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There’s plenty of logic. Just like in any grand tragedy, you have to establish the protagonist in a position of virtue and success before you tear it utterly to shreds.
I think my 1988 edition had a grey cover. The chip guide was yellow and red with a TI logo on it, back when you could build an entire computer from single-gate chips and nary a uP in sight. And 8-bit uP ruled the world.
I got it in freshman maths, freshman computing, and freshman electrical engineering, using three different sets of notation. I think philosophy covers it too.
In 1991 I took a sociology class at Stanford. The prof was studying the incest taboo and genetics. He said something mathematical which didn’t make sense. I tried to tell him so. He said “But that’s what the formula says.” He was very sure of himself. I eventually found that the formula was a simplification, and its necessary assumption was untrue in the case he was applying it to. But he had been so sure of himself that I didn’t go back and try again to point out that he was wrong.
Math isn’t quite the same as logic, but I’d hope that any Stanford professor using math as a core part of their studies would use it correctly and apply basic intuition… nope.
Math, like logic, is a set of tools for deriving truths from other truths. The problem with both is, if your chain of reasoning starts with a falsehood, your conclusions will also often be false.
I learned formal logic in a class called Intro to Abstract Math, which also covered methods of proof and basic set theory. I was also taking Into to C Programming at the same time, so it was really neat to see a new topic from the mathematical perspective one week and then see how it’s implemented in C the next week.
Most of the upper-division math classes had Intro to Abstract Math as a prerequisite, and generally started from all that logic stuff, added a few more axioms, and continued proving things from there.
The cool thing was that many of the upper-division philosophy classes (I minored in philosophy) required the philosophy class Intro to Symbolic Logic as a prereq, but allowed substituting Intro to Abstract Math because Intro to Abstract Math basically covered the entirety of the Intro to Symbolic Logic curriculum in the first week or two. Good times.
If anyone’s interested in learning more, the textbook we used for Intro to Abstract Math is called “A Transition to Advanced Mathematics” by Smith, Eggen, & St Andre, and I highly recommend it.
I took a formal logic class late in my college experience. It was a philosophy credit, which met one of my Core 2 requirements.
It was the most surreal experience I’ve ever had. There were people there who just could not understand “and”. Let me repeat that: there were people there, that despite the concept being repeated several times, still did not understand the logical operator “and”. (Which does exactly what you think it does.) “Or” completely blew them away.
Myself, I didn’t take the textbook out of the shrinkwrap until the final. I spent most of the class wondering what alternate dimension of abject stupidity I’d wandered into.
I think what I liked most about Intro to Abstract Math is that most of the quarter felt like learning ways to formally write down the patterns of thought that were already in my brain.
Logic 101 at the university that gave us the BOFH was a philosophy course that was required for comp sci degrees.
It was also the bunniest of bunny courses. The final exam (75% of the final grade? I think?) had a choose-twelve-of-these-equally-weighted-15-questions format, where fourteen were simple solve-the-algebraic-logic-problem questions and the fifteenth was an essay question.
That was a three hour exam, with no exits allowed during the first 45 minutes. There were students doing the essay question just for the sake of having something to do after solving eleven problems in the first ten minutes.
Gotta love Modus ponens. Accept “if P then Q” and accept P then you must accept Q. For example: If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus is real. We could claim that sentence is false, but that would be ridiculous as it only makes a claim contingent on the sentence being true. An if/then statement is considered true when the if-part is false. And so we must accept the sentence as true. And since we accept the sentence is true, which is to say we have accepted that “if this sentence is true, then Santa Claus is real,” by Modus ponens we must accept that Santa Claus is real.
Betcha they didn’t teach you that in your Philosophy of Logic course.
It’s a pre-requisite for philosophy as well as anything math-related (programming, physics, chemistry, etc). Introductory logic classes at the university I went to were among the largest since it’s needed for so many fields. Unlike begbert and butting, this was not a “bunny course”, about one third through we got to the point of “this is how you prove rules of logic without making any assumptions” at which about half of the students couldn’t follow very well anymore. About two thirds through we got to the point of “and this is how you construct an entire logical system from scratch” at which point 3/4ths off the class dropped out knowing they’d have to retake it anyway.
I got it on my second try. Good thing you could retake individual courses as often as you needed back then.
I find it fascinating that’s it’s a prerequisite to both philosophy and mathematics.
Some people (who severely lack imagination if you ask me) think that philosophy is for “sissies” who want to ponder on the immortality of the mountains all day while math is a hard science for rationality and manliness. (People will assign gender markers to the weirdest things). It has never occurred to them that philosophy and mathematics could be so related
My Discreet Math and Fundamentals of Math both covered logic and proof theorems. Nevertheless, Dorothy’s book is likely from a philosophy class as she is pre-law.
I took LOGIC: Modern Inductive Reasoning at one college and boy was that a bad decision since I could not wrap my head around it. When I was at a different college I took logic again only because I needed the Humanities credit and it was the only one to fit my schedule. I had a blast. Turns out my previous horrific experience was because the instructor had no bleeping clue what they were talking about and gave the best grades to the more squeezable students
Yeah they swung like a Spirograph and I was still socially blind at the time. I still need the aid of Beer Glasses tm to be able to socially focus.
Faz is the physical embodiment of the PUA segment of the manopshere. As such, he’s not so much an individual person as a collection of the psyches of thousands of some of the worst people in the world.
I will be interested to see if there’s any insight offered into his behavior at any point in the future, though.
Yeah, it’s not really clear to me that Faz can really make the transition from creepy/funny archetype to real character with depth. Not without throwing away his essential Fazness.
Trying to offer insight into his character may just highlight the ways it just isn’t realistic.
As Dorothy stare up at the poignant representation of her carefree love with Walky, and then walls it off by putting a symbol of both logic and her education LITERALLY before of it.
Sure! Democracy is the system of government where the stupid people are allowed to step in and run the place if the smart people stop paying attention for one single second. Few other systems of government allow the worst elements of society to usurp power so easily – most others require somebody to die first.
