1355: Airplane Message

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Airplane Message

[edit] Explanation

Large banners are sometimes flown behind airplanes to advertise a product or event to a large number of people. Here, Randall suggests replacing the ad with some interesting facts. This would tell people who see the banner something new and interesting about the world, rather than try to sell them something. He presents two possible facts: Adriamycin, a cancer therapy, and Iry-Hor, the earliest human we know by name.



This fact is also placed at exactly 3100 BC (or BCE) in 1732: Earth Temperature Timeline. The week after that comic came out improving cancer research was the subject of 1736: Manhattan Project. That became the first cancer related comic since this one, even though more than two years had passed and with cancer being a recurring subject on xkcd... It could be a coincidence, but seems strange that both facts were directly/indirectly referenced within two weeks more than two years later, and there are even a banner in the cancer comic...

[edit] Transcript

[There is a plane with a banner behind.]



It doesn't say "prehistoric." It says "predynastic." Predynastic means that Iry-Hor was pharaoh before the establishment of any known Egyptian dynasty. You are correct that he is by definition not prehistoric. (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
"...the Hebrew Scriptures being as much a historical document as any Egyptian papyrii..." No. They are not remotely the same (for the same reason that, hundreds or thousands of years from now, we wouldn't want people to consider "Cool Runnings" to be a "historical document" about the *actual* Jamaican olympic bobsled team). While it's certainly possible -- probable, even -- that much of the Torah is based on events that actually occurred, there is also plenty of physical evidence suggesting that large portions of it were fabricated wholesale. For example, no archeological evidence of any kind supports the claim that the Hebrews were ever enslaved in Egypt. It sounds like your criteria for something being a "historical document" is that it *purports* to document that period in history and *appears* to be old enough to do so, but those aren't sufficient conditions. 23:16, 26 May 2015 (UTC)







You should put that on a banner. -- 19:00, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
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