The original artwork for this strip is available for purchase. See the original artwork information page for more information.
Notes: Pasted-in dialog changes in the last panel.
Ozy and Millie
Wisdom for short attention spans.
Over at my home station:
- So I screwed up my PO box December 12, 2018If you’ve gotten fan mail back, it’s my fault. I failed to keep my PO box paid up, and I know some people got mail back. I’m really sorry! Feel free to send stuff along to the new address: Dana Simpson PO Box 6347 Santa Barbara, CA 93160-6347 Again, I’m really sorry for the inconvenience! […]Dana Simpson
- The unicorn of Today July 9, 2018So the Today Show had Amazon.com list some summer reading books for young reluctant readers. I’m #8! I’m almost more excited that Breaking Cat News, by my friend Georgia Dunn, is #2. Go Georgia! Go kitties! Read more →Dana Simpson
- I won something! July 8, 2018It had been a little while since I actually won an award, though I’ve been nominated a few times. This time, kids did the voting! Phoebe was voted “Bravest Hero” (For The Magic Storm) at the Kids’ Comics Awards, at the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival. (Which, by the way, I should attend some time. […]Dana Simpson
- I’ll be in Spokane July 8, 2018At Auntie’s Bookstore, this Friday (the 13th) at 6. Washington, I wish I knew how to quit you. Read more →Dana Simpson
- Wednesday in West Seattle June 19, 2018I’ll be returning to C&P Coffee Co. in West Seattle, for Words West Literary’s kids’ night. I’ll be reading some selections from various “Phoebe and Her Unicorn” books. It’ll be me and Suzanne Selfors. Last time it was fun! Starts at 6. Read more →Dana Simpson
- I am interviewed by children December 1, 2017One child, anyway. A little girl named Katy, in Massachussetts. She wrote a letter to her local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, asking them to please pick up ‘Phoebe and Her Unicorn.’ Not only did they, but they let her ask me some interview questions. And she really nailed it. Read about it here! […]Dana Simpson
- The Big Sparkly Box of Unicorn Magic October 19, 2017This week has been Magic Storm week, but next week, the first four books are coming out as a boxed set! Read more →Dana Simpson
- Happy Magic Storm release day! October 17, 2017The new book, which is the first one written as a standalone graphic novel, is here! Read more →Dana Simpson
- The gay unicorn agenda July 26, 2017Did you catch the reveal of Max’s parents in this week’s strips? I’ve actually known all along that Max has lesbian parents. I’ve been waiting for years for it to come up organically. And it actually did in the forthcoming Phoebe and Her Unicorn In: The Magic Storm, which is due out in October. So […]Dana Simpson
- School Library Journal June 28, 2017SLJ’s Brigid Alverson interviewed me for a great article about LGBTQ representation in comics. I’m quoted in the article, but I said a lot more, and apparently it was interesting enough that she also published the whole interview. Read more →Dana Simpson
To ants, the behavior of other animals is as inscrutible as the nature of terrain. They don’t ask ‘why is this deer walking by’ or ‘why is this tree here’. Humans do not seem especially inscrutible; we walk through their territory like everything else. But then, they don’t see the connection between humans and sidewalks and houses.
Human beings ask deeper questions about where things around us came from. We seem to have a good idea of how to tell when we’ve arrived at a ‘complete picture’, a consistent account that explains everything, though we don’t really have any complete pictures yet. So yeah, I guess there could be stuff we’re incapable of understanding, but it’s also possible that there aren’t any such things, that we will forever increase our knowledge.
Notice though, that she referred to herself and not all of human(or furry)kind when asking the question if there is anything she cannot understand.
I think she is talking about the limitation inherent in one life, how though there may be nothing that cannot eventually be explained, there will always be some things that cannot be made explicable in just one lifetime, her lifetime.
It is also entirely possible that there are those things so incomprehensible, without any stepping stones to them, that we will always try to ignore them or make up our own explanations for why they are, and persistently ignore the obvious holes in our own theories. Because of our ignorance, we enforce our own ignorance.
Makes me think of this metaphor where an ant colony is a brain, and the ants are the neurons.
In the Orion’s Arm Universe Project, there are AIs that are this incomprehensibly beyond humans. And AIs incomprehensibly beyond those AIs. And so on for six levels.