Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau
- September 06, 2009
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About Doonesbury
G.B. Trudeau’s Doonesbury is currently in its thirty-ninth year, tracking its eighth presidential administration. Trudeau maintains his studio in New York and his Web presence at www.doonesbury.com.
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Comments (33) Jump to Comments Form
Hugh B. Hayve said, 5 months ago
I don’t personally ascribe to Bigfootism, but in some forms of reality I’m an Elvis-Is-Still-Alive-And-Working-At-A-Local-Gas-Stationist
Edcole1961 said, 5 months ago
The late Arthur C. Clarke put it best when discussing UFOs. He said that he believed in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and even the chance that they might visit Earth. But if it happens, there will be no doubt that it actually occurred.
Joe Minotaur said, 5 months ago
Two papers from India(Bangladeshi) published an article from The Onion featuring Neil Armstrong claiming that the moon landings could have been faked. They soon appologized when told that The Onion and all of its articles are parodies of real new stories.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8237558.stm
Lewreader
said,
5 months ago
You mean the Onion isn’t true? Zelda. put down that Nat Enquirer and read these non-believers
baslim_the_begger
said,
5 months ago
There is absolutely no evidence for the existence of rationalists!
Such beings would be beyond belief! Yet, there are those who believe that they exist! But never fear! At Faux News we are committed to the irrational and will insure that these folks do not get a fair hearing!
Fred_Basset_fan said, 5 months ago
It’s not funny that Trudeau would lumps loony groups with 9/11 truth, much of which is based on science and testimony that never made its way into the fantasy commission report. See patriotsquestion911.com
Susan001 said, 5 months ago
Are Rationalists the polar opposite of Creationists?
One would think so from today’s strip.
plus4 said, 5 months ago
Actually it’s well-documented that people who accept biblical Creationism are far less likely than others to accept stuff like ghosts & aliens. Or, as Chesterton puts it, the problem when people disbelieve God is not that they end up believing nothing – it’s that they end up believing anything.
fpatrick said, 5 months ago
Everybody arrives at their crackpot ideas through rational thinking. The problem is that their logic includes (or begins with) crackpot assumptions. (Not to mention the scum who know their logic contains lies that suit their own agenda.)
AKHenderson said, 5 months ago
Fred should read more Popular Mechanics.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=5
The Onion does get it right once in a while. Google “life imitates the onion.”
softshell09 said, 5 months ago
if you don’t have coffee in the morning are you really awake?
wdgnas said, 5 months ago
to paraphrase donald rumsfeld: the absence of evidence does not mean there is evidence of absense. one more thing, brought up countless times, if ufo’s are so advanced why do they continue to crash on this planet?
rikoshayrabbit said, 5 months ago
Call me what you will… but when your head kicks backwards and your brains explode out the back of your head, it’s because you’ve been shot from the front.
AKHenderson said, 5 months ago
Rummy’s advice could be used regarding the birthers and the crowd that thinks there were absolutely no WMDs in Iraq (other than those old sarin gas warheads).
Note that I have not stated an opinion on the WMDs (other than the ones that were found).
Looniness ranks on a scale, and the 9/11 truthers rank loonier than the birthers. Popular Mechanics addresses the physics issues, and common sense should dispel the notion that anyone outside a Tom Cruise movie could secretly rig the WTC for controlled demolition and get away with it.
Bithers, like most folks, are used to thinking of legal proof of birth as a piece of paper as old as the individual in question. A birth certificate. Most people have never heard of a Certificate of Live Birth before, so when they hear about it in the news they are confused. Most don’t take any effort to investigate the news, and the media haven’t taken great lengths to explain this document. The CoLB is like my college transcript. It’s not an original document. It shows that the party in question is in the official records. Once this is better explained the number of birthers will go down. But the Obama admin wouldn’t get any mileage out of that.
wcorvi said, 5 months ago
It’s hilarious that Trudeau would lumps luny groups with 9/11 truth, much of which is based on science and testimony that never made its way into the fantasy commission report.
9/11-ists ARE loony. This is because their theory requires only a select subset of the facts. It only takes ONE FACT to destroy their theory.
plus4 said, 5 months ago
The words “scientific” and “rationalistic” are strong selling points. If a lot of people go out of their way to stick those labels on something, that’s my first cue to examine it critically. And if I catch those people repeatedly misrepresenting or trying to censor those who disagree with them, that’s a pretty sure sign that they’re selling me a phony bill of goods. And if they loudly call me an ignorant idiot for not accepting their arguments and evidence (which turn out upon examination to be questionable at best)… well, that removes any doubt I might still have had.
