Grrl Power #722 – It’s like wrangling a super powered cat with ADHD
Kind of weird that Arianna didn’t offer her own last name in that exchange but it will derail the page when Sydney hears it so I’m saving it for later. Cora’s last name is apparently Zylstra, at least according to a doodle on an old piece of art I had. A quick a-google tells me the name is old Dutch for “one who lives near a drainage sluice.” That tells me that the original Zylstras had very little going on if that was the only way the town had to describe their family.
This should be an epically huge moment in human history. Sure, the Alari beat Cora’s crew to the punch, but they’ve been sequestered in and around their ship over in Deus’s corner of Africa and haven’t been taking interviews. The press is right here with three aliens standing ten feet from them. Sydney’s presence creates something of an oddity buffer, but while the world will still want to know her story… there’s three aliens – who speak English BTW – right there! If I was any of those reporters, I’d be machine gunning questions at them. Heck, I would have googled “things scientists would like to ask aliens” to make sure I covered some important topics and didn’t get hung up on stuff like “Who is the most popular actress in the galaxy right now?” or “Omigod, did you see what Fnib’la wore to the Space Grammys? Sure, she has three butt cheeks, but… >tsk< like, tacky….”
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Sydney’s body language in the last panel shows she is smack dab in the middle of a “There I Wuz…” story. Arianna seems to be a typical government bureaucrat with a penchant for over-classifying information that the public has a right to and will in no way harm national security. What dire secret is involved with recounting the tasty qualities of grakz and it’s end results?
either that, or she’s explaining to them how they’ve never even *heard* of dabbing, which is really weird, like shouldn’t everybody know what that is by now?
I prefer the what is weird that just because one knows what “dabbing” is then they assume that everyone must know “the latest” trend going “viral” because you know……reasons.
Too many people believe that certain bits of info aren’t dangerous to a population just because they’d be fine with it as a knee-jerk. Especially when it lets them thumb their nose at authority that’s actually doing a good job and being respectful, since people are too afraid to do that to an abject despot.
Agent K said it best. “A person is smart. People are dumb panicky animals and you know it.” Irony at the context.
+1
George Carlin said it second best: “Think how dumb the average person is. Then realize that half the people are stupider than that.”
Only… that’s not how averages work.
If it’s a normal distribution the mean and the median coincide, and we generally expect stupidity to be on a normal distribution.
If stupidity is correlated to IQ, then it is exactly on a normal distribution. IQ of 100 is the mean, the centroid, the exact middle of the distribution. And the distribution on either side is very bell-like, within a few standard deviations.
Except smart is asymptopic where there is a lower limit to stupid, eventually they get too stupid to live. Smart can have the same issue, but minus the upper limit. Well minus the theoretical limit, if some science fiction is to be believed the upper limit is too smart to stay human.
Opus, Generally the smarter a human gets, the more of a specialist they become, so in theory, someone would become too well geared to a specific task to function. Basically too smart. Savants who will never be discovered because their gears were never set to account for language.
Uh, No. That’s only semi-kind of correct and utterly bogus. YOU would have to buy the beer for the 26 week verbal dissertation on how WRONG you are. You can educate a moron and by nicodemus’s fetid forelock I’ve had to deal with more than my share of THOSE sophonts. To dumb it down further would be rude. And I’ve been rude enough. :\ I suck at explaining this. But it is harder than solid hydrogen to educate a truly intelligent sophont. Before you ask, yes I can pass Heinlein’s test…unlike the other 90% of the insects on the planet.
Jae, what you are describing is not the natural path for intelligence. You are describing an “Idiot Savant”. Which is a specific situation where a person is mentally handicapped, but has an abnormally high aptitude for one specific thing. That is not the natural end point for intelligence though. It’s a very specific condition/situation that happens rarely.
Typically, in my experience, it’s not that they *can* only learn one thing.
Their interests are focused on one thing that they can do well enough to not get criticized for it, and they’re sufficiently averse to criticism that they avoid spending any time on things they *know* they’ll get criticized for anyway.
Basically, it’s a reaction to people being assholes. It’s not a healthy one, but generally by the time someone gets to that point, they’ve been on the path of mental health for a long time.
Even in this situation, every idiot savant I’ve met has *several* areas of expertise, in which they’re extraordinarily high. It’s just that there’s usually only one that is marketable. (For example, grandmaster of Magic the Gathering artwork trivia (not playing the game), grandmaster of early blues trivia, grandmaster of Schlock Mercenary trivia, grandmaster of mysql btree database corruption recovery. The first two are a bit too niche to be useful professionally, the third probably isn’t marketable at all (too many people who have it, too little general interest), but the last is a particular job.)
Lack of intelligence =/= stupidity.
People with an iq of 90 can still have a ton more common sense than someone with an iq of 130
So in that, Carlin is very, very right.
It doesn’t help that stupid people are more vocal
Do you know how many stupid smart people I have had to deal with over the years. Countless, smart in their field once you get them outside of it they are blithering idiots that don’t know how dangerous they actually are. Sure I would trust them to fix my heart wouldn’t want them anywhere near my computer or car or cellphone. It isn’t about how high the IQ is it is about how much world experience they have how much they know outside their actually book learning.
Can “World(ly) Experience” be defined as “how many different times i screwed something up but survived the event anyway and learned from it”
Making a Difference between “book learnin’ ” and “Street smarts” is a fools errand designed to make you feel better about your self and how you learn. Which ever way it is.
In point of fact; the two are like comparing apples and oranges.
IQ may measure (for vague definitions of measure) Intelligence.
Which is strange to me. How do you hold a yard stick to something so relative, and subjective and entirely ephemeral?
When man can not even determine what is a soul or if we have it. other than to say
“I think therefore I am.”
So someone determines that cognitive function can be measured
But is that really what it determines? Cognitive function?
Or was the whole thing some Edwardian Psychiatric quackery cooked up to justify some preconceived racist and/or classist notions?.
It turns out to be the second.
A test that would allow for distinguishing mentally retarded children from normally intelligent, but lazy children.
Mean average 100-110 Normal folk do what they do to get along.
People that veer toward the low side seem too oblivious to care about getting along with others. And the definition of non functional would be that such a person can not be trained for early 20th century factory work.
Unless something somehow gets and holds their attention.
People that veer toward the high end are certainly not oblivious but rather see too much of an uncaring universe to see the point of getting along. taken to extremes they dont see the point in anything.
Including participating in an unfair economic system that converts their 14 hours a day of their brief time allotted on this earth to working in someone elses sweat shop for as little as they can possibly pay you
Unless something somehow gets and holds their attention.
Both get bored easily. And depressed. (though the low end may have a hard time articulating this concept to others) And Die.
Stupidity isn’t correlated to IQ. There’s tons of blitheringly stupid people with high IQs.
Stupidity is correlated to proficiency in the topic area. If you have a low IQ, you’re not likely to have proficiency in the topic area. But if you have a high IQ, you’re *also* not likely to have proficiency in the topic area, because there are too many topic areas for anyone to be proficient in most things.
However, that doesn’t stop people who are proficient in a few things from thinking they’re proficient in most areas, so they spout out crap like they’re experts on everything. Case in point, Some Ed is even aware of this phenomenon, yet *still* finds himself doing it time and time again. What a moron.
I think he’s talking about a bell curve.
There’s also the fact that she’s talking to the press before even being debriefed by archon, meaning they haven’t had the chance to establish what might or might not need to be classified. For instance Sydney’s ability to generate wormholes will almost definitely need to be classified, but Arianna and others have yet to have the opportunity to tell Sydney not to mention that to the press.
They will probably also want to classify that it was the Alari home world that Sydney was on in the first place, as details of how that happened and what she encountered there could easily fuel the anti-alien folks who want to declare war on the Alari refugees.
“We were chasing a supervillian as a favor to the good vampires when alluvasuddn she opens a portal to her home planet. Natcerly we follow and the place is burnt AF. Time to leave! As we`re running back to the portal it starts to close! We`re almost there when Kaijen start shooting….”
Using my indestructible force field I courageously cover my teammates’ escape.
The portal then collapses, stranding me alone a zillion miles from Earth.