Correct – with a monarchy it’s hard to depose a good monarch, but a bad monarch requires the knife just as much. With democracy it can flip on a time limit rather than an expiration – though it helps if the voting is fair.
Regarding gerrymandering, that technically isn’t stupid people screwing with the system. It’s evil people screwing with the system. We just at the moment happen to have hordes of stupid people backing (and infiltrating) our (more) evil party.
We have a *representative* democracy with low voter participation and an extremely limited choice of pre-corrupted representatives. Also the system was never really designed to ‘represent’ anyone not already very wealthy. The incidental good that has been achieved was really more about stopping peasant revolts. The US government is really very functional, it was just never designed to function for *you*.
No, we have a republic, not a democracy. We are a union of states, not a union of individuals. It’s why you can lose the popular vote and still be president.
Joyce and Sarah’s room is connect to Sal and Malaya’s, and Dorothy and Sierra’s is connected to Amber and Dina’s room, so they’ve ran through at least 4 dorm rooms by now.
Amber just get Ruth to help you ring you…now I just Imagine Amber, Ruth, and a few others trying to place traps to stop the one man infestation that is Faz.
Oh boy, this is stage 2 of 4 of the college meltdown.
Stage 1: Shut out friends/family as distractions.
Stage 2: Shut out everything you love (yes, this includes food) until the work is done.
Stage 3: Caffeine induced zombie trip where you forget everything that transpires.
Stage 4: “Oh god, there’s 2 hours until my ______ midterm/final and I haven’t studied AT ALL!”
It is at this point that you finally snap from the isolation, lack of sleep, lack of food, and nonstop mental taxation. There are 2 natural outcomes to this. You are the kind of person that shuts down entirely and you go into full depression, at least until the end of the rush. OR you’re the type of person that loses literally all inhibitions and you basically drink/drug yourself into a streaking situation.
Eeeeh I argue there’s other outcomes. In my case I barely passed my finals and then quietly accepted that I am terrible at everything while my self esteem declined along with my GPA over the course of 3 semesters.
I always managed to scratch out a somewhat decent set of grades on the final exams—but immediately after the last one was over, I’d come down with an epic mother of all flu bugs.
Mine usually came in the lull between end of classes and start of finals. I missed a lot of exams that way (but always had a doctor’s note so no classes were failed *that* way)
Full depression would possibly cause you to not be able to get out of bed to go to lectures to collect attendance points and do assignments/quizzes, and drinking/drugs would possibly also cause you to not be able to go to lectures and complete assignments, resulting in, eventually, probation when your GPA has slipped below 2.0.
In the US anyway, that’s how most institutions work. As far as I know.
But if you’re like me and keep getting enough points to pass classes while slowly actively melting down? You stay in school.
This story sounds familiar…add on several years of crappy jobs to pay to go back for 2-3 classes and finally graduate, and that sums up my college experience pretty neatly.
Alarmingly common btw on the full depression part and pulling out of classes.
I remember the midterms I had for calculus 2. A class often seen as a major barrier to STEM students. We had 27 students before the midterm, and 12 after it.
I remember a Spanish class where a friend of mine that I’d made in the class just stopped coming one day. We’d exchanged numbers for homework and I texted her for several hours one day. She opened up about major anxiety with the class and giving presentations. Thinking the professor was judging her constantly.
I remember the guy that practically carried me through both Physics of Digital Circuits and intro to AI who had to drop out because of stress and depression.
This is all merely anecdotal, but I can immediately, off the top of my head think of 3 occasions where this kind of pressure destroyed the people put under it.
I have TERRIBLE memories of Calc. II (titled “Integral Calculus” at the school where I took it).
The prof. who taught it gave tests where, in an hour, we had to solve 50 intregals. And show all our work. AND all helpful devices and notes were banned from those classes.
I think about half the class I was in failed. I *barely* passed. I also remember going to the professor’s office hours for extra help. I told him I didn’t understand how to solve the equations on the problem set he’d assigned. He started yelling (literally) at me and asked me how I’d solve the first equation. I said I didn’t know. He said he needed me to tell him something. Randomly, I said I might use the chain rule. He then kept yelling and told me I was totally WRONG and that he didn’t want to speak to me anymore until I could be “smarter” and ask him “better” questions.
(Heck, I guess I am kind of having a #metoo moment…)
But I think STEM fields can be very cut-throat. I also have a story about how, when I was in grad school for physics, the male professor who was in charge of giving students their results on the written comprehensive exams tried to make female students who failed cry. Everyone knew about this and no one did anything to stop it. I failed the first time and he did NOT make me cry – but one of my female friends who also failed ran out of his office in tears. Apparently he told her that she had no place trying to be a scientist because she wasn’t smart enough.
I might add this was at a well-regarded U.S. college. The big take-away for me from this (I’m now a college professor at a different school) is to NEVER treat any of my own students this way.
It’s strange that while STEM is concidered oh so important and there should be more people doing it, they don’t bother to give actual help with learning it.
(I nearly quit my chemistry degree because of needing to grovel to a prof who didn’t like women who ordered me to a oral test for which there was no reason. For someone who got his professorship thrown at him in the 50ties, when there were not enough teachers, he sure could be going on about being good enough.)
Partly because, in many cases, professors aren’t actually hired for their educational qualifications – if they actually have any. They’re recruited for their expertise and prestige in their field. Often both their skills and their interest is in research and teaching is just a thing the university makes them do in order to keep the research job.
Okay, now I’m not going to be able to get out of my mind a naked and hysterically laughing Dorothy running through the quad for several dialogue-free strips with just the look on the other characters faces highlighted as a reaction.
Later dialogue: “I did WHAT? Walky, I can’t remember any of it!”
Well, the Valentine’s Day strip is not as obviously depressing as we feared. Still, Dorothy is going to learn that cutting all fun out of your life to deal with deadlines just results in more stress.
