When I first hit the site, the youtube link was to “All I want for Christmas”. Starting to comment switched it to “Folsom Prison Blues”.
The man is totally cold-blooded. The judge thinks that’s just what the judiciary needs… a guy who can sentence a man to prison, just to watch him die.
I don’t know what the joke is, but I’ll say I’m disappointed that the seal on the wall behind the judge doesn’t resemble that of Washoe County or the State of Nevada.
Seal of North Carolina. I’d be more concerned about the 48-star flag.
Folsom Prison Blues was released in 1955, so the 48-star flag might not be completely inappropriate…
Being as a law degree only takes three years, and yet he will have a job waiting for him even after his predetermined less-than-stellar performance in obtaining his degree, I’m a little confused, and don’t get it. I assume part of this is that the cartoonist is ignorant as to the length of law school, but I still don’t get it…
I recognized the opening line right away, but otherwise this is a typical (for me) Pardon My Planet–the commentators put far more thought into this than the cartoonist.
According to Lawyer jokes lawyers aren’t supposed to have any human compassion so this cold-blooded killer would make a good lawyer and… it’s just a fizzle.
Does the fact that the seal is that of North Carolina have any significance?
Speaking of the 48-star flag, do others recall that for a year we had a 49-star flag? At the time, I was kinda fascinated by the design, which with its offset interleaved subsets laid the way for the even more ingenious 50-star layout we have today.
Anyone going to a less than Top 5 law school in the last 10 years has graduated into an utterly miserable job market. Law schools are closing, applications way down, and the market still not improving.
Mitch4: Which is odd, because 49 is a square — you’d think the few times you had a perfect square, you’d be pleased as punch and just lay it out that way, but apparently that’s not how the flag designers think; the flags for 36, and especially 25 ( http://www.usflag.org/the.25.star.flag.html ) were terrible! (And we skipped 16.)
For what it’s worth, I would have done the 49 star flag as a square, with more spacing horizontally so as to get a rectangular shape; the undulating in-out that the 49 star flag had bothers my sensibilities. (To say nothing about the total fail that 25 was…) And yes, I do like the as you say ingenious 50 star layout.
OK, I just looked at the rest of the designs from the site I linked, and 38 needs special mention — it’s like they were reserving room for two more states? Kinda like Germany before the reunification, or Ireland? — and 43 has to be the most drunken, lopsided one yet…
I remember the 49-star flag (which lasted only one year, after which Hawai’i joined Alaska in the New Kids Club).
I am not, fortunately, old enough to recall the days when the U.S. flag had fifteen stripes (two states having been added to the original thirteen, and each awarded a stripe as well as a star). That idea got reversed, though it took almost a quarter century. And mercifully Congress didn’t go with sixteen, seventeen, etc. stripes as new states were added, or today’s flags would look very unwiedly. (Though I suppose it could work if one went for increasingly slimmer stripes as the number increased.)
“Do these flags make my country look fat?”
“Being as a law degree only takes three years”
A law degree takes 3 years IF you don’t work full-time. If you DO work full-time, it takes 4.
My mind went to this Dilbert strip:
I wonder how many prople bought 49-star flags, knowing Hawaii statehood was in the offing.
One day (a long time ago, but not THAT long ago) I went to the health club, and for some reason they had a flagpole-sized flag hanging on the front desk. The odd thing about it: it was a 49-star flag, therefore at least 25 years old at the time.
I’m sure that plenty of people acquired 49-star flags one way or another. Every current or former armed service member who died that year got a 49-star flag. School buildings, post offices and all kinds of other buildings had to have an up-to-date 49-star flag. When they got 50-star flags, those almost-new 49-star flags had to be disposed of.
There’s an anecdote in “The Pearl”, a notorious underground publication in late 19-century England, of a British army officer and an American army officer at a dinner.
The American officer gave the first toast: “Here’s to the Flag of the United States of America. Stars to guide all nations, and stripes to flog ’em.”
