Today’s Bizarro/Wayno collaboration:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
It all depends on your knowing the classic text, from the introduction to the tv show Adventures of Superman (1952-1958):
Narrator: Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Man 1: Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird!
Woman 1: It’s a plane!
Man 2: It’s Superman!
Woman 1 contradicts Man 1’s identification, then Man 2 contradicts both of them.
But what are the differentiae distinguishing a bird (here, a gull) from a plane (here, a light aircraft) from Superman? The onlookers in #1 appear to have no clue, and their cluelessness has made Superman decidedly testy.
Lexical note from NOAD:
noun differentia: (plural differentiae) [a] a distinguishing mark or characteristic. [b] chiefly Philosophy an attribute that distinguishes a species of thing from other species of the same genus.
In #1, the genus (from definition [b]) in question is the category (class / taxon) of flying things, of which birds, planes, and the Man of Steel are species. (And then there are pterodactyls, helicopters, mosquitos, gliders, bats, and Santa’s reindeer.)
As for the “It’s a bird” meme, we went there in a 10/22/16 posting “Supercamp penguins”, which looked at the tv source and the 1966 Broadway show that exploited the meme:
(#2) How did his thighs get so big and his head so small?
May 12, 2018 at 6:01 am |
Not original with me, but: why is Man 1 so stunned at seeing what he takes to be a bird flying?