Excuses
A late student offers an absurd excuse, then argues it should be judged on its internal merits rather than on whether it's true.
Use this cartoon
Free for classrooms, worksheets, slides and other non-commercial use under CC BY-NC 4.0, with credit to Ben Orlin.
Cartoon by Ben Orlin, Math with Bad Drawings. https://cartoons.mathwithbaddrawings.com/2017-07-06-excuses/ (CC BY-NC 4.0)Transcript
Late student: "Sorry I'm late for class. I was brokering a peace deal in the Middle East."
Teacher: "That's a terrible excuse. It's obviously untrue."
Student: "Hey, you've got to judge an excuse on its own terms, not by its correspondence to an arbitrary set of external circumstances."
Teacher: "You mean 'reality'?"
Student: "Look, I'm not going to let your dogmatism sink this treaty."