Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for December 07, 2010

Hey, what ever happened to the ekert?

That’s because Mike needs Eddie’s business.

Let’s split the difference and say he’s persistently insane.

I’d like to create a line of Freudian Cosmetics so women can makeup their minds!

That’s also the theory of fixing computers.

Where, then, shall the Judgmental place blame–Mike or Eddie?

Keep making the same bad choices expecting the results to be different, they call you an idiot. Do the same thing but from a position of power, they call you a leader.

@Darkeforce: It’s not just the Repubs that do that. Everyone does. It’s endemic to humanity. Still, we haven’t blown ourselves up or else completely killed off the planet…yet. So what are we doing right? Or wrong, IMO?

I think Wiley is referring to us voters, not just Republicans or Democrats. It’s the voters who put the crazies in this last election.

@ HighPriestMikhal, We haven’t completely killed off the planet yet – but in the history of the world, we have only been here a very short time. Give us a while longer, and we’ll get the job done!

10.23, Wiley wrote the Ekert was to be sporadically continued and ended by saying “May the Ekert be with you”

http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2010/10/23

Einstein was talking about science, which is all about controlled experiments in which you can reproduce the exact same initial conditions each time. Under such circumstances, in a universe governed by consistent laws, it is insanity to repeat an experiment and expect a different result.

Outside the laboratory, we live in the context of an ever-changing world in which we control few, if any, of the conditions surrounding our “experiments” (also known as “lives”). In such a circumstance, sometimes the best thing to do is repeat the action that seemingly led to the disaster last time. Odds are, the environment’s different this time, and there’s a good chance the thing will work this time.

Computers, as Edcole1961 noted, are a prime example of this. The computer crashes (or the program quits unexpectedly); you restart the computer (or the program) and repeat the command; lo! over 90 percent of the time it works. This is because the overwhelming majority of computer crashes are caused by random combinations of events exposing a latent fault in the software–a fault that won’t be exposed by a different random combination of events. There’s actually a formal paper on this, from back in the ’70s, and it serves as the basis of the whole “checkpoint and restart” school of fault-recovery techniques.

Don’t they call someone who is doomed to repeat their mistakes a democrat?

Stay the course! Stay the course!

Most sane people believe that any one in governing positions becomes corrupted, hence the constant elections. So, ideas keep being recycled.

Sounds like the American electorate!!!

An excellent observation Joe Minotaur

Kind of like electing Carter and then electing Obama.

@jeffc42: The voters put the crazies in in EVERY election!

puddleglum1066: Hang in there, good buddy. There are some people out here who notice when someone says something intelligent and to the point. (Informative, too.)

mightaswellbe – Actually, cosmic rays are thought to be a significant cause of otherwise unexplained electronic glitches. (Neutrinos pretty much don’t interact with anything else, and naked quarks haven’t been around much since the Big Bang. But cosmic radiation is everywhere, all the time.)

Re: The last election, “He, who caused the collapse should be able to fix it.”

Joe wins, that might be the best line of the year! Puddleglum; Well said, but please don’t deny us your puns!

Insanity isnt so bad…

I think Mike calls it “job security.”

Thought it said..”the virtue of being president” at first.

Well Mike is certainly consistent.

Whether or not this is about voters (it’s a COMIC STRIP; it’s supposed to be HUMOR) that idea makes me feel a little better about following the George Carlin School of Political Thinking: “The people who vote don’t have a right to complain because they’re the ones who put these idiots in place to begin with. The people who didn’t vote knew that these supposed aces would turn out to be jokers.”

Well, that and I’m “legally defined as mentally unfit to vote.” I don’t know if that’s even constitutional, denying a man his right to vote just because annual psych evaluations come up with more red flags than Soviet Russia. Jury duty, yes. But voting?

To those who want to turn this around from whom it was clearly intended to be a dig at, I remind you that it’s a repeat, I believe from the 2004 election cycle, though again timely.

To those who want to turn this around from whom it was clearly intended to be a dig at, I remind you that it’s a repeat, I believe from the 2004 election cycle, though again timely.

Back to the comic, I just love the cat sitting there, taking it all in…sort of like me today, reading all the posts….

Ah Wiley - as usual the comic is superb - although I do believe a repeat - and the comments it solicits are just as amusing - thank you again

Ooh! If it is a repeat, that would add even more to the humor. :)

mightaswellbe said, about 7 reboots ago: “has anyone noticed the correlation between the development of electronics and the fine art of percussive maintenance?”

Are you familiar with the job of “jiggler”? I’m not making this up. In the early days of computers and radars, when there were a lot of electric/mechanical hybrid parts like variable resistors and such, systems would get electrically stuck and stop working. To cure and prevent this, they had people work as “jigglers,” going around and periodically giving the racks of equipment a little shove. Obviously, the shove didn’t affect the electronics directly, but it moved the mechanical things a little, and that disturbed the electrons enough to keep the systems from falling into a stuck state.

Consultants (competent ones anyway) still do this in organizations.

SCAATY_423: As I understand it, cosmic rays are less a factor than alpha particles emitted by naturally occurring radioactive materials in the substrates to which integrated circuits are mounted! When a bit in memory is being held by just one or two electrons, a single stray alpha particle can easily knock it off.

Mike also calls it job security.

It is history that is repeating, not Wiley.

I keep reading the comments hoping someday to see nothing but relevant humorous responses.

Guess my boat just sunk (again) too.

puddleglum1066 said, about 11 reboots ago

Computers, as Edcole1961 noted, are a prime example of this. The computer crashes (or the program quits unexpectedly); you restart the computer (or the program) and repeat the command; lo! over 90 percent of the time it works. This is because the overwhelming majority of computer crashes are caused by random combinations of events exposing a latent fault in the software–a fault that won’t be exposed by a different random combination of events. There’s actually a formal paper on this, from back in the ’70s, and it serves as the basis of the whole “checkpoint and restart” school of fault-recovery techniques.

Or, as I see it: computers are chaotic systems, exquisitely sensitive to the initial condition, and so a reboot, with a infinitesimally different initial condition (and usually a grossly different condtion), often gives a very different result.

Eddie is a Republican. We’ve been giving tax cut to the filthy rich off and on since Reagan. The only difference is that now we have a democratic President, so now the Congressional Republicans are bullying Obama to do the same.