Well, this strip establishes, more than ever before, what an outstanding mind the Professor is – even as a Professorian. And, yeah, part of is that he, quite apparently, discovered a simple and reliable way to reduce entropy. But the bigger part is, actually, that he’s able to admit to shortcomings in his earlier teachings, and straightforwardly so*. That’s clearly something some, or even many, of his fellows amongst the planet’s finest minds are utterly incapable of doing. Like them, the Professor could have gone down the convenient route of “What I taught you was right in principle, but…”, but he chose to be intellectually honest, instead. And doing that gets more difficult the more intellect there is, so don’t underestimate that achievement.
And don’t underestimate Mopey’s achievement, either. Immediately after the bittersweet farewell from her former (and future?) mentor, she steps purposefully into his footsteps again…by stalling the big revelation for another strip. The Professor couldn’t have done that better…in fact, he’d have likely done it the exact same way.
And, yeah, perfect order consists of numbers and tartans. >_> At least by way of visual metaphor. And at least within my limits of coming up with one. The small drawback involved with this particular metaphor is just that it works better in Scotland than outside of it, since Scotland is the only place where tartan is considered orderly fashion. =P
More on Thursday.
*Not just straightforwardly, but also in a cute bashful manner, but that’s not the core of the issue.