Talk:2086: History Department

The business about the 1750s probably has something to do with the British doing their changeover from Julian to Gregorian calendars then, but you can't look too carefully at the details. 108.162.219.16 18:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm confused. Is there any joke apart from the obvious "haha, studying history by fully covering time slices instead of topics"? Fabian42 (talk) 19:05, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

There's also the joke about taking longer to study a period of time than that time took to pass. 108.162.216.208 19:31, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I think it's also a reference to the fact that we are creating more and more data in the digital age, leading to the problem of there being too much data to keep up with. 108.162.241.202 01:13, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Two sides to the same coin? We normally think about historians studying time periods on the order of years, decades, or even longer periods (e.g. the Dark Ages), which naturally takes less time than the original era. Another joke is the idea that an entire department is devoted to such narrow periods, but maybe it's a really small college. Barmar (talk) 20:04, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that the humor is based on the incongruity of thinking in business-like terms of productivity and gains and losses in a history department.

I think the 1750s reference is to Tristram Shandy.

The last Animorphs novel was published in May 2001. Given the number of times Randall's brought up Animorphs in comics, is it possible that May 16, 2001 refers to that? I think it would be very much in line with comic 1380 for him to strangely emphasize an Animorphs-related date. Gman314 (talk) 02:36, 18 December 2018 (UTC)