Speed skiing is the sport of skiing downhill in a straight line at as high a speed as possible, as timed over a fixed stretch of ski slope. There are two types of contest: breaking an existing speed record or having the fastest run at a given competition. Speed skiers regularly exceed 200 kilometres per hour (124 mph)
A Fermi problem, also known as an order-of-magnitude problem, is an estimation problem in physics or engineering education, designed to teach dimensional analysis or approximation of extreme scientific calculations. Fermi problems are usually back-of-the-envelope calculations. The estimation technique is named after physicist Enrico Fermi as he was known for his ability to make good approximate calculations with little or no actual data. Fermi problems typically involve making justified guesses about quantities and their variance or lower and upper bounds. In some cases, order-of-magnitude estimates can also be derived using dimensional analysis.
Yakov Isidorovich Perelman was a Russian and Soviet science writer and author of many popular science books, including Physics Can Be Fun and Mathematics Can Be Fun.
An advice column is a column in a question and answer format. Typically, a reader writes to the media outlet with a problem in the form of a question, and the media outlet provides an answer or response.
A scavenger hunt is a game in which the organizers prepare a list defining specific items that need to be found, which the participants seek to gather or complete all items on the list, usually without purchasing them. Usually participants work in small teams, although the rules may allow individuals to participate. The goal is to be the first to complete the list or to complete the most items on that list. In variations of the game, players take photographs of listed items or be challenged to complete the tasks on the list in the most creative manner. A treasure hunt is another name for the game, but it may involve following a series of clues to find objects or a single prize in a particular order.
Randall Patrick Munroe is an American cartoonist, author, and engineer best known as the creator of the webcomic xkcd. Munroe has worked full-time on the comic since late 2006. In addition to publishing a book of the webcomic's strips, titled xkcd: Volume 0, he has written four books: What If?, Thing Explainer, How To, and What If? 2.
Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School is a children's novel by Louis Sachar in the Wayside School series. The book contains mathematical and logic puzzles for the reader to solve, presented as what The New Yorker called "absurdist math problems." The problems are interspersed with characteristically quirky stories about the students at Wayside School.
A self-help book is one that is written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name from Self-Help, an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles, but are also known and classified under "self-improvement", a term that is a modernized version of self-help. Self-help books moved from a niche position to being a postmodern cultural phenomenon in the late twentieth century.
xkcd, sometimes styled XKCD, is a serial webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe. The comic's tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". Munroe states on the comic's website that the name of the comic is not an initialism but "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation".
D. B. Cooper is a media epithet used to describe an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 on November 24, 1971, extorted a US$200,000 ransom, and parachuted to an unknown fate. He was never seen again, and only $5,880 of the ransom money has been found. The incident continues to influence popular culture, and has inspired references in books, film, and music.
The Game is a mind game in which the objective is to avoid thinking about The Game itself. Thinking about The Game constitutes a loss, which must be announced each time it occurs. It is impossible to win most versions of The Game. Depending on the variation, it is held that the whole world, or all those who are aware of the game, are playing it at all times. Tactics have been developed to increase the number of people who are aware of The Game, and thereby increase the number of losses.
Circular reporting, or false confirmation, is a situation in source criticism where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in reality comes from only one source. In many cases, the problem happens mistakenly through sloppy reporting or intelligence-gathering. However, the situation can also be intentionally contrived by the source or reporter as a way of reinforcing the widespread belief in its information.
"Time" is the 1,190th strip of Randall Munroe's webcomic xkcd. Beginning with a single frame published at midnight on March 25, 2013, the image was updated every 30 minutes until March 30, 2013, and then every hour for 118 days, ending on July 26 with a total of 3,102 unique images. Each image represented a single frame in a larger story.
Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion is a 2014 book by Sam Harris that discusses a wide range of topics including secular spirituality, the illusion of the self, psychedelics, and meditation. He attempts to show that a certain form of spirituality is integral to understanding the nature of the mind. In late September 2014, the book reached #5 on The New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers list.
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is a 2014 non-fiction book by Randall Munroe in which the author answers hypothetical science questions sent to him by readers of his webcomic, xkcd. The book contains a selection of questions and answers originally published on his blog What If?, along with several new ones. The book is divided into several dozen chapters, most of which are devoted to answering a unique question. What If? was released on September 2, 2014 and was received positively by critics. A sequel to the book, titled What If? 2, was released on September 13, 2022.
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words is a 2015 illustrated non-fiction book created by Randall Munroe, in which the author attempts to explain various complex subjects using only the 1,000 most common English words. Munroe conceptualized the book in 2012, when drawing a schematic of the Saturn V rocket for his webcomic xkcd.
The tag "[citation needed]" is added by Wikipedia editors to unsourced statements in articles requesting citations to be added. The phrase is reflective of the policies of verifiability and original research on Wikipedia and has become a general Internet meme.
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life is a 2021 self-help book by Canadian clinical psychologist, YouTube personality, and psychology professor Jordan Peterson, as a sequel to his 2018 book 12 Rules for Life.
The Ballmer Peak is a humorous concept invented by Randall Munroe in the xkcd webcomic, claiming that a programmer who is appropriately intoxicated can achieve a high level of productivity. The concept loosely tied to former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, and is likely a play on Balmer series of hydrogen spectral lines named for the scientist Johann Balmer.
What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is a 2022 non-fiction book by Randall Munroe. The book seeks to provide scientific answers to hypothetical questions proposed by readers of the author's webcomic, xkcd, and blog, What If? A follow-up to Munroe's 2014 title What If?, the book was released on September 13, 2022 to generally positive reviews, with Time saying, "Science isn't easy, but in Munroe's capable hands, it surely can be fun."
