The Man Who Put Snoopy on the Moon

Cernan

NASA is reporting the death of Gene Cernan, the last human being to set foot on the moon… and the reason while Snoopy is still there. During his Apollo 17 mission, he and fellow astronaut Harrison Schmitt had the explorers’ prerogative to name the geographic features they discovered. And thus, there is a crater called Snoopy. Cernan also was involved in naming the Apollo

(I’ve talked to people in the space program, astronaut and otherwise, and given their views of things, I suspect that Cernan would’ve been glad to sacrifice his “last man” status, that he would rather that humans were still directly exploring that which lies beyond out atmosphere.)

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General
Something hatted, something hated

I’d been wondering about this for a while, so I decided to finally check the dates to see which was the inspiration and which the copy. Meanwhile, to bring us into the present moment…. artificial “intelligence”, how I hate you. Share the news!

General
On the four panel status

For more than the first three decades of Peanuts, the daily strip was always four panels… well, no, that’s not quite 100% true, as I think of the August 31, 1954 daily strip of Patty jumping rope, but even that had panel breaks at the quarter, half, and three-quarter marks …

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The 75th Anniversary

I sat down to write a nice, long something on the 75th anniversary of Peanuts, because it’s a 75th anniversary, because this is the official marking of Peanuts being a cultural presence after the end of the strip for half as long as the strip was being made, and because …