XKCD is pretty much the best comic ever created for science nerds. The author, Randall Munroe, just nails the feeling and humor of the smart, moderately socially adept set. Sometimes he's funny, sometimes poignant, and from time to time busts out with a really cool science image. Take the one above comparing the thickness of ice sheets compared with modern skylines, which, hey, look pretty tall to me in real life. Neat.

My personal nerd quotient goes up because in my combined love of rock climbing and fantasy literature, this post made me think of one of the books in the Clan of the Cave Bear series (aka Earth's Children). In one of them, the protagonists ice climb the face of the glacier to escape something, in what I'm sure was an out of the pot into the frying pan kind of situation. In any case, looking at the true thickness of the glacier, that does not seem reasonable! Yes, that is where I am drawing the line in a book about humans and neanderthals who talk with their hands and have magical/mystical mind powers.



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