Take a look at Joyce and Walky! strip from March 25, 2006, which ran the same time as Robin’s Cadbury cereal-fueled ascension to office.
Shortpacked! by David Willis
Toys are serious business.
Convention appearances:
Calgary Expo Calgary, AB: April 26-28
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
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Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
Butt-Taco
Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
Diesel Sweeties
Dinosaur Comics
Dr. McNinja
Dresden Codak
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Hark, a vagrant
Hijinks Ensue
Intrepid Girlbot
Legend of Bill
Medium Large
Not Invented Here
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Overcompensating
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Did Sydney draw stubble on, too? XD
Either that or she’s trying to grow a soul patch thing.
Nah, she’s just biting her lower lip.
20% of the precincts? What is this, the 2000 presidential election when they called Florida for Gore?
Who even did that, aside from NPR? I only remember FOX Propaganda calling Florida for Dubya at roughly November 1st (Eastern Standard Time), as part of their deliberate campaign to get it into people’s heads that Dubya was a done deal, therefore making the subsequent painfully obvious election-rigging seem like an afterthought– ‘cuz, y’know, it had already been called.
…I wonder if Sydney Yus’s campaign manager is also the Secretary of State of California, in charge of overseeing the election? It’s probably a bit of a stretch to expect the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that thousands of (legally cast) votes in Dist. 8 shouldn’t be counted just because an accurate count might threaten Yus’s assertion that she had won; after all, Justice Il Duce’s son and Justice Stepin Fetchit’s wife probably didn’t work for Yus‘s campaign, making them Constitutionally required to recuse themselves from Yus v. DeSanto.
Florida was called for Gore reeeeally early in the evening, because they assumed the sampling of precincts they had was an accurate representation of the state. And when I say early in the evening, I mean like 7pm. Pretty much everyone had put it for Gore, but it was before voting in the Panhandle had begun being counted.
Here’s when CBS pulled it back http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gp1Gf5AETQ&feature=related
For Chrissakes, man. At least read the actual reports, rather than just pundit sites.
Well, shit. This certainly brings things to a screeching halt.
That, or it’ll turn out that Robin paid for the place entirely up-front.
If I recall correctly she did pay for it in cash…
As you may recall, the problem is not mortgage but property tax.
Hey, be nice… I forget Calfiornia people have to pay property taxes >.>
ALSO, I DIDN’T RECALL THAT SO STICK IT IN YOUR EAR!
/owwwwweeeeeneeed
You should be less mean to Minivet
Minivet was replying to Wackd, not you.
Oh.
Well, that’s…huh. Why didn’t I think of that?
So they’re all screwed. Okay then.
But that’s only like $5k per year on a $300k house (at least where I live). And when you rent, its built in to the rent anyway.
The news person looks familiar.
She looks a lot like Mary.
The free ride is over, Ethan!
Hold up.
How can they make that projection with only 20% of the votes counted?
That doesn’t seem to add up if it’s currently a 56-44 split. With that remaining 80%, Robin could easily win.
I’m wondering if Willis is gonna pull an upset on us.
Are you American? Our media loves calling the election as soon as possible. They get away with it by usually being right. The exceptions are situations where parties vote in odd patterns(generally early/late or heavily gerrymandered districts).
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
Yea, the reason they generally get away with it (by being right) is because they have a computer program that they input the election data into and it takes the ones that report first and guesses how other districts are going to vote using a comparison. (I.E. District A is 70% white married couples and it was won by candidate #2 and since District B is 88% white married couples then it is logical to assume that candidate #2 will also win District B and that’s over simplifying it but generally how it works.) It’s generally a pretty accurate system unless you mess up the data like they did in 2000.
Uh, they do this all the time. It’s not (usually) irresponsible journalism, they just look at where the votes are coming in and track mathematically how well the candidate is doing versus how well they need to do where. So if this were Obama running for Senate and he were losing precincts in the South Side of Chicago, that would count against his chances.
Also note they said “project” not “call”.
While this is all very true, there is no way they could call the 56% number with any amount of accuracy. There’s percentage point variation right up till the end. If Yus is up 56 to 44 in the right demographics, she’s definitely going to win, but not necessarily by 12 points.
But elections aren’t just between two people. While we haven’t seen any other candidates, that just means none of them ever worked at Shortpacked! Yus is mentioned because she’s wining, and Desanto because she’s the incumbent, but that other 44% could be split among 15 different candidates.
There aren’t 15 different parties that run candidates in elections in California, though. And none of them gets a significant number of votes, certainly not 44% altogether.
(FWIW, the third parties that appear on California ballots are: American Independent, Green, Libertarian, and Peace & Freedom).
In the United States, they usually are.
(Oh sure, sometimes there are sometimes a few other candidates, but they’re just ballot clutter – lucky to get a full percentage point.)
Alot could change in 80% right? Right???
Besides i remember a strip somewhere at the end with Mike sitting on a pile of stolen ballots…! Could they make a reapearance?
obviously they were from a different election/question but will that be such a big problem for the counters???
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
Well, hell, yeah! Alot could change in ONE percent. Alots are awesome like that.
lol, i suppose they are…
The way it works is that they pay the most attention to precincts where there’s a question of who will win. Most precincts usually lean either strongly conservative or strongly liberal, so you can reliably assume who will carry those areas. If 80% of the precincts are like that in Robin’s district, then in practice the remaining 20% are what actually decides things. So yes, you can call an election with only 20% of the vote in such a scenario.
Does this system fail? Yes, but far less often than you’d think. Of course, when it does fail we tend to focus on that, and ignore the hundreds of times that it works for every one time it fails.
Florida in 2000 was less a failure of this metric and more a case of the media fighting to be the first to call the state, leading to many outlets jumping the gun. Compare that to 2004, when they all seemed determined to be the LAST to call each state so they’d appear more responsible.
But it’s only 20%! That’s…that’s the opposite of 80%! A small fraction! Maybe she stuffed the ballots or something!
Something’s fishy in the state of predictions…
Something’s fishy in the state of predictions…
Not really. 20% of the vote is counted, but they’ve also done random sampling of people exiting the polls and asking them how they voted. So once enough of the actual vote is counted (20% in this case) to be confident that the exit polling is reflecting the actual vote turnout, you can make a fairly accurate guess how the UNCOUNTED portion of the vote went– because you have random sampling of that too.
(It’s all a bit dodgy because that 20% is actually the 20% of DISTRICTS who finished counting first– which usually means the ones with electronic voting machines, which means poorer districts tend to come in last.)
…really, I’ve been horribly jealous ever since I heard about the way Britain counts ballots.
Won’t Sydney Yus be withdrawn from Congress once she is charged and probably convicted with kidnapping, breaking and entering, tresspassing, conspiracy, filing a false report, and assault and battery? That ought to at the very least get her a 5150 in California which is probably pretty bad for a Congressional freshman’s image.
You don’t the congress vary well. She’ll go up in some cirlcles…on both sides.
Don’t forget “Failure to Arson”
I’m pretty sure failing so badly is grounds to be arrested.
Are you kidding? That’s what got her the Tea Party’s support! She’s tough on immigration (Robin is brown), tough on the Gay Agenda (Ethan is a tool), and tough on toys that hurt our children!
Robin is brown? Sydney is browner.
But this is politics. Facts has no place in an election campaign.
Robin is the wrong kind of brown.
I really have to wonder what Sydney’s political platform was during this whole election. I mean, her chief fixation has always been the destruction of a single toy store in San Francisco. That doesn’t really speak to a majority of the voters, aside from the Axis of Something or whatever.
I also have to wonder how much that costs. I mean it’s San Francisco! Nothing in that town comes cheap.
her platform was “WHOO, GIANTS”.
Well, Robin’s platform in 2006 was a similar mixture of vagueness and inanity.
Dewey defeats Truman anyone…?
I’m waiting for that “kitten” to devour one of the cast…
They’re gonna have to pay no rent times infinity? Sweet, they still get to live there for free! Drama avoided.
Infinity isn’t a number, so standard multiplication by zero rules don’t really apply. Try it with your calculator, and you’ll get “undefined”!
Not if you use L’Hopital’s rule!
[James Earl Jones voice]NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!![/James Earl Jones voice]
@.@ contemplating infinity leads to insanity @.@
As just mentioned in another webcomic yesterday
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2047#comic
Sydney Yus…with…power. RUN FOR YOUR LI–wait. A single congress seat. Excuse me, I’m going to go laugh at her thinking she’s won anything. Though free healthcare, a sweet paycheck and endorsements from lobbyists are pretty awesome.
Though you could get free healthcare (or nearly so) by simply moving from the US, of course.
“DeSanto has held the seat since 2006, after the sudden passing of Representitive Nancy Pelosi”
Robin, did you kill Nancy Pelosi during your epic sugar buzz?
hell on earth(shortpacked) is about to begin
I can’t believe people are talking election results and property when the kitty is being adorable with Ethan.
Priorities people.
So Leslie wants their souls to help her pay rent? Cause I’m pretty sure you can’t pay infinity cash… Just saying…
Of course, now that Mr. Yus has won, he needs to, y’know, govern. Mwa ha ha.
Sydney Yus is a man?
Isn’t Yus a girl?
I’d correct you & point out that Sydey is a girl, but I have to admit that the picture used for this strip doesn’t flatter her in that regard.
The way Willis drew her tensing her jaw, does make it look like she’s got chin stubble. That, and her head seems to be at a weird angle, that doesn’t make her look all that feminine.
Kitty! take a shot.
Personally, I think the funniest thing here is Robin’s “finger guns” gesture in her file photo.
I do not think that Sydney will last a full day in Congress before she begs Robin to take back her Seat; she has no clue what she is getting herself into.
I find it funny that everyone is focused on the inaccurate polling practice and ignored the the sudden passing of Nanci Pelosi in 2006 comment.
That’s because it’s not news. DW has revealed before that that’s how the seat Robin ran for was open.
