July 08, 2007
Argumentative Dogs
This morning's Sally Forth:
Sally and Ralph are apparently reading job applications, as indicated in the opening panel:
What caught my eye was Ralph's "If one were to describe their dog as 'argumentative', would they have revealed too much?" (remember that singular they is divinely sanctioned), but then I was caught trying to figure out what this conversation actually means.
Is Ralph asking about a phrase he read in the job application? Or is he thinking about his own life, and how he might describe it? Or both? Is Sally being politely agreeable, or subversively critical? Or both?
Meanwhile, on the argumentative dog beat, there's this morning's Cathy:
And this morning's Dilbert, featuring a typically subtle argument from Dogbert:
Dogbert's argument reworks the traditional sophist's argument for buying lessons in rhetoric ("You should buy my lessons so that you can evaluate my argument that you should buy my lessons"), by developing the infinite regress implicit in recursive consultation.
The argumentative animal in this morning's Fusco Brothers is apparently supposed to be Axel the Wolverine, but I believe that most readers probably see him as a dog (or perhaps a giant rat):
