Nov. 13, 2016 - Prophecy - page 29

Transcript

50 comments

Jan

I've always pondered what a traffic accident in Medieval times looked like...

Jo Li KMC • 11/13/2016

Nothing like a 3-horse pile-up to bring traffic to a crawl...

Kael Duranus • 11/13/2016

Lol... Nothing like a little social commentary there. Someone better call Elon Musk-ox, and let him know one of his teamsterless wagons malfunctioned...

OmegaWolf • 11/13/2016

At this rate they'll be home after dinner.

drivernjax • 11/13/2016 • edited

@Jan Me, too. I guess now we all know. LOL.

@Joseph Collins I guess something NEVER change. LOL.

@OmegaWolf Nah. This is their opportunity to escape. Just need to convince the little guy to spit a little fire at their ropes.

drivernjax • 11/13/2016

I'm trying to read the banner in the last panel. All I can get is "Smart Horse (something) Caravan". It kind of looks like Autonomous but I know that can't be right.

Lord Chaos • 11/13/2016

Darned modern technology.

AlyxVixen • 11/13/2016

@drivernjax It's a baby dragon, it might not have the control to spit a little fire. More like nothing or FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

Jan • 11/13/2016

@Antarian_knight Ahahahaha "Elon Musk-ox" XD Man, wish I'd thought of that.

@drivernjax I've fixed the last panel to be (hopefully) more readable now. "Smart Horse Autonomous Caravan".

Brighttail • 11/13/2016

Is that the bad fortune fortune teller, Kiela there? She is finally showing her hair if so!

Self driving horses will never be a thing.

OmegaWolf • 11/13/2016

@Brighttail Don't think so since Kiela is white furred while that one has grey.

Jan • 11/13/2016

@Brighttail That's a random snow leopard gal, Kiela is off in the distance somewhere. (She'll be back soon. Very soon.)

Kangaar Foxfire • 11/13/2016

Can't recall a prior example of traffic accidents in medieval times or thereabouts. Closest I can recall was in two of the Asterix books where a teenager in a chariot overtook an old couple who remarked "Keep an eye on your oxen; accidents happen so quickly" and one where in a restaurant overlooking a roadway, a waiter remarked "With luck you'll see some accidents while you eat."

@Jan, those actors playing the parts of the drafthorses are very talented at looking dazed. Are they paid to perform nude for U-tube, or is that done with CGI during edit?

PakeshDe • 11/13/2016

You now owe.. 500 more potatoes!

Yes i know bad commercial is bad but still.. Nicely done and adoreable cartoon as always. I have to ask though, maybe the accident was caused by those amazing skunk cabbages we used to see in the comic? ;)

gaia bless pakesh_De Snoofy old burr

Jan • 11/13/2016

@Kangaar The 9t9 version of S&S doesn't have horses or any other creatures. It's all pretend. Like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and its invisible horses.

ndrvr • 11/13/2016

And some goofy explanations for the insurance salesman, like:

"I had one eye on a parked car, another on approaching lorries, and another on the woman behind."

Monks Hand Games • 11/13/2016

Whatever makes horses ass over teakettle, that's what happened

S4TY4 • 11/13/2016

"Smart Horse Autonomus Caravan"...doesn't look so smart right now LOL

MishaFox • 11/13/2016

Well the horses can be too smart if this happened!

Silvador • 11/13/2016

Oh god I'm dying! This is epicly hilarious. XD

Sonic Wolfe • 11/13/2016

@Jan I would figure horses actually drive themselves already. In fact caravans rarely needed steering when they are on the road. Forward (D) is the default setting and they don't have a R gear. So horses are like the Volvos with cruse control that can stay in the lane and stop automatically I guess.

Shockwave07 • 11/13/2016

I wonder what north vale is like... Hopefully nothing like Helgen...

@Jan: Insert obligatory sparrow and coconut quote here

MishaFox • 11/13/2016

My Grandfather used to deliver milk in a horse drawn wagon and the horse knew all the stops. He didn't have to do anything but let the horse go where it was needed.

Bruce Bergman • 11/13/2016

Actually, smart horses know their way home - the really brainy ones could open and close the gates on the way. They used to do that in the Wild West, the barkeep would pour the cowboy into the saddle, untie the horse from the hitching post, and give him a little slap on the rump.

By the time they got home an hour or three later the cowboy was usually starting to sober up enough to put the horse in his stall and feed him before going in to collapse.

David Argall • 11/13/2016

While I have run into no serious estimates, traffic deaths and accidents involving horses were both common and frequent. While we deplore auto accident rates, the horse rate was likely way higher. [the drunk rider had a better chance of getting home, but the horse could get startled and panicked by just about anything, not to mention that a lot of riders were "teenagers" in spirit and reckless driving was a real problem then too. Literary cases include A Tale of Two Cities, and David Copperfield. At the movies, a runaway horse was a cliche. such writers were more concerned with drama than with reality of course, but a good portion of their audience was familiar with horses and the dangers they represented. The hero can be shown impossibly overcoming danger, but the danger must be considered real.

Now the traffic jam then and now is a city event.  There isn't enough traffic for a rural accident to cause much of a delay.

soriac • 11/13/2016

Naah, just some minor bugs in the horses' OS (Operating System? Modus Operandi...), but soon they are eliminated and the autonomous driving system would be fully functional. reaaaalllyyy, any time now...

