the test? Because I wasn't paying attention. ^_^;;

I'm going to nitpick.

I live in the Houston/Galveston area and the worst storm that everyone remembers other than Ike is the Hurricane of 1900.

But since Randall's data doesn't go back that far, I'm really not ticked.

If there's someone older than 115 years living in your area, I'd like to hear about it.

Considering there are only 34 known in the history of history, it's pretty easy to check the list.

The storm of 1900 is the deadliest hurricane in US history (not the strongest by a longshot) and was the reason the Galveston seawall was built and why many hurricanes afterwards didn't do as much damage to Galveston island.

Well except for Ike, but that storm hit the extreme east tip of the island and pushed water into the unprotected north side.

edited 13th Aug '14 4:17:38 AM by tclittle

It doesn't matter how bad it was, since no one who experienced it firsthand is still alive, and therefore no one "remembers" it in the strict sense. We're not interested in history here.

Maybe I misinterpreted the data here.

Although, wouldn't people technically remember if it's studied in a history class? Although, I don't think they teach kids here anymore until they take their first Texas history course.

edited 13th Aug '14 4:37:33 AM by tclittle

The worst hurricane in recent memory where I live is Irene

What-If #108: Expensive Shoebox. I like the plutonium one.

I like his last suggestion the best, for its sheer cutting-the-knot-ness. Why do all that science when we can just cheat?

I think he gave up too early on the "stick in items that belonged to celebrities for their ebay value" path though. It probably wouldn't beat two billion, but he could definitely break the million mark if he tried.

huh.so putting a bunch of plutonium together is enough for things to get explosive huh.thought it'd take more.

Wasn't compression required as well? I thought atomic bombs needed explosives to "prime" the uranium critical mass inside, not just assemble it...

maybe the extra mass is compression enough?

At a certain mass, the neutron flux is enough to generate a spontaneous fission chain reaction. It won't be a gigantic detonation — as noted, you need compression for that. Whether you get a multi-kiloton blast or "merely" a sizable fireball that leaves behind a pool of molten radioactive slag that would burn its way down to bedrock is largely immaterial to anyone nearby (who would be too busy becoming immaterial to worry about it).

Either way you'd poison the ecosystem for miles around, making the land uninhabitable for hundreds of years, and Shiva help you if the materials reach groundwater.

edited 14th Aug '14 1:54:42 PM by Fighteer