Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Unpopular Science
I've always felt some affection for the old Popular Science feature Wordless Workshop, a cartoon that would teach you how to spend twelve hours building an impractical solution to a ten-second annoyance.
I hadn't seen a copy of PopSci (as it now irritatingly markets itself) for many years, but I picked one up at the doctor's office the other day.
In what I guess is a modern-day version of WW, we now get -- well, you guessed it. A cartoon that will teach you how to spend twelve hours building an impractical solution to a ten-second annoyance.
Except now it's gone high-tech. Here's what I mean:
Yep, all the guy had to do is buy $40 worth of electronic components to build a voice amplifier so that he could alert the guy ahead of him that the light is green. Why didn't he just tap his horn? Or yell?
We also don't see the next few panels, where our hero tries this on a gun-toting paranoiac with anger-management issues.
