It's obvious

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Tue Aug 12 19:57:12 UTC 2008


There may well have been a similar cartoon, but the one that I've now
given up trying to recall with any precision is a lot older than Far
Side.

-Wilson

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Barbara Need <bhneed at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Barbara Need <bhneed at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: It's obvious
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Is it possibly a Far Side cartoon? I know he had a few like that.
>
> Barbara
>
> Barbara Need
> Chicago
>
> On 12 Aug 2008, at 12:36, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>> At 9:14 AM -0700 8/12/08, Dave Wilton wrote:
>>> I've just searched the New Yorker DVDs through 2005 (I don't have
>>> the later
>>> ones.) for cartoons with captions or keywords "math," "obvious," and
>>> "blackboard."
>>>
>>> It appears that there is a long tradition of cartoons depicting
>>> professors
>>> contemplating complex mathematical equations on a blackboard.
>>
>> None of these are the one we're trying to think of, although the 2004
>> one is a sort of play on it.  I remember it as being "(Yes, it's)
>> trivial" rather than "obvious", and I'm sure neither "math" nor
>> "blackboard" was in the caption, although perhaps a good keyword
>> search would pick them up.  But maybe I'm misremembering.
>>
>> (The "that and 15c will get you a ride on the I.R.T." one certainly
>> takes me back--my daughter, now living in Brooklyn and a subway
>> regular, had never heard of the I.R.T./IND/B.M.T., and as for a 15c
>> fare...)
>>
>> LH
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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