Although, I've got to say, the message is somewhat attenuated by the fact that this is a comic strip about a talking cat having an argument with a troll.
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If magic isn't real then explain TROLLS & GIANTS!!!one!
What a great quote. Heh, "...kick in the nuts."
Aren't we all just testicle-smashing cats having arguments with trolls, PZ?
Typical Kurtz, re-hashing someone elses gag. "Vanished in a puff of logic" belongs to a better man.
"ow, my balls"
Is a cat always right because it says 'science'? Is a magic square dumb because of the word 'magic'? Why does rationality want to kick testicles? It's sometimes hard to tell the cats from the trolls.
I like the subtle little nod that is the title of that particular strip: "candles in the dark."
No. It's just right more often.
Equivocation.
Loaded question.
Not from where I'm sitting.
That's a cat and a troll??
I generally like Kurtz's style. He like science and pop culture, he doesn't hold with a lot of the silliness of religion, though he stops short of declaring himself completely irreligious. For someone running a daily strip, the humor is decent, and he's not afraid of taking risks to expand the media he works in.
Of course, the bone I have to pick with him is that he's cancelled on Heroes Convention for the last three frickin' years, so I have not been able to get his signatures on my copies of his "Striptease" collection, "Truth, Justin, and the American Way", or buy a Skull plushie in person.
But that's just me.
http://www.videosift.com/video/Robot-Chicken-Ode-to-the-Nut-Shot
Still makes me laugh.
I had forgotten about PVP... I used to read that, well, uhm... religiously. I should go back through the ones I've been missing.
I've always felt Kurtz and I wouldn't see quite eye-to-eye, but I definitely like this one.
Never really got into PvP. Kurtz reputation preceeded him.
Not his best work, but Ryan Smith has long been one of my favourites. L&F is only a stop-gap measure, though, now that he's wrapped up the strip he's been working on the last nine years. The second strip may be a help to understanding ...
Off Topic, but anyone who is interested in Abiogenesis, may be interested in looking at this:
blog.wired.com
Grr. Soz.
blog.wired.com
Kick in the nuts? That's my thing!
King Aardvark's Kick in the Nuts
#4: It's sometimes hard to tell the cats from the trolls.
#7: Not from where I'm sitting.
Truth is where you are sitting???
In Mr. Kurtz' defense, the cat was made super-intelligent by science.
Er, what?
Kurtz wrote an essay---he referred to it as a rant, but---a while ago. It was destroyed in one of his site redesigns, but the Wayback Machine pulled through.
Anyway, one paragraph he wrote can be credited with much my current view on life (and afterlife):
a comic strip about a talking cat having an argument with a troll.
You mean, kind of like Pharyngula?
"No. It's just right more often."
And it knows when it's wrong.
Magic's got nuts?
Isn't there female magic to kick? Where does science kick it?
Kicking ovaries causes collateral damage.
#17: Truth is where you are sitting???
Eliza(tm), is that you?
Isn't there female magic to kick? Where does science kick it?
Trust me, getting whacked in the crotch hurts really quite a bit even if you don't have testicles. It's something about the uncontrolled transfer of kinetic energy to the albeit small external portion of an organ crammed with nerve endings...
(Disclosure: I've never actually been kicked there, but I did have this rather unfortunate incident with landing hard on the leather-covered metal pommel of an English saddle once. That was years ago, and I think I'm still vaguely queasy.)
All long time readers of PvP know the real hero of the strip is Kurtz's dad.
Reminds me of a quote from the show Metalocalypse:
Senator Stampingston: Gentlemen, it's clear that we're in a universally precarious situation. Dethklok has summoned a troll.
General Crozier: That's impossible, there's no such thing as trolls.
Senator Stampingston: Then how do you explain the dead unicorns?
Reminds me of this: "GOD gave us [trolls and giants]!" ;)
Never mind the trolls & giants, how do you explain PYGMIES & DWARFS perfessor Meyers?
PZ said "crotch," the cartoon itself specified "nuts."
Me, I don't like getting kicked anywhere.
I think I kicked a troll in the vitual balls over at Bad Astronomy but he has been quiet for hours, oh it felt good.
An alternative formulation is that of "Papa" Monzano, President-for-Life of San Lorenzo in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle:
"Science is magic that works."
Cat's Cradle can be interpreted as showing the danger of treating science that way - as esoteric knowledge that belongs to a circle of adepts.