Procrastination

This is from Grant Snider’s Incidental Comics.

Why ‘The Far Side’ was so funny

Gary Larson’s biography is on his web site.

Welcome to the modern world

A short tale of road rage

Can you name the missing seven states?

Via XKCD. Hat tip to kottke.org.

The perils of being a cartoon character

A foreign view of U.S. political parties

Yes, I know COVID-19 is not really funny, but…

Grilled chicken

Hat tip to Gene Zitver.

The crazy logic of nuclear deterrence

The Soviet Union has come and gone, but the crazy logic of nuclear deterrence lives on.

The threat of nuclear weapons is the ultimate threat, but it is a threat only a madman would carry out.

So for the threat to be convincing. you have to convince your opponent you are a madman.

The best way to convince your opponent you are a madman is to actually be a madman/

The second best way is to act so much like a  madman that nobody can be sure whether you are or not.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un come to mind in this respect.

The risk is that your act is too successful, and your opponent thinks he has no choice but to strike first.

We’re lucky.  Over nearly 70 years, this has not happened.  But it only has to happen once.

LINK

A Game of Nuclear Chicken With Russia and China by Micheal Klare for TomDispatch.

The effectiveness of masks

Source: xkcd: Masks

The end of war as we know it

Via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Life is a mystery

For more like this, click on Zen Pencils.

The arrogance of power

Arguing about the coronavirus

Source: Leftycartoons

The Simpsons on the two-party system

Hat tip to Caitlin Johnstone

Degrees of ambiguity in academia

Source: XKCD.

The friend who sent me this is a retired professor of English literature.

The world gleams

Source: INCIDENTAL COMICS.

War, power and the clothing of men

These drawings are copied from About Face by Nate Powell for Popula.

Click on About Face to see the rest of the sequence.

War, power and the clothing of men (2)

Click on About Face for the previous part of this sequence.

LINKS

 About Face by Nate Powell for Popula.

A veteran and historian responds to Nate Powell’s “About Face” by Sam Duncan for Popula.

The Sum of All Beards by Adrian Boneberger and Adam Weinstein for The New Republic.

And why can’t we stop wondering “why”?

Source: Incidental Comics.

Another experiment in educational reform

Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Hat tip to Physicist at Large.

Who’s listening?

Source: XKCD.

A cartoon history of metaphysics

Click to enlarge.

Source: Existential Comics.

Electronic voting machines are easy to hack

Source: XKCD

Electronic voting systems have long been vulnerable to tampering and hacking.  This has been known for more than 10 years, but little or nothing has been done about it.

Having a vulnerable system is like leaving your door unlocked or the keys in the ignition of your car.  Eventually somebody is going to take advantage of you.

If we Americans want to protect our voting systems from tampering, it doesn’t matter if the suspected tamperers are Russians, Republicans or somebody else.  We need written ballots that are hand-counted in public.

That’s only one of many problems.   Our election system is increasingly rigged to favor Republicans by discouraging or disqualifying voting by poor people, young people and people of color.

LINKS

How They Could Steal the Election This Time by Ronnie Dugger for The Nation (2004)

It’s Magic! by Greg Palast (2012)

How They’re Stealing Ohio: Vote machines audit function turned off—and worse by Greg Palast  (2016)

Justice Department Warns It Might Not Be Able to Prosecute Voting Machine Hackers by Kim Zetter for Motherboard [Added 9/31/2018]

How to Fight Voter Suppression in 2018 by Edward Burmila for Dissent Magazine.  Twelve ways in which voting procedures are rigged against poor people, young people and people of color, and what to do about them.