Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 14, 2012

The quarterback will be an obese guy who hasn’t bathed in 2 weeks and gets winded walking to the fridge,

Coach the Alaska Dummies

The Fighting Flash Drives ? I love it ! This brings Fantasy Football to a whole new level.

Zonk and Zip seem smarter, smarter than I thought, smarter than BD. This strip was funnier than yesterday’s. Got a snort out of me.

If Zipper is Zonker’s nephew, then who is Zonker’s sibling? This has been bothering me for years.

Hey, where’s Sarge (Guard Sgt) and his big mouth? Did Babygirl succeed in flagging him off the website?

that’s very good!

Roman Numerals work for me :)

Roman Numerals work for me :)πRoman numerals had no 0 = zero.

Well the 0=zero as a NUMBER (rather than just a placeholder) was invented india, and Rome did share sea-lane trade routes with India. So, could Rome have “borrowed” the 0=zero to put on the backs of gladiators for identification purposes?πApparently not. For 0=zero was not used as a NUMBER in even India till the 9th century CE, long after the Roman empire was destroyed, at least in the Western part where the city of Rome was. πBesides, they had no computers based on zeros and ones, and so could have no internet. No internet, no online universities. No online universities, no online university football teams.πBut here’s a really wild weird thought: QUANTUM computers are possible (at least in theory), and research is ongoing at an Olympic pace, and they may on the market in a few decades. You do want the quantums, because one modest quantum computer can (again in theory) do what one thoousand supercomputers (like Watson) can do in one thousanth of the time! And that’s a very very conservative estimate.πThe kicker is that computing on a quantum computer is not based on switching between zeros and ones. It could be based on many different quantum conditions, like electron spin up pointing north, electron spin down pointing south, electron spin sideways pointing east, and electron spin sideways pointing west — and ALL AT THE SAME TIME, which is the wild weird part. But the computing is horrendously faster and can solve horrendous problems that the most kick-butt supercomputer could never solve, not till the sun burns out in another 5 billion years! • Like encryption that is impossible for an enemy to crack. • Like real-time, super-accurate weather predicting. • LIke predicting certain currently insoluble genetics and evolutionary outcomes. πBottom line: What kind of quantum numbers would appear on the backs of two teams battling for a birth on quantum heaven? πDon’t ask. I don’t know. When I was a science writer I could explain how various scans worked: CTs, MRIs, fMRIs, SPECHTs, PETs, etc. I could explain the latest in heart surgery tech. I could explain some pretty hairy genetics and pharmacological stuff. And even some future mind-reading machine, where a “vegetable” patient could communicate with doctors and family members by way of a mind-reading machine.πAlas, I could never touch quantum computing. I might do so today, since great advances have allowed easier understanding of what has already been learned to date.πI’ll give it my best shot: electron spin pointing up north, electron spin pointing down south, electron sideways spin pointing east, electron sideways spin pointing west.πSymbolically they’re gonna look like four tops spinning and pointing in one of thee four directions. Actually, there are an infinite number of directions in which a quantum spinning top could point. πCood luck with that.πDTPi

GT’s favorite, Elizabeth Warren, might have a hard time faking Cherokee identity at a for-profit school — unlike at Harvard, where administrators are glad to give professorships to fakers like Warren

Actually, DT, Zero is credited to the Maya and the Arabs. Stating something like that as an absolute merely subtracts from the absolute. (Hindi inside Joke.)

Today’s strip is funnier though it doesn’t drive home the idea of what is going on in for profit schools as hard as previous strips. Wonder how long it will take for folks to see through the new Eddie Munster addition on the GOP side from this past weekend?

My son attended online school for one year. I was surprised to learn the school required paperwork to determine need for reduced-price lunches. I wondered what an online school serves for lunch. My son answered “Spam.”

