Monday, February 11, 2008

Time to admit it, I just can't do this every day...

I had a break as I changed jobs, but I'm realizing, that I just don't want to read Mallard Fillmore on a regular basis. So, I'll bid adieu with this little video.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Oh dear, he's going to try to stretch the "joke" over multiple strips

Of course one of the things that Bruce manages to completely miss is a fundamental difference between the liberal and conservative mindsets. Conservatives (if I may make an over generalization), tend to submit to authority, whether it's spiritual (thus fundamentalism) or secular (thus AM radio). Liberals, on the other hand, are rather averse to this, and tend not to take anyone wholly as an authority. Put two liberals in a room and you'll get three opinions.

It's also worth noting that in that 400 scientists from Saturday's strip, some of them are people who dispute just some small part of the consensus, or in some cases, are willing to point out some parts of An Inconvenient Truth that they feel are making claims a bit beyond the science, for example, saying that a single hurricane cannot be attributed to global warming, although an overall increase can, while Gore gives the impression that Katrina was directly caused by global warming. Wow, that 400 number, small as it was, is overstating the dissent.

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Déjà Vu all over again

Isn't this supposed to require more than a few months of commentary to happen. I'm reading today's strip and thinking that it seems familiar. That's because it is.

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Well thank heavens that whole racism things is taken care of

After all if people are making claims of being connected to Martin Luther King, then there's certainly not any issue of racism in this country.

So, the media should stop printing letters to the editor about driving while black.

And no talking about racial discrimination in lending. Can't happen here. White politicians are trying to show that they're connected to MLK.

And there's no racial discrimination in employment practices, it's just undue media influence.

So let us all, as we celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday (actual, not observed), celebrate, for his dream has come true. Your will be judge on the content of your character, not the color of your skin (offer not valid for non-white Americans).

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip

Monday, January 14, 2008

Hi Bruce

I was wondering how long it would be before I saw this in the logs:

I can only guess that it's Mr Tinsley himself.

As for today's strip, we learn that (1) Bruce is easily sold redundant software by the guys at the electronics store (2) he's got a Windows machine which is probably vulnerable to hackers even with the software (3) he's got a bunch of racist stereotypical attitudes.

Somehow, none of this was a surprise.

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sundays three times as wrong and in color

OK, let me just take one to show how something that might seem like an appealing objection is based on stupidity and ignorance. Why does the post office charge more for square envelopes than rectangular ones? Because rectangular envelopes can be machine-processed more easily than square envelopes which have to be manually processed.

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip

Saturday, January 12, 2008

400 scientists can't be wrong, can they?

Oh my gosh, the Republicans got 400 scientists to claim that there's no such thing as man-made climate change. That pretty much settles it, then doesn't it.

An interesting quote from The Washington Times:

After a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said 25 or 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil Corp.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt H. Walton dismissed the accusation, saying the company is concerned about climate-change issues and does not pay scientists to bash global-warming theories.

It sounds like he's saying that he's denying that they're funding the scientists. But notice that he actually isn't. Bill Clinton would be proud.

But 400 scientists! That's a lot of guys. Surely that bashes a hole in the whole climate change thing, right? I mean there can't be that many scientists paid by the oil companies, can there?

Oops. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists has over 31,000 members. And many of them disapproved of the AAPG's stance on climate change (that is, they felt that anthropogenic climate change was real). They eventually forced the AAPG to change its stance so that there is no organization of scientists which believes that climate change is just a natural process.

Sounds like consensus to me.

If even the AAPG can't hold to the party line, we have to be pretty proud of the Republican Senate staff's effort to find 400 dissenters across the globe. Like Abraham haggling with God, they're desperate to save, if not Sodom and Gomorrah, the idea that climate change is just a natural variation.

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip