Question 683: They're positive

Topical.

What would I do without xkcd?

He should join what?

Question 682: Puts the Joy in Joystick

Something wanton for the week.
THis ad, released by a company __X__ was recalled a few days after, for more obvious reasons
Puting delicate constituions aside for a moment, gaze into the picture & ID the company, & reason why it was discarded
#brownie points for innovative answers

Question 681: Can you spell that out for me?

Identify. What does he do?

Question 680: Walking on sunshine

ID this, amongst the greatest funk bands to ever groove the sacred ground.

Question 679: Sign Me Up First

Something recently happened to the internet, and it is being termed the "biggest thing since .com".

The terms below have something to do with what happened.

 .blogs, .images, .patents, .videos,  .books, .places, .everything, .realtime, .shopping, .discussions, .recipes, .news,


What do these domain names have in common? The context is really important. - 5 points


Therefore, which company is most (obviously) likely to want these for itself?  - 5 points

Question 678: Hail King Creole

On March 24, 1958 ___X__ accompanied by his parents and a group of family and friends, reported to the Memphis Draft Board. From there, he and twelve other recruits were bused to Kennedy Veterans Memorial Hospital. There, ___X__was assigned army serial number 53 310 761. After being processed and sworn in,__X___ said his good-byes and was bused with the others from Memphis to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas for further processing. There, he received his famous G.I. haircut and coined the phrase 'Hair today, gone tomorrow', in a comment to the news media. He was assigned to the Second Armored Division's 'Hell On Wheels' unit (formerly led by General George Patton) and was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.


Inspite of the fact that there was no war, the army navy and air force vied to get __X__'s attention to join them.


SO ID X

Question 677: Having a sense of adventure

You have two _X_s. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four _X_s back, with a tax exemption for five _X_s. The milk rights of the six _X_s are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven _X_s back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight _X_s, with an option on one more. You sell one _X_ to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine _X_s. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.

What now? And give me X(which is VERY obvious)

Question 676: Faecetious

X is the recently released finding of a lead researcher who is trying something novel with the remains of the sewage sludge in Tokyo.

The results are:

"63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals".

There is very little in terms of documented explanation for the ground breaking news, and there is dispute over its authenticity.

Nevertheless, give me X.

Question 675: MADam please

The origin of the phrase __X__ is in this poem

\William Congreve, in The mourning bride, 1697:

As you'll answer it, take heed
This Slave commit no Violence upon
Himself. I've been deceiv'd. The Publick Safety
Requires he should be more confin'd; and none,
No not the Princes self, permitted to
Confer with him. I'll quit you to the King.
Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent
The base Injustice thou hast done my Love:
Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress,
And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn'd;
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
___X___

Question 674: four a-piece

Connect!

Question 673: Oh my beloved yellow submarine

An easy question for a lazy Sunday Afternoon
THis is actually a question for both the guys & the girls, ( a bit more for the guys perhaps)

ID whats been blanked out
The colour scheme used should be noted.

Question 672: ARE YOU READY?

Meow.

Now look at the pictures.
 

Look, Pai's hair if he ever went blond

__X__ was created by a marine biologist. Nuff said.

Tell me what X is.

Question 671: Word to your mother?

The person in the picture below started what has now become the most comprehensive compendium in its field. ID the person & what he helped create
The settings of the picture are relevant to the question

Question 670: Upside down lad!

Identify the iconic pic, and explain the little there is to explain!

What's with the numbers?

Hey, there seems to be some mix-up with the question numbers and that in turn seems to have led to a bit of confusion.
It's mostly because Pai does weird stuff. But don't blame the freak. Actually, no. Go right ahead. He deserves it. Stupid confusion causing boy. Tch.
In any case, these are the recent confusion-addled questions. Click on the links, read the questions (google if you must) and then answer them.

665 (Newly added question)
666 (Because Pai insists his numbering can't be altered)
667(His opinion isn't that relevant)
668
669

That is all.

Question 669: Even if its his life, he still has a day

The supposed origins of this phrase dates back to the 16th century. In spite of contradictory conventions applied to the __X__ in the phrase __Y__, it still remains amongst the most popular cliches in the world.


A supposed origin is from the lawyer George Graham Vest's tear-jerking speech that became known as the Eulogy to __X__:


"Gentlemen of the jury, a __X__ stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow, and the snow drives fiercely, if only he can be near him. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens." 

The New-York Literary Journa states in Volume 4, 1821:

The faithful __X__ - why should I strive
To speak his merits, while they live
In every breast, and __Y__
Does often at his heels attend.

SO:
ID X & Y 

Question 668: Love thy master

Sitter, I expect.
Subject?

