Comic #3890: clock

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Here's the detailed text transcription from the comic:

A sociological discovery was made.
90% of elite engineers were observed disassembling and reassembling clocks as children.
Huh.

The media was notified.
NewsNet
Millions of children are underclocked!
CRISIS
‘It's not a crisis,’ says…

A new program was instituted.
The updated achievement test will contain a clock assembly portion. Teachers of students who fail will be punished.

After brief resistance, school employees got out of the way of progress.
We canceled art class to focus on… the details of clock repair.
It’s nice to hear that you finally care about your students.

As the phenomenon internationalized, xenophobia became the primary driver of education spending.
Japanese children are breaking and reassembling clocks 12% better than our children. How did we let this come to pass?

War is politics by other means. Once education is politics, it must have soldiers by other means.
I just don't see why a kindergarten needs 6 hours a day of clock homework.
Chinese missiles can reach Washington in 2.7 minutes, man. Connect the dots.

In time, more scientific details emerged.
It was reverse causality. Future engineers liked clocks as kids, not the other way around.

But, by then, the train had left the station.
The program is actually creating fewer engineers than before!

Science is dead. Engineering is static. The humanities are unknown. All is clock.

Going by our clock-based metric, everything is great!
According to the big clock, we clocked so much clock that we’re off the clock!
CLOCK YEAH!