Jan • 11/13/2016

@soriac Imagine filing the bug report:

Bug #38144: Pathfinding module mistakes opposite lane's turn-signal carrot as own.

Symptoms: Horse changes velocity vector to intersect turn-signal carrot, followed by sudden deceleration of horse. Caravan in tow unable to brake in time and makes impact against horse posterior at speed.

Expected behavior: Horse continues forward if vector of turn signal carrot does not intersect its own forward vector. Horse slows down if vector of turn signal carrot does intersect its own forward vector.

Importance: High. Possible recall of all horses affected, firmware 1.11.2a and below.

Proposed fix: Patch , , and dependencies. ETA 3-6 months.

soriac • 11/13/2016

@Jan: the patch just adds some blinkers over their eyes, I wonder if that's enough.. I would suggest as an interim solution to paint the carrots a dark blue on the outside to calibrate the sensory input :-) I would also highly recommend the following two steps: a) an immediate conference to discuss the full extend of this little problem and b) having a press conference telling this was just a minor glitch

RCRuskin • 11/13/2016

'Autonomous caravan' - Does this mean there is an automaton in place of the driver/drover?

Or are the horses on their own?

Piedunk • 11/13/2016

That's what you get for relying on mechanical horsepower. shakes head

Katnik • 11/13/2016

Long on horsepower but short on horse sense, I'll do my own driving, thank you. At least nobody's nose wound up in a bad place. @ David Argall, I read a statistic somewhere that mile for mile, riding a horse was about as dangerous as riding a motorcycle. @Kangaar Foxfire, a couple of wrecks in S&S, the runaway catapult and that potato wagon that was broadsided by the chicken .

Katnik • 11/13/2016

P.S. Just noticed the screeching brakes on the Sheriff's horse. wonder when ol' Dobbin last had a good tuneup.

TheSkulker • 11/14/2016

Yes, that was one of the first things I noticed. Screeching brakes on a horse and wagon! LOL!

Jan • 11/14/2016

@Katnik @TheSkulker Them horseshoes gettin' rusty! XD

jprime • 11/14/2016

That horse on the left might've gotten it the worst; his tongue's out.

Silverwolf • 11/14/2016

Another failed LHC (Large Horse Collider) experiment. They need to get them up to relativistic speeds, like 0.9C, before you get results!

Arc Nova • 11/15/2016

I'll never go to an airport and look at the words "Smarte Carte" the same way ever again.

WB101 • 11/15/2016

Uh-oh. Classic Wind 10 OS error... driver not found. Must upgrade carrot and/or horse-brain…

Doing 'Muldoon' impersonation... I told them! How many times? They needed locking mechanisms on the horses' routing controllers! Insert loud crash and a T-Rex roaring in the distance here.

Or I could just go with... I thought they would have hardcoded that LEFT turn at Albuquerque by now. O_o

ndrvr • 11/16/2016

....who ordered a "low rider" pizza with veggi toppings...???

Zefiro • 11/16/2016

The dragon is just adorable :) And I'm not biased in any possibly way cough (though I have to admit in the last strip I wondered whether he was tied up as well)

Katnik • 11/17/2016

The horse's legs are still waving, so their motors are still running - somebody should shut them off before they spill fuel and catch fire. Or are they electric ? They look like straight gasoline horses to me.

Mike • 11/18/2016

It was probably the possessed potatoes, when will they learn that you have to exorcise every last one?? I vote for fewer demonic vegetables (I'm looking at you Brussel sprouts...) and for more newd vixens, tied up or not...

LLNV

Vulpis • 11/19/2016

@Silverwolf Now there's a thought to make the Sheriff pull his mane out as badly as our star couple..a S&S-world version of Wolf running around..

Guesticus • 11/20/2016

Was the Shire Reeve asleep at the reins that he failed to notice the traffic up ahead until he almost parked his horse in a barrel? o_O

Dragon doesn't need to use his flame thrower attachment when he has claws and teeth for stealthy (and less chance of burnt fur) escapes

ScottyTheMan • 11/21/2016

Now that's just hilarious, rofl.

Pastangum • 11/24/2016

I guess it'd be what Howard Tayler would call 'low hanging fruit' to say that the Smart Horse, erm, crashed .

Katnik • 11/24/2016

I know they're just "seeing stars", but the grey horse sure looks like it has a "cutie mark".

Kirstyen Wolfess • 11/24/2016

And it's going to take how long for Vale Valley Traffic Control and whichever towing company Vale Valley Towing, or North Vale Towing) to show up? =P

2bit marten • 11/25/2016

@Jan I think it might have been a pseudo hardware error. Floating-point operations can go south if there is a sag in the power supply feeding the the regulator for the RAM. This in turn can cause signal jitter and offset the parity count leading to a bus crash. And we all know what happens when the halt signal comes in too late; buffer over-run! Solution: Check the buffer status before execution and include refresh points in the path. (Yes, I know my jokes are corny)

jprime • 11/25/2016

@Katnik If that's true, it looks like his special talent is communism.

Crimson Fox • 01/14/2017

Somebody ran a red - uh...traffic rune?

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