Recent Comments

1. about 12 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   The one I heard was for mattresses, where “if it’s over eight, then it’s time to replace.”

2. about 12 hours ago on Over the Hedge

   According to population maps, the bald eagle lives in or migrates across three countries: Canada, the United States, and Mexico. It is interesting how humans are the only animals that are so particular about “borders.”

3. 1 day ago on Get Fuzzy

   The Great Wall of China couldn’t keep out the Jurchens, Mongols, or Manchurians. There’s a lesson that Orange-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named could learn from that in his “war on drugs” at the United States’s southern border…

4. 1 day ago on Doonesbury

   There was a “24” season that was vaguely similar to that premise.

5. 2 days ago on The Born Loser

   I guess I should have realized that I was communicating with someone from outside the United States. Yes, the effects on people of different economic classes will differ, depending on the country’s economic structure. I do not speak proudly of my country’s setup, especially under our current presidential administration.

6. 3 days ago on The Born Loser

   Unfortunately, this seems to be a case of different sources saying different things. A source that I consulted was the Encyclopedia Britannica, which I hardly consider a partisan hack site. According to an entry on its webpage: "Mark Weller, executive director of the pro-penny group Americans for Common Cents, says, ‘The alternative to the penny is rounding to the nickel, and that’s something that will negatively impact working families every time they buy a gallon of gas or a gallon of milk.’ The U.S. Federal Reserve found that minorities and low-income people are more likely to use cash than credit cards. Raymond Lombra, professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University, says the extra rounding charges would exceed $600 million annually and would ‘be regressive, affecting the poor and other disadvantaged people groups disproportionately.’ Look for the quote under “U.S. Penny: Should the U.S. Penny Stay in Circulation?”

7. 3 days ago on Peanuts

   Get back to us in three years, maybe two.

8. 3 days ago on The Born Loser

   Since you invited us…Even though the penny is a net loss to make in pure financial terms, abolishing it may cause downstream negative effects on the poor. In a country that counts in five-cent increments, many establishments will begin rounding up from the previous monetary values not divisible by five cents. A few cents here and there might not seem like much to the well-off, but over the span of weeks, months, and years, poor people would feel a significant effect. This is especially considering that they pay in cash more frequently, being less likely to have cards, or even bank accounts. Many financial institutions require you to have a minimum balance to transact with them.

9. 3 days ago on B.C.

   I didn’t know about this dinosaur until now. Way cool!

10. 4 days ago on Non Sequitur

    Because the result of a division by zero is what mathematicians call “undefined.” Think of it in terms of inverse operations. If you have 6 divided by 2, for example, the quotient is 3, and multiplying 3 by 2 gives 6. But now suppose you divide 10 by 0. What number can you multiply 0 by to get back to 10? There isn’t any such number (since anything multiplied by 0 gives 0), and even infinity is dubious. That’s how I like to approach it.