Am I the only one now imagining Obama and the Republican presidential candidates as the cast of Almost Famous in the "Tiny Dancer"-on-the-bus scene?
Well, you reprobates have always lacked imagination.
I agree. White students shouldn't go running to their assistant masters because they're afraid they might get their feelings hurt by someone offended by their Halloween costume. They should proudly wear their sexy bigot costumes in the name of strengthening the arguments of those who would oppose them.
3: Right, I'd be more with sympathetic with ogged's point of view expressed in the last sentence. if the mainstream discussion were not already so massively asymmetrical. But I do appreciate the fortitude he shows by so forthrightly showing himself to be a running dog lackey of the establishment.
And what if part of taking something on "in a full and clear and courageous way" might sometimes involve something more dramatic than "out arguing" the opposition on their ground. But I guess there are no examples of that kind of thing ever happening from history.
So hold us ogged, in your electronic arms.
How exactly does anyone envision 'out-arguing' a blackface costume? I mean, the proper response in the marketplace of ideas is for people of good will, including those in positions of power, to point out that it's offensive. Which is what the Yale administration did. Marketplace of ideas FTW!
The Yale fuss was about the AssMaster calling the administration's response inappropriate. Which was wrong, and wrongness on that point is a perfectly fine reason to say that the AssMaster shouldn't be representing Yale in that sort of official capacity.
I've lost track since the last thread, is AssMaster the official abbreviation? If so, was this done on purpose? It seems like it would have to have been.
7: Obama agrees with you, I think.
I think it's entirely appropriate for -- any institution, including universities, to say, "Don't walk around in blackface. It offends people. Don't wear a headdress and beat your chest if Native American students have said, you know, 'This hurts us. This bothers us." There's nothing wrong with that.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/obama-on-pc-a-recipe-for-dogmatism.html#
Marketplace of ideas FTW!
Except that it's more like the university as yet another segment of the service sector, with the students as customers who must be satisified (because the customer is always right).
10: I think as soon as you charge somebody tens of thousands of dollars, they're entitled to customer service.
Which was wrong, and wrongness on that point is a perfectly fine reason to say that the AssMaster shouldn't be representing Yale in that sort of official capacity.
Objectively fascist:
http://hlrecord.org/2015/11/fascism-at-yale/
Remember, wearing blackface is the natural order of things; saying that wearing blackface in 2015 makes you an enormous prick and an embarrassment is fascism; whining in New York Magazine about people calling you an enormous prick and an embarrassment is the kind of resolute boldness that will defeat ISIL.
Meanwhile, the overlap between states that don't want Syrian refugees and ones that won't accept Medicaid expansion is incredibly high. Accept the huddled masses yearning to be free? No risk too small, when it comes to being shot by brown people. Worried about losing your house when you get ovarian cancer at 53? No stand for freedom is too great!
13 has destroyed my will to live. The only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that the Carolina Panthers are 8-1, which means miracles can still happen.
snarkout would like America a lot more if he didn't have to live in Cleveland.
The only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that the Carolina Panthers are 8-1, which means miracles can still happen.
No, they aren't. Sorry, Walt.
This is real America, where fat people eat Polish boys and cops roll up and shoot little kids. Fuck off to Miami with LeBron if you can't hack it.
Plausibly, but I think eating an actual Polish boy is probably more of a German thing. It's a kielbasa with fries and BBQ sauce on it.
16: OH YES WE ARE. KEEP POUNDING.
How the hell did I not know about Polish boys?
It seems a weird oversight that the Wiki article references all sorts of other sandwiches, but not the famous Pittsburgh sandwich that's almost identical, except for the bread and BBQ sauce. I mean, kielbasa, fries, and cole slaw on a sandwich isn't exactly a common thing. Outside of Cleveburgh, that is.
I don't like that iconic Pittsburgh sandwich. It's really bland.
I was once in a meeting where a colleague who grew up around here said, of some allegedly revenue-generating plan, "We'd make more money selling polish boys on the street!" You can imagine the resolutely blank-faced reaction from everyone else in the room.
