XKCD: It's more than a comic

I remember being in the kitchen, eating my breakfast. I was... 10 or 11. I wanna say 10, but I was 11. My mum was watching the tiny telly we have in the kitchen.

Apparently Einstein's "sticks and stones" quote went on for longer.

Does anyone know the original context of that quote?

According to Wikiquotes it's from a 1949 interview with Alfred Werner, though there are earlier attributions.

There is also a logical problem with that quote: if after WW III civilisation was destroyed to the point of being reduced to fighting with sticks and stones, they would hardly have the organisatorial or political wherewithal to start another World War, if they were even aware of each other to such an extent that you could call it a World War.

Otherwise, we might as well call the Peloponnesian War a World War.

How much of a world war could it have been if it only involved one country?

Greece wasn't "one country" at the time.

Then again, if World War III reduces mankind to handful of people living in a cave, any fight between them could count as a world war.

Actually, WW I was fought in Europe and its immediate surroundings (as well as the USA being involved near the end), and we still call it a World War. So technically, any war that involves most of a given civilization can be called World War from the point of view of that particular civilization.

Actually, there were also hostilities in the Middle East (involving the Ottoman Empire), in Africa and in the Pacific (involving the European powers' colonies), and India voluntarily offered support to the British.

edited 30th May '16 1:01:22 PM by Aetol

Japan also participated, mostly to get a slice of Germany's colonies in Asia. They even sent a fleet to the Mediterranean to help the Allied cause.

Being a colony, I don't see how India could have "volunteered" anything. Wouldn't they have been obliged to lend support by the empire?

Maybe the British would have forced them to help anyway, but apparently they didn't have to. The Indians believed that being helpful would help them secure their independence in return.

Lets fight a war over who gets to name the wars.

British colonial rules were weird, I'm not sure when it came into effect but before the Empire ended each Dominion (which was different from direct colonial subjects) got to choose if it went to war or not and made its own decisions on a lot of matters

The British Dominions gained control over their own foreign policy by the Statute of Westminster in 1931, and it didn't include India. In WWI, all the Dominions became involved in WWI automatically when Britain declared war. In WWII, the Dominions (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, mainly) were free to make their own choices, but India was not.

Map Age Guide. This one's confusing. :S

This is something I relate to. I'm a geography nerd annoyed by how many schools and libraries don't update their world maps. (South Sudan became a country in 2011, get with the program.) So I'll always inspect them and estimate what year they're from.

I've never been this in-depth though.

I love it, but especially over on the right side where there are some future gags thrown in. For example, I am curious about what happens in 2021 that results in Colorado becoming a radioactive zone with spiders.

Oh, and the middle path leads you to the conclusion that you're in Middle-Earth, Narnia, a few other fictional nations, or holding a cat instead of a map.

edited 1st Jun '16 7:44:41 AM by Fighteer

Don't worry, it could be worse. At least you don't have a globe that still has the Soviet Union.

I have two world maps in my room from 2004 and 2008. I've drawn corrections on them with a sharpie

I like how the first question is Istanbul or Constantinople.

As someone with 5 globes I love this, I've many times tried to date maps, though I go for much more precise dates then what the chart offers, there are some city and province name changes that one can use for map dating, I think one I used once was somewhere in Canada.

Being from middle Europe I miss the changes in the Yugostlavian region during the '90s—early '00s.

At first, you might think it narrow-minded that the only animals you could possibly be holding that the flowchart accounts for are cats and seagulls. But then you think about it a bit more, and you realize that cats and seagulls are really the only animals you could actually mistake for a map.