“I’m just thinking for myself like you told me to. You should try it yourself sometime.”
cryptomaniac said, 5 months ago
The only “ists” worth looking at are cartoonists…
Ira Nayman said, 5 months ago
And satirists…
Copernicus12 said, 5 months ago
Fact is you tools have all been had by this living lie Buzz Aldrin who ought to be ashamed of himself for lying to the world about walking on the moon for the past 40 years.
At least Armstrong didn’t embrace the media circus like him and seems to have a hard time living the lie.
Don’t ever forget these guys lied about seeing NO stars, yet they claimed to have observed the larger and smaller Magellanic clouds from the 250 degree surface of the moon.
They are faint satellite galaxies of our milky way with hundreds of thousands of stars too faint to be distinguished individually with the human eye, yet they claim they couldn’t see any stars right here in our galaxy!
Even Collins claimed he ‘couldn’t remember’ seeing any stars!
Like this guy was allegedly in orbit around the moon and experiencing the darkest night that any man could ever hope to experience in it’s shadow on the dark side, yet he expects us to believe he didn’t see any stars outside the window of the module.
Get a grip people and wake up to the real world, these fakes have been lying to you for forty years now.
I learned all this from a guy called Ken from Dublin, check out his brilliant comments on Metacafe, I was guilty of trying and failing to ridicule him because his truth was so hard to take, but now I have realised he was right all along.
He is a brilliant blogger and debunker of this moon landing bullshit that we have been lied to about for the past 40 years.
Thanks Ken for introducing me to the REAL world where these moon landings are about as real as the aliens mad Buzz claimed to have seen up there, lol!
I sincerely apologise Ken for ever contradicting you.
Hugh B. Hayve said, 5 months ago
This guy Dave (not from Dublin, so that might tarnish his credibility) blogs about the Earth being flat…ect., ect. I’m glad Dave introduced me to the REAL world of cyanide flavored kool-aid and LSD….blah, blah…
eksteen
said,
5 months ago
Just want to make sure that you all know that this is not true for coffee from Cornerstone Coffee Works. If you don’t believe, place your order at ccw.coffee@gmail.com.
vhammon
said,
5 months ago
In each case 9/11 “truthers” or Obama “birthers,” people had legitimate questions about facts. In the case of the birthers, where is the birth certificate? It was presented. Facts made no difference to the ‘story’ the birthers tell.
In the case of 9/11, people have written entire books laying out literally hundreds of unanswered questions (collapse of building 7, missing gold stored in buildlng 7, power shutdown over the weekend before, contrary physicist views to those of Popular Mechanics, etc.), and pointing out the unwillingness of the official 9/11 commission to make any effort to answer these questions.
While there are certainly people asking the 9/11 questions who have jumped to the conclusion that the administration had foreknowledge or even planned 9/11, I’d wager most people simply would like to see their questions investigated and answered by a fully independent commission. And, there will certainly be people who will stick to the story in their head, no matter what the facts discovered may be.
However, any and all questions about 9/11 are lumped into the rants of “conspiracy nuts who think G.W. Bush planned the whole thing.” HA HA HA, what idiots!! and the questions are all dismissed.
Just as it would have been a disservice to democracy and a disrespect to the people asking for proof of Obama’s birth to deny them a view of his birth certificate (see Factcheck.org if you’re still wondering), it is a disrespect to ignore the questions of perfectly rational people about 9/11.
Ushindi
said,
5 months ago
I think I’ll just go have my addictive coffee…
EDIT: I did have it, and would also like to thank AKH for the link to PM. I hadn’t read it before.
The Old Wolf
said,
5 months ago
Quoth Cryptomaniac, 8 conspiracies ago:
>The only “ists” worth looking at are cartoonists…
B. Kliban certainly thought so…
My youngest son - age 24, and very intelligent - is convinced that the US had a hand in bringing down the twin towers. He also believes that at the very least, the Apollo 11 landing was faked for political reasons. I disagree on both counts, but I do not consider him a loony - in a world that works for everyone, each person has the right to believe what he or she will, with dignity.
