2011-09-14
Explanation
A child asks his father, an engineer, for help with a "spot the difference" puzzle. Rather than sitting down and working through it with his son, the father scans the puzzle into a computer and uses image processing software to automatically highlight the dissimilar areas in green, announcing "Puzzle complete." The child's mother then points out that fathers who are not engineers spend more time with their kids, and asks whether he wants to be a "good parent or an efficient parent." The father answers "Obviously a good parent." The final panel reveals: "And that was the last time he ever spoke to me."
The comic satirizes the engineer mindset of optimizing everything, even activities that are meant to be about the process rather than the result. The father completely misses the point of the puzzle -- it is supposed to be a bonding activity with his child, not a problem to be solved as quickly as possible. When confronted, he gives the "correct" answer (a good parent), but the punchline implies he took this to its logical extreme by never speaking to the child again, since he calculated that his interactions were making things worse. It is a joke about how over-literal, optimization-obsessed thinking can lead to exactly the wrong conclusion about human relationships.