Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for August 01, 2012

For once Rat makes sense.

Pig should watch “Fiddler on the Roof.”

hahaha…

… or the reason for doing something that’s just a pretext for getting together.

Way to hit the nail on the head, Rat.

It’s very freeing when you realise you don’t actually have to be friends with someone just because they’re a blood relation. And that you don’t necessarily like someone just because they share your DNA…and that it’s OK.

Even thoughI agree with that rodent, I still don’t like him.

For 20 – 21 years I had a tradition of going to an annual fall festival. And guess what, I can remember the reason for that tradition and the reason the festival began in the first place. The latter was so the city could get people out in the downtown area during the fall as people began to shun the area. Prompt folks to shop at local downtown buisnesses in the time before the Christmas shopping season. And the reason for my always going to the festival was because my family had gone to that first one as a fun evening out and to see what was being done in the way of harvest decorations.

And now that festival is in danger of being cancelled.

Rat is glib, not smart. Pig is his hopeless, witless Second Banana. Goat is having an uncharacteristic lapse today; he should have been able to explain the Family Potato-Sack Race easily.

as long as I remember my medication, our family get-togethers are fine

And how I love Rat. What’s the spice of life without the witty naysayer? It’s an American iconoclastic tradition…teehee.

Counter THAT. It’s right out of Fibber McGee.

Susan is correct, this is a site for everyone. We don’t want to turn it into a Gil Thorp forum.

Goat and Rat in agreement?……not very traditional!

Goat and Rat agreeing….now that’s breaking tradition.

Maybe I should stop sending this strip to my three workers and end the tradition.

That’s a very poor analogy – you’re confusing empirical evidence with fact. Just because you haven’t, personally, had firsthand experience with something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist or isn’t provable. .If you actually think “Numbers on a piece of paper don’t mean much and certainly are not proof” you need to take some mathematics courses – and at least one accounting class.

SusanSunshine, orinoco womble, ThreesNotACrowd, TheTrusted Mechanic: Thanks for pointing out that the comment is still there – I completely missed the offending remark (what does that say about me?) I agree with all of you that it was inappropriate and – especially – immature.

LOL LOL!

Has Goat ever won?

xxx

That may be YOUR definition of “faith” but it’s a poor one. Faith is a firm belief in something for which there is no empirical proof. This analogy may fall a bit short but here goes: When you place your money in a bank, you are expressing faith in that bank to hold on to your money and protect it. Indeed, faith can be well-placed or misplaced. Most banks live up to your faith in them. Some don’t.

One of the best descriptions of faith: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

Reminded me of the Hank Williams’ Jr. song, “It’s a family tradition”.

tra·di·tion /trah-’di-shen/: (noun) A culturally mandatory waste of time.

I’ll have to take your word for it — that comment does not appear on my screen.

No traditions in my family. Even my specialty recipes are out of the books and cans.

No violence in today’s strip ??

’It’s kind of like the definition of “Faith”!

’ “Faith is believing in something you KNOW is not true!”

‘The basis for most religions in the world…’

+++++

Sorry to hear about your faith. On the other hand, my faith has deep historical roots.

+++++

I’d also disagree about the definition of tradition. Tradition needs a community, so that the community can remember and hand on the stories that tell why we do what we do. Otherwise, it’s often pretty pointless.

.

But, on the other hand, when you know the whyfor, you can change the tradition when a new generation shows up, or a new situation needs a new response. My community does this sort of reexamination frequently. And we’ve been around in one form or another for some 1500 years. . . .

Them sacks of potatoes are pretty slow. I can beat ’em with one leg tied behind my back.

Poor pig.

After I got married, I continued my family’s tradition of making banana fudge (c’mon, it’s not bad – has nuts in it and all). However, after a dozen years I gave up that tradition. I was having to eat it all myself. Even the kids didn’t like it. Still have to make my mother-in-law’s bland turkey soup after Thanksgiving and Christmas, though.

You may have graduated with a 3.5 gpa, but you failed to grasp the basic principal behind either mathematics or accounting. .Faith deals with intangibles, and differs according to everyone’s personal belief structure. Unlike mathematics, it does not deal in tangible amounts and is not based on an unwavering and unchanging principle and language. It doesn’t matter what particular symbols you assign to a known quantity, but that tangible quantity exists, regardless of what symbols you attach to it. You might want to ask why something that could be accurately calculated from the days of ancient Rome or Egypt is no different when measured today. That’s not something that has “little meaning”. You can’t make precision machines without numbers. Knowing that they will always represent certain values means you can either build things, calculate whether you can plow an extra field in the time alloted, or estimate whether you can win a battle with your neighbor. .If you have ten fingers, and can assign an unchanging symbol to their quantity, then you have concrete proof that specific integers do indeed represent that specific amount. Therefore you have a basic principle that can be assigned to any measurable property, and that principle will keep on being accurate, even to trillions of units, even if you personally don’t believe that many units exist. Take your check to a bank, cash it and you’ll get an equal amount in paper and coin, regardless of what your “faith” in the numbers happens to be. These quantities exist, entirely independent of your belief in them. This is why accounting is not based on a “belief” system.

Thank you for announcing a fact that, to me, was so obvious I never would’ve thought of it.

You’re the one who doesn’t get the fundamentals – whether it’s 5 or V, the symbol representing the quantity is unchanging within a single system. Since the symbol doesn’t ever deviate, the principle is immutable, so the numerical value of the number also never deviates. . Applied mathematics deals with physical truth in a mathematical framework. It’s that simple. No matter what symbols you use in your numbering system, 5 bricks are never represented as 6 bricks. There is no “faith” involved here, any more than there is “faith” involved that the word for “horse” is not applied to “cat”. If you want to insist that the quantity of 10 or X or dix is really 11 or 15, it’s not a breach of any sort of “faith”, but it will mean that whatever you build will fall over, and you will probably end up being charged with fraud or else committed for psychiatric observation. .Speculation in commodities or stocks, or devaluation of currency due to inflation is a different thing altogether. But good luck arguing that the numbers “don’t matter” when the stock you purchased at 200 is now only worth 2. If you had cashed in your speculative investment earlier, at 200, which is what you could have put your hands on, you’d have a different opinion – we’re talking about values assigned to numbers, which you don’t seem to understand. Regardless of how many people agree with you, all your “faith” will not make 2 mean 15, or 16, or 25 – no matter what you call it, the value of 2 is always 2. .Pure mathematics are also another issue – but even then, the field deals with commonality of structure and what can be proved. if you think a mathematical a “theorum” is the same thing as “faith”, you’re very much mistaken.