Cartoon Saturday Returns!

Gertrude Baines, the world's oldest person, has died at age 115; Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Aniston, and Jennifer Lopez all turn 40 this year; yesterday marked the eighth anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11/2001; South Carolina reprehensive Joe Wilson, in a display of the civility we've come to expect in Congress, shouted "You lie!" at President Obama during his speech to a joint session of Congress earlier this week; and Israel has fired artillery barrages at Lebanon in retaliation for rocket attacks launched from that country.

Yep. It's high time Cartoon Saturday got back on the job.

There really isn't much that's funny about the rancorous and uncivil debate over health care, but we can try to look for the humorous silver lining buried deep within the dark cloud...

Everyone is spun up about the possibility of pandemic flu...swine flu, bird flu, whatever. At work, we're developing plans for how to keep working through a flu epidemic. Others have to work hard at epidemics, too...so to speak...

My virtual friend Gilahi had an interesting comment thread on one of his posts this past week about the number of people he knows who seem to be failed chemists or chemical engineers. Like yours truly. Read the comments for a linguistic excursion into the concept of dragon poop soap. But I digress. This is an example of why I made the decision to move from chemical engineering to Linguistics as an academic major all those years ago...

Those of you who are familiar with the classic board game "Clue" (known in other parts of the world as "Cluedo") can appreciate this pair of cartoons...

And finally, when I get tired of harping on the virtues of civility and participation in public life, I can always fall back on the happy thought that I'm doing my own small part to make the world a better place...

It's going to be a short, but busy weekend of paying bills, visiting grandchildren, and doing laundry. Well, one out of three ain't bad.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo