451: Impostor

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Impostor
If you think this is too hard on literary criticism, read the Wikipedia article on deconstruction.
Title text: If you think this is too hard on literary criticism, read the Wikipedia article on deconstruction.

[edit] Explanation

The first panel shows Cueball discussing an engineering problem with Ponytail. Logarithms are used in fields such as psychology and computer science, and have nothing to do with heat dissipation.

Klingon is a language from Star Trek. This is fairly self-explanatory.

Sociology has nothing to do with ranking people; it is the study of human society and social behaviors.

Literary criticism is almost entirely subjective, so many interpretations can be valid. There isn't just one "right" way to critique literature, so these students think Cueball has a valid point.

[edit] Transcript

My Hobby: Sitting down with grad students and timing how long it takes them to figure out that I'm not actually an expert in their field.


Engineering:
Students: Our big problem is heat dissipation
Cueball: Have you tried logarithms?
48 seconds
Linguistics:
Cueball: Ah, so does this Finno-ugric family include, say, Klingon?
63 Seconds
Sociology:
Cueball: Yeah, my latest work is on ranking people from best to worst.
4 Minutes
Literary Criticism:
Cueball: You see, the deconstruction is inextricable from not only the text, but also the self.
Eight papers and two books and they haven't caught on.


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