Is it really an iconic *Pittsburgh* sandwich or is it just a thing at Primanti Bros., which happens to be in Pittsburgh? Places all over Cleveland have Polish boys.
It's hard out there for a pimp with a very specialized market.
16: I'm as surprised as you that they have 8 wins, but it's really happened.
It's odd enough being in Chicago and seeing the word "Polish" used as a noun on menus. Usually it says "Maxwell's Polish" which sounds like a chess defense or something. "Polish Boy": have not seen that one yet.
24: I have no idea. But it doesn't work as well as the fries on a salad. Bread plus potatoes plus cabbage is just like concentrated bland.
20: Gosh. It turns out I was not aware of all internet traditions.
29: It's a meme for discerning hipsters like apo and myself. You wouldn't have heard of it.
To continue banging on about Yale: all the parties involved think someone else should not express themselves some way.
First speech, by Yale admin: We think that students shouldn't wear blackface, because it's offensive.
Second speech, by AssMaster: I think that Yale shouldn't dissuade students from wearing blackface, because it's stifling their freedoms.
Third speech, by pissed-off students: We think that AssMaster shouldn't oppose Yale's discouragement of blackface, because it implicitly privileges blackface as speech more worthy of protection than disapproval of blackface.
Everyone wants someone not to say something, so you can't decide between the parties on who's more about the free speech. Disapproval of other people's ideas isn't inimical to the marketplace of ideas, it's how the marketplace of ideas actually works.
Doesn't the cabbage have a tangy dressing, though? Also I seem to recall it works best with a meat like pastrami.
Usually it says "Maxwell's Polish" which sounds like a chess defense or something.
Or a shoe decoration.
32: The last time I had one, it wasn't as tangy as I remember it. I think I'm just too old for a sandwich of carbs on carbs.
I am ltrying to think of newspaper appropriate phrases to describe plasmids which convey antibiotic resistance but I can only come up with stuff for the wrong sort of paper:
The deadly doughnuts?
The polo-style pathogens?
The terminal torus?
Too bad none of these will get used.
"Maxwell's Polish" is a proprietary floor cleaner for reclaimed oak floors.
Maxwell's Polish is a tiny Central European person capable of violating the laws of thermodynamics.
Disapproval of other people's ideas isn't inimical to the marketplace of ideas
That's true. Calling for the removal of N and E Christakis from their positions at Silliman (not Yale generally) is getting closer. We could reasonably disagree about whether their emails were sufficient to justify them losing these positions, I think, and removing them, as the Yale admin has refused to do, seems closer to the territory of "inimical to the marketplace of ideas" than just criticizing the speech.
13: Meanwhile, the overlap between states that don't want Syrian refugees and ones that won't accept Medicaid expansion is incredibly high.
"AS YOUR GOVERNOR, I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM MASS SHOOTERS IF THEY ARE SYRIAN"
13, 40: But no worries, Trey Gowdy--acknowledged master of trunning and effective and professional Congressional hearing--is holding hearings on refugees today. I'm sure it is being conducted in such a manner that it is yet another win for the Marketplace of Ideas.
And speaking of that fucking asshole, one of his committee minions has been indiscreet in public again, and in a breathtakingly humiliating way.
"Now to me, that was us stepping in a trap because we should have known that she was going to go on and just stall, debate, filibuster, on these answers to make it go as long as possible, so we would look cruel," he continued.
And this is fabulous: "Next week we'll be going to Germany and to Italy to do some more research, on the Benghazi," he said. "So this thing is not over.
Please proceed, Congressman.
39: At what point is it reasonable for disagreement with someone's speech to justify calling for their removal from a position where they're in some sense stating policy for an organization?
That is, if the Christakis's speech were: "We think blackface is great, and support residents of our dorm in their choices to mock members of inferior races," (they didn't say this, and I'm not saying they did, or that they came close), I don't think we'd be arguing about whether it were appropriate to fire them. Jailing them would still be out of line, but I think we'd all be comfortable with Yale's likely decision to fire them, and wouldn't think of it as inimical to the marketplace of ideas at all, but again, as an expression of how the marketplace of ideas works. There are some ideas where when you express them, people disassociate themselves from you, including by firing you.
