Certainty
Certainty
[A door seen from a hallway, with "Teachers' Lounge" on the glass, next to the door is a sign reading "Award." Inside the door are two teachers talking.] Megan: My students drew me into another political argument. Cueball: Eh; it happens. Megan: Lately, political debates bother me. They just show how good smart people are at rationalizing. [The two teachers continue talking. A third one is seen reading a book on a sofa.] Megan: The world is so complicated - the more I learn, the less clear anything gets. There are too many ideas and arguments to pick and choose from. How can I trust myself to know the truth about anything? And if everything I know is so shaky, what on Earth am I doing teaching? Cueball: I guess you just do your best. No one can impart perfect universal truths to their students. Miss Lenhart: *ahem* Cueball: ...Except math teachers. Miss Lenhart: Thank you.

Megan and Cueball are teachers in this comic, talking about their students and the political discussions with them. They outline that it's not possible to find the real truth. But then Cueball, interrupted by a harrumph of the mathematics teacher Miss Lenhart , states that Mathematics is an exception (because math can actually be proved , conclusively). Randall likes mathematics because mathematical political discussions are not possible.
The title text shows a simple valid mathematical equation, the distributive property , and Randall is daring one to politicize it. Though this happened years after the comic was published, people have in fact politicized the distributive property , claiming that teaching it promoted socialism.
[A door seen from a hallway, with "Teachers' Lounge" on the glass, next to the door is a sign reading "Award." Inside the door are two teachers talking.] Megan: My students drew me into another political argument. Cueball: Eh; it happens. Megan: Lately, political debates bother me. They just show how good smart people are at rationalizing. [The two teachers continue talking. A third one is seen reading a book on a sofa.] Megan: The world is so complicated - the more I learn, the less clear anything gets. There are too many ideas and arguments to pick and choose from. How can I trust myself to know the truth about anything? And if everything I know is so shaky, what on Earth am I doing teaching? Cueball: I guess you just do your best. No one can impart perfect universal truths to their students. Miss Lenhart: *ahem* Cueball: ...Except math teachers. Miss Lenhart: Thank you.
