2016-02-22

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1642 - Gravitational Waves - #1643 - Degrees


I feel like this comic would have a lot more impact if we saw more of the effort that went into the making of the gravitational wave detector. Like, this probably cost NASA or whatever a trillion dollars, it already seems anticlimatic to have the GWD just the size of a desk. We should have a whole room of things all blinking away, after at least two panels of hard work by the science people trying to make stuff happen.

Speaking of which, if they already knows that it works, why are they just reacting to it in the second panel. The comic actually makes more sense if you read it backwards. It's funnier that way too, you expect them to be all disappointed but then they're all "Hooray!".

Also, the comic would be funnier if he took out the actual sciency stuff from the last panel. The two black hole merger things are (apparently) actual examples of events that the GWD could detect, and it really only distracts from the joke.


This is one of the times that Randy drawing half of a conversation's participants offscreen could make sense. If the guy was standing next to a window with a temperature thingy on it, it'd make sense that the other guy would be calling from offscreen. He's probably folding clothes or something and wants to get it done so he doesn't want to have to leave the room and stop.

As it is, we should see two stick figures, and Offscreen should start his sentence with "While you've got your phone open" because that is the Polite Phrase.

It was nice of Randy to add in the good sides of Fahrenheit, even though it is the obvious inferior system. It feels charitable, and I approve. That last dot on the chart is really telling though. Who thinks "I am going to deliberately respond in a way that my friend will not understand for non-humorous purposes" and then thinks "Hmm... that probably makes me a bad friend."? Like, no, it makes you a straight up asshole. Say... that reminds me of a famous webcomic strip.

The 'radians' punchline just doesn't make sense. Like I'm all for making fun of stupid people and making fun of people who made innocent mistakes (especially if they are small children), but that's just not something someone would say. That's essentially saying gibberish, it doesn't have any relevance to the question. Randy should have made the guy say "Kelvin" instead, since that is an actual temperature scale, so it'd be technically correct but completely useless, unlike the radians answer, which is incorrect on a few different levels as well as being completely useless.


On an unrelated note, I don't know how familiar any of you guys would be with The Cringe Channel, but I'm mildly surprised a screenshot of this blog hasn't been sent in. The caption would be something like "This guy has spent more than two years 'reviewing' XKCD and complaining about how it's not funny."

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