The actual idea Christakis expressed can, I think, fairly be summarized as "Yale's administrative disapproval of blackface is less worthy of expression than some student's blackface costume: it is better to chill the first expression to avoid chilling the second." And I think that there could be differences of opinion about that idea, but it's not clearly out of line to say that it's an idea that one might find Yale reasonable in disassociating itself from: Yale hasn't chosen to do so by firing the Christakis', but advocating that they do so doesn't strike me as out of line at all.
31 is a very inaccurate description of what happened, but if it were accurate it would sure make those protestors look sensible!
43 last is also totally inaccurate!
So I'm a non-white person whose initial reaction to the Yale goings-on was a genuine concern about free speech consequences (not the freedom to wear blackface, but the freedom to weigh in one part of a racially-tinged discussion without facing calls for firing) and who felt that much of the student reaction was self-infantilizing... but I've had some recent conversations about race with white people, and I have to say that the experience of watching a liberal white person casually dismiss some aspect of lived minority experience is completely and utterly MADDENING and INFURIATING, even if it is relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things.
"Yale's administrative disapproval of blackface is less worthy of expression than some student's blackface costume: it is better to chill the first expression to avoid chilling the second.
s/b
"A culture in which offensive speech is policed with institutional nudges is less worthy than one in which it is policed by individuals reacting to that speech."
That might be wrong, but it's different.
To be clear, they said nothing about the relative value of encouraging/discouraging "blackface" (putting aside the fact that "blackface" wasn't really at issue). The only thing they did was to raise the question of whether student or administrator speech was the right vehicle for handling those issues on a college campus, and they did so in about the most innocuous way possible. The threat to "speech" broadly defined is that people are calling for them to lose their jobs as college house administrators on the basis of participating (again about as innocuously as possible) in a emotionally charged debate; for the students, this wasn't OK because apparently even sending that email was a violation of the "safe space" that's purportedly Yale college housing. That's the concern.
Or, 47 says it better. And 46 clearly is true and drives a lot of the heat around these issues on all sides.
I won't comment more on this, but I think it's a stretch to say that E Christakis was stating policy for an organization.
"I don't think we'd be arguing"-- as long as we're talking about the Silliman position not the employment at Yale generally this is probably right, but it depends on the details of the case.
Also 45 seems right, so I've completed the trifecta of disagreeing with 43.
To be clear, they said nothing about the relative value of encouraging/discouraging "blackface" (putting aside the fact that "blackface" wasn't really at issue).
But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren't a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don't know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable.
Here's a picture of Tiana, for reference.
I still think we aren't sufficiently leveraging the time value of offensiveness in the marketplace of ideas. Photos of today's uber yalie undergrads in offensive costumes if obtained now and set aside to gather interest in an ideas account will appreciate steadily and when they've matured can be used to destroy the ambitions of loathsome people. Thus the only real social value yale can provide is as a safe space for bigots with really poor judgment.
Are non-black 8 year old Tianas generally wearing blackface? The ones who came trick or treating at my house weren't.
Maxwell's Polish is a tiny Central European person capable of violating the laws of thermodynamics.
Is he the little guy that opens and closes the screen door on the submarine?
24: Nowadays you can get Primanti-style sandwiches lots of places (including Cleveland; I had one in a bar in the Flats 16 years ago on my way home from Tiger Stadium). But the point remains that it's the sandwich style most associated with the city (to AB's eternal annoyance), and it's very like a Polish boy. Certainly more like it than a Chicago-style hot dog, which Wiki suggests as related.
Spackerman hilariously referred to Primanti's as a deli and complained that the corned beef sandwich wasn't to his liking, an impressive exercise in point-missing.
31 is a reasonable summary, even if we might quibble.
43 last isn't right.
