Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

a delightful book by a delightful artist

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

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I’ve been a long-time reader of xkcd comics, although perhaps not to the level that some readers get (I completely forgot about “Time” until it had finished, although I have since read the Wikipedia article on the story multiple times). I sometimes imagine that he and Henry Reich of Minute Physics get together and have science parties together (honestly, when I think of what Munroe looks like I just think of Reich). Which is all to say, these books are definitely the sort of non-fiction […]

cbr12bingo – How To!

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe

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Randall Munroe, the engineer/author/cartoonist extraordinaire (most importantly- the creator of the excellent webcomic xkcd) is at it again with How To. He takes all sorts of simple questions and expands, explodes, and/or completely blows up the possible answers into a cacophony of hard science and absolute absurdity. Say you want to throw something really far- he starts out with an anecdote about George Washington hucking (technical term) a silver dollar across a river, which turns into a breakdown of how far silver dollars could be […]

The title of the book tells you everything you need with this one. (CBR12 Bingo)

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe

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I laughed out loud when I saw the How To square on this year’s bingo card – days before a friend had given me Randall Munroe’s latest  How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems when I had lamented my inability lately to sink into reading anything. Her answer to that problem (and it is a good answer) was something intended to be read in small pieces and not all at once, and something that is both humorous and full of interesting information. Checks […]

Sudo read this comic if you don’t already

XKCD Volume 0 by Randall Munroe

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Since starting to work from home full time in March, I have gotten a little out of the habit of checking the XKCD web-comic regularly. I’ve forgotten how I first found it; I suspect my brother forwarded me one he thought I’d like and the rest, as they say,… Anyways, I realized that I had XKCD: Volume 0 on my shelf, and I don’t think I’ve ever read it through until very recently. The tagline on the webcomic is “A web-comic of romance, sarcasm, math, […]

The Munroe Doctrine

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe

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When I was in grad school, most of my professors used xkcd comics at some point.  I’m pretty sure I understand p-values because of this strip. My friend told me about a book by “that stick figure comic guy from class” so I checked it out. That was What If? by Randall Munroe. What If? is a book that provides real scientific and mathematic answers to absolutely absurd, but fun questions.  Questions like: How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the […]

If you’ve seen the comic, you know what this book is

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This book kept popping up in my Amazon Prime as a free download, but I never payed it any attention until KimMiE” reviewed it a month ago and mentioned that the author was the guy who makes the XKCD comics. That was all I needed to hear. Taken from the “What If?” Section of the website, where he answers the internet’s most inexplicable science-ish questions (for instance: what would happen if everyone actually had one soulmate, one random person in the world?). His answers are […]



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