Recent Comments

1. about 3 hours ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   Who would happen to have the serial number of their TV? These days it just might be possible to find the SN for a big-ticket item that you purchased through a reputable online retailer, but when this strip was running, no way.

2. about 3 hours ago on For Better or For Worse

   He did just say he didn’t want to change the name. . . .

3. about 3 hours ago on The Lockhorns

   That sounds like a useful skill. I should look up how to do it.

   Now how would I look that up?

4. about 3 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   If someone called me an a-hole . . . well, first of all, I probably wouldn’t care; there aren’t that many people whose opinions of me are important enough that I’d want to change my behavior solely to appease them.

   But if I or you or anyone else were going to defend my honor, the first step would be to pin down the person insulting me on why exactly he or she felt that way. Let’s assume that in the course of doing so, it becomes clear that I’m being condemned because I’ve done something that is common behavior, and that my insulter has personally excused comparable behavior from others in similar situations, without any extenuating circumstances that do not apply in my case. Then, yes, I’m clearly being judged by a double standard, and I would say that absolves me of any responsibility to take the judgment to heart as I would if the same judgment were coming from someone more fairminded. But we’d have to go through the whole process first, we couldn’t lead with it.

   And even then, I don’t really think that would settle the heart of the matter. What’s really essential to determining whether I’m being judged fairly is whether or not the offending behavior is indeed offensive. If it is, it doesn’t become less so because others have gotten a pass on it. I might use the fact that others have gotten a pass on it to my advantage, if the negative judgment includes some consequence that is more substantial than being described by a rude word, but if I succeed it’s only by a rhetorical trick. Logically, the question of whether I behaved appropriately is not resolved, and to suggest otherwise is to commit the tu quoque fallacy—which is really just a more rarefied synonym for whataboutery.

5. about 24 hours ago on Pearls Before Swine

   “Maybe. It’s possible somebody flagged it and the moderators deleted it, too. The reason I mentioned it is because it might have given @old_geek’s comment more context about who “they” referred to.”

   If that’s the case then the management of this restaurant (to extend the metaphor) has 86’d that comment. The handful of times I’ve observed that happen, the managers and staff take a dim view indeed of other patrons who are attempting to continue the disturbance.

   “Do you think asking to expand the scope of the conversation to “left-wing rage” is off-topic?”

   I think so. Talking about bad behavior in one context doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be discussed in all contexts, unless the person talking about the behavior is explicitly saying that this behavior only occurs in that context. It might also be interesting to discuss whether behavior that is bad in one context might be appropriate in a different context, and what the key to that difference is. But simply saying “Someone else did something similar somewhere else!” is irrelevant at best and whataboutery at worst.

6. 1 day ago on For Better or For Worse

   Perhaps. And if the story were told from her perspective I suspect we would get the same impression of her.

   At any rate, I wish they’d stop wasting time on this dead end. When she’s not in the day’s strip I have all I can do to remember she’s still around.

7. 1 day ago on Pearls Before Swine

   I once described myself as “disoriented in the Orient” when I needed to travel several miles along a major road in Seoul and couldn’t remember whether to turn left or right onto it.

8. 1 day ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Rat’s walking left to right across the desk in the first two panels, is nowhere to be seen in the third, and in the fourth has returned to his starting point on the left edge of the desk. It’s disorienting.

9. 1 day ago on Peanuts

   Gotta love people who can keep up both sides of a conversation singlehandedly.

10. 1 day ago on Calvin and Hobbes

    Even when I was six I’m sure that “under the bed covers” would have been the first place I looked for a missing stuffed animal. Maybe the second.