825: Guest Week: Jeffrey Rowland (Overcompensating)

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Guest Week: Jeffrey Rowland (Overcompensating)
Guest comic by Jeffrey Rowland of Overcompensating/Wigu. Jeffrey is famous as the picture on the Wikipedia article on 'Necrosis'.
Title text: Guest comic by Jeffrey Rowland of Overcompensating/Wigu. Jeffrey is famous as the picture on the Wikipedia article on 'Necrosis'.

Explanation

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This may be a reference to Scott Adams' God's Debris, in which a delivery guy has a long conversation about the nature of the universe with an old man. While often dealing with complex questions, the old man in the story presents arguments in a very straightforward way. Some have called some of the arguments in the book very clever and original, albeit overly simplistic. This comic could be a parody on that style of philosophy.

The title text is completely true: After a brown recluse spider bit him, Rowland started experiencing cell death in his leg. Although the wound itself is benign, it still is featured in Wikipedia articles (such as Loxoscelism).

Transcript

[Jeffrey Rowland and Randall are sitting together, with a globe between them. Mr. Rowland has a drink with a small umbrella over it.]
Jeffrey Rowland: But enough of my theories about Thanksgiving. The real reason we're here is to discuss my hypothesis that dark matter itself is what consciousness is made of...
[The frame focuses on Jeffrey Rowland.]
Jeffrey Rowland: Unobservable to anything that is itself conscious in much the same way the mail-man won't deliver your mail if you are watching the mail-box
[Mr. Rowland raises his drink.]
Jeffrey Rowland: Which brings us to my theory about ghosts --
Randall Munroe: Wait did you just say Thanksgiving was invented by the Turkey Voluntary Extinction Movement?
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Discussion

The Turkey Voluntary Extinction Movement has to be a riff on the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (www.vhemt.org [I'm not sure what the "t" is doing there] ). Alas, their primary purpose seems to be selling TShirts (their site concludes with the FAQ Question: How do I order stickers, T-shirts, and stuff?)Traveller (talk) 23:06, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

The "t" is probably there so the acronym can be pronounced "vehement". And the lack of organization is probably because it is no organization but a movement, i.e. just some people advertising an ideology. Their primary purpose is to convince you not to have kids. Mumiemonstret (talk) 14:11, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

The Globe shrinks noticeably between the first and last panels. --ParadoX (talk) 01:00, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

I believe that was intentional. 108.162.221.51 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Removed the bit about supposed turkey stupidity. There's no evidence (aside from "everybody knows/says" type arguments) to support it, and plenty to discredit the assertion. See, for example: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/release/2003/11/osu-animal-scientist-debunks-dumb-turkey-myth Orazor (talk) 10:33, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the dark matter/consciousness correlation is a reference to Dust in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials"?

I don't know anything specifically about Jeffrey Rowland's necrosis, but as a general point, I'm going to stand up for the brown recluses here: https://spiders.ucr.edu/myth-brown-recluse-fact-fear-and-loathing L-Space Traveler (talk) 12:23, 5 November 2022 (UTC)