Only my Orbs and an encyclopedic knowledge Science Fiction and
Role Playing Games allowed me to survive against the aliens that had destroyed a world!
“And then, the giant aliens who saw us come out of the wormhole decided that WE needed to be eradicated too…. I hope they don’t know where Earth is…. and then I blew one of them up, which really really got them upset…. and then I used my orb to warp to a Dyson-sphere, but couldn’t really come home because the sphere is damaged somehow… I’m pretty sure that it is mostly safe, but nobody can say for sure because it uses technology probably billions of years beyond even the civilization that made the Dyson-sphere…. except that is supposed to be secret, so please don’t mention that in your news article…. and then I met the really cute puppy wolf thing guy…. did you know that most aliens are anatomically similar to humans…. don’t ask me how I know…. and then I came directly here, though I probably should have gone through border control or a quarantine checkpoint, or something…. DAMN, I need to declare the grakz…….”
“… oh wait, did we ever figure out what those weird ghosty, soul things that escaped through the portal into Earth were all about?!!”
NEWS AT 6 and 11!!!
There is no possible way for Arianna to KNOW whether it needs to be classified or not yet, since sydney told her literally nothing.
The public has a right to know things, but they don’t have a right to know everything. Many things need to be redacted before information can be made public, and nobody has had a chance to do any of that yet, so she is right to call out Sydney.
“The public has a right to know things, but they don’t have a right to know everything.”
True dat. The fact that some bureaucrats go overboard on the demand for secrecy doesn’t mean there is no legitimate need for secrecy.
Third category: things the people have a right to know (ie, will absolutely find out eventually), but is so disturbing or profound that society must be prepared for. almost all of what sydney just went thru fits in this category, also.
Like the alien robot things tall enough to perpetually see the curvature of whatever world they currently are standing on and were the first thing they’d found capable of making any sort of mark on Halo’s shields, the food so spicy that even Sydney had trouble handling it, exactly how many aliens there are, and that there are totally sexy dog-men in space (also that Halo is probably the first human to experience intercourse with an alien, or at least the one with the least baggage to do with revealing that fact)?
I don’t think Sydney is the first human to experience intercourse with an alien, since Earth is a big travel spot for anonymous sex tourism, apparently going back millenia.
That’s why every soldier or operative must go through debriefing before dropping their briefs in front of the media
The general public have a right to know to be very careful where Grakz is involved. This is a matter of public safety, everybody.
Absolutely. Apart from the fact that the general public would realize it’s not something to eat before they get within about five feet of it. I might get to a little less than five before I realize it’s something to run from, because I tend to be slow like that. (My tolerance for spice is around the jalapenos level. I have, in my lifetime, consumed roughly one entire habanero raw, undiluted. Not because I’m manly, but because I’m stupid, and didn’t learn my lesson the first time I took a nibble, or the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. There is no enjoyment from it; it just hurts. I don’t like pain. At least I haven’t been dumb enough to actually try more than a nibble of one.)
I use refined ghost pepper and Carolina reaper powder in my kitchen. It’s a local product friends of mine produce in small batches using commercial equipment.
I’ll try the Grakz.
Just one bowl at a time at my age though.
Maybe only
re: overclassification I can verify that.
Back in 1983 buildings in our compound in the Halba refugee camps were bombed. I took pictures of the damage. The US Military Attache offered to have the film developed. The US military promptly classified them.
It is possible they asumed they were caused by some specific weapon or another.
Or it could be that they wanted to create the appereance of being “on to something”.
Or just to confuse the heck out of their enemies.
Espionage. Classification. National Security. All those require mindgames like that as their bread and butter.
In some military places oranges, ashtrays and spherical objects like apples were banned as classified objects as they referred to secret nuclear weapons information. Classification, a fun game for nobody.
Will someone please save us from idiots with the secret stamp. This has been an on going problem for decades now and it only appears to be getting worse.
The Police does not over-release details of crimes. Those things can be used to convict the actuall perpetrator/vet any confession of him and weed out copycat crimes.
It is like keeping some of her Orbs powers secret.
Every single detail that Sydney does not tell them is something a spy or person that received spy information could hang himself by.