Monkey Master thinks you need to spend some time with the cute boy who threw him at you. That is just Monkey Master’s opinion, though. Freely given, because Monkey Master cares about you.
Maybe it’s just me but it doesn’t seem like Dorothy should be struggling this much this early on? Either she’s taking too many classes or there are harder ones she’s in that haven’t been shown… I mean, it’s not like college is a cakewalk, but if she’s as smart as she’s portrayed combined with how disciplined she is, I don’t get why she’s struggling. Unless it’s because she went from A+ to A.
She’s taking a heavy course load full of hard stuff to try and catch Yale’s attention. Plus her extra curriculars and her volunteer work and trying to maintain a social life and therapy appointments and you can see where this is going.
Dorothy got less than an A, probably the first time that this has ever happened. A lot of students who went through highschool with excellent grades and taking advanced courses react badly to their first poor grade (even if it’s a B).
Dorothy is in freakout mode and not realizing that she’s setting herself up for a brutal flame out.
Kinda interesting to note that she’s mirroring Walky’s own academic troubles on a different end of the scale.
Both of them have a lot of their self worth tied up with their academic performance, if for different reasons.
Not in this one. to avoid locking people in the bathroom, it only locks on the inside. That’s why Joyce is able to hover over Sal when she’s asleep whenever she wants (which, to be fair, she’s only done twice).
Yeah, but they’re just like…not even two months into their term (according to the wonderful timeline someone created on the Walkypedia Wiki), so she’s hovered over Sal about once every 2-3 weeks, which could be considered fairly regular, especially if she repeats that, even after Sal explicitly told her not to (at least in my memory she did so)…
It is weird – everytime you go use the bathroom, you need to lock two doors and then remember to unlock them both afterwards?
At least one seems like it would get forgotten pretty regularly – either leaving it unlocked so someone bursts in or locking it so the other side can’t use it.
She’s one of the few unequivocally nice characters in this strip. I also like how Willis occasionally hints that her air-headed genki ways are just a front (especially useful for angering Ruth or Mary) and that she is quite able to be serious when the need arises.
I empathize with Dorothy SO much right now. I’m not a college student any more, but I AM a college professor. I literally have no social life AT ALL and my long-term relationship isn’t going so well because of how much time and energy I have to devote to my job. Basically, I also hate the fact that I have to sleep (A LOT compared to most people – I have some medical problems) because the time I spend sleeping is time that, in theory, I could spend working.
I kind of think there is something wrong with the fact that, in the U.S., Dorothy’s attitude is often seen as praiseworthy. And with the fact that, despite me being differently-abled, my internal narrative keeps telling me that I CAN NEVER WORK HARD ENOUGH and I SHOULD FEEL LUCKY TO EVEN HAVE A JOB AT ALL. I was born and live in the U.S. and am not sure exactly how and when I internalized this narrative. Maybe in college, like Dorothy is apparently doing as well?
POOT.
P.S. to any college students reading this: please know that your professors work really hard as well! Most of us try our best to help you succeed and honestly care about you and your academic career. We are also often over-worked and under-paid; we are doing the best we can!
That reminds me of this incident from one of George W. Bush’s campaign trails where he was speaking to a woman in her 60’s who said that she was holding down 3 jobs. His response was to turn to the camera/crowd and go “Did you hear that? Such a great American work ethic!” or something to that effect. And all I could think of was “what kind of society have we got where an old woman has to work three jobs just to get by?” What kind of sacrifices are these people making in terms of family and their own mental health? And we’re supposed to be OK as a society with how this is? :/
I’m figuring that Dorothy is now on a countdown to her ‘tunnel vision’ breaking down. Frankly, I don’t think she had realised how Walky had become central to her life before she tried to live it without him.
I find it weird that I struggle to relate to Dorothy yet easily relate to Dorothy here. It wasn’t long before I found college wasn’t as easy for me as hs. My discipline went out the window and my grades went down.
I just went in the opposite direction. I withdrew from the classes I really struggled with and coasted through the ones I could handle.
Of course, I didn’t have a plan when I went to college, like she does. I was just looking for life experience.
Ironically, this is an apt metaphor for my childhood and adolescence; whereas college was where and when I finally figured out that I couldn’t just repress/deny/ignore all of my feelings and social needs, like a good little Vulcan, and had to actually acknowledge and work on expressing those in healthy ways.
My view is the opposite. I think it’s a sign that Dorothy is going to become more and more focussed not on her work by on why she needs to sideline Walky in favour of her work. Eventually, she’s going to end up achieving less because obsessing on why not seeing Walky anymore is logical and reasonable.
Yes, she might run but I suspect that she’ll have to come back, even if only to make her peace with Walky.
oh hey did I just accidentally stumble my way into being on Defense Team for an annoying little sibling who acts like a huge shithead and probably just really wants attention from SOMEONE in particular preferably their big sibling, who was neglected while their big sibling was abused, and whose name also starts with an “F”
Transferring to Yale Dorothy? Just finished Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom. Turns out that Yale has a THEORETICAL 20-30 spots a year for transfers. In 2012, they actually admitted 5. Harvard accepted 15, but Princeton accepts no transfers as a matter of policy. Basically they are saying that their Gen Eds are so good that no other school can match them. Totally backward of course. Many spots are filled with legacies and the spawn of millionaires.
Their grad schools are full of strivers and the Phi Beta Kappas of the country. Better to plan on an IU degree and then a prestigious grad school, since that is much more attainable.
Live on hope, you die of starvation. Eat Arby’s. Happy Valentines Day. Celebrate Lent.
I’ve also said this a few times before. It’s even worse because Dorothy is only 18 or 19. This is her first semester. This driven attitude apparently wasn’t good enough to get her into Yale the normal way right out of high school. How is it possibly going to work now?
Now I want a Family Circus style map of the chase scene. In and out of rooms, through various bathrooms. Doors being held or blocked by cast members. Hijinks happening, with Dorothy as the unmoved center.
