xkcd

by **CarlTheFirst** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:26 pm UTC

Exüberance wrote: I thought that the one guy got ripped off buying a bunch of books which turned out to be blank. So, to hide the fact that he got tricked into buying blank books, he made up a story

The irony here is that such an interpretation would not necessarily move the subject entirely away from alternative medicine. Making up crazy excuses to avoid admitting that a person was fooled (or to avoid admitting that they were wrong, in the case of the inventors of nonsense) is a staple of quackery.

by **CarlTheFirst** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:37 pm UTC

TheCycoONE wrote:It's not like placebos don't work; they're remarkably effective against a number of ailments particularly as an anti-depressant and anesthetic.

Actually, it IS like placebos don't work. They aren't "remarkably effective ... especially as an anti-depressant and anesthetic." Placebos are BARELY effective, and that weak effect being limited to things like mild depression and minor subjective pain.

They also only work if you think they will work so putting them on the shelf with other medications gives them the credence they need.

Amazingly, you are also wrong about that. Placebo effects exist even when patients are told that they are receiving a placebo. That works because most placebos effects come from the ritual/experience of taking a pill and the interaction with "someone who cares", not because there is a strong mind-over-matter driven be specific belief.

If you bought them and they didn't work you'll buy something else, no harm done.

Except you are out $10 and spent an extra day suffering.

If you bought them and they did work then even better, you're being treated without nasty psychoactive drug dependencies or other side effects.

Your drug phobia is not supported by evidence. Most drugs, especially OTC, have few or no side effects for most people when taken at recommended doses.

by **cream wobbly** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:39 pm UTC

hwillis19 wrote:
Kit. wrote:I wonder if there are studies trying to find a correlation between magnitude of the placebo effect and perceived (by the test subject) monetary value of the pill.

It is an axiom which I believe to be fairly widely accepted, although I'm struggling to find any papers on it at the moment.

A story on NPR not so long back described the Placebo Effect taking hold even when the subject knew they were taking a placebo, and even self-administered: https://www.npr.org/2010/12/23/132276823/Even-Knowingly-Taking-A-Placebo-Seems-To-Help

That would tend to discredit the notion that efficacy of the placebo correlates to its monetary value.

by **drwho** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:55 pm UTC

Randall:
I recall the radiation dose chart you made during the Fukushima, as a way to use science to lessen the hype. Perhaps you could write up a similar one for Homopathy. It could be something which could be smuggled into the medicine section of CVS and other places where snake-oil is being peddled.

by **rhomboidal** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:57 pm UTC

Naturally, all of the books are about the miracles of alternative medicine.

by **Fire Brns** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 7:04 pm UTC

by **Steeler** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 7:05 pm UTC

I had a different takeaway than homeopathy. The comic can be taken as a pretty good dig at snobs who criticize certain artistic mediums for their full expression, mediums which don't require you to read between the lines.

I didn't see anyone bring this up on pages 1 or 3, but I didn't read page 2, so I apologize if I'm repeating the already-said.

by **marieC** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 7:30 pm UTC

Didn't see anyone mention this: http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2010/06/homeopathy.html which is a pretty great skeptics' explanation of homeopathy. Even better it's in comic form which obviously everyone here is partial too.

Science, it's better with pictures.

by **yorik** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:14 pm UTC

I don't mind a dig at homeopathy as long as everybody understands that there's huge difference between homeopathy and naturopathy, or, as another poster put it, phyto. Many herbal remedies really do work (and many don't). For that matter, everything you eat has some effect on the body. Drug companies only sell what they can patent, and they can't patent a plant chemical.

BTW I can vouch that SSRI's do increase suicidal thoughts in adults; been there, done that. I dropped that particular SSRI fast, and it was supposedly one of the safest ones. Switched to another one and put on 40 pounds of fat. Now there's something depressing! I go for the sunlight and natural vitamin D now.

by **lly** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:21 pm UTC

cream wobbly wrote:
hwillis19 wrote:
Kit. wrote:I wonder if there are studies trying to find a correlation between magnitude of the placebo effect and perceived (by the test subject) monetary value of the pill.

It is an axiom which I believe to be fairly widely accepted, although I'm struggling to find any papers on it at the moment.

A story on NPR not so long back described the Placebo Effect taking hold even when the subject knew they were taking a placebo, and even self-administered: https://www.npr.org/2010/12/23/132276823/Even-Knowingly-Taking-A-Placebo-Seems-To-Help

That would tend to discredit the notion that efficacy of the placebo correlates to its monetary value.

Why would you think that? It just means that the conscious mind is not the only actor in play when it comes to the efficacy of placebo. Not that knowing the monetary value wouldn't influence it, or that you wouldn't get a stronger effect if they didn't know (which is untested in the study listed, though even this doesn't imply that knowing the monetary value wouldn't have an influence). There is also some evidence that "Placebo effects seem to be malleable and depend on the behaviours embedded in medical rituals."

by **loosenut** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:52 pm UTC

Wired had an article talking about the effectiveness of placebos back in '09. Google "Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why".

Also, reference the article on Wikipedia about psychoneuroimmunology. Once you understand the link between mind and body, you might appreciate the power of the placebo effect.

I'd post links, but I'm a newbie and they won't let me.

by **Meagen** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:55 pm UTC

CarlTheFirst wrote:Amazingly, you are also wrong about that. Placebo effects exist even when patients are told that they are receiving a placebo. That works because most placebos effects come from the ritual/experience of taking a pill and the interaction with "someone who cares", not because there is a strong mind-over-matter driven by specific belief.

And the "ritual/experience of taking a pill" makes people feel better because... they believe it'll make them feel better. It's a specific belief about what sort of ritual makes someone feel better.

...unless you're saying that the ritual of taking a pill has its own inherent ability to make people feel better independent of all the cultural baggage of the person taking the pill.

by **hwillis19** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:56 pm UTC

cream wobbly wrote:A story on NPR not so long back described the Placebo Effect taking hold even when the subject knew they were taking a placebo, and even self-administered: https://www.npr.org/2010/12/23/132276823/Even-Knowingly-Taking-A-Placebo-Seems-To-Help

That would tend to discredit the notion that efficacy of the placebo correlates to its monetary value.

Indeed – it's sometimes referred to as the "meta-placebo" effect. But still, there are other documented aspects of the placebo effect which support the "expectancy" hypothesis. For example – and again, I'm referring here to something I've been told but haven't read and can't find, so pinch-of-salt – it is my understanding that an intravenously administered "analgesic" placebo has a greater effect against pain than an inert pill, and similarly the dosage does count, so a single capsule taken orally once a day supposedly has less of an effect than taking two capsules once a day, or one capsule four times a day, etc.

VectorZero wrote:I'll see you with Tim Minchin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U

You, sir/madam, have just 1-UP'd my day...

by **CarlTheFirst** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:24 pm UTC

Meagen wrote:
CarlTheFirst wrote:Amazingly, you are also wrong about that. Placebo effects exist even when patients are told that they are receiving a placebo. That works because most placebos effects come from the ritual/experience of taking a pill and the interaction with "someone who cares", not because there is a strong mind-over-matter driven by specific belief.

And the "ritual/experience of taking a pill" makes people feel better because... they believe it'll make them feel better. It's a specific belief about what sort of ritual makes someone feel better.

...unless you're saying that the ritual of taking a pill has its own inherent ability to make people feel better independent of all the cultural baggage of the person taking the pill.

I don't think anyone believes that walking into an office and being handed a pill is the actual cause of anything, so again the belief in a mechanism is not necessary.

Of course the belief in the pill working probably does have an impact on the net placebo effects, but that is not all of it. I am only responding to the claim that placebos don't work unless people think they do. Maybe they don't work quite as well, but they do work in the absence of any specific belief.

by **Ehsanit** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:31 pm UTC

On a vaguely related note, I came across this a while back and it's very interesting. Now I'm sure that giving someone a drug with no molecules of the actual stuff isn't going to help in the same way as giving them the proper dose of the actual stuff. Even so, the placebo effect is far more powerful than most people give it credit for.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/maga ... ntPage=all

by **ilikejuggling** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:37 pm UTC

This may in fact be the best XKCD ever.

That is all.

by **bmonk** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:50 pm UTC

While I was thinking about this, I stopped to listen to Cage's 4′33″.

by **skeptical scientist** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:53 pm UTC

sgbraunstein wrote:As far as books, Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

As far as medicine...well, doesn't that only count if homeopathic medicine doesn't work? I don't know if any of you have tried going to a Chinese doctor. But I lived in Taiwan for a year, and went to several Eastern (read: Homeopathic) doctors, and that stuff DEFINITELY WORKS.

Fire Brns wrote:Yes I was going to say this. If you want homeopathy, don't go to a store or homeopathy "specialist" instead befriend a Chinese immigrant: it worked for me. Also only use for minor ailments, if you have cancer get the chemo.

Your anecdotes do not trump the data, or the fact that the idea of medicine which has been diluted down to pure water has zero plausibility.

by **gormster** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 10:25 pm UTC

cream wobbly wrote:
Randall's alt text wrote:I just noticed CVS has started stocking homeopathic pills on the same shelves with--and labeled similarly to--their actual medicine. Telling someone who trusts you that you're giving them medicine, when you know you’re not, because you want their money, isn’t just lying--it’s like an example you’d make up if you had to illustrate for a child why lying is wrong.

When our child started teething, we were advised to use homeopathic teething tablets. We rejected the idea for the longest time, until (I suspect lack of sleep) wore us down. We caved. We bought them. We used them. And you know what? They bloody worked. If we forgot (sleep deprivation is one cause of forgetfulness), or we ran out of the stuff, we were in for a night of no sleep. (And we made notes to ourselves so that we didn't have to remember whether or not they worked.)

Then we looked at the ingredients. Right smack bang in the middle of the list: Lactose. The sugar from milk. Jeez, the kid just wanted to nurse! Plus, despite the labelling, it's not homeopathic!

This is apparently incredibly common. Some homeopaths, the kind you actually go and see and they knock up a remedy themselves, instead of homeopathic remedies like... well a placebo, will use ACTUAL DRUGS. Like, if you have trouble sleeping, they'll prescribe wolfsbane or something, but actually give you codeine.

by **murgatroid99** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 10:27 pm UTC

About the expensive placebo thing: a few years ago the New York Times had an article say that more expensive placebos are more effective.

by **hwillis19** » Mon Oct 31, 2011 10:48 pm UTC

On a slight aside, I just love how scathing the Homeopathy article intro is on enwiki:

In the context of homeopathy, the term remedy is used to refer to a substance which has been prepared with a particular procedure and intended for patient use; it is not to be confused with the generally accepted use of the word, which means "a medicine or therapy that cures disease or relieves pain".

by **CodingSquirrel** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 12:30 am UTC

Before reading the alt-text I thought this was a shot at people who belittle other people who prefer movies to books. The opinion being that they will make up their own imagery to go along with the text. Watching movies is being lazy and shows a lack of imagination. I thought Randall was taking it one step further and saying that reading written text is being lazy, that you're not using your own creativity to fill in the pages, but instead relying on someone else to do it for you.

by **SirMustapha** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 12:41 am UTC

SpringLoaded12 wrote:You have every right to your critiques of the comic, as you argued with some other folks a couple of weeks ago, and today I agree with you -- another homeopathy comic was not a good idea -- but I never understood why you guess what goes through Randall's head as he makes the comic. I'm not saying your guess is wrong, but I'm not saying it's right either. What makes you so sure of your theories?

