Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Comic 905: I'm Done With Pokemon For Now

homeownership

[Title: Homeownership; alt text: New research shows over 60% of the financial collapse's toxic assets were created by power drills.]

The time sure does fly! It seems like only yesterday I was putting off writing this post because it's boring because it's fucking identical to 616. Don't believe me? Look:

lease

That's all he's got. "Ha ha ha I am so quirky ha ha ha WHOOPS MY HOUSE FELL DOWN." I'm not even going to waste my time on this one.

In other news, Randy didn't learn from the last time his comic file name contained the word 'advertising.'
Posted by rs

33 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 31, 2011 at 9:13 PM

    I actually liked the newest one a little bit until it was explained by the post-caption

    why is it so hard for webcomic authors to not continue after the punchline

    ReplyDelete
  2. rsMay 31, 2011 at 9:13 PM

    terror. terror that people might not Get The Joke

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 31, 2011 at 9:15 PM

    Despite the bad execution it's not a terrible idea, only people actually do look at Wikipedia citations. It's not like a journal article where you get a number in square brackets, which probably leads to some paper in some other publication but you probably don't care enough to hunt it down in most cases.

    ReplyDelete
  4. John MagnumMay 31, 2011 at 9:20 PM

    i kind of liked the basic idea of 906

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  5. AnonymousMay 31, 2011 at 9:20 PM

    9:15 - do you ever actually follow Wikipedia citations? Many of them are to journal articles, newspaper articles, books, and other published media. Verifying a source can be very difficult and time consuming - I've needed to use interlibrary loan before to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousMay 31, 2011 at 9:38 PM

    I find the latest one entertaining solely because that OCD part of my brain wants to claw at the blue bracketed numbers to see what the citations are from, understanding that there never will be any actual citations.

    OH GODS.

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  7. AnonymousMay 31, 2011 at 11:29 PM

    that randy spends his entire day on wikipedia is such a non issue now. not even worth mentioning except maybe in this slightly meta way.

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  8. AnonymousMay 31, 2011 at 11:39 PM

    GOOMH RANDALL I HAVE A RANDALL IN MY HEAD TOO

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  9. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 12:05 AM

    I should know better and get on with my life. I mean, it is only a stupid webcomic.

    But no, I STILL HATE IT!!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 12:24 AM

    905's dialog bothers me a bit... The conversation in the first panel has that "we made a baby?!" vibe.

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  11. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 1:28 AM

    Hey Rob, start putting some effort in to your fucking reviews, shitdick.

    Carl's website now sucks.

    ReplyDelete
  12. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 1:34 AM

    Is there anyone who actually takes Wikipedia seriously for anything? The "little blue numbers in brackets" have a 50/50 chance of referring to an unreliable quaternary source such as a poor newspaper(!) article. This is especially so for Controversial[tm] articles where each side will war with the other with increasingly inappropriate citations which are uniquely considered acceptable on Wikipedia.

    For the more sciency articles you're more likely to have an appropriate reference barely understood and awfully explained, since "I just studied this topic in Undergrad 101" usually doesn't make you a good candidate for preparation of learning or reference material. I'm still annoyed when the mathematical articles on Wikipedia are lauded: they're wordy, waffling about random stuff ("I just studied this topic...") rather than actually getting to the point of neatly and succinctly presenting and proving anything, never quite unambiguous enough to make me sure of anything I didn't already know. The much terser Wolfram's Mathworld, for example, is much closer to the right way to do it.

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  13. MichaelJune 1, 2011 at 3:37 AM

    @9:15: often, there's some assurance that the reviewers have done so. But, to overgeneralize, I only bother when an insufficient (or no) derivation was presented and the formula given doesn't seem at least reasonable.

    @9:20: they're only sometimes that way, but agreed. Often, things that are in books can also be found by googling, though -- sometimes in google books, of all things.

    @1:34, part 1: Agreed.

