一本搞笑的新自助指南里的顶级“坏主意”

一本搞笑的新自助指南里的顶级“坏主意”

Best known as the brains behind the beloved webcomic xkcd, Randall Munroe has recently published a book – “How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems” – all about foolish ideas and the wonderful science behind them. As ever, all of this inadvisable advice is painstakingly calculated and playfully explained with the distinctive stick-people illustrations that make xkcd so lovable in the first place.

兰德尔·门罗最著名的作品是广受欢迎的网络漫画《xkcd》，他最近出版了一本书——《如何:为常见的现实世界问题提供荒谬的科学建议》——书中讲述了愚蠢的想法及其背后的奇妙科学。和以往一样，所有这些不明智的建议都是精心计算出来的，并通过独特的插图进行了有趣的解释，正是这些插图让xkcd开始变得如此可爱。

If you've ever wondered whether astronaut Chris Hadfield could fly a plane from England to France in the Channel Tunnel, or if it’s possible to predict the weather using pixels on your smartphone, then Munroe is your guy.

如果你想知道宇航员克里斯·哈德菲尔德是否能驾驶飞机从英国通过英吉利海峡隧道飞到法国，或者是否有可能使用智能手机的像素来预测天气，那么门罗就是你要找的人。

“I feel like I’m always coming up with bad ideas for how to do things,” Munroe told IFLScience. “Often, they sound like bad ideas and turn out to be bad ideas. But the process of analyzing and trying to figure out whether they're bad ideas or not can teach you something really interesting.”

门罗告诉IFLScience:“我觉得我总是会想出一些糟糕的方法来做事情。”通常，它们听起来像是坏主意，结果却变成了坏主意。但分析并试图找出它们是否是坏主意的过程，可以教会你一些真正有趣的东西。”

“Then occasionally, something that sounds like a ridiculous idea does turn out to be better than it sounded at first. You wouldn’t know that if you didn’t take it seriously for a minute and try thinking about it,” he explained.

“有时候，一个听起来很荒谬的想法会比它一开始听起来更好。如果你不认真思考一分钟，你就不会知道。”他解释道。

While the advice is undoubtedly absurd, the thought experiments help to unearth some fascinating facts and otherwise unknown insights. According to the Munroe school of thought, science is at its most engaging at the most absurd ends of the possible.

虽然这些建议无疑是荒谬的，但思想实验有助于揭示一些有趣的事实和一些未知的见解。根据门罗学派的观点，科学是在可能最荒谬的情况下最引人入胜的。

Take, for example, Munroe’s friend who text him saying he’s got a nasty ant infestation at his house. Not satisfied with any sensible solutions, Munroe headed towards the decidedly bad idea of whether it would be feasible to protect the house with a moat of lava.

举个例子，门罗的一个朋友给他发短信说他家里的蚂蚁横行成灾。由于对任何合理的解决方案都不满意，门罗想到了一个坏主意:用熔岩护城河来保护房子是否可行。

Well, this was a plainly terrible idea. But as he explains in the new book, this bad idea led him on a whole trail of discovery, from the ingredients of lava to the bizarre insects that actually live on recently cooled lava flows called lava crickets. Then comes the task of constructing a lava-proof moat and the energy needed to maintain a hot pot of nicely heated liquid lava (which, according to his calculations, could tip your daily energy bill into the millions of dollars, depending on the desired heat of the lava and size of the moat).

这显然是个糟糕的主意。但正如他在新书中所解释的那样，这个糟糕的想法引导他踏上了一条完整的发现之路，从熔岩的成分到奇异的昆虫，它们实际上生活在最近冷却的熔岩流中，这种昆虫被称为熔岩蟋蟀。然后是构建lava-proof护城河的任务和维护所需要的能量的火锅好加热液体熔岩(根据他的计算,可能会使你的日常能源法案到数百万美元,取决于所需的热熔岩和护城河的大小)。

By his own admission, Munroe typically likes to tackle these ideas by himself in true nerdy fashion. However, for this book, a few of the ideas required a helping hand from experts to develop, including an astrophysicist, a robot ethicist, an astronaut, and Serena Williams.

门罗自己也承认，他通常喜欢自己以一种真正书呆子的方式来处理这些想法。然而，在这本书中，一些想法需要专家的帮助，包括一位天体物理学家、一位机器人伦理学家、一位宇航员和塞雷娜·威廉姆斯。