Plus the whole part where there was a Portal on earth leading to the Allaary homeworld (wich neither group of Refugees might know) and how Maxima was running from them might cause a minor panic.
So I says to Mabel, I says….
“…I says ‘Don’t look, Ethel!’ but it was too late…she’d already got a free a
shot.”
needs the squirt bottle.
That only works with cats, and us cats just don’t like getting wet. Most of us.
Cora – “What I’m hearing is that some pussies like being wet.”
Yep too much squirt bottle results in maulings and hairballs left in your shoes.
My cat ignores the squirt bottle. Probably because he likes to play in the shower and is used to taking baths
Cora likely didn’t offer her last name because Arianna didn’t offer hers.
We don’t even know whether Cora’s people have last names.
A: So, what’s your name?
C: Cora.
A: Last name?
C: Yes!
A: Y- yyyes?
C: Yes, Cora is the last name I chose for myself.
A: W-what I mean is, Earth people usually use two names…
C: Really? What’s yours?
A:… Let’s move on to the next question…
Parallel lines.
I hereby formally request 3 butt cheek monthly vote incentive picture.
“Arianna didn’t offer her own last name in that exchange but it will derail the page when Sydney hears it so I’m saving it for later.”
It is probably ‘Grande’. Unless she is taller than that other one. In which case she would be a ‘Venti’.
It is about time to get Arianna a permanent post on a news network to put out the official position on the alien ‘situation’. I would probably not go with Fox. They already have a ‘Fox Nation’ program. It might cause some confusion to have a program called ‘The Arianna Nation’.
Or any surname beginning with the letter I.
A.I.
If Arianna’s last name turns out to be Huffington, I am going to hurl.
No, that wouldn’t set Sydney off.
Possibly it’s something like Habanero or Serrano.
Or Cunniwinguf…
I’m wondering if Arianna’s full name is something like Arianna Bukkake, where she has no clue what her last name means. As an alien who doesn’t know all of Earth’s slang terminology, Dabbler might even miss one like this. Of course as soon as Sydney explains the term to Dabs…
My bet is Arianna’s last name is Scoville. Even if unrelated, revelation of this will be a conversational speed bump.
She shares a last name with a famous person. i.e. Arianna Schwarzenegger.
I have a feeling, looking at Halo;s glasses, that they are linked to her Wrist-comm as a Heads-up display now
As was said in the Teamups and Crossover book of Wearing the Cape. They’re chokers project heads-up displays. And glasses/goggles can easily get broken/lost/pulled off.
Clearly Arianna isn’t familiar with herding cats. You don’t snap your fingers, you fill a spray bottle with a mild solution of Ammonia and water.
Herding cat’s is easy first you get the big box of kibble treats then you get in front of the cat’s. Shake the box toss out some of the treats cat’s get wise to the sound and will follow you all you need to do is drop treats every once and a while. Unless they are my cat’s at which point they sit down and wait for you to give them the kibble which is what I have trained them to do.
I just have to say “foodies” and mine will go in whatever direction I am headed.
I use vinegar instead of ammonia. Little bit easier on the carpet.
Then the cat will smell, like the litterbox.
Wait, does everyone in that universe have ‘Sense Tingles’? o_O
It’s the Chuunibyou universe.
Something for everyone.
*yorpie snax sense tingles*
*tosses Yorp a Yorpie snax*
Yay! Loves you forever!
*tail wagging furiously*
Aha! Arianna is developing powers of her own! I KNEW she was head for supervillain status!
Doesn’t everyone in this universe have them? (pulls an dumbfounded alfalfa face)
Arianna forgot her clicker…
nah, she threw it at Dabbler way back at the Archon revelation news-brief… i doubt she ever got it back…
Next comic: Surprise golden hugs of relief? Or amazing purple / blue “thank you!!!” makeout session in front of the cameras?
“And whilst the press are here, yes, this is my real form, for those of you who suspected I’m an alien. Oh and I love having sex, I have just had to restrain myself in public, because human society is so repressed!”
Not sure what Dabbler might say in that situation though.
Yorp used “Surprise Twist Pun” – it’s super effective! brichins has done a spit-take! *
Yorp earned 3 Yorpie snax.