    @1:34, part 2: Any mathematical article that wasn't clear to me on Wikipedia either isn't on Mathworld, or isn't any clearer there. Just sayin'

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  14. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 4:36 AM

    @Michael part 2: fair enough. Mathworld's not exactly complete, but it does have a fairly pleasant habit of getting to the point - if it's not covered in enough detail there then thee extra verbiage on Wikipedia won't get me any further. I've never been mathematically enlightened by Wikipedia, which is odd as people (who I would usually take seriously) say that one of Wikipedia's strengths is its coverage of mathematics.

    I guess one problem is that I am really put off by waffly let-me-hold-your-hand-for-you expositions. A good paedagogical text for me is certainly not just a coverage of theorems and proofs, but it has good flow, discussing concepts as working mathematicians understand them and lightly drumming pitfalls and tricks into you. A good chapter on any subject allows me to put the work into context: what's the same and what's different vs what I have studied before? (for something at the level I'd hope from an encyclopedia see for example _All The Mathematics You've Missed_ by Garrity). You just don't get that from Wikipedia.

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  15. Gamer_2k4June 1, 2011 at 7:52 AM

    I guess my only problem with 906 is that Randall said "Wikipedia has trained US to believe anything in brackets." No, Randy, Wikipedia has trained YOU to do that. Not all of us spend our lives on Wikipedia.

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  16. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 9:05 AM

    @Gamer_2k4 if he'd actually made the small change of "us" to "me" then I'd salute the comic. Especially because the stick figure would be him, and the stick figure is masturbating.

    ReplyDelete
  17. JustScottJune 1, 2011 at 2:17 PM

    Does anyone else think that Rob hacked Redux so we would be forced to read his crap?

    ReplyDelete
  18. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 2:46 PM

    If the reviews are going to be you saying that you're not going to waste your time reviewing the comic, maybe it's time to only update when Randy has come up with some new interesting ways of sucking.

    ReplyDelete
  19. rsJune 1, 2011 at 3:38 PM

    "Hey Rob, start putting some effort in to your fucking reviews, shitdick."

    nah

    "If the reviews are going to be you saying that you're not going to waste your time reviewing the comic, maybe it's time to only update when Randy has come up with some new interesting ways of sucking."

    nah

    ReplyDelete
  20. kJune 1, 2011 at 4:47 PM

    Blog won't function if there isn't at least a semblance of life.

    Rob is doing the noble thing in halfheartedly continuing. Just like how always happens in inspiring stories, like in a war.

    Or like when a dog saves an elderly person.

    Or like when a dog saves a child.

    Rob is the dog, the blog is the elderly, it's not going to die of the fire in the house but it can't escape death forever.

    ReplyDelete
  21. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 5:27 PM

    Rob, you need to keep on keepin' on.

    ReplyDelete
  22. VesJune 1, 2011 at 6:37 PM

    Rob continue to be fat, lazy, and unproductive

    your country is counting on you, son

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  23. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 7:30 PM

    Rob: the true American hero?

    ReplyDelete
  24. VesJune 1, 2011 at 7:33 PM

    because eating is half the battle

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  25. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 9:11 PM

    don't look at me

    ReplyDelete
  26. seVJune 1, 2011 at 9:14 PM

    Rob ate the other half.

    ReplyDelete
  27. TheMesosadeJune 1, 2011 at 10:04 PM

    Rob is the embodiment of all American men, not by virtue but by mass.

    ReplyDelete
  28. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 10:33 PM

    Raven you whore this doesn't even make sense
    http://pennyarcadezomg.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  29. Ann ApolisJune 1, 2011 at 10:39 PM

    Raven <3

    ReplyDelete
  30. AnonymousJune 1, 2011 at 10:40 PM

    @Anon1033: I guess you're just not in Penny-Arcade's target audience.

    ReplyDelete
  31. AnonymousJune 2, 2011 at 4:18 AM

    @everyone I guess you're just not in xkcd's target audience.

    ReplyDelete
  32. R.June 2, 2011 at 6:06 AM

    thank god

    ReplyDelete
  33. AnonymousJune 4, 2011 at 5:02 PM

    I did not know Penny Arcade was anything other than dull tripe dabbling in the inane, but now I see the light.

    ReplyDelete

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