CSotD: An amusing lecture, with assigned reading
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My freshman year, I had a history course taught by the department head, which consisted of two very entertaining and informative lectures by him and a test section by his teaching assistants that had nothing to do with the lectures but was based instead on reading assignments.
The history course I subsequently took in summer school was a great deal more to my liking. You will understand that, well, Santayana may have only been paraphrased, but I wasn't even close …
(Peanuts, of course, though not today's)
So enjoy these cartoons and comments, but don't neglect the secondary assignments or you'll have to read the blog all over again.
Speaking of academics, Baby Blues touches on a point of contention. I was raised with an allowance but never paid for grades. I have never been very good at money management but credit a regular allowance with what little planning skills I possess.
Paying me for grades would have been hopeless, however, because, while they didn't have ADD in those days, I was never able to see ahead to the end of the grading period and was always stunned when finals approached. The C's I managed to pull off were due in part to the glibness implied in Charlie Brown's analysis, together with last-minute hyperfocus, a life-saving aspect of ADD.
I was also saved, in college, by majoring in matters of opinion, a Great Books program patterned on St. John's but without the intensity of students showing up for class in their pajamas, which I honestly saw one morning on a visit to the Santa Fe campus.
Johnnies make the students in "The Paper Chase" look like slackers. The bulletin board in the student union was full of requests along the line of "Looking for people to form a Euclid study group" and my suspicion is that there are an awful lot of kids there who have stepped — nay, leapt — over the line from hyperfocus into full-blown Aspergers.
Which makes it a very cool place to be if you are an Aspie but people who have dropped out of St. John's have tales to tell.
Still, a curriculum largely based on philosophy is good for those who excel in glibness and having opinions. As long as you avoid Aristotle and lean more towards Epictetus and Plato, you can be just like the guy in today's Pros and Cons and still graduate, as I did, in the top 85 percent of your class.
I have no idea if Dan Piraro is ADD, ADHD, an Aspie or just a really funny guy, but I do know he has a talent for disjointed thinking, which leads to wonderfully insightful comics like this one.
At some point certainly before I was out of my teens, it occurred to me that, if you were invisible, you would also be blind because the light would pass right through your retinas. And that, unless you fasted for a couple of days and underwent a thorough colonic, people would still be able to see where you were anyway.
As someone who can't watch a production of Peter Pan without seeing the wires, I was gobsmacked with admiration over this panel. The idea of willingly suspending disbelief enough to accept the basic contradiction of a creature that is not invisible but doesn't reflect light, and then being analytical enough to add a small, absurd complication leaves me breathless.
I would be heartbroken to learn that Piraro did well in school.
That, too.
Having noted the benefits of being glib, let me back off that praise a bit. While "Today is the first day of the rest of your life" is a good reminder of the possibility for renewal, "live every moment as if it were your last" is well-summed up by Brewster Rockit who dwells in an interstellar space nearly as vacuous as that bit of advice.
Overthinking ruins glib, vacuous philosophy: Whenever I see a bumpersticker that says "Drive it like you stole it," my reaction is "Really, really carefully so you don't get stopped."
And — no joke — the first time I saw "this shampoo has not been tested on animals," I thought it was a disclaimer.
Now here's a reading assignment:
I don't normally feature reruns, at least intentionally, but Doonesbury is just re-starting a critical arc. All the yellow ribbons, football game flyovers and declarations of our devotion to our heroes isn't going to amount to squat if we don't actually step up and help the legions of young people who are going to come home with serious medical issues.
Those who play George Patton, strutting around spouting about patriotism and then disrespecting front-line soldiers with PTSD, and who don't feel we should fully fund the VA and other programs to help these veterans, had better not believe in Hell, because, if it's real, they'll be there.
And you'll go deeper into the circles of eternal fire if you dare to talk about "personal responsibility."
I dealt with the mother of a medic who was being redeployed and was actively suicidal but (A) couldn't get a medical discharge and (B) didn't want it because he wouldn't let his buddies down. Then, once his desperate mother and girlfriend finally got a U.S. senator involved and cancelled his reployment, I had to kill the story because he was ashamed to let people know he had stayed behind.
George Patton will not be alone down there.
Meanwhile, it all reminds me of a journalistic side to the topic, on which war correspondent David Axe and cartoonist Matt Bors teamed for an unforgettable graphic memoir.
Consider that a secondary source that will, if you read it, boost your grade.
Next assignment:
From the increasingly-important pen of Jen Sorensen, something you need to go read, about another reason a lot of legislators had better hope that Hell isn't a real place or else, if it is, that God shares their cruel and perverted sense of justice.
Should have saved this for next month:
Today's Mother Goose and Grimm makes a pomposity-deflating gag based on history: Rats and housemice are, indeed, invasive species brought over from Europe.
I'd have saved it for November, where it could take the place of the "Indians look upon Pilgrims as illegal aliens" cartoons that are nearly as mandatory as (A) bear trap in the fireplace for Santa, (B) sleeping through New Years and (C) parents ate all the Halloween candy have become for their respective holidays.
Final reference to the Almighty today, for the benefit of Mayflower bluebloods and their Know-Nothing ilk: The first shall be last, baby, and the last shall be first. And here's your moment of zen:
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