Please, say nothing about beheading!

Question 667: An insult conveyed in the form of a compliment

Connect these 5 comical pictures to one 'magnetic' concept

Question 666: Unleash who from where?

• The following are the descriptions of __X__. However, its more popular connotations are not given. ID X & the more popular connotations
  
  
  §  __X__ is the magic sum, or sum of the magic constants of a six by six magic square, any row or column of which adds up to 111.
  §  The sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel is __X__ 
  §  __X__  was a winning lottery number in the 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery scandal, in which equipment was tampered to favor certain numbers as each of the three individual random digits.
  §  __X__  was the original name of the Macintosh SevenDust computer virus that was discovered in 1998.
  §  In the Bible,__X__ is the number of talents of gold Solomon collected each year 
  §  In the Bible, __X__  is the number of Adonikam's descendants who return to Jerusalem and Judah from the Babylonian exile
  §  The number __X__ is a frequent visual element of Aryan Brotherhood tattoos.
  §  In Kabbalistic Judaism __X__ represents the creation and perfection of the world.
  
  

Question 665: It's LeGen...wait for it...

Sometime in 1680, this odd looking gentleman:

proposed to aid and assist the merchants of France in developing and promoting their economy and asked __X__ how this could be achieved. __X__ responded by saying __Y__.  __Y__ went on to become a very often used term in economics especially with reference to free trade and doing whatever the hell you want.

Identify X and tell me what Y is.
Don't bother about the gentleman in the picture.

Not a Question!

This isn't a question. Just something you ought to see!

This is a picture taken directly above these camels in the desert at sunset.  It is considered one of the best pictures of the year.  Look closely, the camels are the little white lines in the picture.  The black you see are just the shadows!!

Question 664: Who's scared of her?

The Dreadnought Hoax, perpetrated by Horace De Vere Cole involved Cole and five friends—writer __X__,  brother Adrian Stephen, Guy Ridley, Anthony Buxton and artist Duncan Grant—who disguised themselves with skin darkeners and turbans. The disguise's main limitation was that the "royals" could not eat anything or their make-up would be ruined. Adrian Stephen took the role of "interpreter".

In Weymouth, the navy welcomed the princes with an honour guard. An Abyssinian flag was not found, so the navy proceeded to use that of Zanzibar and to play Zanzibar's national anthem.

Thus began one of the most famous hoaxes in history, which exposed the incompetence of the British Navy.
The "royals" inspected the fleet. To show their appreciation, they communicated in a gibberish of words drawn from Latin and Greek; they asked for prayer mats and attempted to bestow fake military honours on some of the officers. This was origin of the phrase __Y__

So:

1) ID the missing person
2) WHat phrase, which gained notoriety in the past 2 years, finds its origins here.

ID the person on the extreme left.

Question 663 : Farms of Steel

Pre Script: Scores will be updated!

What's being talked about?

It has been estimated that, for every square metre of territory on the front from the coast to the Swiss border, a tonne of --------------- fell. One shell in every 4 (some sources say one in every 3 did not ------ 

Given the swamp-like conditions of trench warfate in the period, the weapons - in the form of ___________________________- buried themselves on impact or were otherwise quickly swallowed in the mud. As time passes, construction work, field ploughing and natural processes bring the rusting s____ to the surface. Most of the __X__ is found during the spring planting and autumn ploughing.

In Belgium, X discovered by farmers is carefully placed around field edges, or in gaps in telegraph poles, where it is regularly collected by the Belgian army for disposal by controlled explosion at a specialist centre near Houthulst.

Gas canisters and grenades need greater care as the gas remains poisonous and volatile long after many explosives have perished. The town of Vimi and the villages of Farbuf, Willerval, Acheville and Arleux-en-Gohelle were evacuated in April 2001 when mustard started to leak from X that had been gathered by the French Département du Déminage for disposal

Belgium has a disposal facility that can deal with most kinds of ---- at Poelkapelle, built after ocean dumping of stopped in 1980. Once extracted by the army, the gas chemicals are burned and destroyed at high temperatures at specialized facilities -----

Oops

There was an error in Question 660.

It was 2^128 and not 2^28. An editing error. My fault entirely. I apologise.

Give it another shot.

Thanks.