Randall never distanced himself, either as an artist or as a person, from his comics. That was the whole point of xkcd since the beginning: it's a comic with which nerds could relate to, in a personal level. That's what "Randall, get out of my head" originally meant, in fact. Even when the comic is downright overblown or surreal, they always mirror some part of his personality that he wanted to show, and his "blag" posts reflect that. Raptors, ball pits, kites and so on and on were not just some quirky gags he found by chance: they were actual interests of his, and he never even tried to deny that. xkcd IS Randall. But that's not all: when Randall wants to "deliver a message" in his comic, he's never subtle. He creates strawman characters in his comics constantly, and he hardly ever tries to represent his "adversaries" in a fair, balanced light. It's impossible to be perfectly neutral, even in art, but that doesn't mean you should try it once in a while. Randall does the opposite: he actively avoids neutrality, because his opinions are the comic, especially when it deals with science, conspiracy theories, homoeopathy and every instance of "you dumb, I smart" comic we see.

by **Eternal Density** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 1:47 am UTC

phlip wrote:... "know no borders"...

You mean the bookstore?

by **Coyne** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 3:06 am UTC

Thibaw wrote:I wonder how many of you got the homeopathy reference before reading the alt text. Because I didnt and now I feel like my intellect failed me on this one.

Doubt it.

Certainly, homeopathic medicine falls in the same category, but the comic wasn't specific to that. We also have:

People who buy diet cola because, "It's better for you".
People who buy electric cars because, "They're better for the environment."
People who buy vacuum tube sound systems because, "They have better sound."
People who buy blank books because, "They're too smart to fall for that mind control in real books."

Take your pick; there are thousands. "Snake oil" is ubiquitous and we all fall for it. Otherwise, how would anyone ever sell snake oil?

So on to digression and a favorite rant ...

I think the real problem is the snake oil salesmen: In medicine, for example, whether you're buying homeopathic or the most expensive prescription available, you are totally rolling the dice. Take the "real medicines" they sell on TV. I listen to all those horrid symptoms and paraphrase it back as:

If you take this medicine, you will die. But you won't have your problem anymore.

Now, of course, if it isn't homeopathic medicine, the manufacturer knows (almost certainly) if it is safe and effective. If it isn't safe or effective or either, the company basically has 2 choices: Admit it isn't (and not sell any) or bury the evidence (and sell it anyway). Guess which one is more profitable? And those companies that are responsible citizens will do the latter anyway, but you have no idea which is which since a significant proportion of big pharma companies are fine with selling snake oil (whether homeopathic or billed as the "real thing").

I'm not taking any drug by choice that hasn't been on the market for at least a decade because, these days, it takes that long to weed out the snake oil.

by **shadowself** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 3:31 am UTC

bmonk wrote:While I was thinking about this, I stopped to listen to Cage's 4′33″.

I am surprised it took almost three pages for someone to mention this, it was the first thing I thought of.

by **CasualSax** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:08 am UTC

I can see the need and art in a single blank book. A shelf of them though!?

And, speaking of emptiness as art: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJagb7hL0E

Also, not making a decision is a decision, not giving your kid what they want is tough love, black is white, up is down, and everything you know is wrong.

by **gmalivuk** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:24 am UTC

skeptical scientist wrote:
sgbraunstein wrote:As far as books, Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

As far as medicine...well, doesn't that only count if homeopathic medicine doesn't work? I don't know if any of you have tried going to a Chinese doctor. But I lived in Taiwan for a year, and went to several Eastern (read: Homeopathic) doctors, and that stuff DEFINITELY WORKS.

Fire Brns wrote:Yes I was going to say this. If you want homeopathy, don't go to a store or homeopathy "specialist" instead befriend a Chinese immigrant: it worked for me. Also only use for minor ailments, if you have cancer get the chemo.

Your anecdotes do not trump the data, or the fact that the idea of medicine which has been diluted down to pure water has zero plausibility.

Both of these quotes are additionally funny on account of the people who posted them evidently not knowing what homeopathy is or that it wasn't invented anywhere particularly close to China...

by **herbys** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:45 am UTC

As others have said, what CVS is doing could be labeled as "evil" or "stupid". It would be evil if we were forced to buy there. But as I have stopped buying there since I discovered I will have to look twice before buying medicine from them, and I don't think I'm the only one, I lean more towards stupid.