The key problem with 43.last is that it characterizes the original memo in terms of its most obviously correct assertion. (Blackface is bad.) The overall validity of that memo should, rather, be judged according to its weakest point, to wit: Its assertion that it is appropriate for some Yale administrators to recommend that students give a thought to other people when choosing a Halloween costume.
Sure, Christakis is obviously wrong on the merits on that point. But it's unfair to characterize Christakis as tolerant of blackface. We don't know exactly how transgressive she's willing to let people be.
51: If blackface was such a big issue at Yale, why are the students getting sucked into a meta-debate about the best way to consider these issues? Seems like addressing this head-on is much more of a political winner.
Dressing up as Tiana is exactly the sort of stupid landmine that illustrates the limitations of liberal piety about race. If your little white daughter wants to dress up as Tiana, is it advancing or retarding racial progress to tell her that's completely off-limits?
The Christakis case is a bad example, because of the complications of them being den mothers or whatever the hell they are. In that position, if you lose the support of your charges, it could be reasonable to be removed without implicating free speech at all.
I've stayed away from this but here goes: What is wrong with dressing up as Tiana? Is wearing a green dress considered a form of cultural appropriation? Or is this being used as shorthand with putting on blackface?
What is wrong with dressing up as Tiana?
Black girls finally got their own Disney Princess, so white girls should just step back.
I haven't been following the Yale thing very closely since the initial reports.
WRT the Missouri protests, I've been much more impressed by the students than by their online cheering section. With the "We need some muscle over here" gaff, they quickly realized that this was a tactical misstep and adjusted course, because not being veteran activists they were learning on the job. In contrast, over a week after it happened, comment sections* were still full of people high fiving each other over the incident and sneering at anyone suggesting that physically ejecting a journalist from a public place might not be such a great idea. The students had a lot more sense than their fans.
From looking at all the adolescent swaggering and trash talking that was going on at places like CT and LGM during the protests, it seems like there are a lot of middle aged academics who need to renew their subscriptions to Internet Tough Guy Magazine.
*Not so much, as far as I remember.
Look, not to go there, but if they were militant (but respectful) atheists, and religious students demanded that they be fired as house masters because they didn't feel that they were welcoming enough to their religious convictions in light of people mocking thise convictions, would we even be having this conversation? Of course not. How about pro-Palestinian intellectuals in a house with Jewish or Israeli students. Assuming that part of their job is not just to be maximally supportive counsellors but to foster discussion of issues in a university-appropriate way (and I think that this is part of the job description) they are going to have to be able to say reasonable things even if sometimes those reasonable things are wrong.
60 I did not know that Black Disney Princesses are like the Highlander.
Also, childhood is so fraught.
Peep's joking, Barry. Other than that Tiana is sort of out-of-date right now and this was another let-a-thousand-Elsas-bloom Halloween, there's nothing at all wrong with girls (or boys, what the hell) of any background choosing to go as her for Halloween, though blackface would be unacceptable. I had a black Cinderella and a black Catwoman (who's never seen Eartha Kitt) and it was no big deal, nor were the white Doc McStuffins or Latina Little Mermaids we saw. The only actual race-related trend I noticed in costumes this year was zero kids of color as cops.
64: My impression was that minions were huge this year.
How about pro-Palestinian intellectuals in a house with Jewish or Israeli students.
If their immediate reaction to an email from the Yale administration politely requesting, based on previous experience, that demonstrators consider whether their signs are being offensive and anti-Semitic was to send out an email talking about a more innocent time, wondering whether the spirit of campus experimentation was being crushed, and telling Jews that instead of being offended they should walk away from anti-Semites or confront them themselves, I should fucking hope that people would question whether they should be in charge of the residential life of their undergraduates. Further, in that instance, I bet a lot of people would better understand why an email about free speech is aces in many contexts but insulting as a response to the initial email.
65: Also very true here! And the cutest one I saw was black, though not my child. Sometime about two puffs in her hair plus the little round glasses and overalls plus her giant grin was just adorable.
