The Uncle Baldwin Effect...

I'm taking the title from today's post from the character of the same name from the late Walt Kelly's comic strip, Pogo. Every so often, Porky Pine's uncle would show up in the swamp, make an infernal nuisance of himself and generally make a dog's breakfast of his nephew's life by exploiting their uncanny similarity. You could generally tell when the creep popped up when one of the dumber denizens of the strip complained to ol'Porky anout 'his' antics. They were distinguished by the fact Uncle Baldwin wore a greatcoat to cover a telltale bald spot on his rump. (His name was a pun, meaning 'bald one'.) Kelly's stated motivation in introducing the guy was that he wanted to have two people who looked exactly alike in order to avoid having to learn to draw a new character. Lynn seems over the last few years to have picked up the same habit. We all remember a time when John and Elly didn't look alike but nowadays the only way we have of telling the two apart is their hairstyles. Mike and Deanna are also starting to blend together, with only the hair color separating them. As other, wiser minds have pointed out, if this trend continued we'd only be able to tell Liz and Anthony apart based on the absence or presence of facial hair.