No, he wasn’t. We don’t know Faz’s family situation before Blaine married his mother, but we do know he didn’t live with his mother’s boyfriend and his wife (this is making the likely, but unproven, assumption that Blaine cheating on Stacy with Faz’s mom).
Dorothy’s biggest problem is the fact she seems to have difficulty with the fact being a politician is about charisma and not grades. Walkerton has a better chance of being elected than her because he can network.
The thing is, she wants to do the job well. It’s not her fault that the skills you need to get elected are not the ones you need to actually be a good leader.
I’ll go with the idea that he first page states that “The great Faz graced this place with his mighty presence”, and the second points out that heterosexual services are available (appointments preferred to prevent disappointment due to prior bookings).
“Dance of the Vampires,” the professor’s “Logic” song.
Sadly, this never got a cast album, so this is from someone sneaking a recorder into the theater and recording the song. That will make it slightly hard to hear, but try;
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WHAT PLACE DOES LOGIC HAVE IN THIS WEB COMIC
(oh hey I’m p sure I have that book tho)
There’s plenty of logic. Just like in any grand tragedy, you have to establish the protagonist in a position of virtue and success before you tear it utterly to shreds.
She started from the position that Walky was a throw-away boyfriend. Not a position of virtue, but the potential for tragedy lurks just the same.
Not so much “throwaway” but “mutually-acknowledged as casual and not long-term”.
But I was referring to LOGIC as the protagonist that would ended up getting torn to shreds.
Ah.
I think my 1988 edition had a grey cover. The chip guide was yellow and red with a TI logo on it, back when you could build an entire computer from single-gate chips and nary a uP in sight. And 8-bit uP ruled the world.
Didn’t a collision with an asteroid kill them all off?
No, the dinosaurs ate all of them, and then the asteroid killed the dinosaurs off sometime later.
Top shelf, apparently…
To quote one of my other favorite webcomics: “Logic is knowing what the f**k is going on.”
what class teaches Logic?
Philosophy.
huh that’s funny, I took philosophy in my first two years and we didn’t have logic unit
I’m a philosophy professor. We teach logic, and also a whole bunch of other stuff. Philosophy’s a bit of a grab bag area of study.
As a Mathematics undergrad, I took two logic courses, formal and informal. Both were counted as Philosophy courses and had PHIL numbers.
The Logic 101 class at my college satisfied both a humanities and an engineering requirement. It was pretty popular.
I got it in freshman maths, freshman computing, and freshman electrical engineering, using three different sets of notation. I think philosophy covers it too.
My college had an Introduction to Logic class as an elective. Best elective class I ever took.
When you get down to it, doesn’t EVERY class teach logic?
….
*waits for a zillion counterexamples*
In 1991 I took a sociology class at Stanford. The prof was studying the incest taboo and genetics. He said something mathematical which didn’t make sense. I tried to tell him so. He said “But that’s what the formula says.” He was very sure of himself. I eventually found that the formula was a simplification, and its necessary assumption was untrue in the case he was applying it to. But he had been so sure of himself that I didn’t go back and try again to point out that he was wrong.
Math isn’t quite the same as logic, but I’d hope that any Stanford professor using math as a core part of their studies would use it correctly and apply basic intuition… nope.
Math, like logic, is a set of tools for deriving truths from other truths. The problem with both is, if your chain of reasoning starts with a falsehood, your conclusions will also often be false.
And you can’t actually prove those basic postulates using those tools. It’s tricky.
And did being in that class ultimately turn into an exercise in applied logic for you? *evil grin*
I learned formal logic in a class called Intro to Abstract Math, which also covered methods of proof and basic set theory. I was also taking Into to C Programming at the same time, so it was really neat to see a new topic from the mathematical perspective one week and then see how it’s implemented in C the next week.
Most of the upper-division math classes had Intro to Abstract Math as a prerequisite, and generally started from all that logic stuff, added a few more axioms, and continued proving things from there.
The cool thing was that many of the upper-division philosophy classes (I minored in philosophy) required the philosophy class Intro to Symbolic Logic as a prereq, but allowed substituting Intro to Abstract Math because Intro to Abstract Math basically covered the entirety of the Intro to Symbolic Logic curriculum in the first week or two. Good times.
If anyone’s interested in learning more, the textbook we used for Intro to Abstract Math is called “A Transition to Advanced Mathematics” by Smith, Eggen, & St Andre, and I highly recommend it.
that actually sounds pretty rad, I kind of wish I could have taken Abstract Math but my grades were struggling enough as it were
I took a formal logic class late in my college experience. It was a philosophy credit, which met one of my Core 2 requirements.
It was the most surreal experience I’ve ever had. There were people there who just could not understand “and”. Let me repeat that: there were people there, that despite the concept being repeated several times, still did not understand the logical operator “and”. (Which does exactly what you think it does.) “Or” completely blew them away.
Myself, I didn’t take the textbook out of the shrinkwrap until the final. I spent most of the class wondering what alternate dimension of abject stupidity I’d wandered into.
I think what I liked most about Intro to Abstract Math is that most of the quarter felt like learning ways to formally write down the patterns of thought that were already in my brain.
Logic 101 at the university that gave us the BOFH was a philosophy course that was required for comp sci degrees.
It was also the bunniest of bunny courses. The final exam (75% of the final grade? I think?) had a choose-twelve-of-these-equally-weighted-15-questions format, where fourteen were simple solve-the-algebraic-logic-problem questions and the fifteenth was an essay question.
That was a three hour exam, with no exits allowed during the first 45 minutes. There were students doing the essay question just for the sake of having something to do after solving eleven problems in the first ten minutes.
I took a Philosophy of Logic course. Modus ponens. Socrates is mortal. And so on.
Gotta love Modus ponens. Accept “if P then Q” and accept P then you must accept Q. For example: If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus is real. We could claim that sentence is false, but that would be ridiculous as it only makes a claim contingent on the sentence being true. An if/then statement is considered true when the if-part is false. And so we must accept the sentence as true. And since we accept the sentence is true, which is to say we have accepted that “if this sentence is true, then Santa Claus is real,” by Modus ponens we must accept that Santa Claus is real.
