literature: November 2007 Archives

It's no secret that I love XKCD (and so does my Mother), so Wired has made me happy by doing a feature on Randall Munroe, the writer behind XKCD:

A geek with a paper cut does not bleed CH3, and every nerd has a heart lodged in his chest instead of a TI-85. Behind those thick polycarbonate lenses is a man of flesh and blood, a man who deserves to be loved. Don't believe him? He has the graphs to show it.

"I think the comic that's gotten me the most feedback is actually the one about the stoplights," says Randall Munroe, creator of the hugely popular comic with the unpronounceable title. "Noticing when the stoplights are in sync, or calculating the length of your strides between floor tiles -- normal people notice that kind of stuff, but a certain kind of person will do some calculations." In one comic, the hapless hero charts the size of his dating pool as he ages. "Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve," he declares, "is the girl for me."

I can only hope to reach the levels of insight that Randall has shown through XKCD.