Re Danae in Non Sequitur, I think it was Isaac Asimov, or maybe Martin Gardner, who told about the time his brother pranked him for April Fools Day. His brother warned him the day before that he would pull the ultimate prank, the prank of all pranks, at some time or other during the day when least expected. Morning — nothing. Afternoon — nothing. Evening — nothing and now he’s getting nervous. Bedtime — nothing. He can’t sleep. After midnight passes he realizes that the prank is getting him to expect a prank, and there was no prank.
I read a story where someone shows up at (an office?) (a school?) with a batch of April Fool’s cookies. People wonder what has been done to them, and decline. Finally one person tries, and they’re great. Not untoward. That being the joke.
Sorry SMB, it looks like interaction with “markdown” , a system for doing just-a-little markup on the fly, by typing asterisks or underscores. It’s pretty smart about when to ignore those and print just what you type, but sometimes goes ahead and treats something that way when not intended. In your previous comment, notice that the A in MASH is italicized, probably resulting from markdown seeing asterisks immediately adjacent on both sides.
Yeah, me too — forgot about Smullyan, but he was indeed interesting and somewhat central.
Gardner remains a significant node, of course, as for a general public (such as me) he provided the introductions to these other figures such as Hofstadter[*] and Smullyan.
Comics I Don't Understand 
All I can think of is it’s supposed to be a pun on a “House quorum,” but I hope someone comes up with a better explanation that makes it funny.
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It seems to be that the point is the horses coming to agreement on alfalfa. But of course, that’s not what quorum means.
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Re Danae in Non Sequitur, I think it was Isaac Asimov, or maybe Martin Gardner, who told about the time his brother pranked him for April Fools Day. His brother warned him the day before that he would pull the ultimate prank, the prank of all pranks, at some time or other during the day when least expected. Morning — nothing. Afternoon — nothing. Evening — nothing and now he’s getting nervous. Bedtime — nothing. He can’t sleep. After midnight passes he realizes that the prank is getting him to expect a prank, and there was no prank.
So he asks rhetorically, “Was I pranked or not?”
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I read a story where someone shows up at (an office?) (a school?) with a batch of April Fool’s cookies. People wonder what has been done to them, and decline. Finally one person tries, and they’re great. Not untoward. That being the joke.
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MiB, while I don’t recall that anecdote itself, it sounds like it could have accompanied Gardner’s “The Unexpected Hanging”
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So, are they voting as a committee, perhaps? And instead of saying “nay”/”neigh”, they vote with “alfalfa”? Still kinda not very funny, IMHO.
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Mark in Boston #3, that was Raymond Smullyan, “What Is The Name Of This Book?”
https://archive.org/details/WhatIsTheNameOfThisBook/page/n15/mode/2up
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Mark et al, the same ploy was also used on an episode on MAS*H, except not for April Fool’s Day. Unless it was.
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Don’t know what’s up with CIDU’s text rendering, that should be (with added spaces):
M * A * S * H.
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Sorry SMB, it looks like interaction with “markdown” , a system for doing just-a-little markup on the fly, by typing asterisks or underscores. It’s pretty smart about when to ignore those and print just what you type, but sometimes goes ahead and treats something that way when not intended. In your previous comment, notice that the A in MASH is italicized, probably resulting from markdown seeing asterisks immediately adjacent on both sides.
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Thanks, I figured as much. Some day I’ll figure out how to work this contraption.
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Pete: Thanks! I’d forgotten about Smullyan, even though I read the book many long years ago.
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Yeah, me too — forgot about Smullyan, but he was indeed interesting and somewhat central.
Gardner remains a significant node, of course, as for a general public (such as me) he provided the introductions to these other figures such as Hofstadter[*] and Smullyan.
[*]Eventually his successor at SciAm.
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