Is it possible for a comic to be able to be both CIDU & LOL? Because while I have less than no understanding of sailing ship rigging, (… which is likely part of the point of this… and several other … XKCD comics…) the hover text, where I don’t understand “yawl” or “ketch”, still had me LOL-ing: “I wanted to make the world’s fastest yawl, so I made the aft sail bigger, but apparently that means it’s not a yawl anymore! It’s a ketch-22.”
For extra credit, guess which of these alleged riggings are NOT real before looking at the ExplainXKCD page.
(And yes, I marked this as a “Kvetch” in imitation of “Ketch”…couldn’t resist)
Related
4 Comments
The “kind of” category in the explainXKCD writeup yielded some surprises for me.
zbicyclist: Me too! Some seriously hard-core sailor types weighing in there, methinks.
That’s one of the things I love most about the Internet: there’s always a geek out there saying things about some tiny technical detail being wrong in a movie or whatever. And you just KNOW that person is just overjoyed to be able to show off their knowledge. It’s harmless, makes them happy, and brings me a small amount of joy as a result–sort of the inverse/converse/perverse of schadenfreude.
Yawl come back here now.
I can imagine a model builder doing something like the comic.
I know one thing for sure – no matter what a boat or ship is called – we will not be going on it – he suffers from motion sickness – no boats, no planes, he has to drive the car*, but he has managed go on subway trains if it is short enough distance and is facing forward.
*When he has to go to the eye doctor we sit in the parking lot of doctor’s building until he feels he can see well enough to drive home – from the next county – I do keep sharp eye out to make sure he is doing okay driving. Only times I was able to drive him was after cataract surgeries while he was still mostly out of it from the anesthesia.
Comics I Don't Understand 
The “kind of” category in the explainXKCD writeup yielded some surprises for me.
zbicyclist: Me too! Some seriously hard-core sailor types weighing in there, methinks.
That’s one of the things I love most about the Internet: there’s always a geek out there saying things about some tiny technical detail being wrong in a movie or whatever. And you just KNOW that person is just overjoyed to be able to show off their knowledge. It’s harmless, makes them happy, and brings me a small amount of joy as a result–sort of the inverse/converse/perverse of schadenfreude.
Yawl come back here now.
I can imagine a model builder doing something like the comic.
I know one thing for sure – no matter what a boat or ship is called – we will not be going on it – he suffers from motion sickness – no boats, no planes, he has to drive the car*, but he has managed go on subway trains if it is short enough distance and is facing forward.
*When he has to go to the eye doctor we sit in the parking lot of doctor’s building until he feels he can see well enough to drive home – from the next county – I do keep sharp eye out to make sure he is doing okay driving. Only times I was able to drive him was after cataract surgeries while he was still mostly out of it from the anesthesia.