# ­xkcd thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-strips\ **Created:** [May 28, 2020, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574 "2020-05-28T00:57:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 100
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2023, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1983 "2023-01-25T21:09:01Z")
> **[Planet Killer Comet Margarita](https://xkcd.com/2729/)** > > I'll take mine on the rocks, no ice. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2023, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1984 "2023-01-25T22:38:25Z")
If those images are to scale (and I’m pretty sure they are), that would make one heck of a diluted drink. The cross-sectional area of the booze tankers are comparable to that of the comet, but they’re only a few tens of meters wide, to the comet’s few kilometers. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2023, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1985 "2023-01-25T22:47:57Z")
If your margarita’s too weak, they’ll make you another. As soon as the next comet comes along. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2023, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1986 "2023-01-25T22:54:12Z")
I don’t think it’s necessarily to scale. A ULCC tanker carries 3.7M barrels, or 575,000 m^3. That’s 2.3B m^3 for 4000 of them. A smallish 2 km comet would be 6.28B m^3. Not particularly dilute. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1987 "2023-01-26T00:11:59Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I’ve been on highways like that. One of the limited access highways in the Chicago area was like that but forcing merges in the inside. Four or five lanes wide and at each on-ramp the lane continued on so the driver didn’t have to merge, but eventually reach the median and have to constantly change lanes to the right. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2023, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1988 "2023-01-26T00:22:45Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > Four or five lanes wide and at each on-ramp the lane continued on so the driver didn’t have to merge Agreed; that’s probably the most common case I’ve seen. Onramps get their own lane, but so as not to have the highway continually get wider, the inner lane merges back in eventually. Might be safer overall; slow trucks especially have a hard time safely merging into fast traffic, whereas the two left lanes are already at speed. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1989 "2023-01-27T19:54:31Z")
> **[Code Lifespan](https://xkcd.com/2730/)** > > Surely (no one/everyone) will (recognize how flexible and useful this architecture is/spend a huge amount of effort painstakingly preserving and updating this garbage I wrote in 20 minutes) ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1990 "2023-01-27T20:01:05Z")
Right. Elaborate frameworks and massive products die of neglect and inertia. Throwaway code lives forever. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1991 "2023-01-27T21:04:01Z")
The happy medium is to write code that you wouldn’t mind revisiting 5 years from now. That excludes uncommented spaghetti code as well as overelaborate frameworks. Just write clear code that does the task at hand, is self-commenting as much as possible, with code comments to fill in the gaps. Use good coding practices (basic stuff like using functions instead of copy-and-pasting the same thing 10 times), but don’t generalize the code far beyond what’s required. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2023, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1992 "2023-01-27T21:22:24Z")
This reminds me of an amusing moment of my time with IBM. One of my colleagues, in his many years of service, had exactly 1 of his analyses reach the desk of the CEO. That analysis? Some crappy rush job that he absolutely did NOT have the time to do properly. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2023, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1993 "2023-01-30T18:52:15Z")
> **[K-Means Clustering](https://xkcd.com/2731/)** > > According to my especially unsupervised K-means clustering algorithm, there are currently about 8 billion types of people in the world. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2023, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1994 "2023-02-02T08:01:03Z")
> **[Bursa of Fabricius](https://xkcd.com/2732/)** > > If an anatomical structure is named for a person, it means they were the only person to have it. Pierre Paul Broca had a special area of his brain that created powerful magnetic fields, enabling him to do 19th century fMRI research. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2023, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1995 "2023-02-02T15:16:58Z")
That hat feels vaguely anachronistic. (No, there’s nothing else remarkable in that scene, why do you ask?) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2023, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1996 "2023-02-03T09:00:37Z")
It’s a perfectly fine 16th C hat shape. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2023, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1997 "2023-02-04T07:35:32Z")
> **[Size Comparisons](https://xkcd.com/2733/)** > > If you shrank the Solar System to the size of Texas, the Houston metro area would be smaller than a grasshopper in Dallas. If you expand Rhode Island to the size of the Solar System, the ants there would be as big as Texas. OK, I haven’t actually done the math, but it’s probably close to right. Assuming the statement in the strip is right, of course. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2023, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1998 "2023-02-04T15:29:11Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > If you expand Rhode Island to the size of the Solar System, the ants there would be as big as Texas. But less than half the size of Alaska. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2023, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1999 "2023-02-04T15:32:23Z")
Isn’t this actually “Texas is so small that…”? I mean, by the same token, if you expand Rhode Island to the size of the Solar System, the ants there would be as big as Texas. Because you need an even greater expansion factor for Rhode Island than you do for Texas. And the Solar System is so large that, if you expanded it to the size of the Solar System, the ants there would be as big as ants. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2023, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2000 "2023-02-04T15:38:45Z")
I think that was why it was labeled as “unhelpful size comparisons.” So, if you _shrink_ the Solar System down to the size of Texas, would Rhode Island be the size of an ant? ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2023, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2001 "2023-02-04T17:57:01Z")
But the ants would be shrunk too. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2002 "2023-02-06T23:26:14Z")
> **[Electron Color](https://xkcd.com/2734/)** > > There's quark color, but that's not really color--it's just an admission by 20th century physicists that numbers are boring. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574.md?page=99) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574.md?page=101)