This strip always amused us as it was the first strip the newspaper ever ran a footnote with. A footnote for what, you may ask? To explain what temporal physics was. In fact, it so baffled the staff (with the apparent exception of the Editor-in-Chief) that the footnote contained a web site that readers could visit to read up more on the subject. Professor Hobo, educating young minds one scientific field at a time.

If Rick is supposed to be so dumb (and he isn’t just supposed to be, he really is), then why does he instantly know what a temporal physics lab is when real college students do not? Was Rick just pretending he knew? Is he really not that dumb? Or was this whole incident a comment on Murray State’s students?