The British officer replied with a toast of his own: “Here’s to the ranting, roaring British Lion, who s—s on the stars and wipes his arse on the stripes!”
Speaking of which…
James Pollack – my thought also as I never finished the 4th year.
Okay = how much is a 49 star flag worth today?
I figure that 51 is a problem as it is a prime number – hard to divide the stars.
Shrug – the setting of 13 stripes was for exactly that reason – they foresaw the flag becoming too long with a stripe for every state, so it was set at 13 for the original 13 colonies.
Although of course, there were more than 13 colonies in British North America weren’t there and even more in our hemisphere -right? They just did not all join in the Revolution.
Meryl…. 51 is NOT a prime number. 17×3.
I saw the last reply or two in email, and didn’t immediately pick up that these were continuing an older thread. I was mentally composing a reply about how there are other useful kinds of decomposition besides rectangular. But at that point I made a quick perusal of earlier posts in the thread, and noticed that larK in January was already specifically answering my intended post!
@ Powers – 17 x 3 suggests that the simplest solution for 51 stars would be six rows, alternating between 8 and 9 stars in each row.
@kilby. I thought of that but being an even number of alternating rather than an odd number word make it top or bottom heavy. That may or may not matter but…. it matters.
(Current flag has alternating rows of 6 and 5 but the top and bottom are the same length so it’s symmetric)
But right heavy is fine. so my design is a column of 7 stars, then a 7 by 7 grid with 5 stars removed in a dice pip 5 pattern. That is; an 7 row, 8 column grid with the following (row #, column #) cells removed: (2,3), (2,7),(4,5),(6,3),(6,7).
Or admit PR and DC at the same time, and go for 52.
Or, to add just one, merge SD and ND and stick with 50.
@ woozy – I remember seeing a website or a blog post that documented appropriate (symmetric) designs for a wide number of star numbers, but I cannot find it right now. As I recall, some of the ideas were very artistic.
Comics I Don't Understand 
When I first hit the site, the youtube link was to “All I want for Christmas”. Starting to comment switched it to “Folsom Prison Blues”.
The man is totally cold-blooded. The judge thinks that’s just what the judiciary needs… a guy who can sentence a man to prison, just to watch him die.
I don’t know what the joke is, but I’ll say I’m disappointed that the seal on the wall behind the judge doesn’t resemble that of Washoe County or the State of Nevada.
Seal of North Carolina. I’d be more concerned about the 48-star flag.
Folsom Prison Blues was released in 1955, so the 48-star flag might not be completely inappropriate…
Being as a law degree only takes three years, and yet he will have a job waiting for him even after his predetermined less-than-stellar performance in obtaining his degree, I’m a little confused, and don’t get it. I assume part of this is that the cartoonist is ignorant as to the length of law school, but I still don’t get it…
I recognized the opening line right away, but otherwise this is a typical (for me) Pardon My Planet–the commentators put far more thought into this than the cartoonist.
According to Lawyer jokes lawyers aren’t supposed to have any human compassion so this cold-blooded killer would make a good lawyer and… it’s just a fizzle.
Does the fact that the seal is that of North Carolina have any significance?
Speaking of the 48-star flag, do others recall that for a year we had a 49-star flag? At the time, I was kinda fascinated by the design, which with its offset interleaved subsets laid the way for the even more ingenious 50-star layout we have today.
Anyone going to a less than Top 5 law school in the last 10 years has graduated into an utterly miserable job market. Law schools are closing, applications way down, and the market still not improving.
Mitch4: Which is odd, because 49 is a square — you’d think the few times you had a perfect square, you’d be pleased as punch and just lay it out that way, but apparently that’s not how the flag designers think; the flags for 36, and especially 25 ( http://www.usflag.org/the.25.star.flag.html ) were terrible! (And we skipped 16.)
For what it’s worth, I would have done the 49 star flag as a square, with more spacing horizontally so as to get a rectangular shape; the undulating in-out that the 49 star flag had bothers my sensibilities. (To say nothing about the total fail that 25 was…) And yes, I do like the as you say ingenious 50 star layout.