And it is specially stupid since the only reason why homeopathy *sometimes* works is because of the care and attention of the only type of medical(like) professional(like) that can devote some time to their patients, which enhances th eplacebo effect. Getting homeopathy from a shelf is as effective as getting a bad spell on you cured by a vending machine sellign tickets that say "you are cured".

by **drakvl** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:49 am UTC

The discussion of the placebo effect reminded me of an article I read a while back, with a headline something like "Not doing acupuncture more effective than not doing medicine" -- another article on the experiment can be found at http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/AlternativeMedicine/2604 -- the explanation was that fake acupuncture won out thanks to the more involved rituals of it, but I'm sure acupressure proponents cite this study to support their claims.

by **QRS** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:54 am UTC

I've lurked for ages, but this crap really makes me mad, too. So I registered just to point out that Wal-Mart does exactly the same thing and that nearly tricked me into buying them. I nearly walked out of there with homeopathic eyedrops by mistake, because they wrote "homeopathic" in tiny print and, well, I needed eyedrops at the time, making it rather hard to read tiny print. Then I found out that it contains diluted "apis" ... what's "apis"? Some unknown extract from honeybees. And at a low enough dilution that it could potentially trigger bee allergies.

I actually wrote a complaint about this to, I think it was the FDA. Naturally, they ignored me completely. Guess you have to be dumb enough to put it in your eyes and have a reaction, but smart enough to figure out why. IMHO, things that have no FDA approval have no place in a pharmacy. I'm not about to put bee crap in my eyes, but man, I almost wish that I had suffered enough harm that I could sue them and force them to stop carrying that crap.

I bet that if you look carefully, you'll find this stuff in a LOT of different pharmacies, not just CVS and Wal-Mart.

by **QRS** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:01 am UTC

sgbraunstein wrote:As far as books, Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

As far as medicine...well, doesn't that only count if homeopathic medicine doesn't work? I don't know if any of you have tried going to a Chinese doctor. But I lived in Taiwan for a year, and went to several Eastern (read: Homeopathic) doctors, and that stuff DEFINITELY WORKS.

Perhaps someone has become accustomed to the western image of "medicine"?

Homeopathy refers specifically to the practice of taking an ingredient which causes the symptoms you're trying to get rid of, then diluting it to something like one part in a million (or less). It does not refer to herbal medicine in general. Herbs can (and often do) have effects, but you have little control over the dosage, proper labeling and they haven't been screened for harmful side effects. So it's a little like playing roulette: you can be a lucky sucker and just happen win, or you can be on the House side and pretty much always win. (bad pun intended)

One of these choices is much more likely to be successful than the other.

by **whateveries** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:03 am UTC

SirMustapha wrote:...and every instance of "you dumb, I smart" comic we see.

This 'You dumb, I smart' thing, it's, it's kinda like, pretty much, every post you do. you ever notice that?. No? maybe a bit of deconstructionist analysis of your own posts mixed in with some soul searching and therapy might give yourself an 'in' to your fairly obvious self hate (we all see it, being played out week after week, we cry for you, we really do) . It's not Randall you hate, it's not the repetive jokes, it's the reflection in the xkcd mirror that you hate. SirMustupha, you don't need to hate yourself, sure, you are a wierd pink rabit thing, but surgery can fix that. surgery and a fake tan. or, even, even a new jpg.

*edited out he most glaring of mys spilling, mistakes*

*edit* also I forgot to mention, the obvious reason why the placebo effect is so effective and awesome is the accidental homepathic dosage they get with the glass of water...

by **DavidRoss** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:15 am UTC

Thibaw wrote:I wonder how many of you got the homeopathy reference before reading the alt text. Because I didnt and now I feel like my intellect failed me on this one.

