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Dork Tower is updated Tuesdays and Thursdays. For as little as $1 a month, you can join the Army of Dorkness – and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! We’re nearly 80% of the way towards three comics a week! Become a Dork Tower Patreon backer – you get everlasting gratitude. Oh, wait – and also swag!

The post Wordless hugs are much better. appeared first on Indexed.

D20Monkey launched on October 4, 2010. In the nearly nine-years since that day, I have written jokes, created characters, imagined worlds, and told stories that I love with all of my heart, but every story has an ending and as[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry...

This comic best viewed on xkcd.com

Dork Tower is updated Tuesdays and Thursdays. For as little as $1 a month, you can join the Army of Dorkness – and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! We’re nearly 80% of the way towards three comics a week! Become a Dork Tower Patreon backer – you get everlasting gratitude. Oh, wait – and also swag!

Hey there!

I'm excited to announce that my new book, How To, will be going on sale in a few hours!



I'm really proud of this book. It features information on everything from opening water bottles with nuclear weapons to how to be on time for meetings by altering the rotation of the Earth. It also includes real-life tips and advice from a number of experts who generously lent their time, including Col. Chris Hadfield and Serena Williams.

You can order it now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and Apple Books.

Lucky number 13 for Annabelle (Trevor). Don’t forget, there is an announcement tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter to find out when it goes live.  

If you were wondering why Max hadn’t joined the fray yet, this is it. It’s not like she couldn’t have knocked some heads first, but she wanted to be sure the Interdictor’s shields wouldn’t interrupt her blast. She wasn’t that concerned about it blocking her shot, she was more concerned that if it did, the backblast would be detrimental to her own team and probably all the windows on headquarters.

Somehow I didn’t realize it while I was drawing them, but now I have two sequential pages where someone dials in their energy attack complete with closeups of their face and hands. Normally I draw two pages side by side, then save them as separate files when I’m done, but because this page is a double, they were separate files that I had to flip back and forth between. Still, you’d think I would have noticed.

Okay, so… let’s all politely ignore that tactically… this was terrible move for Maxima. For one thing, she’s lucky that the ship listed before crashing to the ground. I mean, Maxima is crazy strong, she could have shouldered it to the side though if it had started coming straight down, but I’m not sure she could lifted it.

The part of this that makes it especially risky is that while coring out a spaceship is a baller move, there’s a chance she could have hit something… sensitive on the inside. What if she had ruptured an antimatter chamber or hit some kind of… I don’t know, singularity implosion drive? (whatever that is.) She could have turned North America into a black hole or something. So… let’s pretend that she had a brief conversation with Cora about where to aim.

The reason I didn’t get into this stuff in the comic is because the point of the whole Fel attack wasn’t to have a big drawn out fight with a boarding action and all that, it was to prompt Cora’s final line. I actually planned out a longer fight, which I hinted at when the Mushroom Spacecop girl called the ship a supercarrier, but again, I decided to trim the encounter to the essentials.

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Okay, so most of you guys know one of my favorite authors is Michael-Scott Earle. Quick update – Amazon banned him over a year ago for reasons they never explained. Basically Kindle Unlimited is deeply exploitable, so instead of fixing anything, Amazon has taken to banning authors whose success doesn’t match their expectations. The short version is, he sued them but it came down to them saying “we’re a monopoly and there’s nothing you can do about it.” So he’s striking out on his own and is going to start running Kickstarters to fund his novels. The good news is that 1) New Tamer and Star Justice! 2) All his previously written books will be available soon at his website, (soon) so if you missed any of them the first time around, then prepare your wallets. You can also sign up for his mailing list there to get heads up on the kickstarters. He’s also super active on his facebook page, so there will be updates there as well.

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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

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My generation's codpiece is yelling at strangers on twitter.

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Dork Tower is updated Tuesdays and Thursdays. For as little as $1 a month, you can join the Army of Dorkness – and help bring more Dork Tower to the world! We’re nearly 80% of the way towards three comics a week! Become a Dork Tower Patreon backer – you get everlasting gratitude. Oh, wait – and also swag!

Strand line

The often lovely line of interesting seaweed, driftwood and things to find left behind by the waves at the top of high tide. Hopefully, not too much plastic.