* “has spit-taken”? Couldn’t find a good way to say it in the proper grammar.
Foodies, yum yum!
*munch munch, burp*
“Did a spit-take” is slightly better than “has done a spit-take” because Brichins is the agent, and “do a spit-take” is a compound-verb. (Spit-take is a compound noun, as well.)
We-e-e-llll, not quite. “Did a Spit-take” is Simple Past in English, showing a completed action at some time in the past. “Has done a spit-take” is Present Perfect, showing an action which may have been performed several times in the past. See https://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/simplepast.html .
I was trying to riff on “{ pokemon name} has fainted!” which is past tense (or past perfect or whatever), so I rejected ‘did’ even though it sounded like the most correct syntax. Thanks gorblimey for justifying my head canon that it still sounded workable – been way too long since English classes.
Your American was just fine. It parses and passes all tests. In spite of the rules mavens. pfft, American doesn’t stick to the “rules of English” and considers them naught but “guide lines at best, suggestions the rest of the time”. But that is just what I was enlightened to some 30+ years ago. (said educator was a phd in English and the first person that I’d ever heard deride grammar Nazi’s)
WHOO HOO!!! Welcome Back, Halo!
Now the wait till Maxima come with-in ear shout of Sydney.
I am hoping it will be a good reunion. Mind you, Colonel to Recruit … kind of hard to figure what is allowed, but Sydney has shown actions/reactions that have been beneficial to those who were near her at the time of possible trouble.
Baby got back.
Is it just me or does the three butt-cheeks thing sound more interesting than it seams. I mean think about it we have butt-cheeks cause there is a hole or two between them. So why do they need an Extra butt-cheek? Do they have some additional orrifice? and if not is it a shape thing – like are the butt-cheeks virtical like ours or horizontal – so to add more cushioning ? Are we even talking fleshy anatomy here – or are they like a crystalized entity and their butts just happen to have three flat areas with grooves between them so we call them butt-cheeks cause we’re being “earthist”.
Well, bilateral symmetry being what it is, we have two legs and they both need a lot of leverage (big muscles with well placed attachment points) to do what we need to do. And those glute muscles that your butt is made of are what gives us a lot of the strength to stand up. Two legs, two butt cheeks. Nature found a convenient spot to route some things through there, but if there were a three-legged species whose legs, taken one at a time were anything like ours, they’d need a triple-cheeked butt to distribute the load.
We have two legs and they both need a lot of leverage (big muscles with well placed attachment points) to do what we need to do. And those glute muscles that your butt is made attaches to well-placed support points in your pelvis. We have the strength to stand on our hind legs because we have bulgey butts. A three-legged species would need a triple-cheeked butt.
And I cannot lie.
Maybe the three butt cheeks thing is the result of a species having a dual gastrointestinal tract. We humans have certain organs that are duplicated for redundancy, such as lungs and kidneys. We also have organs that lack that redundancy and are therefore a single point of failure. An alien species might have had evolutionary pressures that resulted in the development of a dual system.
Our GI Tracts contain symbiotic microbes that allow us to digest the foods that we consume. Perhaps Fnib’la’s species has one GI Tract with microbes specialised for a plant based diet and a second GI Tract with microbes specialised for a carnivore’s diet. Or it could be some other completely alien reason why two digestive tracts are required.
no, no, no. Third butt cheek is evolutionary adaptation to provide structural support for multi tails. 1 is easy, but 9 tails? special skeletal support is needed.
Hm… one new cheek and triple the butt cracks, weaponizeing carnival worker farts everywhere. ;p)
I was kind of imagining a glamour selfie with a hot alien chick showing off her backside while looking back, with her two tails forming a heart shape, with her triple butt in the middle of the heart. *shrug* Vote incentive, Dave.
It is strongly suspected that there are 3 big overlooked biological reasons why we were “free” to evolve full sentiency & tool using capabilities, not counting opposable thumbs & hip/knee arrangements. (Those are the freebies/gimmes.)
Those 3 big overlooked biological reasons are: 1. The shape of certain vertebrae in our lower backs. 2. Our shoulder sockets. 3. Our big buttocks.
