Nancy by Olivia Jaimes for October 07, 2020

If you regularly try to toast long bread, you should get one of those l o n g toasters

This seems much more an engineering solution than Sluggo’s earlier. Get close and brute force it.

If you keep the middle untoasted, it’s easier to fold.

Who knew that Nancy could be a money making opportunity? And I can’t believe nobody has invented this before! If people want to toast extra long slices of bread, why not invent the “tall toaster” to do the job? I am on my way down to the patent office as I finish typing this.

Hey, Nancy, this is why the toaster oven was invented, sit the bread on the rack set the timer and … DING … toast!

I dunno, I was thinking an Archimedes Mirror, myself.

This is what computer programming is. 50% elegant solution, 50% egregious hacking.

…or cut the bread in half.

OR: cut the piece of bread in half and toast both pieces at the same time.

I know, boring solution.

Any reader who would accept emptying a pool with squirt guns to find a quarter or carrying five hundred pounds of dirt around in a wagon for a garden (Nancy Classics) should have no problem with this.

People still eat toast!?!

She needs a classic plumber’s gasoline torch. When they get hot and the flame is burning blue, it hardly leaves any fuel taste at all.

So, my favorite from the Bushmiller years were the ones that he drew himself but used gags/scripts by invited guests.

Here’s the one he drew from an idea by special guest writer Rod Serling.

Special Treat, it’s animated.

https://abload.de/img/nancyicanty1uuv.gif

I like the use of the word “elegant” here, as in the context of a scientific or an engineering solution.

Whereas we generally think of “elegance” as referring to a certain high sophistication in terms of dress or decoration, matters of refined taste… in the scientific/engineering context it is a term of art.

This is how Ian Glynn explains it in his book Elegance in Science : The Beauty of Simplicity…

“So what does elegance mean in the context of science? [Simplicity] is a considerable part of it, creativity too. An elegant mathematical proof, an elegant theory, or an elegant experiment is one that is economical and imaginative, [and]sometimes breathtakingly simple….”

An elegant solution is often preceded by the exclamation AHA!

So this cartoon is itself an elegant example of an inelegant solution, way too complicated. Sunlight, books, magnifying glass, hair dryers, and a mirror (or is that a Fresnel reflector?).

The first idea, of flipping the bread, would have been elegant if it had worked.

I use that very method to get a head start on a toasty, melty sandwich before I put the assembled thing in the panini press.

You could also just use a hot pan.

Too bad they don’t still make Post Toasties cereal. These would make Nancy’s life SO MUCH easier.