More lines: browse line, plimsoll line. draw smooth lines. choose the fast line, the coastline paradox

More beaches: surfing breaks, beaches—amazing for play, gastropods, sea jelly—sea star.

It will be of little surprise to inform you that within the very fabric of the Dewey editorial team there are book nerds who love science fiction and fantasy. Former Senior Editor Winton Matthews just returned from a trip to Dublin, Ireland to attend the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon), where members awarded the Hugo Awards to recognize outstanding works and achievements in science fiction and fantasy. He was quick to share reports of Irish language and societal trends that may influence Dewey development in the future—even on vacation we've got classification on our mind.

Announced on August 18^th, the Hugo winners included "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies," written by Alix E. Harrow. The short story is about a troubled teenager looking for liberation via library books. And it features Dewey numbers! The books in the story are filled with magic and personified (and kind of judgmental): "The sewing and pattern books (646.2) noted that his jeans were unlaundered and too small, and the neck of his t-shirt was stained grayish-yellow. The cookbooks (641.5) diagnosed a diet of frozen waffles and gas-station pizza. They tssked to themselves." Librarians will especially enjoy the story; take the time to read it at Apex Magazine's site.

Authors, we’re always willing to provide fact checks (within reason) for the DDC numbers you feature in your works, whether historical or current; just send an email to dewey@oclc.org and we’ll help you maintain your fictional verisimilitude!

Proxemics

I love this concept of the study of social distance, or how humans use space. Distinct from ergonomics, which is more about how people fit into their environment, proxemics focuses on the social aspect of space. For example: At what distance are you intimate? Where does your personal space end? How far away should you be for a good conversation? Why are the big circular wedding and conference tables so bad? How close should desks be in an office to encourage collaboration without feeling jammed together?

Dev Patnaik at Jump Associates used to give the fine example of how you will whisper politely and with awe in the vaulted ceilings of a cathedral, while the confessional box — for people to share their deepest secrets — is low and close. An olde English pub that you stoop to enter under the low ceiling immediately feels friendly and intimate, whereas you’ll struggle to have a deep conversation on entering a warehouse.

Proxemics was coined by the cultural anthropologist Edward Hall. His book The Hidden Dimension has the details.

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Found this delightful story in 'The Monsters and the Critics: And Other Essays.'

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The other day I was really freaked out that a computer could generate faces of people who DON'T REALLY EXIST, only to later realize painters have been doing this for several millenia.

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The DDC is launching a new community engagement initiative where librarians and classifiers just like you have the opportunity to propose new and edited Dewey numbers. Crafting a new number may seem intimidating, but I’m here to tell you that it’s easier to succeed in editorial work than you may think.

I arrived at the Dewey offices two months ago with a semester-long Cataloging and Classification class under my belt, along with some excitement and determination. Since then, I have built a proposal for a new podcasting hierarchy from the bottom up. It’s true that researching and proposing a new Dewey hierarchy does have a bit of a learning curve, but it’s also true that the process isn’t inaccessible to people like you and me, the editorially uninitiated.

Here’s a quick rundown of my experience drafting a DDC proposal.

I began by looking for literary warrant. I searched WorldCat for books with the subjects “Podcasts,” and “Podcasting.” Once I had established that there were enough works on this topic to justify its own number, I looked at where these items are currently classed. A good clue that a topic may need to be reworked in the DDC is if books on the topic are scattered throughout the classification. As I suspected, this was the case for books on podcasting. While scattering is to be expected for very broad topics, it can be a problem for a subject as specific as podcasting. Another indication that a new podcasting number is needed was that even when podcasting books were classed together, the DDC number under which they were located did not make logical sense.

My next step was to explore the DDC itself and look for places in the existing hierarchy where my proposed topic seemed to naturally fit. I accomplished this by searching for topics similar to podcasting, like radio and television. I analyzed the hierarchies of these parallel subjects and used their structure to inspire my new podcasting hierarchy.

While there’s more to building a new number than these preliminary steps, they’re a good place to start. I am not a subject matter expert in podcasting. After completing the research outlined above, however, I now have a better sense for how the topic might fit into the existing schedules.

