First day of Fall 2014 term, this is image #1 for "enhanced learning" in my courses.

Damn you, Trudeau, for drawing today's strip at the end of the academic year. We educators will have to wait until September to print this out and post it on our office/classroom walls.

I teach in classrooms with computers. At one point instructors could see what was on the student's screen. That changed with smart phones (and budget cuts for underutilized software). It truly amazes me that many students will come to class and spend the whole time browsing or chatting on the web. Perhaps I'm teaching to those who don't care about the cost or don't care about the grade or have some social dependency for perpetual communication and support. Whatever the case, time and money is being wasted. It had been my practice to call on students who were otherwise engaged with an irrelevant or non-existing topic. It went like this:

Instructor: "Well, Mr. Smith, which argument has the most merit?"

Student: "Uh, sorry I wasn't paying attention."

Instructor: "I know. That is why I called on you."

Most of the class would smile. Now many won't know I called on a student. Sigh...

Electronic Sniper: As a 44-year-old college student I have to ask, where can I sign up to be on the team for this? Back when someone else would have been paying for it, perhaps I would have been the same way. But today, I want my money's worth!

A Paintball Sniper for inappropriate electronic media use. Brilliant!

Whoa.... I never realised that at some point Duke didn't wear Ray-Bans. I thought he was born with Ray-Bans!

In this past week's Classic strips from 1974 I think Uncle Duke doesn't quite look like himself. but resembles a character who came on board later -- Jeremy Cavendish, fellow bird-watcher to Dick Davenport, and later wannabe-boyfriend of Dick's widow, Congresswoman Lacey Davenport

Uncle Duke? All this time and I don't think I ever knew he had a family connection to anyone else...

Sigh. I'm beginning to think I wish Zonker were my best friend. He's such a nice guy.

“DON’T BE EVIL” -- Yikes! What a scary rabbit hole that search went down! I had no idea Google is backing so many of the Koch brothers' favorite groups. 

Todays strip; Apposite to a tee and absolute perfection! What needs to be the motto/mantra of the 2010s: "Don't Be Google."

My only house plant is one I started from a seed in 1974 She is a Bo Tree (Ficus religiosa). I greet Her every morning and when She talks back I know that I will have attained enlightenment!

Trust, phooey. I always get this overwhelming urge to verify, and I am delighted that more and more people are coming to share that urge, using the ever-more-powerful digital and legal tools available to us. The Barna Group, an Evangelical polling company, reports that 38% of young Evangelicals fact-check sermons on their smart phones. Watch out, pastors!

God, I miss Walter.

C'mon Zonk, lighten up. Anyway, where I live it's May so let Jack and Aretha have at it.

I'm loving the synchronicity on the Flashbacks page today, though I think Uncle Sigmund would be interested to know why GBT is so interested in how people put their trousers on.

Today's strip is the only time I have disagreed with Doonesbury. Automation puts people out of work who would be doing the simpler tasks. With increasing technological demands, it is mostly the better educated, more creative and more intelligent people who are able to find work. At the risk of sounding elitist, I suggest these are the very people who would be doing original creative work if they were freed from the need to earn a living. Moreover, people with well-paying jobs generally work many more than 40 hours a week. I further suggest the majority of corporations would prefer machines over people -- no strikes, no complaints, no retirement, no benefits to pay. Look at how people who could once be free of work at least when they were in airplanes, their cars, or their homes are now expected to be constantly engaged.

In this particular march towards automation, the reach of outsourcing enabled by the digital age finds a much larger number of "skill communities" vanishing locally, since they are not being integrated into sort-of-similar automated versions of what they were doing previously. "Skilled labor" dwells in communities of old and young, vendors and suppliers, which depend on commerce to finance their continuity. These communities cannot be stopped and started at will. They are complex networks that, with enough lean years, can go away and maybe not come back.

"Because each successive advancement liberates us to do higher-value work." Like administrator at a university or high frequency trader? Come on, Mike! I suggest you read David Graeber's article "On the Phenomenon of B***S*** Jobs."  

Mike, Walden taught you well. Today's strip was straight out of Economics 101.