XKCD: It's more than a comic

Cool.

now we just need Black Hat guy to start using shoebox nukes.

The check idea is not good because the value of a check is limited by the bank account's ability to honor it.

In answer to an earlier question, nuclear weapons use conventional explosives to turn sub-critical masses into supercritical masses. For any greater detail, I refer you to Google.

Also, consider the following:

http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/f/What-Is-The-Most-Expensive-Element.htm

edited 14th Aug '14 5:27:05 PM by Catbert

Looks like Black Hat Man updated his actuarial table.

What happened to the penguins ?

He killed them, obviously. Although his apology makes it seem like it might have been an accident.

He assuredly wouldn't be trying to apologise (naturally in a Black Hat Guy way) if he had decided to do it on purpose.

#1409

I haven't laughed out loud at an XKCD strip in a while.

At least she didn't get access to the universal console and typed "sudo rm -rf /".

http://www.thehugoawards.org/2014/08/2014-hugo-award-winners/

"Time" won Best Graphic Story!

Over my head, beyond the basics.

There's something beyond the basics? It's highlighting from a group (table "people") those that meet her search criteria. And then she drops the table and the contents (the people) are erased.

Magic from Technology.

Pretty darn funny. A tool like that would be pretty scary even if they only had SELECT priveleges. 8p

"California"

Cool! You can actually see the yearly cycle of heat: starting in 2000, they have two years of wet conditions, followed by three years of dry conditions, then two wet, then three dry, then two wet and then three more dry, right up to 2014 when everything goes crazy.

What-If #109: Into the Blue

This one gives us an apocalyptic scenario, but it's defined as such in the premise, so not quite as interesting. What is interesting is the method for calculating the odds of hitting something if you aimed an infinitely strong laser randomly into the night sky. And of course the joke at the end.

Would there be a significant difference between this question and if you were instead shooting an arbitrarily destructive projectile in a random direction? I assume that gravity becomes a factor, but by how much?

For the sake of the joke it seems that Randall is ignoring gravity, gravitational lensing, and travel time at the speed of light.

Lots of interesting links back to former What-Ifs and XKCD's.

That last picture: It still boggles my mind that dwarf planets are somehow not planets. Would anyone here tell a real-life dwarf they're not human?

If dwarf planets are planets, then there are actually more than 9 planets. IIRC the reason they call Pluto a dwarf planed is that they found objects of similar size in the asteroid belt. So if they call Pluto a planet, they should call several other ones a planet too.

I want 18 planets now.

There! Are! NINE! Planets!

The whole "Pluto isn't a planet" thing has gotten a lot of people really mad. Who knew that we as a people, who watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo unironically, could get so offended by astronomy?

edited 21st Aug '14 6:27:14 AM by Fighteer

Pluto is not the same sort of object as Mars or Jupiter, but then again neither are Mars and Jupiter the same sort of object as each other. We've got 4 rockballs, 4 gas blobs, and a few thousand comet-esque things floating around. The word "planet" doesn't have any special meaning in the first place. When the term was first coined it just meant anything that wasn't a "fixed star".

Also, Mars' "moon" is just a stupid rock that isn't big enough to be spherical. And I guess the moons of the gas giants could also be called rockballs?

edited 21st Aug '14 6:43:46 AM by Clarste