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xkcd presents "What If?"
07-18-2012, 03:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-26-2018, 04:44 PM by Bob Schroeck.)
Randall Munroe is answering hypothetical questions - a different one every Tuesday.
So far, he's told us:
If you want to know the questions, go read the articles...
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Rob Kelk
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1: Spontaneously Exploding baseball.
2: Firefly Being Uncancelled
3: Feeding Every Hungry Child in Africa.
---- Yes, I do get a bit silly in work
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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This week: " http://what-if.xkcd.com/4/]This ... would wipe out most life on the planet, which could—to reddit’s horror—threaten the integrity of the DNS system."
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Rob Kelk
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Just started reading these.
I knew I was in trouble when I reached the line:
"I sat down with some physics books, a Nolan Ryan action figure, and a
bunch of videotapes of nuclear tests and tried to sort it all out."
At which point I was already giggling madly. 
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oh god, now I can't get the "boiling meat sphere" image out of my head.
-Terry
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This week: " But it’s hard to feel threatened by something that you can evade by sitting on the kitchen counter and destroy by letting the sink overflow."
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Rob Kelk
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them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
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This week: " (Even a vacuum arguably isn’t truly empty, but that’s a question for quantum semantics.)"
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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"... adding this to the long list of engineering problems which can be waved away by tacking on the prefix “nano-”. "
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Rob Kelk
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That second one is definitely worthy of Mythbusters, and I must see it performed!
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Quote:The engineering principles behind this were solid enough that in the
1960s, under the guidance of Freeman Dyson, the US government actually
tried to build one of these spaceships. The story of that effort, dubbed
Project Orion, is detailed in the excellent book
of the same name by Freeman’s son George Dyson. Advocates for nuclear
pulse propulsion are still disappointed that the project was cancelled
before any prototypes were built. Others argue that when you think about
what they were trying to do—put our entire nuclear arsenal in a box,
hurl it high into the atmosphere, and nuke it repeatedly—it’s terrifying
that it got as far as it did.
O_O
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Quote:The engineering principles behind this were solid enough that in the
1960s, under the guidance of Freeman Dyson, the US government actually
tried to build one of these spaceships. The story of that effort, dubbed
Project Orion, is detailed in the excellent book
of the same name by Freeman’s son George Dyson. Advocates for nuclear
pulse propulsion are still disappointed that the project was cancelled
before any prototypes were built. Others argue that when you think about
what they were trying to do—put our entire nuclear arsenal in a box,
hurl it high into the atmosphere, and nuke it repeatedly—it’s terrifying
that it got as far as it did.
Huh. Never knew they wanted to actually use an Orion drive in atmosphere.
The concept is actually marginally sane, if you assume it's to be used solely as extra-orbital transportation. The only real problem then is the old 'what happens if the ship carrying the nukes into orbit does a Challenger' problem, which I've not yet heard a good solution for.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
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I read that book a few years back. Really interesting read.
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This is our scenario; we can be specific. They’re actually in Rhode Island.
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber." --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.
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Jorlem Wrote:This is our scenario; we can be specific. They’re actually in Rhode Island. "There are a lot of uncomfortable glances. Someone coughs."
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Rob Kelk
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Oops, I missed a week... and came late to this week's column, too.
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Rob Kelk
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You know, the format in some ways, makes me think: Mythbusters: Theoretical Apocalypse Version.
First, we answer your question.
Second, We answer your question in a literal way where the world explodes.
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" Unit cancellation is weird." But not as weird as the tangent that fills two-thirds of the article...
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Rob Kelk
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and remember to turn on javascript for that 'what if' (otherwise the notation is really weird and almost non-readable)
-Terry
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" It's mid summer. The air is hot and heavy. Two old-timers sit on the porch in rocking chairs."
(fixed, damn yuku)
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>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI
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Present link is malformed Ankh. it is sort of cucular to right back here.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
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Have a working link: " Atmospheric scientists try for years to piece together what happened, but no explanation is forthcoming."
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Rob Kelk
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Quote:Fear reigns supreme as the world fears rain supreme....
Nice bit of wordplay there.
Quote:... years pass without any signs of the disaster repeating.
Bummer.
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Well the entire water drop to end all water drops piece doesbring up a good reason as to why mages should avoid playing with weather...
One gets the mental image of a less than cautious would be weather mage attempting to condense the water in a cloud system and instead condenses it all into one big drop...
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werehawk Wrote:Well the entire water drop to end all water drops piece doesbring up a good reason as to why mages should avoid playing with weather...
One gets the mental image of a less than cautious would be weather mage attempting to condense the water in a cloud system and instead condenses it all into one big drop... One of these days, I'm going to write my short story about the Rainmaker, a weather controlling superhero who spends all his time in the American Midwest, slowly and carefully keeping the planet's weather from going off the rails because of the other weather manipulators treating it like it's their personal toy.
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Quote:One of these days, I'm going to write my short story about the Rainmaker, a weather controlling superhero who spends all his time in the American Midwest, slowly and carefully keeping the planet's weather from going off the rails because of the other weather manipulators treating it like it's their personal toy.
Eddings did something like that in The Malloreon, when Belgarath tore a strip off Garion regarding all the time and effort he and Beldin had needed to put into fixing the worldwide weather patterns after Garion conjured up a localized thunderstorm to stop a single battle -- it wasn't even a whole war, just a stupid knightly skirmish between Arends (of course, since it was between Arends, it might've turned into a war after all).
Six months it took two of the world's most powerful sorcerers to fix it all: "Your one tiny little storm in the right place at the right time came very close to altering the weather for the next several eons -- all over the world -- you blockhead! ... Do you know what the term ice age means?"
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