At some point in the future, the facts will out. My favorite line on that subject comes from MIB:
“Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat. And fifteen minutes ago, you knew that people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know… tomorrow.”
And I can’t wait…
rricchhterr said, 5 months ago
the tide l could rip…
Copernicus12 said, 5 months ago
Well stated vhammon, it’s seems only Americans believe 9/11 was a terrorist attack by Saudis - though millions of you Americans too know it was an inside job.
The rest of the world knows it was domestic American PNAC terrorists committing yet another false flag attack to garner popular support for an invasion of the Middle East to take control of the oil there.
Never forget the Gulf of Tonkin incident or ‘Operation Northwoods’ where these home bred psychopaths first proposed murdering American citizens with fake foreign terrorist attacks to justify invading Cuba.
AKHenderson said, 5 months ago
One thing about 9/11 that confuses even non-troofers is that the towers appeared to fall fairly evenly.
When you chop down a tree, the tree from above the point of “incision” falls at an angle. The same thing happened to the towers.
http://k4a4.com/-wtc/wtc-collapse-sequence-photos-amy-sancetta-ap01a.jpg
The upper portion fell at an angle. At the same time it was falling downward, placing direct downward pressure on the lower portion. Thus the lower portion fell in the direction it was being pushed.
Let’s be glad the terrorists didn’t aim for the 25th floor.
Operation Northwoods? Is that named for a shopping mall?
A lot of the oil we already have is placed off-limits to exploration. Heh, what makes anyone think that we could control someone else’s oil if we can’t control our own?
puddleglum1066 said, 5 months ago
Copernicus12, you need to understand better how cameras (and for this discussion the human eye is a camera) work.
Photographic film, and the retina, work over a fairly limited range of light levels. Too much light, everything just goes white; too little, everything goes black. Cameras and eyes have adjustable apertures, and cameras have adjustable shutters, to increase the range in which an image can be perceived. Still, no matter what the camera or eye is set to, it can only record a certain fairly narrow range (a few orders of magnitude) in light levels.
Still with me? Good. Now, think about the astronauts on the moon: it was mid-morning in the lunar day, which means the sun was up, illuminating the lunar surface (which is somewhat more reflective than the ground on earth). To avoid being blinded by the light reflecting off the the surface, the astronauts were wearing the equivalent of sunglasses (strongly tinted, reflectorized helmet visors). Their cameras were loaded with fairly slow film and set to a daylight exposure and aperture.
So, even though the sky was black, the stars were not visible because they were just too dim to be seen (or photographed) by eyes, visors and cameras set for the daylight level of illumination on the surrounding lunar surface.
You can experience something like this yourself: go to a nighttime sporting event. Pick a seat from which you can see both the sky and the field, but not the lights (you may have to block the lights with a hand). You won’t see stars in the sky unless you look up or block your view of the field; when you’re looking at the illuminated field, your eyes will stop down to the point where they can’t see stars. Now, keep in mind that the daytime sun (both here and on the moon) is many times brighter than stadium lights, and you’ll see why the astronauts didn’t see stars on the moon. It was daytime, and the sun washed them out.
The more interesting question is why anybody expected to see stars. And the answer to that is, we’ve been conditioned by decades of Hollywood movies to expect stars in space. But in truth, you don’t see them… and their absence in the Apollo pictures is in fact evidence that the pictures are genuine. If the pictures had been faked, there’d be stars.
howieroark said, 5 months ago
Joe Minataur…FYI Bangladesh is a seperate country. It is not part of India…Just wanted to make sure you know ;-)
4deerinmyyard said, 5 months ago
Nicolaus wants his name back.
Chikuku said, 5 months ago
Over a hundred million people in the USA, hundreds of millions more around the world, believe in “Ghosts’ - disembodied spirits - perhaps because they have been visited by them, or they have had a Near Death Experience and have been Ghosts for a few minutes. To reject the testimony of hundreds of millions of people because it goes against your prejudices is not “Reasonism” or Rationalism. It’s mule-headed dogmatism. It’s rejecting valid evidence because it does confirm your own bias.
Chikuku said, 5 months ago
That day in Dallas in November 1963, some 20 Sheriff”s deputies ran towards the grassy knoll, because it seemed to them that the shots came from it.
Chikuku said, 5 months ago
Everybody believes in Evidence, as long as it confirms what they already believe.