The lumbar vertebrae in question are trapezoidal rather than more cylindrical, compared to all other vertebrae bones in the spine. Why is that important? The shape of it provides the body with immense stability when carrying a load in the lower torso. Females* tend to have even more trapezoida versions than males, and this ‘arch’ augmentation to the spine allows pregnancies to be viably & comfortably carried while walking around upright. Without this slight adjustment to all our spines, we would still have to be knuckle-walkers. Without females benefitting most strongly, pregnancy would require extremely slow mobility, and thus high vulnerability to predatory attacks during said pregnancy. Instead, we were able to walk around, which meant we could have both hands free for tool using, rather than said knuckle-walking.
Our shoulder sockets give us an incredible range of motion for our arms, as humans. (Certain bird species can do even more (hummingbirds, iirc), but they cannot do it with the same leverage, and they cannot grasp and throw things with their wings, so we’re not going to count them.) While the arrangement of tendons, ligaments, muscles and bones varies between most of the great apes and humans, with gorillas, etc, technically being stronger pound for pound in biceps strength…a gorilla cannot throw anything with any real force or speed without overbalancing itself, and cannot throw in nearly as many directions like a human can. This high motility of the socket joint not only allows us greater force and speed in throwing things, but also greater leverage in tool use, giving proto-humans a distinct mechanical advantage in combat against predators trying to eat us, and against prey that we want to eat. We can make complex movements because of our underappreciated shoulder sockets, increasing not only our tool use, but our harvesting of consumables.
Lastly, our heavily underappreciated buttocks are the largest gluteal grouping, proportionately speaking, of all creatures great and small. (Most of what you might think is buttock, like say on a kangaroo haunch, is actually thigh muscle, not glutes.) Once we evolved the ability to walk upright comfortably (hip sockets, knee and foot joint arrangements, and those lumbar vertebrae), we needed to be able to walk more strongly, more confidently, and for longer periods of time over greater distances and terrain features. By shifting some of our muscle mass from thighs to rumps, we actually conserved a lot of biomechanical energy. Humans are able to outwalk pretty much everything on the planet due to our large glutes, which do not get tired nearly as quickly as any other species’ rumps. Other creatures can outrun us in a sprint, but get tired very quickly. Dogs can mostly keep up with us, but they still have to do it on all fours, no tool using. We are terrifying pursuit predators. We are the original Terminator, (mostly) unstoppable…and it’s all thanks to our big butts.
(*gender used for the sake of convenience, as it’s attached most heavily to XX chromosomal arrangements, or other chromosomal arrangements that effectively function as XX.)
It’s called persistent, or endurance hunting and almost exclusively practiced by canines and humans.
most predators stalk their prey, and then pounce… But if they miss, they essentially give up and start over again.
Only humans and dogs ( and Rarely bears, and weirdly enough the Cape Buffalo )
Will pick a target and run it to the ground no matter how long it takes.
Which may have something to do with The human Tendency to come to a conclusion
And then sticking with it no matter how circumstances or available information changes.
Persistence Hunting is the main reason that dogs were so easily domesticated by humans. They pretty much self-domesticated themselves because of how we both engage in persistence hunting together extremely effectively :).
Learned that from the Discovery Channel.
“seams” instead of “seems” lol I see what you did there
Twerk it like a Newton’s cradle.
What can Sidney be saying just out of earshot? maybe a tall tale or two?
“No lie, there I was; We were training in hand to hand combat, and I was put up against Maxima. Things got out of hand.. Last I remember was a shout of “Bang! Zoom!” And I woke up yesterday on the moon. Good thing I had my Hitchhiker’s Guide in my pocket…”
About Zylstra… you’re confusing “drainage” with sewer drains, i think.
The Netherlands have a great deal of land reclaimed from wetlands and ocean, and draining water is a large part of Dutch culture and tradition. So dikes, canals, sluices, and pumps, and the jobs related to them, play a significant role in Dutch names.
I’m gonna assume you’re dutch. If not, I am ^^
Zylstra looks kinda alien to me as we write it like Zijlstra or Zeilstra, which makes a difference, surprisingly.