Who says we have to discuss current events with right wing trolls? I don’t think we have to, regardless of what they say. Meanwhile, I won’t allow them to dictate what we can discuss.Scary stuff is happening with voter suppression, a war on women and other things. We can’t be RailRoaded by the RR ticket. I won’t be railroaded, no matter what. It turns out that Eddie Munster is another one who won’t allow women to have reproductive choice in any case. Someone needs to hold his feet (and others) to the fire. If he is so against reproductive rights, what does he and his wife use? Why isn’t she having a baby every year? I don’t think GT is about keeping liberals from having their say. GT is well aware that there are right wing nut jobs out there and it doesn’t stop him.

The issue for quantum isn’t which way electrons spin. That just sounds like going to base 4 instead of the current base 2 or binary. It is can we find a way for information to travel faster than the speed of electricity or light.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Thank you, that was enlightening ( no pun intended ).

DT Pi just recently rejoined our merry little group after being absent for almost 6 months. I felt the need to share my opinion with him regarding certain activities that started taking place while he was absent.

@leftwingpatriot – You mean Chris Christie?

@MiepR: Zonker has a sister (Zipper’s mother), but she has never appeared in the strip.

The current limit on the power of computer processors is heat buildup, not the speed of light. We are trying to pack a lot of circuitry into microscopic spaces. The last few generations of computer processors have gained processing power by being more efficient, not faster. Our brains work a lot slower than light speed.Eventually we’ll have to find something better than silicon. http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/03/moving-beyond-silicon-to-break-the-megahertz-barrier/

“. . . for-profit colleges, they wouldn’t have enough men to recruit a football team.”πI got a laff outta that one, Babygirl.

BD “Coaching High School”πHow about BC coaching ONLINE high school? BD coaching ONLINE home school? ONLINE Day Care University?

Would “the ‘vector’ of the mathematical ‘language’ being used. Would that tie in with your wonderful description of the ‘directions and spin’ that would make for quantum computers?”πStomps the spit outta me.

Maybe a football team would make a for profit college even more profitable. That would seem to be the Walden style.

He lied about his marital to both his American wife and the state of Hawaii.

He died in a car crash in 1982. He was a horrible human being- a wife beater, a drunk, and neglectful father. The president only met him one, when the older Barack visited the US in 1971. He tried to erase 10 years of neglect in 1 month of activities.

Uh-oh, poor BD

I thought NCAA membership with football program was “for profit”!

President Obama was born in Hawaii and not only are there official birth certificates which show this, but the current governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, was a friend of both of the president’s parents and has publicly stated this many times since he knew both of them both before and after the president’s birth. There is also the evidence of a birth announcement in the Honolulu newspaper back in 1961. Reasonable people can see that of course the president was born in Hawaii.

More importantly, what is the reason behind continually questioning the president’s birthplace when it has been shown to be in Hawaii so many times? There are many more important things to spend our time and energy discussing.

“The current limiting factor with computers …”

Dang Sarge, what got into you? After months of gibberish ad-nauseam, you post something coherent. I’ve got to confess, I was having serious doubts about your academic claims based on what I saw on your posts and for the lack of documentation. Just a suggestion, in the future if you feel the need to speak the truth, use this post as a template in order to avoid falling into the One Trick Pony rut.

“Today, we judge Barack Obama … by the content of his character and the content of the character of his purported family. ¶ It don’t look good.”πWhaddaya mean? You got some ‘splainin’ to do.

You and I have had our run ins in the past, so it gives great pleasure to thank you for the fairness you have shown regarding the “birther” issue. As for his character, and that of his family, please understand that not all presidents have come from Cleaver household.Lincoln had a horrible relationship with his father. Lincoln father basically treated his son beast of burden, loaning the son out as farm laborer to his neighbors, while the father kept the pay. He left his father’s house, as the law allowed back then, on his 21st birthday and never saw him again. He did not even attend his father’s funereal.Gerald Ford’s biological father was a drunk and wife beater. Ronald Reagan’s father was also a drunk and wife beater. Even though I did not agree with Reagan’s political philosophy, I have to give him credit for being an effective politician.

BTW, the US population today reached pi x 100 million. Just a little fun fact.