Recent Comments

1. over 2 years ago on Baldo

   I think we’ve seen it both ways. e.g. https://www.gocomics.com/baldo/2013/04/07 and https://www.gocomics.com/baldo/2017/12/08 .

   Maybe it has multiple locations.

2. almost 3 years ago on Baldo

   I vaguely recall it being stated somewhere that “Baldo” takes place in El Paso, Texas, although I can’t seem to find where it was stated.

3. over 3 years ago on Doonesbury

   The vaccine mainly protects you. (Partially protects: it lowers your odds of getting sick, and especially lowers your odds of getting severely sick, but doesn’t eliminate them entirely.)

   The mask mainly protects the people around you. So whether you should wear it depends at least as much on their vaccination status as yours.

4. almost 4 years ago on Doonesbury

   Just remember that if the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit.

5. almost 4 years ago on Doonesbury

   Some of my cards are still like that, but admittedly I haven’t actually had anyone make an imprint in decades. The last one was a taxi cab, just before cell phones became ubiquitous.

6. about 4 years ago on Tom Toles

   Actually, Trump is not wrong.

   There is more forest litter (sticks, twigs, leaves, cones, etc.) than there should be: we removed fire from its natural place in the ecosystem by putting out fires—even relatively small ones—whenever they got started in the national forests, with the result that litter accumulated and now any fire that occurs is significantly more destructive than it would be otherwise. (Picture tossing a lit match into your fireplace. If all you’ve got is logs, no fire occurs; but if you’ve got enough kindling, the logs will end up burning. Our misguided forest management policies effectively filled the forests with kindling.)

   What to do about the excess forest litter is a difficult question. Trump’s blithe suggestion of raking the forest floors is completely impractical and makes one wonder whether he’s ever actually seen a forest: the forests are too big, especially since the trees in them would prevent any sort of heavy machinery from being used, and anyhow rakes don’t work very well on non-flat, many-cornered surfaces like typical forest floors. (Reminds me of the time that, upon learning that sunlight kills coronavirus, he suggested that we look for ways of putting sunlight inside the human body.)

   Of course, climate change is also contributing to the wildfires. (Most events in the real world are caused by a combination of factors rather than by one single factor.) California’s hotter than it used to be, and it’s easier to set hot things on fire than to set cold things on fire. Also, climate change makes the trees and other plants less healthy, weakening their natural defenses (a dead, hollow log burns a lot more easily than a healthy tree full of sap).

7. about 4 years ago on Doonesbury

   One relatively difficult-to-manipulate figure is the total number of deaths this year as compared with the average number of deaths in previous years. See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm , which estimates a total Covid death toll in the U.S. between 190,000 and 250,000.

8. over 4 years ago on Baldo

   In this strip, Baldo looks about the age he would have been when Gracie was born, so I guess there’s a sense in which Sergio followed up on the threat.

9. over 4 years ago on Baldo

   Yeah. Three-hundred-year-old joke.

10. almost 5 years ago on Garfield

    I’m pretty sure she’s a stray. Let’s see … https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/2008/05/16