Zijlstra comes from draining water out of an area (as we do) and Zeilstra from the sail of a ship or just a different spelling.
fun fact: we Dutch are so good at claiming land back from water most of our population lives below sea level AND we created a new province after the second world war by draining water out of an inland sea/lake.
As an American, I apologize for our role in climate change. Sorry for the inescapable devastation that will be hitting your nation in a generation or two. I hope we snap out of the current madness in time.
(I don’t apologize for the last two years of it – that jerk is in office against the will of the majority of voters.)
Except, it was the majority of voters who got him in
Unlike one of his predecessors…
Oh joy, “voter fraud” vs “voter suppression” dueling delusional narratives… yay.
Sir Liesalot lost the popular vote by almost two million people. The only other presidential elections where the popular vote winner lost the Electoral College were in the presidential elections of 1876, 1888, and GWB in 2000.
Wishing your pet politician won the popular vote does not make it fact.
It literally wasn’t. He lost the popular vote and squeaked by on a technicality in the electoral college.
The last president we had who won the popular vote was Obama, and before that, Clinton.
Need to find a way to force the EC to be all-proportional, instead of winner-take-all in most states.
Doesn’t require an amendment, keeps the purpose of mitigating population domination in POTUS elections, and eliminates things like, say, someone losing by millions in the popular vote yet winning the election by a wide electoral margin.
You just go right on believing that.
There is nothing at the federal level that requires states to do that all-for-one BS That’s a state-by-state issue and not all states do it. Too many do. A federal law requiring states to send electoral college Electors by the winner of each voting district, instead, might not survive a Supreme Court Challenge, since it isn’t addressed in the constitution.
Even so, it’s still possible for some districts to go for either party by huge margins, where others are much tighter, and the final tally may still have the loser polling a larger popular vote.
Actually it is addressed in the Constitution. Article 2, Section 1. Also in the 12th Amendment
Article 2, Section 1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. … The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves.
Amendment XII: The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;-The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;-The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President-The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
Actually the EC is mentioned in Article 2, Section 1, and the 12th Amendment of the Constitution.
Maine and Nebraska actually already have that. Any state could do it if the state legislature passes a law to change the electoral college of their state, but most choose not to intentionally. Especially not the big ones, like California, New York, and Texas.
Please don’t ruin this comment section with your political diatribes.
Sorry bout that.
Don’t be. Facts are facts.
Talk of presidents and partisan politics is frowned upon by our host. Global warming and such, well now that’s another matter entirely. If you’re a closed minded true believer in AGWCC, then there is nothing I can say or reference that will change your mind. For the open minded person willing to consider I offer the following :
CO2 is cited as the prime cause of AGWCC by its proponents. But in talking to others on this topic I have found that most people don’t even understand how thermal absorption of CO2 is supposed to cause heating or that this takes place in only three discrete and very small bands of the infrared spectrum specifically at 2.7, 4.3 and 15 Microns. What happens is that a CO2 molecule captures an IR photon then reradiates it at a different frequency. This capture causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate which ceases as the photon is reradiated. While in its vibratory excited state it cannot absorb another photon, but as it reradiates that photon the co2 molecule transfers its vibration to surrounding gases which is where we get atmospheric warming because as we learned in high school, molecular vibration translates to heat. But there is a limitation to that process. A hundred, thousand or million additional photons will have no affect on that co2 molecule in its excited state and therefore will add nothing to the warming effect. By the same token if there are no other photons to be absorbed then again we have no warming. What’s important about this is that two of those IR wavelengths I mentioned have about reached their saturation point, no matter how much more co2 is added there are no more photons at those specific frequencies to be absorbed and the third is about halfway to its saturation point. Also there is the fact that a tiny amount of something cannot significantly heat a large amount of something without an extreme difference in temperature. For every CO2 molecule there are about 2500 other atoms and molecules of atmospheric gases. Keeping that in mind, to raise the vibrational heat factor of those 2500 other gases by one degree, that one CO2 molecule would have to be heated to over 2500 degrees. Ridiculous. These are some of the reasons that the warming effect of CO2 grows at a logarithmic rate vice linear; it’s the law of diminishing returns. At some point no matter how much CO2 you have, it will be unable to absorb any more radiation. This is why dinosaurs were perfectly happy at breathing in an atmosphere of over 2000ppmv of CO2 and why the Earth endured millions of years of glaciation where CO2 levels exceeded 8000 ppmv. Point in fact we are at a very low CO2 level regarding geological history and at 400ppmv we are about halfway to the point where plant life will begin to die off. Some species are already showing sign of stress. Did you know that commercial greenhouses have CO2 generators that keep the levels at about 1400ppmv?
