Are you really telling us that your surveys can't handle checkboxes, or was this a meta joke about "checkbox" not being in the top ten hundred english words?
Randall Munroe spoke to The Reg again. We're habit-forming that way
In just over a decade Randall Munroe has become firmly established and it’s safe to say adored as the author of xkcd. Since starting in LiveJournal and moving to xkcd.com on 1 January 2006, Munroe has published over 1,600 webcomics which continue to amuse and enthuse netizens. His stick-driven dioramas offer glib observations …
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 12:30 GMT smartypants
New names for things...
Is fascinating.
...sometimes obfuscates.
E.g. 'very tall road' didn't do it for me, as it's the going-over-something-elseness of a bridge rather than the tallness of it which I think about, e.g. when crossing the millenium bridge.
...sometimes elucidates:
E.g. 'Machines for burning cities' is far more apt than 'nuclear bomb'. It makes it harder to be in favour of them! (Even if you define them as 'Machines that could burn cities if they were used but we hope we don't have to')
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 13:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: New names for things...
I agree that trying to describe things with a minimal vocabulary is interesting. If you like that sort of thing you might want to try playing with Toki Pona.
One way in which Toki Pona differs from English is that compounds are not ambiguous as they are in English: "heavy metal power building" could be parsed in 5 different ways: ((heavy metal) power) building "a building relating to power that is characterised by heavy metal", ..., heavy (metal (power building)) "a power building that is metal and heavy". Yet Toki Pona doesn't use any linguistically implausible devices (so no spoken brackets). Yes, it's a minority interest, but a worthy one, I feel...
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Wednesday 25th November 2015 12:58 GMT Paul Slater
Re: New names for things...
"compounds are not ambiguous as they are in English..."
This is not entirely true. Adjectives have an order in English so that we we would expect (for instance) a big bouncing baby to be a child that is of a good healthy size rather than one that is able to bounce quite high.
http://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/adjectives/order-of-adjectives/
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 12:41 GMT Martin an gof
Nothing beats paper
The Up-Goer Five is printed out on three sheets of A4 (the printer took a hefty hit of ink) and is stuck on the wall in the outside loo, alongside the words of The Monarchs Song (Horrible Histories), maps of Wales, posters of wildlife and other things to keep you educated while... doing what needs to be done.
Pre-ordered the book some time ago :-)
in a move seemingly at odds with the web community, Munroe has produced a book – yes: a piece of analogue, physical, old-school technology
It's not his first - there are numerous poster-size printouts of the illustrations, a book of the comic and The What If Book . I have the latter but haven't done more than skim it yet - it's intended to be a Christmas present and I don't want to deface it!
He's not the only one to cross over from web to physical, I've also recently received Sydney Padua's gloriously well-produced The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage which is a somewhat involving read, but complements the webcomic very nicely.
M.
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 13:52 GMT Dave 126
No, pops, it's too risky! For all we know, there could be cubes in there the size of gorillas!
- The Simpson's Tree House of Horror, Homer3
Paralleling Mr Munroe's career path, a great number of The Simpson's writers hold maths or physics degrees: http://mathsci2.appstate.edu/~sjg/simpsonsmath/degrees.html
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 20:56 GMT allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Re: There is a version in German
Well, that's compund languages for you.
BTW: male "Lebensabschnittgefährte", female "Lebensabschnittgefährtin"
And if your Finnish is up to it, you can really knock yourself out, try atomiydinenergiareaktorigeneraattorilauhduttajaturbiiniratasvaihde for size...
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 14:04 GMT Phil W
Biannual
Isn't biannual when you like both normal years and leap years?
I'm surprised it took Randall much time or discussion on the difference and correct usage of biannual and semi-annual for meetings that occur twice a year, though.
Bi is a Latin derived prefix meaning two.
Biannual means twice a year, this could be a meeting in January and a meeting in Jube or a meeting in February and a meeting in December. The gap between them is unimportant, if there's two a year it's biannual
Semi is a Latin derived prefix meaning half.
Semi-annual means half a year, this is a meeting every six months. While there will of course still always be two meetings in a year, they will always be 6 months apart if it is Semi-annual.
If you're bilingual you speak to languages, you're semi-lingual yo spe ha a lang.
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 14:20 GMT Bc1609
Re: Biannual
So, semi-annual meetings are by definition also biannual, but biannual meetings are not necessarily semi-annual. Of course, biannual can also mean biennial, which can mean either "once every two years" or "lasting for two years", which would mean that biannual has three possible meanings, and semi-annual two, if the pattern is followed. Perfectly simple.
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 14:20 GMT roytrubshaw
Re: Biannual
Isn't biannual when you like both normal years and leap years?
Chortle!
<pedant>There was much discussion on Explain XKCD (http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1602) about this.
I think - maybe - the confusion should have been between biannual and biennial. Biannual and semi-annual both mean the same thing i.e. twice a year. Biennial means once every two years.</pedant>
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 14:39 GMT Dr. Mouse
My copy arrived today
I laughed out loud just at the cover!
I can't wait to dig in, although it is not without risks. I read the introduction on lunch, then immediately had to send an email. Just before I hit send, I realised I had written it in thing-explainer style.... Quick rewrite needed, as it was being sent to an offsite developer!
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 15:42 GMT captain veg
“I call bats 'skin birds'"
I was slightly intrigued when I learned that the French call bats "bald mice" (chauves-souris). Surely the most remarkable thing about a bat is that it is a mouse-like(ish) mammal that can fly, not that it has a bare bonce. Like in German, Fledermäuse.
A friend suggested that the French are more interested in appearance, while the Germans care about function.
-A.
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 20:18 GMT Michael Thibault
Next stop: making simple the very old big people's school word book's what-the-word-means using only the top ten hundred words.
(with a little help from http://splasho.com/upgoer5/)
Anyway, look forward to a close reading of Thing Explainer; I expect it will be entertaining, and a brain-strainer.
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Tuesday 24th November 2015 23:13 GMT Danny 2
He answered Time in comic form.
My friend who most took to XKCD isn't a techie or that scientific, but he loves it all the more because he learns more from it. His favourites are the epic diagrams. And he had the decency to buy me the Shark-balloon T Shirt and let me read the first book, so I've informed him of the new one.
I love the ten hundred most common word limit, reminiscent of NewSpeak. Dutch only has 50,000 words which is why they haven't written any world class literature, (sorry, hoor, Anne Frank) but are good at inventing TV game shows and negotiating business deals.
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Wednesday 25th November 2015 11:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Dutch
Is that some kind of joke? If it is, I don't get it. Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal contains over 430,000 entries... though that's completely irrelevant. People invent words if and when they need them. All human languages have an infinite potential vocabulary even if no large academic dictionaries have been compiled for them. Most words never get recorded in any dictionary.
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Wednesday 25th November 2015 12:04 GMT Danny 2
Re: Dutch
No joke. "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal contains over 430,000 entries" - aye, but it lists all Dutch words since the middle-ages most of which are never used in a modern dictionary or heard anywhere. Plus most damningly it lists the same words multiple times from different sources. So take the word Lekker, great, it lists it eleven times! That's typical Dutch c̶h̶e̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ 'creative accounting'.
English is the greatest language, take it from a Scot.
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