I didn't get it until I got to the Alt-text, either. I was thinking he was heading into the abstract art or philosophy domains. However, I do not consider that a failure of my intellect and I don't think anyone else should either.

by **QRS** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:30 am UTC

musicgeek wrote:Walgreens is now doing the same thing (stocking homeopathic products alongside their actual medicines, with no obvious labeling separating them). What really bothers me is that some of these "remedies" will actually work because of the supposedly inactive ingredients. There are cough suppressant syrups containing a whole host of 30x bizarro ingredients, in a base of honey or barley syrup, both of which have been shown (by themselves) to have a cough suppressant effect. I mistakenly bought an athlete's foot product once ("Fungicure" soap) which contained tea tree oil, a fairly powerful antifungal ingredient. However, according to the fine print on the label, the tea tree oil was part of the supposedly neutral base and the actual active ingredients were a bunch of 30x nonsense. I'm still trying to wrap my head around a company that makes and sells a product that works, but tells its customers that it works for completely made-up reasons.

At least I could almost forgive them for that, given that they were giving you something useful. I'm still upset about the bee-derived ("apis") eye drops I almost bought from Wal-Mart when I couldn't see very well to read fine print.

It may have been a small victory, but I pushed all of their product as far back on the shelves as I could, so that people wouldn't be able to find them without looking for them and would grab the real medicine instead.

by **Copper Bezel** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:32 am UTC

Subversive facing. Awesome.

SirMustapha wrote:Randall never distanced himself, either as an artist or as a person, from his comics. That was the whole point of xkcd since the beginning: it's a comic with which nerds could relate to, in a personal level. That's what "Randall, get out of my head" originally meant, in fact. Even when the comic is downright overblown or surreal, they always mirror some part of his personality that he wanted to show, and his "blag" posts reflect that. Raptors, ball pits, kites and so on and on were not just some quirky gags he found by chance: they were actual interests of his, and he never even tried to deny that. xkcd IS Randall. But that's not all: when Randall wants to "deliver a message" in his comic, he's never subtle. He creates strawman characters in his comics constantly, and he hardly ever tries to represent his "adversaries" in a fair, balanced light.

Well said!

Oh, you were complaining? Sorry.

Reading the forums is a new thing for me, and I might need to stop doing that, but I have to say that this is the best strip in ages and really made my day. I read it at face value at first blush, too, before reading the alt text. It was awesome both times. = D

by **Eebster the Great** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:35 am UTC

whateveries wrote:*edit* also I forgot to mention, the obvious reason why the placebo effect is so effective and awesome is the accidental homepathic dosage they get with the glass of water...

Pssh, the water doesn't remember the medicine unless it was shaken ritualistically first. Everyone knows that.

by **whateveries** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:44 am UTC

Eebster the Great wrote:
whateveries wrote:*edit* also I forgot to mention, the obvious reason why the placebo effect is so effective and awesome is the accidental homepathic dosage they get with the glass of water...

Pssh, the water doesn't remember the medicine unless it was shaken ritualistically first. Everyone knows that.

a cure for parkinsons then?

by **QRS** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:45 am UTC

Eebster the Great wrote:
whateveries wrote:*edit* also I forgot to mention, the obvious reason why the placebo effect is so effective and awesome is the accidental homepathic dosage they get with the glass of water...

Pssh, the water doesn't remember the medicine unless it was shaken ritualistically first. Everyone knows that.

I'm not to five posts yet, so the forum won't let me link to that old "Diluting the scientific method: Ars looks at homeopathy" article on Ars Technica which is a great explanation of what homeopathy is and how we know it doesn't work.

If anyone wants to read that, just Google the title of it. It's a good read.

by **DavidRoss** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:51 am UTC

Colin OOOD wrote:
marsman57 wrote:Did we really need to talk about homeopathy again?

http://xkcd.com/765/
http://xkcd.com/808/

I agree, there is too much repetition on XKCD. How many comics on crypto have there been? How many about love? How many about maths? Why does Randall keep regurgitating that Black Hat character again and again? Does he have no imagination?

Please note: this reply may contain traces of sarcasm in a non-homeopathic concentration.

I'll defend Randall as well. This is a totally different take on a target-rich environment. Given that he got me all the way to the Alt-text before the punch line, I'd say it's original. For really unoriginal, try Dennis the Menace or Garfield. They are so repetitive that you'll understand today's comic before you even open the paper.

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