Recent Comments

1. about 2 months ago on Pearls Before Swine

   No conspiracy is needed to explain why the prices of commodities are similar. Most gas stations are franchises, which can set their own prices.Think of it from the point of view of a new franchise owner. He looks at the prices other gas stations are charging and sets his prices to slightly more to see what happens. Then, perhaps, he gets no business so he reduces his price to what the nearest gas station is charging. If he doesn’t get the volume of business he needs , perhaps because people aren’t used to stopping at his new gas station, he’ll reduce the price below what nearby gas stations are charging. But it isn’t going to diverge too much from the local standard.

   A similar story could result in him charging a bit more than nearby gas stations, perhaps because his gas station is slightly more convenient to get to. But in any case for a commodity like gas, where what is being sold is the same, the price will of nearby gas stations will converge.

   So no conspiracy is needed to explain why the prices of commodities are similar. On the other hand products like comic strips are not a commodity: the product produced by different creators is wildly different, so some creators will get paid more than others. I really enjoy Pearls so I hope Stephan is one of the creators making the big bucks

2. 4 months ago on Pearls Before Swine

   What does Rat think about the use of “leverage” as a synonym for “reuse”?

3. 5 months ago on F Minus

   He announces these might be his last words. Then he dies before completing the sentence which would reveal where the treasure is. If he hadn’t made the announcement he would have had time to say where the treasure is.

4. about 5 years ago on Barney & Clyde

   Curious if strip will address the fact illnesses seem due to black market cartridges and that smokers who switch to vaping using legit cartridges are much healthier than if they smoked. Do authors feel that people who lack the “will power” to quit nicotine altogether deserve to die from heart attacks and lung cancer?

5. about 5 years ago on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

   The logician hasn’t reasoned correctly, he isn’t using the fact that we know the subject has been struck by lightning. Statistics show that 10% of the people who are struck by lightning die as a result, which is much higher than the chances of a randomly selected person being struck by lightning. It is true that a person selected from the total population pool has a very small chance of being struck by lightning, and since not everyone who is struck by lightning dies as a result the randomly selected person has even less of a chance of dying as a result of a lightning strike – but in this case the subject isn’t part of the general population, he is part of the small pool of people who have been hit by lightning.

6. over 5 years ago on Ted Rall

   Some union reps are definitely in the “rich” category. Some of those working for charities are rich also – just because you work for a charity doesn’t mean you are working for free!

7. almost 6 years ago on Berger & Wyse

   Paying more for less

8. about 6 years ago on The Other End

   Seems fair

9. about 6 years ago on F Minus

   This is the funniest comic I’ve read for a long time!

10. about 6 years ago on F Minus

    For the sake of marine life it makes sense for beach restaurants to ban plastic straws for drinks that are going to leave the restaurant. But a general ban seems to me to be virtue signalling