CSotD: Sunday Comics w/ Extra Nitpicking
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The question is theoretical, like “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” which is about how much space non-corporeal critters take up, the answer to which is “Get a grip.”
The tree falling in the forest is about whether sound is the vibration itself or the sensing of the vibration in the ear. It’s pretty darned metaphysical, and I hated metaphysics.
The word “metaphysics” was coined to refer to everything Aristotle wrote after “Physics,” which is an example of how etymology can make sense but also be ridiculous, bearing in mind that, as noted here several times, I also hated most of Aristotle.
If you go all literal on things, it makes metaphysicians angry. When your professor holds out a pencil and says that you can’t prove it will fall to the table if he lets go of it, you’re supposed to debate Berkeley and Hume.
You are not supposed to ask him if he’d like to put money on the proposition.
Anyway, there’s always somebody in the forest, so the tree always makes noise. The question is “Do the ears of chipmunks, birds, insects, bears and deer count?”
That’s also true in the desert, though the hearer might only be a scorpion. By the time you get to a place where there’s nobody to hear it, you’d be out in space where no one can hear you scream. Theoretically.
But there, a tree would fall so slowly that it would made no noise. Or it might just hang there like a professor’s pencil.
Discuss.
Speaking of nobody being around, I really like Siegel’s piece because it is indeed ridiculous but accurate, and a reflection of Yogi Berra’s “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Except that Yogi didn’t go there, while Seigel’s kvetcher is part of the problem.
Over in the Western Adirondacks where I grew up, it’s very easy to walk in the woods for hours and run into nobody. The crowds are over in the High Peaks around Lake Placid, where the paths are so worn down that in some places you end up walking in a knee-high trench.
Two things freak city people out when they visit the Adirondacks: One is the silence, the other is the darkness. I am completely serious that people who visit there often require nightlights and a radio playing softly in order to sleep.
Excellent timing by Dave Whamond. Yesterday I tried to subscribe to something, as in “give them money,” but when I got to where I was supposed to create a password, they kicked it back saying it wasn’t right.
So I added a “special character” and it still wasn’t right, so I made it longer and it still wasn’t acceptable, but they never said why, so I said to hell with it. They were offering a discount, which maybe was because for some reason nobody has been subscribing.
And then there are the websites where, if you forget your password, they have a link to reset it. And to do that, you’re required to enter the password you can’t remember.
Another piece of good timing. I got a new router last week, and the only instructions that came with it were the legal boilerplate about not dropping it in the bathtub. As to setting it up and pairing it to my computer, TV, etc, it offered a QR code and said to visit their app.
Which told me how much fun I was going to have with it and showed me the merch I could buy, but not how to make the damn thing work.
Fortunately, a very nice fellow in Bengaluru was able to walk me through the set-up over the phone. I suspect he and his colleagues cost them more than they’d have paid to add two or three more pages to that useless brochure. Or to reprogram that useless app.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I’m entering this pair as evidence that neither side of the aisle has a monopoly on questionable theories.
The things referenced by the McCoy brothers are a matter of harmless delusion, but the theories about the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., are distressing because we laughed at the rightwing’s Pizzagate idiocy. Gosh, it seems turn-about is fair play.
There was a 180-page report on the event that focused on security failures and mentioned only that the president’s ear was grazed by a bullet (not, for example, a fragment from his lectern, as some had speculated).
And lord knows Dear Leader played it up, which is reflected in this passage:
DTD ASAIC (Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge) recalling those moments, testified that he had never trained for a scenario where a protectee tries to stay in the face of a potentially imminent threat. DTD ASAIC continued that “[u]sually, after they experience something like this, they want to leave.”
There have also been informal reports about the wound, which lack of detail matches Trump’s similar reports on his annual physicals and refusal to release his academic records beyond lying that he graduated from Wharton with honors. And that he could have played professional baseball.
In any case, I’m equally willing to believe that Hillary Clinton and Tom Hanks drank blood in the basement of a pizza place built on a slab and that a massive fake-assassination conspiracy included recruiting a shooter who couldn’t make his school’s rifle team because he was a lousy shot.
And that JFK is alive in a vegetative state on a Greek island which is why Jackie pretended to marry Aristotle Onassis, who provided the island, nursing care and cover story.
Juxtaposition of This Week’s Contest
The weekly fill-in-the-black contest continues at GoComics. This is more challenging than the single panel caption contests some cartoonists run, because you have to not only come up with a whole series of captions but also to draw in the parts of the comic that are missing.
(There may be other explanations, but none that explain why it happens so regularly.)
UPDATE: And we have a winner! DD Degg to the rescue.
Frazz offers an excuse to play this entire song, since it’s based on the Compensational Theory of Nature.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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