Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for August 13, 2013

Bug juice!

Are you this hyped up over at “Ziggy” too?

Was the fly doing the backstroke?

You find soapboxes in the strangest places.

@the_kraut

You’ve got it backwards. The primary mission of both Voyagers was to get information on Jupiter and Saturn. Everything else, is just because they were going that way anyway (and will continue to for a long, long time).

Janis is incorrect.Arlo would only be considered a snob if his left pinkie was extended when he flicked mister bug out of his wine.

Is he drinking Chardonnay? If so that would be so ironic!

Arlo didn’t want to share any of the good stuff!

then there was the Werner Von Braun quote to Eisenhower from Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff”, referring to the Russian/American space race:“Mr.President, our Germans are better than their Germans”

;)

I think it was a piece of cork, instead of a fly….

But isn’t it ironic….. (sorry)

How about all our contributors to this forum who want to offer their “learned” opinions go to some place else and let the rest of us enjoy a comic strip free of pompous exhibitions of a lack of knowledge of history? Also a lack of basic writing skills.

Why would cork have wings?

a comment for the_kraut. My friend it is the funny papers not a commentary on life. You need to get aa life.

“has to be cork … if it was a fly, he’d be spilling the rest out. He wouldn’t drink it!”

If it’s a bit of cork, there’s no joke.

An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman walk into a pub, and each orders a whiskey. Three flies are flying overhead, and one drops into each drink.

The Englishman, revolted, tells the bartender to throw it out and pour a replacement in a new glass.

The Irishman calmly pulls the fly out of his glass and drinks the whiskey.

The Scotsman pulls the fly out of the whiskey, holds it over the glass, and slaps its back shouting “SPIT IT OOT!!! SPIT IT OOT!!!”

The Serbs were the proximate cause of the Great War. Got all huffy on the semi reasonable demands of Austria Hungary. And the dominos began to fall. Defensive alliances were the cause of offensive responses. And 7 million died.

Your Welcome. :)

“But the rest does everything that America and the Americans are hated, worldwide.”-America is loved worldwide. We are the place people know they can make something of themselves if they try.We are the place people go so they don’t die.We are the place people go to be free.They just don’t always like what all the other Americans are free to do.No bars keep people in America.People are dying to come here.

“The only part about the US space program I didn’t like was the political posturing of it. After our astronauts went a few times it stopped.”-That was Nixon. He figured if people weren’t watching the landings on TV, that meant they didn’t care about the missions, so he cut them out.He was just that way.-“Going to the moon was a dead end.”-Depends on your goal. If your goal was simply to do it first, it was MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and then abandon all the advances or look elsewhere. If the mission were gaining better understanding of the universe, it was part of the process. I would like us to put a few rovers like we have on Mars on the moon and simply see what all they find. Surely during the gravitic survey and imaging, there have been some interesting things to investigate further.

That fly must be hammered!

“What about the wars “you” Americans started?”-We have started wars, Spanish American, we blamed them for blowing up the Maine when it was likely a drunk sailor with a cigar.-Mexican American, we wanted to steal some land due to the idea of Manifest Destiny, that God wanted us to have it.-“What about Vietnam,”-Mostly the Soviet Union kept that war going by convincing people Socialism was the wave of the future as well of the idea that they needed to be nationalist. Actually, they had a lot to do with it by insisting on a part of Vietnam at the end of WWII since they didn’t really fight Japan at all.-We involved ourselves in it mostly out of fear the USSR would take over the entire world, one little rinky dink nation at a time unless we stood up to them and their puppets. Actually, they would have failed eventually but either way millions of people were going to die.-“what about Irak?”-We didn’t want to be caught with our pants down again by not being ready to respond to threats. Saddam had multiple weapons programs in the past, had aggressively invaded several nations and threatened the security of the world by pretending to still have advanced weapons programs. We didn’t want the place, but we conquered Iraq to end his threat.-(By the way, I may be responding to something someone else said and which you just copied, if so, no sweat, I’m just feeling wordy today.)-If the Germans did not start the Great War (WW1), who did -The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the associated treaties which got everybody to fighting when nobody really cared.

