[Editor’s note: Science comic geek alert. Thanks Martin and Jo!]
Republished from XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
Posts Tagged ‘jo’
Gravity Wells (xkcd)
Thursday, January 14th, 201050 States and 50 Metros (fake is the new real)
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009[Editor’s note: Fascinating look at the cultural geography of the United States sorted by large cities and subtracted from the 50 states. For instance, considered as metros, New York city, Los Angeles, and Chicago are larger in population than the non-metropolitan portions of Texas, California, North Carolina, Florida, and Pa. The author has another good post on subway systems around the world all scaled to the same size. Thanks Jo!]
Republished from fake is the new real.
By Neil Freeman, artist and urban planner.
The fifty largest metro areas (in blue), disaggregated from their states (in orange). Each has been scaled and sorted according to population. The metro areas are US-Census defined CBSAs and MSAs.
Small sampling below. Click on image for all 100 shapes.
Analyze this, Tufte! Movie Narrative Charts (XKCD comic)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Thanks Jo!]
Republished from XKCD.
These charts show movie character interactions. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical groupings of the lines indicates which characters are together at a given time. On the LoTRs up and down roughly correspond to northwest and southeast.
Hardest National Geographic Bee Yet Goes to 13-Year-Old (NG)
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
[Editor’s note: The annual geo bee’s U.S. round wrapped up yesterday. The winner, Eric Yang, will compete in the world championship in Mexico City. The contest was sponsored by Google this year and is hosted by Alex Trebek. Video of the winning question. Thanks Jo!]
Don’t mess with Texas seventh grader Eric Yang—at least when it comes to geography. Today the 13-year-old swept the toughest National Geographic Bee to date—with a perfect score.
Yang, of Griffin Middle School in The Colony, Texas, won the annual competition during a tie-breaker round with this question: “Timis County shares its name with a tributary of the Danube and is located in the western part of which European country?”
The answer, Romania, comes with a U.S. $25,000 college scholarship, a lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society, and a trip to the Galápagos Islands with Jeopardy! host and Bee moderator Alex Trebek.
Comic: Converting to Metric (XKCD)
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009[Editor’s note: Helpful hints on how to go metric if you never had a science class in the US since the 1970s. I don’t yet dream in metric but I ain’t afraid of it 😉 Thanks Jo!]Â
Republished from XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
The key to converting to metric is establishing new reference points. When you hear “26° C,” instead of thinking “that’s 79° F” you should think, “That’s warmer than a house but cool for swimming.” Here are some helpful tables of reference points:
Going West (Comic from XKCD)
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
Girl: I’m Sorry. The Google Maps team hired me.
Boy: But I can’t move to California!
Girl: Then I guess this is the end.
Boy: It can’t be! Listen… When I look deep into your eyes, I see a future for us.
Girl: Look deeper.
Boy: “We’re sorry but we don’t have imagery at this zoom level”? They… they have you already.
Republished from XKCD. A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Thanks Jo!