Sixteen Things Calvin and Hobbes Said Better Than Anyone Else, Edd McCracken, Book Riot, February 6, 2012

On life’s constant little limitations

Calvin: You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.

On expectations

Calvin: Everybody seeks happiness! Not me, though! That’s the difference between me and the rest of the world. Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria!

***

On the unspoken truth behind the education system

Calvin: As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations.

On the cruel reality of commercial art

Hobbes: Van Gogh would’ve sold more than one painting if he’d put tigers in them.

On the tragedy of hipsters

Calvin: The world bores you when you’re cool.

Fox News devolves from climate denial to rejecting all science, Lindsay Abrams, Salon, May 9, 2014

As for the consensus of 97 percent of scientists who say man-made global warming is a real phenomenon, Will contends that “they pluck these things from the ether” (as Chait points out, the number actually comes from this report), while Krauthammer just dismisses the idea of a scientific consensus. “Ninety-nine percent of physicists convinced that space and time were fixed until Einstein working in a patent office wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not,” he says. “I’m not impressed by numbers. I’m not impressed by consensus.”

Thus begins the point at which Krauthammer completely gives up on science, Chait writes:

It is hard to dispute this except to note that Krauthammer here has taken a radically skeptical position not merely on climate science, but on all science. His argument implies that no scientific argument merits respect. Given the provisional and socially constructed peer pressure driving the consensus theory of aerodynamics, it is amazing that he is willing to travel in an airplane.

Stop Describing Your Diet as “Clean Eating,” L.V. Anderson, Slate, May 8, 2014

BuzzFeed unveiled “a two-week detox plan that’s actually realistic” this week, and it made me want to throw a head of broccoli at my computer screen. Not because the menu is unappealing—the pictures and recipes appear delicious, actually. Not because the idea of detoxifying your body via a diet is a scam (although it is). Not because it proscribes caffeine and alcohol and provides 1,300 to 1,600 calories a day (which don’t exactly sound “realistic” to me). No, the thing that drives me crazy is that the plan is called the “BuzzFeed Food Clean Eating Challenge,” and “clean eating” is a meaningless term that does more harm than good to our discourse about food.

Photo credit: By Vegas Bleeds Neon (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.