Personally, I’d really love if we don’t have a bunch of political debates here, especially if it has nothing to do with the comic (which is why I like the law debates which do have something to do with the comic). This is one of the few comics I read which doesn’t get very political, so that people in any political persuasion can enjoy it.
Agreed. There are plenty of other places people can go if they want to shill for one brand of politics or the other. I’d much rather debate everybody’s pet theories about just what the hell is Vale anyway.
Awesome.
She’s awesome.
If she’s a she.
*shrug* she looks like one and can surely look like she wants, and personal identity matters.
So she is one.
I think she’s either an AI nanotech organism in a solid state shell, or an alien or supernatural type that normally takes a mist form that is a generally unknown species (maybe not Nth level, but the one above the top known level but below Nth level that Cora mentioned) who has serves Deus for some reason. Sort of like on Disney’s Gargoyles, Puck took the form of Owen to serve Xanatos simply because he found Xanatos fascinating and had offered him either one magical boon from Puck of anything he could wish for, or a lifetime of loyal service from him as Owen…. and Xanatos chose the lifetime of service from Owen.
I wish they still made cartoons as good as Disney’s Gargoyles.
I wonder if she gets her bodysuits from the same place where Vance gets his?
the Dutch did not have last names until required by Napoleon, and they took it into their heads to have fun with it. I have a Dutch ancestor with a last name that means “of the gutter” and another “by the dike”.
Monty Python had a sketch featuring a man with three buttocks. Despite repeated requests from the interviewer, the man refused to show them to the audience.
DaveB already gave us a shot of 4 buttocks, I assume 3 would be similar…? Surprised no one’s brought it up actually, now that I remember it’s there.
Sometimes the banner at the top of the page can be very hilarious with it’s random combinations. http://prntscr.com/n54j8w
So we’re absolutely positive Arianna has no superpowers?
She’s a lawyer. As a lawyer myself, I can say that we all have superpowers.
Poor Ariana, hasn’t found the time to replace that training clicker. Now she is reduced to mere snaps.
Sydney’s plan list.
1. Stick with the plan.
2. Step one of the plan.
3. Stick with the plan.
4. Step two of the plan.
5. Stick with the plan.
6. No! Stick with the plan
7.NO! NO! NO! STICK WITH THE PLAN!
8. DAMMIT SYDNEY! WE STILL HAVE TWO MORE STEPS!
I will be very happy in the (near?) future if, when we learn about the last orb’s functions, if it somehow has something to do with Make Maxima Say Bingo and The List.
Thinking about it… the Flight Orb shouldn’t be called that. It isn’t just flight now, is it?
It’s the Move Orb.
Move At (x) Speed
Move To (x) Planet
Move center of gravity to (x) Direction
each orb will end up being for a particular element/ dimension, so the unknown may just be for time, the last dimension of the 6.
well, the 6 that most people can agree on, anyways
:)
Exciting!
It would be interesting if Sydney talk about the grakz and left out the after effects just smiling at the one who tries it out.
Surnames happen when there are too many people in a place who have the same first name.
A lot of them indicate some sort of ancestry. Others relate to the place where they were born. Some of them come from a nickname, either of the person or an ancestor.
No idea if aliens would have the same sort of thing. It’s possible, even likely, if ancestry is important, and there’s some sort of list of “normal names”, so there’s a likelihood of duplication.
I’ve dabbled my toes in the area of human naming (and attempts at coming up with rules for “valid names”) and it’s a nightmare. There’s no limit on the number of names a person can have, or the length of any given name, or the characters that make up a valid name, or the circumstances under which a name can change (added or subtracted or changed). And that’s just for humans!