Betcha they didn’t teach you that in your Philosophy of Logic course.
You are relying on the unstated assumption that any collection of words can be assigned the value “true” or “false.” This is not so.
I remember a Freshman course called “Logic, reasoning and persuasion” where I first learned the terms contrapositive, and ad hominem.
It’s a pre-requisite for philosophy as well as anything math-related (programming, physics, chemistry, etc). Introductory logic classes at the university I went to were among the largest since it’s needed for so many fields. Unlike begbert and butting, this was not a “bunny course”, about one third through we got to the point of “this is how you prove rules of logic without making any assumptions” at which about half of the students couldn’t follow very well anymore. About two thirds through we got to the point of “and this is how you construct an entire logical system from scratch” at which point 3/4ths off the class dropped out knowing they’d have to retake it anyway.
I got it on my second try. Good thing you could retake individual courses as often as you needed back then.
I find it fascinating that’s it’s a prerequisite to both philosophy and mathematics.
Some people (who severely lack imagination if you ask me) think that philosophy is for “sissies” who want to ponder on the immortality of the mountains all day while math is a hard science for rationality and manliness. (People will assign gender markers to the weirdest things). It has never occurred to them that philosophy and mathematics could be so related
My Discreet Math and Fundamentals of Math both covered logic and proof theorems. Nevertheless, Dorothy’s book is likely from a philosophy class as she is pre-law.
I took LOGIC: Modern Inductive Reasoning at one college and boy was that a bad decision since I could not wrap my head around it. When I was at a different college I took logic again only because I needed the Humanities credit and it was the only one to fit my schedule. I had a blast. Turns out my previous horrific experience was because the instructor had no bleeping clue what they were talking about and gave the best grades to the more squeezable students
Yeah they swung like a Spirograph and I was still socially blind at the time. I still need the aid of Beer Glasses tm to be able to socially focus.
I forgot how most of Faz’ character in Shortpacked was just acting nothing like any human being ever would
I mean, Shortpacked! also had Galasso, Mike, and Robin.
It’s about a 50-50 split on normalcy and bizarre there.
And Ultra Car. And Yaz. And Ninja Rick. And Conquest. And the various strawman customers.
It was way more than 50-50.
Well, as far as ‘normals’ go, you had Ethan, Amber, Leslie, Ronnie, Jacob, Ken, and Malaya. Not the worst ratio ever.
A resurrected president is “normal”? Might as well include Jeshua ben Joseph in there as well.
I wonder if we’ll ever see Faz hang out with Ruth’s brother?
Faz is the physical embodiment of the PUA segment of the manopshere. As such, he’s not so much an individual person as a collection of the psyches of thousands of some of the worst people in the world.
I will be interested to see if there’s any insight offered into his behavior at any point in the future, though.
Yeah, it’s not really clear to me that Faz can really make the transition from creepy/funny archetype to real character with depth. Not without throwing away his essential Fazness.
Trying to offer insight into his character may just highlight the ways it just isn’t realistic.
Might have to use a chart to illustrate that.
This chart
shows the day to day wonderfulness that is Faz.
Umm . . . it seems to be reversed left-to-right.
Happy Valentine’s day as Dorothy ponders who/what her true love is?
As Dorothy stare up at the poignant representation of her carefree love with Walky, and then walls it off by putting
a symbol ofboth logic and her education LITERALLY before of it.Nah, she’s actually REALLY into apes.
Well, yes. Walky IS classed as hominoidea.
Fool, you can’t defeat Hijinks with Logic! It’ll only make them stronger!
“But… that shouldn’t be able to work-”
“AND YET IT DOES! Hahahaha, Hijinks beats logic AGAIN!”
That was Robin’s campaign slogan.
It’s sad what this says about American democracy.
We have a democracy?
Sure! Democracy is the system of government where the stupid people are allowed to step in and run the place if the smart people stop paying attention for one single second. Few other systems of government allow the worst elements of society to usurp power so easily – most others require somebody to die first.
Democracy lowers the barriers for smart people getting control back too.
Um? Gerrymanders? Packed judiciary?
Correct – with a monarchy it’s hard to depose a good monarch, but a bad monarch requires the knife just as much. With democracy it can flip on a time limit rather than an expiration – though it helps if the voting is fair.
Regarding gerrymandering, that technically isn’t stupid people screwing with the system. It’s evil people screwing with the system. We just at the moment happen to have hordes of stupid people backing (and infiltrating) our (more) evil party.
We have a *representative* democracy with low voter participation and an extremely limited choice of pre-corrupted representatives. Also the system was never really designed to ‘represent’ anyone not already very wealthy. The incidental good that has been achieved was really more about stopping peasant revolts. The US government is really very functional, it was just never designed to function for *you*.
No, we have a republic, not a democracy. We are a union of states, not a union of individuals. It’s why you can lose the popular vote and still be president.
Partially ninja-ed by TerribleName.
No matter how hard you try to stop them, hijinks will ensue.
That would make a good concept, and title, for a webcomic.
Ooo! Quick register hijinkswillensue.com
hooray! 2 panel sierra!
I was wrong. Sierra is already She-Hulk.
Yes, because putting work before exercising and eating is both healthy and logical. Dorothy whyyyyy. ;-;
Don’t try reasoning with her, her logic’s all tied up holding Monkey Master at bay.
Well, if she studies that logic text, maybe she will realize something.
ALL PROBLEMS CAN BE AVERTED BY SCHEDULNG….
-Dorothy, two months ago realtime, so, what, yesterday in comic time?
1) It’s not called “Logicing of Age.”
2) Deadlines are deadlines. Hopefully as one gains experience, one gets better at managing them, but see #1 above.
The punchline is not necessarily being presented as a positive outcome.
Oh, Dorothy, honey, no.
Beat me by 10 min.
Logic? Shockwave would approve.