And that's imagining, I dunno, protestors at a Netanyahu speech, which strikes me as a more defensible moment for provocation than a fucking Halloween party.
Do what thou wilt, but no blackface, shall be the whole of the Law.
The AssMasters (heh) were being maddeningly tone deaf in their insistence on having their Teachable Moment when the students clearly weren't buying it. Continued tone deafness of that kind could be convincing evidence that they just weren't any good at the job, and should be replaced.
Have they been consistently bad or was this the first time something like this happened? I'm not sure calling for firing as a go to first remedy is such a great thing.
Have they been consistently bad or was this the first time something like this happened? I'm not sure calling for firing as a go to first remedy is such a great thing.
In 2012 (at Harvard, not Yale), their reaction when Harvard's administrators got mad about a bunch of anti-Semitic flyers parodying Harvard's finals clubs ("no fucking Jews!") was to write an op-ed for Time about free speech on campus and complain about how the administration didn't understand satire:
After the flyer incident, the administration issued a statement deploring the use of the "deeply disturbing" language and reminding the community that the invitations did not "demonstrate the level of thoughtfulness and respect we expect at Harvard when engaging difficult issues within our community." Residential staff were enlisted to ferret out the identity of the satirists and to reach out to students who might have been hurt or offended by the crude statements.... Astoundingly, there was no public recognition from the university administration that the authors of the fake invitation might have been attempting a stinging rebuke to the very institutional bigotry and sexism that they were taken to task for promoting - a satirical strategy as old as the ancient Greeks and found in virtually every Onion headline on serious topics ranging from child rape to the holocaust. But this is the problem of living in a free-speech surveillance state: otherwise sensible people tie themselves in knots trying to define which speech is acceptable and which is not.
It is unclear to me, and I don't really care enough to find out, whether Harvard actually punished the authors of said flyers in any way, or just called them assholes in administrator-speak (which is rich, coming from Harvard, but hey).
Were there really Ass Masters (plural) or one Master and one Ass Master?
64: Thanks for clarifying, Thorn! 60 is a comment by a silly middle-aged white guy with no actual knowledge!
You linked the thing in 71 before -- you seriously think that publishing that article is a firing offense? That for real gives me free expression chills.
To 66, given current campus trends we will likely soon have a lot of opportunities to test the hypothetical in real life. Is a UCLA residential life administrator who sends an email raising light but reasonable opposition to either the pro-Israel speech code being debated by the UC Regents or an email fromthe Uc administration suggesting that Palestinian protestors considder whether they are giving offense unfit to serve? Of course not. Clearly if the residential administrator actually mostreats students, that's a fireable offense -- merely taking reasonable positinsnon controversial issues, even if they're erong positions, can't possibly be (unless the job has some implicit "don't speak on anything controversial to maximally make all your students feel maximally comfortable, which it doesn't and shouldn't).
It's like the Sith. One master and one Ass Master.
75.1: What the fuck are you talking about? Has the lack of birthday cake maddened you? No, of course I don't think publishing that article is a fireable offense; I was responding to the question posed in 70 about whether this was a consistent pattern of behavior. The Christakises are, to their general credit, resolutely opposed to official criticism of offensive speech. In fact, I don't think this is the best quality to have in a camp counsellor, but I do think it's admirable in general and the more admirable because they don't seem to tack their sails based on their feelings about the speech.
75.2: I think maybe I've come to understand part of the difference in opinion here -- I view being the master of Silliman College as a sort of sinecure, a special thing that some faculty members get to do that is basically an honor above and beyond their faculty appointment. And as part of the function the Master and AssMaster perform, I do think fostering an atmosphere of inclusion and civility -- which generally I think is bullshit code for "shutting up people I don't like" -- is a critical quality to have in such a person. People should always should be wary of encouraging the heckler's veto, but if the minority students of Silliman College genuinely feel that they are not being heard by the Christakises, that would to me disqualify them from such a position. Yale seems to have come to the opposite conclusion, which is legitimately fine with me; they understand the nuances of the position a lot better than I do as a non-Yalie (and also who is calling for their dismissal, what the other residents of the college who may be less vocal feel, etc.). But the idea that calling for them to be replaced at Silliman is the first step toward exiling them until they adopt Mao Zedong Thought? I think that's ridiculous. The kids are welcome to call for them to be shitcanned in that role, and Yale is welcome to say no.
