Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for August 08, 2019

Calvin spent 2 weeks camping with you. You can spend couple hours in the museum with him.

In fact, a Tyrannosaurus is geologically closer to YOU than it is to a Stegosaurus.

Stegosaurus… makes me think of Spike from “The Land Before Time.”

Dinosaur museum visits build character, Dad.

Guys, he’s not looking. RUN!

This is one of my favourite strips. Calvin hates school and cannot concentrate in the classroom but this demonstrates what a superior intellect he has. :)

Parents always embarrass their children. It’s in the job description for being a parent. One day, you will do it to your children.

For once, Calvin gave you something to be proud of, at least in the traditional sense, Dad! Rejoice instead of complaining like a six-year old. I’m sure Mom’s pretty proud of him!

’Cause there are new species being discovered all the time.

Why are we going here if he already knows everything?

Calvin is ahead of his time. He’s not even a teenager yet and he knows everything.

Mom ‘n’ Dad, you really ought to hang out with other ’toons more. Now, if you were friends with the Phantom, he might take you all to his “Gander of Eden” where there is a real, live “Steggy”!

He doesn’t know how to speak respectfully to others. Maybe he’ll learn that.

Ah, the famed Thagomizer makes an appearance. One of the few cases where a newspaper cartoon (GaryLarson’s The Far Side) inspired actual scientific naming. (There is a Wikipedia article on it, look for ‘Thagomizer’.

(Centuries from now, dimwits will take this as evidence that humans and stegosaurids coexisted. ;) )

LOL! This is Calvin’s favorite subject, Dad! You should know this by now!

That would mean the fight between the T-Rex and the stegosaurus from Fantasia was historically inaccurate.

Cut Mom some slack, Calvin. Explain that the stegosaurus would have had to deal with the allosaurus, which looked a lot like a tyranosaurus but was actually only very distantly related.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allosaurus

Uh, Calvin? Never be rude to the people who are taking you inside…

A museum trip builds character, dad.

Panel 2: “And this is called the Thagomizer for the late Thag Simmons.”

I was lucky that both my parents liked going to museums of all kinds and taking me along. Good memories.

As far as this strip goes, more evidence that Calvin, despite not doing all that well in school, is quite intelligent.

But the models of the tyrannosaurus and the stegosaurus came to the 5 and dime at the same time.

Reminds me of my son when he was about 4 years old and we were in a hobby shop. We were in the model section and we were looking at the dinosaur models, he’s rattling the names of the different dinosaurs shown on the kits and a couple behind us couldn’t believe it. An interest is a good thing to feed if it helps you learn.

Dad because you made Calvin go camping and Calvin loves this history.

I learned something new today: That the “Thagomizer” from The Far Side was eventually coined as the real term.

Let’s introduce Calvin to Shannon, from the Luann strip.

This reminds me of a story a coworker told decades ago. Her son was an average student but one day she overheard him explaining the Superman universe to his friends. He had every detail of the origin story and how Superman came to earth and what krypton is, etc. Said he could have written a doctoral thesis on Superman! All of this simply proves is that the trick is to catch a student’s interest.

Panel 2: a Thagomizer!

I remember that a few years ago that a paleontologist suggested that the T-Rex was not a mighty carnivore but a carrion eater. It caused all sort of backlash from T-Rex fans. Personally, it makes sense. The short arms would be a handicap to a predator. However, in today’s world, no carnivore would turn down a free meal that it did not have to kill.

So the primeval world at Disneyland go it wrong!? Walt, say it ain’t so!

I like the interests of nature from Calvin!!

The cartoon fate of Thag Simmons notwithstanding, stegosaurs and humans did not exist in the same era; humans evolved around 60 million years after the event that killed all non-avian dinosaurs, and some 120 million years after stegosaurids went extinct. In The Prehistory of the Far Side, Gary Larson suggests that “there should be cartoon confessionals where we could go and say things like, ‘Father, I have sinned – I have drawn dinosaurs and hominids together in the same cartoon.’”15 Wikipedia

William Stout. Amazing dinosaur artist. Check him out.

He can teach George from “Peppa Pig” a few things about dinosaurs.

I am still a Calvin when I go to the Museum of Nature & Science even now

I think it’s great that a kid can get so enthralled with something. And I think it’s great that the “something” is often dinosaurs. Not sure why that is. What’s not quite so great is if they decide that being “cool” is more important than being fascinated. I’m hopeful that most kids’ adults will help them extend their fascination phase, perhaps by transitioning to something else interesting.

Oh, the other hand, normally parents don’t embarrass their kids until the kids are teenagers. Nice head-start, Calvin’s parents!!

You mean, Disney got it wrong with “Fantasia” and the “Rite of Spring” sequence?