Anyone else notice he claims the Joyce and Walky ran in 2010, not 2006?
Also, I kinda wish you didn’t have 20 years of back strips, I kinda wanna read more of your old stuff. I started with Shortpacked
20 years? Barely thirteen! Toughen up!
…well, unless you count Sly Sirs, but there are like, ten of those. And the old Walky comics, but are those even online?
…and holy hell, have I actually been reading Willis’s comics for seven years?
Leslie is going to multiply Ethan’s rent by #DIV/0! to get an actual number.
N / 0 = infinity, give or take that this sort of thing makes baby Jesus cry. Thus 0 * infinity = N. You don’t believe me; read up on limits. Seriously.
Also, this is actually *more* mathematically correct when you’re responding to somebody who is saying or implying “You can’t increase my rent because it’s currently 0.” True fact; they cover it in second-year calculus.
Not really. In fact, hell no. In calculus (limits to infinity, second year – what the hell are they teaching you kids in first year these days?!) you learn to deal with the limits of products like that as they approach undefined values, but it’s still not correct to say “0 * inf. = N.” It’s more accurate to say “the limit of the products of a quantity that approaches infinity and one that approaches zero may be a nonzero finite number, or infinite, or zero, or divergent.” It’s not even really accurate to say “N/0 = inf.” or even “N * inf. = inf.,” since the operations aren’t defined that way. Once you get past calculus into university level, you learn how important it is to be careful with the definitions of operators that you can take for granted when you’re dealing with everyday nonzero reals. Division is defined as the unique inverse where such an inverse exists, which it doesn’t with zero. “Multiplying/dividing by infinity” is something of an abuse of notation, where you usually mean something else for which that’s a convenient metaphor.
If you think you’re telling me anything I don’t already know, you’re wrong – what did you think I meant when I said using such a phrase makes baby Jesus cry?
Of course, since we know that both the start and end points of the equation in question are finite and nondivergent (that is, 0 and whatever the resulting rent will be), your entire protest is completely incorrect anyway. So the multiplicitive increase from 0 to whatever specific N Leslie eventually charges them is indeed an infinite amount – blast it, I need to comfort that damned baby again. Sorry, gotta go.
But Sydney Yus never wins, she always comes just close enough to taste it and then it is taken away at the last second.
I think at the last second before polls close, Jacob will stumble in and vote for Robin, flipping the win to her.
Or Robin could pull a Superman and run around the earth so fast that time starts moving backwards. Though hell, if she wanted to, she could use her superspeed to stuff all the ballet boxes without anyone seeing her. (That is what I would do with superspeed, well…one of the thing I would do… the rest aren’t too legal either.)
With a face that cheery, I don’t know how anyone could not vote for Robin.
Clearly, that’s why the news is reporting Yus as the projected winner: to motivate people who haven’t voted yet to get off their keisters and vote for the more photogenic choice.
I believe they’ve done away with that nonsense now and aren’t announcing precinct results until all polls in the state close.
(There have accusations over the years that ‘calling’ the race while polls are still open has either de-motivated the opposition voters who then don’t show up at polls– or made voters for the presumed-victor less likely to show up. No, AFAIK clear-cut cases of this happening, since such races were by definition neck-and-neck anyway.)
I voted for a 5th Party for Governor today!
Anyway they’ve already won in the Shortpacked universe since they don’t have Pelosi representing them.
Yes, but the might end up with Yus. Which may or may not be worse, but…
Am I the only one who realizes that “increasing rent” does not imply multiplication, and thus both Ethan’s protest and Leslie’s retort make no sense whatsoever?
Nope.
Using “increase” does however imply that there was some rent to begin with.
Not really. You can increase from zero.
November…is HERE.
Heh. I just read that one in the book last night.
Had to look up who the representative for San Francisco was …
Shoulda just waited a day.
If Ethan was in NY he could vote for The Rent is 2 Damn High party
Does anyone else notice that the Robin statuette looks a little like a Muppet?
…wait, then who’s the speaker?
Oh, right. This is Shortpacked!
Frank.
(Also, he’d probably be a pretty good speaker… um… in a figurative sense. A skilled… declaimer.)
I thought Robin was the representative from Nerds, or some shit?
In reality, no one would vote for Sydney. Unless the vote was for which Shortpacked character you think is the most poorly developed and brings down the most comics.
Leslie just divided by zero.
Infinite zero is still zero.
My theory is that Drew has a hoarder in his past, maybe one of his parents or both and that’s why he’s so afraid of clutter(ing).
That’s why he uses the “it’s only plastic/it’s only a toy” argument, because hoarders attach so much sentimental value to objects and he refuses to even consider Ethan’s way of looking at toys/collectibles.
He’s afraid of going down the same path of mental illness he witnessed, so he wont give himself any leeway in his home and in his relationship, to the point of trying to control/change Ethan’s behavior.
Between you and me, I do think that Ethan has a problem (not hoarding yet) with collecting: it represents a way of filling a void. What is this void? What caused it? Willis knows! Drama!