CSotD: What a day for a Humpday!
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Well, afraid not, but I share the fellow’s sentiments.
Since I hit the sack before Dear Leader’s deadline for genocide, I turned on my computer this morning wondering if there was anything left, to find that he’d found yet another thing that will now happen in two weeks. Which is to say that Kearney wasn’t being a prophet when he dropped this one last Thursday. He’s just bright enough to recognize the pattern.
Whamond could have had a different goal promised “in two weeks” in every panel, though the abandonment of a health care plan after all these fortnights is a valid observation.
Trump uses “two weeks” as a universal stall, and back when he was a private citizen, it probably worked because two weeks later, people would forget what he’d promised. Brian Stelter recently pointed to a NYTimes piece by Shawn McCreesh last June in which he discussed Dear Leader’s “two weeks:”
It is a slippery thing, this two weeks — not a measurement of time so much as a placeholder. … It is completely divorced from any sense of chronology. It simply means later. But later can also mean never. Sometimes.
I suppose the Iranians may be hoping these two weeks are like the two weeks after which Trump will forget his health plan or his tax plan or any number of “never gonna happen” things, but it would sure fray my nerves if I were in their place.
Wiley is as political as I plan to be today, and the timing on this one, which ran today, is about as precise as one could hope for, and works whether Dear Leader was committing war crimes or postponing them for two weeks. Which, by the by, makes me think of “two dollars,” but for now let’s just enjoy Humpday and hope for cooler heads or midterms or something to occur before (or in case) the two week TACO arrives.
There are a lot of Artemis cartoons, most of them pretty predictable, a few kind of funny. It’s been two or three decades since an airline lost my luggage, but they make it count: One time the bag contained clothes for a wedding I was attending, another time they lost my guitar when I was traveling to a gig.
It’s not about how often they do it, but whether they can make it matter.
There can be revenge. I once had a three-pound block of Cabot cheddar in my carry-on, a gift for my hostess, that caused a delay at the screening. Apparently it x-rays like plastic explosives. If I do that again, I’ll stick some wires in it.
We don’t joke, however. My uncle sent his GF a potted Easter lily at Spring Break once and when she brought it home, some idiot in line made a joke and not only was their plane late but every plane in America and Canada was off schedule for the next 24 hours.
This one made me laugh, because we did it all the time when I was a kid, but, after giving it some thought, I don’t remember my kids’ friends doing it, and they’re 50. I think they set things up by phone, but maybe it just happened on its own.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Rob Harrell is right about middle-school boys and personal hygiene, and Duginski is right about schools and climate control, and I like that Duginski supplements his political commentary by showing the classroom in disrepair.
But air conditioning is an issue in a lot of places where they are looking at year-round school or just extending the school year at either end of summer.
You can tell the principal’s office from outside the building because principals work all year and so there’s an air conditioner in the window. They know it’s needed, but, as Duginski shows, a lot is needed, and it’s easier for legislators and school boards to make rules than to find money.
Meanwhile, middle school teachers will tell you what it’s like in May, June, August and September to be trapped in a room with unbathed adolescents.
Who will then discover Axe Body Spray and make things worse.
I saw an article about how students can no longer have class discussions because AI has robbed them of the ability to think for themselves. Well, as Frazz says, the liberal arts reinvent themselves every day, but, then again, the point of the liberal arts is to teach people to think.
There are ways to foil AI, including discussing topics rather than having the teacher stand at the front of the room droning, and by having short in-class writing assignments. Of course, that assumes class sizes of 20 or so, and see Paul Duginski’s cartoon, above. Teachers are more expensive than air conditioners.
Still, if you’ve got students doing all their work at home, you can’t complain about how they’re doing it.
This, O Best Beloved, is how the liberal arts began: Guys like Socrates and Diogenes just hung out in the agora taking about stuff, and people who wanted to learn came to listen, and to talk to them. It became more formal, and the Seven Arts were the Quadrivium – Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy — and the Trivium of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric (hence “trivia”).
Another thing about AI: It’s destroying computer searches. Not only does it try to lead you down rabbit holes as Arlo notes, but it’s often distracted by stupid assumptions. I tried to look up something out of classical history the other day, but it turns out some rock group had snagged a couple of the relevant words for its name, and not only did the AI snippet at the top insist that was what I wanted, but that was also the first two pages of results.
I’m very good at framing requests, but AI is very good at insisting on what I must surely mean instead of what I most certainly do. Dagnabbit.
It’s 20o out, with an expected high today of 50. The mockingbirds aren’t back yet and I miss their lengthy, inventive concertos as much as I miss 70 and 80 degree days.
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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