This guy draws in stick figure comics on romance, sarcasm, math, and language.  He publishes web comics without fail every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and most importantly he was invited to Carnegie Mellon by AB Special Events on November 9, 2007 and spoke in Weigand Gymnasium.  This guy is Randall Munroe, better known as "the xkcd guy". 

The lecture began by differentiating the blood alcohol concentration with respect to time on the overhead, in reference to his earlier comic number 323 "BallmerPeak".  He talked briefly about his comics, and then proceeded to a question and answer session to make it more interactive.

During the question and answer session, he answered an array of questions ranging from what he would rather have trapped with him in a mall to asking if he was married – he isn't.  He admitted that his fame on the Internet makes meeting people a little strange, since "they know all your jokes, but you know nothing about them." 

To address how his mom thinks of xkcd, he replied: "It's been established that I don't try to hide excessively, but [my parents] pretend they never saw it."  Then he added, "once in a while my mom tells me I have spelling errors."

Munroe posed his famous kite prank as a challenge to students, which involved hanging a loose rope in the middle of a field by flying a kite so high up that the string and the kite itself cannot be seen. Another challenge was three-dimensional fencing with light-sabers.  If anybody is actually up to the challenge, Munroe said, "Let me know!" Overall, the audience was engaged with the sensibly interactive mode of his talk from the very beginning to the very end.  For Munroe's comics, visit xkcd.com.

 talkback to the pulse