Also will the rest of this story arc be about stuff happening as Faz and Amber run through the whole thing?
When you get down to it, isn’t LIFE about stuff happening as ALL OF US run through it?
Wait, did you just equate “all of us” with “Amber and Faz”?
…I call being Amber!
Obviously with so many of us and only two of them we’re going to have to share.
LOGIKK NOT MUNKY
+1 internets
You monster. I laughed at this so hard.
Joyce and Sarah’s room is connect to Sal and Malaya’s, and Dorothy and Sierra’s is connected to Amber and Dina’s room, so they’ve ran through at least 4 dorm rooms by now.
Or they could have gone into Joyce and Sarah’s room and then back out.
Why can’t you do it? Why can’t you set your monkey free?
Idiot YouTube poster doesn’t have a clue what “a capella” means.
It’s a for profit school, right?
ALWAYS GIVIN IN TO IT
DO YOU LOVE THE MONKEY
OR DO YOU LOVE ME
Amber just get Ruth to help you ring you…now I just Imagine Amber, Ruth, and a few others trying to place traps to stop the one man infestation that is Faz.
Ruth is out on a date!
Since last night?
nope, still out, probably…
Nonono. FROM. She’s out FROM her date.
“From”, “to”, “with”… All applicable prepositions.
Oh boy, this is stage 2 of 4 of the college meltdown.
Stage 1: Shut out friends/family as distractions.
Stage 2: Shut out everything you love (yes, this includes food) until the work is done.
Stage 3: Caffeine induced zombie trip where you forget everything that transpires.
Stage 4: “Oh god, there’s 2 hours until my ______ midterm/final and I haven’t studied AT ALL!”
It is at this point that you finally snap from the isolation, lack of sleep, lack of food, and nonstop mental taxation. There are 2 natural outcomes to this. You are the kind of person that shuts down entirely and you go into full depression, at least until the end of the rush. OR you’re the type of person that loses literally all inhibitions and you basically drink/drug yourself into a streaking situation.
Eeeeh I argue there’s other outcomes. In my case I barely passed my finals and then quietly accepted that I am terrible at everything while my self esteem declined along with my GPA over the course of 3 semesters.
I always managed to scratch out a somewhat decent set of grades on the final exams—but immediately after the last one was over, I’d come down with an epic mother of all flu bugs.
Mine usually came in the lull between end of classes and start of finals. I missed a lot of exams that way (but always had a doctor’s note so no classes were failed *that* way)
Which one gets you committed/pulled out of school?
(both?)
Full depression would possibly cause you to not be able to get out of bed to go to lectures to collect attendance points and do assignments/quizzes, and drinking/drugs would possibly also cause you to not be able to go to lectures and complete assignments, resulting in, eventually, probation when your GPA has slipped below 2.0.
In the US anyway, that’s how most institutions work. As far as I know.
But if you’re like me and keep getting enough points to pass classes while slowly actively melting down? You stay in school.
This story sounds familiar…add on several years of crappy jobs to pay to go back for 2-3 classes and finally graduate, and that sums up my college experience pretty neatly.
Alarmingly common btw on the full depression part and pulling out of classes.
I remember the midterms I had for calculus 2. A class often seen as a major barrier to STEM students. We had 27 students before the midterm, and 12 after it.
I remember a Spanish class where a friend of mine that I’d made in the class just stopped coming one day. We’d exchanged numbers for homework and I texted her for several hours one day. She opened up about major anxiety with the class and giving presentations. Thinking the professor was judging her constantly.
I remember the guy that practically carried me through both Physics of Digital Circuits and intro to AI who had to drop out because of stress and depression.
This is all merely anecdotal, but I can immediately, off the top of my head think of 3 occasions where this kind of pressure destroyed the people put under it.
I have TERRIBLE memories of Calc. II (titled “Integral Calculus” at the school where I took it).
The prof. who taught it gave tests where, in an hour, we had to solve 50 intregals. And show all our work. AND all helpful devices and notes were banned from those classes.
I think about half the class I was in failed. I *barely* passed. I also remember going to the professor’s office hours for extra help. I told him I didn’t understand how to solve the equations on the problem set he’d assigned. He started yelling (literally) at me and asked me how I’d solve the first equation. I said I didn’t know. He said he needed me to tell him something. Randomly, I said I might use the chain rule. He then kept yelling and told me I was totally WRONG and that he didn’t want to speak to me anymore until I could be “smarter” and ask him “better” questions.
(Heck, I guess I am kind of having a #metoo moment…)
But I think STEM fields can be very cut-throat. I also have a story about how, when I was in grad school for physics, the male professor who was in charge of giving students their results on the written comprehensive exams tried to make female students who failed cry. Everyone knew about this and no one did anything to stop it. I failed the first time and he did NOT make me cry – but one of my female friends who also failed ran out of his office in tears. Apparently he told her that she had no place trying to be a scientist because she wasn’t smart enough.
I might add this was at a well-regarded U.S. college. The big take-away for me from this (I’m now a college professor at a different school) is to NEVER treat any of my own students this way.
It’s strange that while STEM is concidered oh so important and there should be more people doing it, they don’t bother to give actual help with learning it.
(I nearly quit my chemistry degree because of needing to grovel to a prof who didn’t like women who ordered me to a oral test for which there was no reason. For someone who got his professorship thrown at him in the 50ties, when there were not enough teachers, he sure could be going on about being good enough.)
This was clearly an educator who had forgotten (if he ever knew) their actual role.
Partly because, in many cases, professors aren’t actually hired for their educational qualifications – if they actually have any. They’re recruited for their expertise and prestige in their field. Often both their skills and their interest is in research and teaching is just a thing the university makes them do in order to keep the research job.
Okay, now I’m not going to be able to get out of my mind a naked and hysterically laughing Dorothy running through the quad for several dialogue-free strips with just the look on the other characters faces highlighted as a reaction.
Later dialogue: “I did WHAT? Walky, I can’t remember any of it!”
