This xkcd strip needs an extra panel

Via PZ’s blog Pharyngula I saw this xkcd strip.

I am a physicist and a physics teacher and so of course am well aware of this popular lecture demonstration where a bowling ball or some other heavy object is hung from the ceiling of a lecture hall. A person then stands some distance away from the lowest point at which the ball is resting and brings the ball up to their nose with the rope kept taut. The ball is then released and it swings away from the person and returns, just like a pendulum. The point is whether the person will flinch when they see the ball come back towards their face. The law of conservation of energy predicts the ball will not rise higher than the initial release point and so will never hit the face, and the panel looks at how different scientists might respond to being in that situation.
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What is this cartoon saying?

(Doonesbury)

Doonesbury strips go in a lot for political and social commentary. I usually get the point of the cartoons but this one puzzles me. What do the two guys disappearing signify? Are they dead? But that would not be making any kind of point. Is it meant to show that these people who were once Wall Street big shots are now reduced to pretending to still be busy but in really are just fading into irrelevance, spending their retirement days in idleness, while their wives, freed from the constraints of being corporate spouses, have found new leases in life and are engaged in meaningful activities?

Police and firefighters opposing vaccinations

On The Daily Show Trevor Noah comments on the odd fact that there seems to be high levels of resistance to getting the covid-19 vaccine among police and firefighters. The vaccine mandates issued by many jurisdictions that require all government employees to be vaccinated has resulted in many of them either leaving or challenging the mandates in court. Given that they pride themselves on risking their lives for the sake of others, this fear of taking a life-saving vaccine is puzzling. It may be that it is a higher level of general anti-vaccine and other right-wing ideology within these groups that is driving the resistance.

25 years of sexism at Fox News

Fox News is celebrating 25 years of existence and The Daily Show has created a montage of some of the many instances of sexist and misogynistic comments by its male on-air personalities in the presence of their female co-workers. You can see in some cases how uncomfortable the women are and the struggle they face in deciding whether to show their anger (and be accused of lacking a sense of humor) or the awkwardness of trying to laugh it off while still making it clear that the comments were inappropriate.

Who knew?

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Fantasyland) said that the horse de-worming medicine Ivermectin that the nutjobs are pushing as a covid treatment, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Surely she could take a little more care when making stuff up and at least say that it won the prize for medicine, though even then the prize is given to people and not products. We are entitled to expect better lies from our elected representatives. These people really have contempt for their followers.

Show some respect, Marjorie!