Question 662: Armageddon out of here

The phrase __X__ has been in constant use since the advent of geography. However, the application of this moniker to the Elk RIver in Virginia came about in W.E.R. Byrne's book, "Tales of the Elk":




"The Elk river, seventy miles above its mouth at Charleston, in that wildly picturesque portion of central West Virginia, makes an abrupt bend in its course, where the waters, now with impetuous rush, now in placid pool, are baffled and turned to the right in a graceful semi-circular sweep of almost a mile, by beetling cliffs rising sheer from the river level, to an elevation of several hundred feet. These cliffs and their huge rocks, which, in the ages, have fallen away and found lodgment in and along the side of the stream, to the pioneer raftsman, as his craft swept into the curve from upriver, gave the distinct impression of having reached an insuperable barrier to his further progress - a cul-de-sac, or the jumping-off place; hence from the earliest history of the country, that locality has been called, and still bears the name -____X___".


So ID X

Question 661: Ding dong the bells are going chime...or was it something to do with death?

Handsome! :D

Identify. Connect. Explain.

Question 660: 1,2,3,4,5...

Guest question courtesy Kishore Narendran.

Associate 2^128 (340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456)
and the date 8th June, 2011 with the pictures below. Connect.

Question 659: Mission Emission?

__X___ arose in response to ___Y___ who taught that the position was the only proper way to engage in sexual intercourse. This explanation probably originated from Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male through a confluence of misunderstandings and misinterpretations of historical documents. However, prior to Kinsey, at least in Western civilization, writing about sex and sex positions was largely forbidden and so the absence of references to that term may reflect that, not the absence of use of the phrase. Tuscans refer to the position as "The Angelic Position" while some Arabic-speaking groups call it "the manner of serpents."

__X__  known by several names, including "the matrimonial", "the Mama-Papa position", "the English-American position", and "the male superior position".

FOr more obvious reasons, __X__ can't be shown here
But
ID X & Y.

My way of Saying I'm Back.

Question 658: Deth note

"To everyone, to all my friends, I love you, I have to leave. "

__A__ banned that which the above line is connected with due to the belief that it sent out the wrong message.


__X__, believed that __A__ had misinterpreted it and with reference to the ban said, "You made __Y__ man of the year, and if anything he left an indelible last message that the easy way out is to blow your fucking head off."

Identify A, X and Y(this one if you want) and tell me what it was and why it was banned. 




Oh and crack 648 already! You'll are smart people.

Question 657: 'Tisn't a PRoblem

A slightly weird map I found.
What's the subject of it?

Question 656: To hell with the titles

Pai thinks he owns xkcd.
Idiot.

Anyway, xkcd question :D!

Tell me what the pie chart illustrates.

Pai, enjoy Cyanide and Happiness. Ha!

Question 655: Hewlett Packard( No, not the answer)

Iconic in every sense.

Explain the pic and its significance :)

Question 654: We're off the Mark!

Who is depicted in this cartoon?

Question 653: Sounds like my kind of spirit

Since Nagaratna stole XKCD from me, i decided to take cyanide and happiness from her.
Just id the blanks

Literally, it is.

Beats going bald

Question 652: The racquet they all created

The Sequence of events leading to the __X__ are as follows:

The Assembly quickly decrees the following:

The National Assembly, considering that it has been called to establish the constitution of the realm, to bring about the regeneration of public order, and to maintain the true principles of monarchy; nothing may prevent it from continuing its deliberations in any place it is forced to establish itself; and, finally,  the National Assembly exists wherever its members are gathered.

Bailly: I demand that the secretaries and I ______ first; which they do immediately according to the following formula:

We _____ never to separate ourselves from the National Assembly, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the realm is drawn up and fixed upon solid foundations.

Hearing of ___X___, the King called a meeting of the orders. At the end of the meeting he ordered the __Y___ to disperse. They refused. One of the delegates declared that  "We are here at the will of the people, . . . and . . . shall not stir from our seats unless forced to do so by bayonets." The King was unwilling to use force and eventually ordered the first and second estates to join the new National Assembly. The ___Y___ had won.

ID X & Y

Question 651: Detective shows teach us a whole lot

 The Supreme Court of the United States held that an elicited incriminating statement by a suspect will not constitute admissible evidence unless the suspect was informed of the right to decline to make self-incriminatory statements and the right to legal counsel , and makes a knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver of those rights.


It is supposed to be a safeguard against self-incrimination. As a result, if law enforcement officials decline to offer the warning to an individual in their custody, they may still interrogate that person and act upon the knowledge gained, but may not use that person's statements to incriminate him or her in a criminal trial.

What's the warning called? You would have heard it tonnes of times (Not the name. But the actual warning).

Question 650: Yes We Can a bliss

Id the famous gent in the pic
When asked if he indulged in it in its wholesome state
he replied" frequently.... thats the point"

So
ID
& did what frequently?

Question 649: Robbit

Connect these images to a structure!
Pic 2 is not to be used literally, i.e, it COULD be misleading.

Go ahead, Quack it!