People often ask me how I get the props that end up in the comic. To demonstrate that it's easier than you might think, I took the pictures for this strip using nothing but common household items. You too can create "Sid's secret room" in the comfort of your own home, using nothing but an eye-themed novelty clock, a miniature Turkish-English dictionary, a wax small stellated dodecahedron, and whatever else was in panel four. I forget the details.

Next week, I'll explain how to make your own "Stephen's secret room."

This one time*, David Hume said, "Whatever has the air of a paradox, and is contrary to the first and most unprejudic'd notions of mankind, is often greedily embrac'd by philosophers, as shewing the superiority of their science, which cou'd discover opinions so remote from vulgar conception. On the other hand, anything propos'd to us, which causes surprize and admiration, gives such a satisfaction to the mind, that it indulges itself in those agreeable emotions, and will never be perswaded that its pleasure is entirely without foundation. From these dispositions in philosophers and their disciples arises that mutual complaisance betwixt them; while the former furnish such plenty of strange and unaccountable opinions, and the latter so readily believe them. Of this mutual complaisance I cannot give a more evident instance than in the doctrine of infinite divisibility, with the examination of which I shall begin this subject of the ideas of space and time."

That may be the best introductory paragraph ever written. And its not even the introduction to The Treatise itself, its the introduction to the first section of the second part of the first book of The Treatise.

*1739 AD