Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
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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There is a comic strip called The Argyle Sweater that has even more tortured puns than Pearls Before Swine, if you can believe it.
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?
Cartoonist Stephan Pastis tends to poke fun at cyclists in the form of a recurring character known as Jef the cyclist who is portrayed as a very athletic and fit person who is always smugly giving unsolicited advice to others about how they they should exercise and eat.
Samantha Bee examines how the funeral industry persuades people to pay far more for funeral costs than is necessary, by not revealing prices up front, by making survivors feel guilty if they don’t pay for premium services, and by falsely telling people that certain things such as embalming are required when they are not.
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One of the biggest lies perpetuated by the oligarchy is that everyone benefits when the wealthy get even wealthier, even obscenely so. This Matt Wuerker cartoon rightly pricks that bubble.
Mothers everywhere will love today’s Zits strip.
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.
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.