These modern times are sometimes called a culture of 'instant gratification', but that does not square too well with people waiting a year for the next Harry Potter book, or a month (week?) for the next Sopranos episode.

Where does the need and endurance to do that come from ? What makes us feel it is important ? (at least some of us, personally i hate Harry Potter, way too much vengance motif)

Maybe we should call it a culture of spectatorship. A culture of villing victims.

At the hospital there are doctors and nurses. They know a lot more about health and how to keep it than I do. They see to it that I stay hale and healthy. It is their job.

At the disco there is a girl on a table showing us how to dance and enjpy ourselves. She is continuously exstatically happy, never get sick from drinking (as real girls often do). She push happiness on us as a product.

On TV we wath game shows of people playing games. and they dont argue endlessly about the rules (like cousin mith and sister Sue) nor do they get drunk and roll in the gamepieces (like uncle Dough). Oh what fun it is to watch others have fun (or at least pretend they have fun).

We had a local Advertisment not too long ago, selling Donald Duck magazines "Our stories are better than yours" it said. That is probably true. I am no professional story teller. But is 'quality of story' really the point? How about 'talking to grandpaw' ? Methinks that is at least as important.

Are we forgetting hor to make our own entertainment? how to play with ourself ? or better yet, with friends ?

regards JakobA

And IMNSHO that is what the strip is mainly about. All this race-stuff presupposes that it is a binary choice. white or not, black or not, hispanic or not. Just like those moral licences: you can only have one.

But reality is analog, With club med, office parties and niggas in the woodpile we are all little bit of everything. And hardly any of us know our exact proportions. Opus have the edge there, going by surface area.

Even today there are lots of people who think 'mixed marriages' are bad. But can you even define that term without going binary ?

regards JakobA

Breathead have drawn some dynamite strips. Unfortunately this is not one of them.

And downright unfair to 'the Generals'. There are lot of indications and reports of the DoD chafing under the Rumsfeldt rule and counteracting it as best they could without directly ubdercutting their Commander in Chief. Still that torture memo did get retracted, And the nr of newly retired generals speaking out is remarkable.

BTW, lets keep this civil please.

regards JakobA

Please have a look at the theory of r-K selection http://pcp.lanl.gov/RKSELECT.html , as an applicable explanation here.

Those in control of their life (rich) see a benefit of investing hevily in a few children who can then compete succesfully in the predicted future environment.

Those not in control (poor) are better off churning out babies in the hope that one of them will luck on to a good thing.

Unfortunately a secondary consequence of this is that the rich will tend to INSIST that the future must be the same as today as any unpredicted change is likely to upset their carefully planned applecart. We become more and more stridently conservative whether in the shape of denial, self-serving morality or fraud.

As for whether Malthus was right I think biogirl nailed it back on page 1. To vague and open to interpretation to have a truth value.

Broadsheet headlines august 8 2007

"

Airbrushing the baby

The great circumcision debate, continued

Sex ed in Second Life

237 reasons to have sex

The rise of the "vegansexual"

"

Dont you girls think of anything other than sex ? ;-))

Then how about:

Prisoners must NOT be considered a source of information.

I get the impression that Alberto Gonzales is "doing a heck of a job"

My (uneducated) guess is that it is the "dont think about blue elephants"-effect.

When people are raised with perpetual admonitions that they must resiste the temptation to have gay sex, they end up believing there actually is a temptation, It becomes tempting, even if they never felt any temptation before.

So I belive Craig is correct in saying he is not gay. Just screwed up.

regards JakobA