We know that the DDC isn’t perfect. We also know that our user community is brimming with ideas on how to improve the classification. Join us in editorial work and put those ideas into action! You may not realize it yet, but you already have all the tools you need to propose your very own Dewey number. Reference our Editorial Project Checklist and/or get in touch with the editors at dewey@oclc.org for more information on how to begin your own DDC proposal.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

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I've done it. I found something even lazier than graph jokes.

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Human risk

In Don Norman’s classic The Design of Everyday Things, Don gives an example of how to break into an office: just turn up at the door with a bunch of unwieldy computer equipment that looks difficult to carry and ask someone if they can open the door for you. Generally, someone will. Which goes to show no matter how well your system is designed, how seemingly impregnable your defences are, or how robust your processes, human risk — people doing things they shouldn’t, or not doing things they should — are most likely the biggest ones. Like accidentally leaning on the keyboard before sending a bank transfer.

The sketch is loosely based on a story, which is not true but illustrates the point nicely, that the Mongols got past the Great Wall simply by bribing the guards.

If you like behavioural science, cognitive biases and the like, and want to build a better understanding of human risk you might like the human risk newsletter run by a long-time patron of Sketchplanations Christian Hunt.

Over the past year we've been developing ways for library workers to be more involved in reviewing and creating proposals to revise the DDC. A lot of people have talked about wanting to help but aren't sure how they can get involved. There are different options depending on your interest:

• The editors publish draft proposals ("exhibits") when we submit them to the Editorial Policy Committee for review. You can find these at http://oc.lc/deweyexhibits and we welcome your feedback—we want to hear how proposed changes would impact your library.
• As the editors work with Dewey users to create proposals, we disseminate the drafts to each other and to a group of DDC experts via email regularly. If you’d like to be a part of giving us feedback before the drafts are made public, please let us know via the poll below.
• We're looking for more Dewey users to help us create proposals. We've created a site with a checklist of how an exhibit is made and examples of recent exhibits to give you a sense for the research that goes into revising the DDC: http://oc.lc/deweycontributors. For a small change, this might take just a few hours' worth of work; larger revisions will likely require more back and forth.

Have just a little time to spare? Help us review draft proposals in general or in your area of expertise. Have a concern about an outdated area of Dewey? Work with us to research how we can update the schedules to benefit your library's users and library users around the world!

If you'd like to get involved in any way, please fill out this quick form to let us know!

Hey, Titans, Scott here. I wanted to take a moment to update everyone on my father’s health. Many of you ask me about him online and at conventions. He’s been a part of the comic strip and I know many of you are fans and are concerned. Which means the world to us.

Dad had a couple falls las…

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The cobra effect

The story goes something like this. Back in colonial India the top Brit in charge decided there were too many cobras around Delhi. To reduce the population they put in place a cash reward, or bounty, for anyone who brought in a dead cobra. The intention was clear. Legend has it that people did bring in the cobras reliably because some enterprising souls had started breeding cobras for the very purpose of getting the bounty. When the authorities realised this they scrapped the scheme, the cobra farms closed and the bred cobras were released into the wild significantly increasing the cobra population by a few orders of magnitude. Hence, the cobra effect: when a well-intentioned measure can have the opposite effect to that desired.

It’s not clear how true this story is, but the cobra effect has been demonstrated many times. The Freakonomics podcast on the cobra effect discusses some excellent examples (with references), including:

• A bounty on rats in French colonial Hanoi — where the bounty was earned by bringing in a rat tail — which went the same way as the cobra story
• Removing wild pigs at Fort Benning, Georgia, at $40 a pigs tail that didn’t make a dent. It could be the hunters would bait the pigs with all sorts of tempting scraps. Many pigs learned to avoid the hunters and instead bred like crazy while well-fed on scraps.
• The capital of Colombia, Bogotá, tried to reduce traffic congestion by restricting each car from driving one day during the week. The result: people started buying more than 1 car and did more driving on weekends.
• Publication of proposed areas of habitat to be protected for endangered species meant land developers responded by building in those areas before the land was protected.

People are smart. Incentives work, in the sense that you tend to get what you incentivise. So be careful what you are incentivising.

Also see: Goodhart’s Law and What gets measured gets better.

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