“ there were a lot of replies to my comments yesterday,”-I haven’t read yesterdays comments yet so I’m just commenting on today’s.-“If you still call me a troll I can live with it – as long as I have my fun.”-After all, trolls gotta eat too.-“One last word to the American space program: I think the most important part was the Apollo-program. To bring the first man to the moon was the greatest thing you Americans ever did – seen from the side of technology.”-Nope, it was Saran Wrap. Although the moon landing was nice too.-“ But to my opinion the scientists of the Voyager-project made a mistake, they wanted too much.”-You can’t want too much information about the universe and that was the goal of the Voyager Missions, to gain information. As was pointed out elsewhere, the gas giants were the primary focus of that investigation and everything else was just gravy. But gravy is good.- “About the following I am not sure. Correct me if I am wrong. ?But since the probes had to “visit” the big planets to gain momentum and velocity? the scientists installed equipment in the probes to investigate these planets. These instruments consumed energy which is badly needed after the probes left the Heliosphere.”-The path of the explorers involved what is called a gravity slingshot in which they pulled energy from the planets by going close to them and then shooting on ahead. Every visit shorted the amount of time needed to go and reduced the amount of fuel needed to get there. -They weren’t fools.-“There can be build enough space probes to visit and investigate the moon, other planets, other planets moons, the sun and comets. But probes which are designed to leave our solar system and travel on endlessly should start their work just there where they are now, in the heliosheath depletion region, and do not waste energy before.”-You can’t start your work in a place which takes decades to reach. Oh, sure, you could turn off all the instruments until you get there, but why would you? The radioactive plutonium powering the equipment is going to decay anyway. The electronics aren’t destroyed by being turned on and sending back information. You need to get near the planets for the gravity slingshot anyway and gravity will sling whatever mass comes its way, so there is no good reason to not gather information on the way — especially since you can‘t promise the instruments will still be functioning later.-When the craft were launched, we did not have spread spectrum technology to send back large amounts of information from so far away, that was developed and reprogrammed into the instruments in mid-flight. That was a success such as few can begin to comprehend.(The technology which made it possible also made it possible for Janis to have a bad connection, but at least she had a connection. Without it, there would be no way this many cell phones could operate.)-“By this way we possibly could have gathered data about the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. That is why I called the compromise useless. Maybe I was a bit harsh there.”-The existence of the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud were hypothesized but not certain at the time of launch. In fact, the objects are still so spread out that seeing anything useful is still unlikely.…“ I choose the avatar-name the_kraut deliberately, knowing very well what it means.”-You knew everybody loves sauerkraut?Therefore we must love you? Makes sense to me.-One other thing about probe instrumentation, not Voyagers I think but still interesting. We knew the atmosphere of Venus was too thick to see through so we developed what is now called “ground penetrating radar.” Since it would pass by Earth on the way to Venus, scientists decided to point it our way. They discovered lost cities in Central America and the Middle East, giant dried lakes in the Sahara, nuclear submarines a hundred metres underwater. -The applications are taking too long to be fully used, but they are there and growing day by day. I remember when Robert Heinlein testified to Congress regarding the spin-offs of the space program including the one which had restored blood flow to his brain and made him able to write again and testify before Congress.

@Burnout70s

“His welcome what?”-an alternative spelling of “you’re welcome” or “you are welcome”And you’re right that it is a common spelling mistake although knot the worst. (those usually involve knot, not, site, cite, sight, their, there, they’re, want won’t and suchlike)

You honestly think anyone is interested in your long, windy monologue? Crawl back under your bed and leave us alone.

To ignore the historical commentary and respond to the few commenting on today’s comic — I think you missed the point. It looks like he’s fished a fly out of his wine and is now holding up the glass to the light to see if there are any more flies in it. Janis comes up, not being there to see the action with the fly, and thinks Arlo is examining the wine for color and clarity, and is therefore acting the wine snob.

("There are five basic steps in tasting wine: color, swirl, smell, taste, and savor. These are also known as the “five S” steps: see, swirl, sniff, sip, savor. During this process, a taster must look for clarity, varietal character, integration, expressiveness, complexity, and connectedness." — Wikipedia)

" if it was a fly, he’d be spilling the rest out. He wouldn’t drink it!"-That’s part of what makes it funny, that he DID drink it after ousting the fly.

Free wine fly…

spit it out ya wee bastid!