“S’okay; I got a video!”
“BECKY! NO!”
10/10 visual pun
Well, the Valentine’s Day strip is not as obviously depressing as we feared. Still, Dorothy is going to learn that cutting all fun out of your life to deal with deadlines just results in more stress.
Panel 5 is kind of heartbreaking.
Sooooo… when are you gonna start selling a Monkey Master action figure on your web-store? ‘Cos I’d totally buy one to keep in my office.
His previous venture into Shortpacked! action figures was a bust.
A bust of who?
It’s kind of weird seeing Dorothy like this. So far, she’s shown a high level of self awareness.
I know, right? Not like the classes are going to get any easier, and doubly so if she’s going to an Ivy League
Yeah, wonder if she’s talked to her therapist about any of this.
What is love
anyway?
Does anybody love anybody anyway?
The door always must be left unlocked.
Baby don’t hurt me
Don’t hurt me
No more
Monkey Master disapproves of your poor work-life balance, Dorothy.
Monkey Master thinks you need to spend some time with the cute boy who threw him at you. That is just Monkey Master’s opinion, though. Freely given, because Monkey Master cares about you.
Uh, it’s almost symbolic in a subtle way.
Symbolic logic. Nice one.
I will now for the rest of my days live the lie of pretending I actually thought of that one instead of just blundering into it.
Called it! … the hovertext, at least.
Maybe it’s just me but it doesn’t seem like Dorothy should be struggling this much this early on? Either she’s taking too many classes or there are harder ones she’s in that haven’t been shown… I mean, it’s not like college is a cakewalk, but if she’s as smart as she’s portrayed combined with how disciplined she is, I don’t get why she’s struggling. Unless it’s because she went from A+ to A.
She’s taking a heavy course load full of hard stuff to try and catch Yale’s attention. Plus her extra curriculars and her volunteer work and trying to maintain a social life and therapy appointments and you can see where this is going.
I have a feeling she isn’t going to Yale. Going to have to adjust her expectations a bit.
Of course she’s not going to jail.
She’s going to be a freshman at IU forever, just like the rest of them.
Going to Yale. I mean going to Yale. Not sure where that came from.
At some point Rod Serling has to step into the frame to narrate the conclusion…
Now you’ve done it. Within the year, Dorothy will be in jail and it will all be thejeff’s fault.
Dorothy got less than an A, probably the first time that this has ever happened. A lot of students who went through highschool with excellent grades and taking advanced courses react badly to their first poor grade (even if it’s a B).
Dorothy is in freakout mode and not realizing that she’s setting herself up for a brutal flame out.
Kinda interesting to note that she’s mirroring Walky’s own academic troubles on a different end of the scale.
Both of them have a lot of their self worth tied up with their academic performance, if for different reasons.
If I recall, she got a C. Not clear if it was only one either.
Could literally just lock the door
Front door, yes, bathroom doesn’t work like that. It locks from the inside.
Usually when I’ve been in dorms with shared bathrooms like that, the bath doors lock from both the inside and outside.
Not in this one. to avoid locking people in the bathroom, it only locks on the inside. That’s why Joyce is able to hover over Sal when she’s asleep whenever she wants (which, to be fair, she’s only done twice).
Yeah, but they’re just like…not even two months into their term (according to the wonderful timeline someone created on the Walkypedia Wiki), so she’s hovered over Sal about once every 2-3 weeks, which could be considered fairly regular, especially if she repeats that, even after Sal explicitly told her not to (at least in my memory she did so)…
Oh, yeah, that’s twice too many, but I don’t want to sound like I’m saying she does it daily (like she does to poor Sarah).
So lock the OTHER bathroom door from the inside.
Which keeps Amber and Dina from using the half-bath.
Really, it seems an odd setup, no matter which sides of the doors the locks are on.
It is weird – everytime you go use the bathroom, you need to lock two doors and then remember to unlock them both afterwards?
At least one seems like it would get forgotten pretty regularly – either leaving it unlocked so someone bursts in or locking it so the other side can’t use it.
Amber and Dina might want to pee.
I feel like this is a metaphor… For global emperialism during the American Revolution and how it impacted global trade.
Yes! Someone understands.
Now explain in detail.
Sierraaaaaa
She’s one of the few unequivocally nice characters in this strip. I also like how Willis occasionally hints that her air-headed genki ways are just a front (especially useful for angering Ruth or Mary) and that she is quite able to be serious when the need arises.
I empathize with Dorothy SO much right now. I’m not a college student any more, but I AM a college professor. I literally have no social life AT ALL and my long-term relationship isn’t going so well because of how much time and energy I have to devote to my job. Basically, I also hate the fact that I have to sleep (A LOT compared to most people – I have some medical problems) because the time I spend sleeping is time that, in theory, I could spend working.
I kind of think there is something wrong with the fact that, in the U.S., Dorothy’s attitude is often seen as praiseworthy. And with the fact that, despite me being differently-abled, my internal narrative keeps telling me that I CAN NEVER WORK HARD ENOUGH and I SHOULD FEEL LUCKY TO EVEN HAVE A JOB AT ALL. I was born and live in the U.S. and am not sure exactly how and when I internalized this narrative. Maybe in college, like Dorothy is apparently doing as well?
POOT.
P.S. to any college students reading this: please know that your professors work really hard as well! Most of us try our best to help you succeed and honestly care about you and your academic career. We are also often over-worked and under-paid; we are doing the best we can!
That reminds me of this incident from one of George W. Bush’s campaign trails where he was speaking to a woman in her 60’s who said that she was holding down 3 jobs. His response was to turn to the camera/crowd and go “Did you hear that? Such a great American work ethic!” or something to that effect. And all I could think of was “what kind of society have we got where an old woman has to work three jobs just to get by?” What kind of sacrifices are these people making in terms of family and their own mental health? And we’re supposed to be OK as a society with how this is? :/
I think the exact phrase from Bush the Younger was
Only in America!
