Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on Dick Tracy

   Usually, when a character says something like, I have important information and I’ll tell you later, that’s like volunteering to be murdered.

2. 3 days ago on Doonesbury

   I have no trouble with the term “spooks” as referring to spies of various sorts, although I kinda like the term I saw in a British mystery novel, “the stealthy men.”

   However, the term can also be used as a racist slur against people of colour. True story: I used to work in an office building that had regular offices (including ours) on the first two floors, a high-security reception area on the third floor, and floors four-ten occupied by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. (They apparently liked, at that time at least, to occupy some floors in busy office buildings—if they were exclusive tenants, then a watcher could surmise that anyone going in or out was a spy.)

   One day a guy, as it happened a Black guy, stuck his head into our office selling something or other. When we said no thanks, he asked about the upper floors. I was about to say something like, Oh, that’s the spooks, when I realized that the term could be taken the wrong way.

3. 7 days ago on Dick Tracy

   It’s a pretty dumb international terrorist and saboteur who draws attention to himself by leaping over a transit turnstile.

4. 9 days ago on Dick Tracy

   “If you feign indifference to something that should upset you the clue is the dog that doesn’t bark.”

   I agree, but we the readers were overhearing a private conversation between Sr and Jr. Could Sr feign lack of interest because he’s trying to pull something over on the kid? Or maybe because he knows we’re listening?

   (As I recall, in the deliciously acid 1977 movie Nasty Habits, essentially Watergate with nuns, as performed by famously liberal actors having great fun, Nixon surrogate Glenda Jackson says “We can get the money, no problem,” and then, leaning closer to the microphone she knows is hidden in the statue of the Infant of Prague, “but it would be wrong!”)

5. 9 days ago on Non Sequitur

   Exactly. And the states could apportion the state’s Electoral College allocation by percentage vote, which would result in a fairer and more democratic system. (This wouldn’t address the small-state advantage, but that’s a different problem.)

   I see the first-past-the-post winner-take-all electoral system as a real problem of democracy, along several dimensions. Note that it’s essentially the same problem whether on a constituency basis (as for US Representatives or for Members of Parliament) or the larger basis of a state’s EC representation. There are “safe” constituencies and states (which discourages democratic participation), and a few votes in “swing” constituencies and states can have enormous consequences.

   (I am aware that Maine and Nebraska do things a little differently, but it was pointed out to me that their constituency-based elections are still FPTP winner-take-all.)

   Last I heard, some Republicans were trying to get some blue states to adopt proportional EC representation, to water down their influences, while keeping red-state representation solid. Clearly any changes would have to be nation-wide. Or like the National Popular Vote Initiative, which seeks similar reform.

   Note that the way states choose their representatives to the federal legislatures and to the EC has changed over the centuries—it’s not written in stone.

6. 11 days ago on Annie

   “Morning in America” seems to position the strip around the time of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign.

7. 11 days ago on Non Sequitur

   “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

   “The ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ was first described in a satirical open letter written by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest the Kansas State Board of Education decision to permit teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in state school science classes. In the letter, Henderson demanded equal time in science classrooms for ‘Flying Spaghetti Monsterism’, alongside intelligent design and evolution. After Henderson published the letter on his website, the Flying Spaghetti Monster rapidly became an Internet phenomenon and a symbol of opposition to the teaching of intelligent design in state schools.

   “Pastafarian tenets (generally satires of creationism) are presented on Henderson’s Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster website (where he is described as ‘prophet’), and are also elucidated in The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, written by Henderson in 2006, and in The Loose Canon, the Holy Book of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The central creation myth is that an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe after drinking heavily.” —Wikipedia article on Flying Spaghetti Monster

   Note that there is exactly as much evidence Danae’s version of Creation as there is for the FSM’s version or the Christian version. (i.e., none)

8. 11 days ago on Monty

   If there are in fact two quarters on the front drive, and not slugs, say, then they should be captured and deposited in the “miscellaneous revenue” account.

   But they could certainly use that surveillance system over at the Transit Authority detention facility in Dick Tracy, where camera outages are so common that they’re taken for granted.

9. 11 days ago on Luann

   “The message here is aimed at all those who shop online . . .”

   All those steps would have to happen for anyone buying goods in a store, except the last would involve delivering them to the store instead of to Luann’s door, and there would have to be the additional step of Luann’s having to go the store to pick them up.

   I generally and broadly describe myself as a democratic socialist or social democrat, but mainly concentrating on the equitable distribution of society’s benefits to its members. Most economists would be unable to deny the efficiency, in most cases with some glaring exceptions, of a decentralized market in allocating resources to activities.

   In 1958 Leonard Read published an essay entitled “I, Pencil,” available around the Web. He points out the very many activities around the world that go into the making of a pencil, all without having to be organized centrally. Conservatives often see this as a refutation of “socialism,” but modern socialists (mostly) no longer push the idea of a centralized planned economy based on input-output matrices, and are happy enough to accept a decentralized market for much economic activity.

10. 12 days ago on Dick Tracy

    “We saw the Totten executive seeming to have an interest in the turnstile jumper.”

    Well, no: on October 31st, we see Dad Totten say to the cops, “Yes, that drunk [whom we the readers haven’t seen, I think] is ours…the other…who? Sprengstoff? Never heard of him.” He then tells Junior to “Deal with that idiot in the drunk tank” [why? does Totten always go bail for its employees or something?]. About “the other guy,” he tells Junior, “Forget him. His I.D.s obviously a fake. Not our issue.” We see just Sr and Jr, with nobody else present to witness, so, unless Dad is trying to pull something off without Junior’s knowledge [certainly a possibility], he is showing no interest. Unless that was turnstile jumper in the drunk tank and Sprengstoff is the other guy. Or something. I’m sure that it will all be tied up.