OK, I just looked at the rest of the designs from the site I linked, and 38 needs special mention — it’s like they were reserving room for two more states? Kinda like Germany before the reunification, or Ireland? — and 43 has to be the most drunken, lopsided one yet…
I remember the 49-star flag (which lasted only one year, after which Hawai’i joined Alaska in the New Kids Club).
I am not, fortunately, old enough to recall the days when the U.S. flag had fifteen stripes (two states having been added to the original thirteen, and each awarded a stripe as well as a star). That idea got reversed, though it took almost a quarter century. And mercifully Congress didn’t go with sixteen, seventeen, etc. stripes as new states were added, or today’s flags would look very unwiedly. (Though I suppose it could work if one went for increasingly slimmer stripes as the number increased.)
“Do these flags make my country look fat?”
“Being as a law degree only takes three years”
A law degree takes 3 years IF you don’t work full-time. If you DO work full-time, it takes 4.
My mind went to this Dilbert strip:
I wonder how many prople bought 49-star flags, knowing Hawaii statehood was in the offing.
One day (a long time ago, but not THAT long ago) I went to the health club, and for some reason they had a flagpole-sized flag hanging on the front desk. The odd thing about it: it was a 49-star flag, therefore at least 25 years old at the time.
I’m sure that plenty of people acquired 49-star flags one way or another. Every current or former armed service member who died that year got a 49-star flag. School buildings, post offices and all kinds of other buildings had to have an up-to-date 49-star flag. When they got 50-star flags, those almost-new 49-star flags had to be disposed of.
There’s an anecdote in “The Pearl”, a notorious underground publication in late 19-century England, of a British army officer and an American army officer at a dinner.
The American officer gave the first toast: “Here’s to the Flag of the United States of America. Stars to guide all nations, and stripes to flog ’em.”
The British officer replied with a toast of his own: “Here’s to the ranting, roaring British Lion, who s—s on the stars and wipes his arse on the stripes!”
Speaking of which…
James Pollack – my thought also as I never finished the 4th year.
Okay = how much is a 49 star flag worth today?
I figure that 51 is a problem as it is a prime number – hard to divide the stars.
Shrug – the setting of 13 stripes was for exactly that reason – they foresaw the flag becoming too long with a stripe for every state, so it was set at 13 for the original 13 colonies.
Although of course, there were more than 13 colonies in British North America weren’t there and even more in our hemisphere -right? They just did not all join in the Revolution.
Meryl…. 51 is NOT a prime number. 17×3.
I saw the last reply or two in email, and didn’t immediately pick up that these were continuing an older thread. I was mentally composing a reply about how there are other useful kinds of decomposition besides rectangular. But at that point I made a quick perusal of earlier posts in the thread, and noticed that larK in January was already specifically answering my intended post!
@ Powers – 17 x 3 suggests that the simplest solution for 51 stars would be six rows, alternating between 8 and 9 stars in each row.
@kilby. I thought of that but being an even number of alternating rather than an odd number word make it top or bottom heavy. That may or may not matter but…. it matters.
(Current flag has alternating rows of 6 and 5 but the top and bottom are the same length so it’s symmetric)
But right heavy is fine. so my design is a column of 7 stars, then a 7 by 7 grid with 5 stars removed in a dice pip 5 pattern. That is; an 7 row, 8 column grid with the following (row #, column #) cells removed: (2,3), (2,7),(4,5),(6,3),(6,7).
Or admit PR and DC at the same time, and go for 52.
Or, to add just one, merge SD and ND and stick with 50.
@ woozy – I remember seeing a website or a blog post that documented appropriate (symmetric) designs for a wide number of star numbers, but I cannot find it right now. As I recall, some of the ideas were very artistic.
Wikipedia has a few:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_flags_of_the_United_States#Possible_future_designs
Someone suggested trying for 53 states, because then we’d be one nation, indivisible…
Playing with the full deck plus Joker. 🃏