—
Bonus from the Baltimore Sun, years ago, on a meeting about a living wage:
Reporter: What would you do with a living wage, sir?
A guy: I’d be able to quit two of my three jobs.
“Only in America!”
When said by someone from any other country (and it’s often the only thing our stunned minds can think of to say), this is not praise.
No socially self-destructive strip on Valentine’s Day? IT’S A TRAP!!!!
I would argue that Dorothy’s current path qualifies.
Also it’s a trap.
here is kitty’s finnish word of the day! pronunciation guide: https://unilang.org/view.php?res=53
pyssy (gun)
why did no one tell me about the word “pussy” i can’t believe this
have a nice day!
I’m figuring that Dorothy is now on a countdown to her ‘tunnel vision’ breaking down. Frankly, I don’t think she had realised how Walky had become central to her life before she tried to live it without him.
I find it weird that I struggle to relate to Dorothy yet easily relate to Dorothy here. It wasn’t long before I found college wasn’t as easy for me as hs. My discipline went out the window and my grades went down.
I just went in the opposite direction. I withdrew from the classes I really struggled with and coasted through the ones I could handle.
Of course, I didn’t have a plan when I went to college, like she does. I was just looking for life experience.
Think you can be a bit more blatant with your visual metaphors?
… ow, all of my feels.
Ironically, this is an apt metaphor for my childhood and adolescence; whereas college was where and when I finally figured out that I couldn’t just repress/deny/ignore all of my feelings and social needs, like a good little Vulcan, and had to actually acknowledge and work on expressing those in healthy ways.
It’s a sign, isn’t it? Their break will become a break-up.
My view is the opposite. I think it’s a sign that Dorothy is going to become more and more focussed not on her work by on why she needs to sideline Walky in favour of her work. Eventually, she’s going to end up achieving less because obsessing on why not seeing Walky anymore is logical and reasonable.
Yes, she might run but I suspect that she’ll have to come back, even if only to make her peace with Walky.
I agree with you on this
It might or might not become a break-up, but it’s clearly not going to solve her problems.
So far she mostly seems to be heading for a break[i]down[/i].
breakdown.
(curse you, tags, curse you!)
oh hey did I just accidentally stumble my way into being on Defense Team for an annoying little sibling who acts like a huge shithead and probably just really wants attention from SOMEONE in particular preferably their big sibling, who was neglected while their big sibling was abused, and whose name also starts with an “F”
PARALLELS GO AWAY I DONT WANT YOU
Monkey Master’s arms are actually detachable USB drives. #truefact
*Plays “Love is a Bourgeois Construct” by the Pet Shop Boys on the hacked Muzak*
Unfortunately, moving her ‘Basic Logic’ book to cover Monkey Master uncovers the ‘Kraft Macaroni ‘n’ Cheese’ T-Shirt that Walky bought her.
Every time Sierra is in a strip it’s a pleasant surprise.
Transferring to Yale Dorothy? Just finished Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom. Turns out that Yale has a THEORETICAL 20-30 spots a year for transfers. In 2012, they actually admitted 5. Harvard accepted 15, but Princeton accepts no transfers as a matter of policy. Basically they are saying that their Gen Eds are so good that no other school can match them. Totally backward of course. Many spots are filled with legacies and the spawn of millionaires.
Their grad schools are full of strivers and the Phi Beta Kappas of the country. Better to plan on an IU degree and then a prestigious grad school, since that is much more attainable.
Live on hope, you die of starvation. Eat Arby’s. Happy Valentines Day. Celebrate Lent.
I’ve also said this a few times before. It’s even worse because Dorothy is only 18 or 19. This is her first semester. This driven attitude apparently wasn’t good enough to get her into Yale the normal way right out of high school. How is it possibly going to work now?
Isn’t the normal way being extremely wealthy and having parents that went there?
We don’t know what happened in high school. She could have had any number of reasons not to be accepted.
Now I want a Family Circus style map of the chase scene. In and out of rooms, through various bathrooms. Doors being held or blocked by cast members. Hijinks happening, with Dorothy as the unmoved center.
Amber could have easily caught Faz by now, but she’s suppressing her power level to avoid civilian casualties.
That or Amazigirl wants no part in what Amber wants to do to Faz the second she catches him.
Or Amber wants to do it that badly.
Faz was raised in the same household as Amber, and has the same powers. The main difference is that he uses them, not for evil, but for sleaziness.
No, he wasn’t. We don’t know Faz’s family situation before Blaine married his mother, but we do know he didn’t live with his mother’s boyfriend and his wife (this is making the likely, but unproven, assumption that Blaine cheating on Stacy with Faz’s mom).
Cheating or no cheating, different Mom’s ergo different households. No stepson until he moves out and then marries the Fazmother.
Yeah, that’s what I meant…the bit about cheating was to address the fact I referred to him as Faz’s mom’s boyfriend.
Does she want brain fry? Because that’s how you get brain fry.
Dorothy’s biggest problem is the fact she seems to have difficulty with the fact being a politician is about charisma and not grades. Walkerton has a better chance of being elected than her because he can network.
The thing is, she wants to do the job well. It’s not her fault that the skills you need to get elected are not the ones you need to actually be a good leader.
Even then. People skills are still as important as any kind of book learning.
Really good policy wonks need a front-man to stand in front of the curtain.
I note that Faz has dropped one of his pages in panel one. Perhaps this will shed some light on why he is here.
Make that two pages.
I’ll go with the idea that he first page states that “The great Faz graced this place with his mighty presence”, and the second points out that heterosexual services are available (appointments preferred to prevent disappointment due to prior bookings).
Lie in the grave you dig for yourself.
Lyric?
Not that I’m aware, thought of it myself last night.
bookshelf munkey is watchin u meditate
–Dave, did not want
“Dance of the Vampires,” the professor’s “Logic” song.
Sadly, this never got a cast album, so this is from someone sneaking a recorder into the theater and recording the song. That will make it slightly hard to hear, but try;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmB6eFj_qVM