Comic Art Museums and Believing Someone Else's Press

The Guardian reported on a new German museum of comic art. In it, the writer accepted a claim that it was the first museum devoted to comics in the world. That's the problem of beleiving what you read. San Francisco has had one since 1987; there is a cartoon art museum in Florida and two in New York City; and the National Cartoon Museum opened in 1974 under the name the International Museum of Comic Art. I knew offhand about the one in San Francisco, and about 20 seconds of searching the web revealed these others. There may well be others. It was sloppy work to assume that because someone claims something to be original that it is.

Put Down That T-Shirt

In proof that admission to M.I.T. doesn't keep someone from being stupid, an undergraduate nearly got herself shot for looking like a walking bomb:

Star Simpson, 19, was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and approached an airport employee in Terminal C at 8 a.m. to inquire about an incoming flight from Oakland, according to Major Scott Pare of the State Police. She was holding a lump of what looked like putty in her hands. The employee asked about the plastic circuit board on her chest, and Simpson walked away without responding, Pare said.

It was Playdough in her hand and "art" on her sweatshirt. Maybe being surrounded by machine gun-toting police had a beneficial effect on her education.