79.last is meant to read "this racist professor rightfully kept his job...".
79 -- I meant, fireable from their job as residential life people/ass masters/whatever we're calling it. 75.2 explains your view more. I certainly think the protestors have the right to protest*, but the goals of a protest can ultimately threaten free expression, even if people have an expressive right to do the protest, and to the extent that the protestors were calling for the Cs to be removed from their job because of an (unquestionably civil, even if likely misguided) email, because the sending of the email makes the students feel not "safe," that strikes me as a threat to free expression, and one that's likely to be ultimately used much more for evil ends than good ones.
Ultimate troll question: Can Stephen Salaita ever serve as a residential life advisor?
*in a moral sense, really; Yale is a private college and with some limits can basically structure its free speech/protest space/what ass masters can say rules however it wants.
Can Stephen Salaita ever serve as a residential life advisor?
Only if Phyllis Wise is co-advisor, to balance things out.
81 - I thought of Salaita as an example. If Jewish or Israeli students felt that he was being dismissive of legitimate concerns of theirs and could point to behavior that backed that up*, then I think I'd say no on Salaita**. Similarly Daniel Dennett and religious students, say. In general, I think the qualities that go with being a committed proponent of a particular viewpoint probably don't match up very well with the qualities that, as I understand it, make a good AssMaster.
* I am fully aware that in practice, this would lead to endless concern trolling.
** I would also wonder what the hell a) Yale and b) Salaita were thinking by putting him in that position.
I am again disappointed that the college involved is called Silliman. Too obvious.
83.1 -- yeah, then we're in a fairly specific question about the role of these kinds of people in the residential life of a college, and to some extent about the relative role of "safe spaces," on college campuses. I do think that there should be some such spaces! Probably, the college's mental health counselor staff should not go around taking controversial positions in semi-public emails. BUT there is also part of university life, including, importantly, residential life, that is and should be about encouraging people to (civilly) discuss things with people with whom they disagree, and where people probably need to toughen up about merely having to encounter a disagreeable idea. It's the insistent demand for (what looks like) the substantial widening of the safe space at the expense of the non-safe space that I find troubling.
Though, as I said when this came up before, you can't really fault the students because for years the University has been telling them that they are customers and that college will be a fun, safe, comfortable, customer-driven experience, and so it's legitimate to get mad when it's not. But, it does seem like something real is being lost.
The Ass Master should insist on a flared base to keep anything real from being lost.
I think Salaita would be an obvious no for that kind of role. Dawkins is an easy no too, though more because he's an asshole and a sexist than for outspoken atheism. Don't have a clear opinion on Dennet. My vague impression was that he was less of an asshole than the other three horsemen, and might be fine. Obviously you'd need to have a serious talk to make sure he was going to treat religious student with respect.
The Christakises
Every time I read this I mentally pronounce it The Chrissakes
84 - I don't understand why you could possibly be disappointed, it is magnificent. I know if there was position called "Silliman AssMaster" I would absolutely fight like hell to get it.
Also I'm not clear on why analogous cases are being treated as hypothetical here: the problem isn't that minority students felt that the Christakises might be uninterested or dismissive of their concerns, or that they would provide cover or support for racist shit. It's that they openly expressed disinterest in the concerns of the minority students (especially in their response to the initial criticism when they just doubled down on explaining that free speech was valuable in the liberal arts traditions why don't you understand my reasoned position etc.), and that they published (as administrators) an article opposing any official expressions of condemnation for blackface. That's not hypothetical!
doubled down on explaining that free speech was valuable in the liberal arts traditions why don't you understand my reasoned position etc.), and that they published (as administrators) an article opposing any official expressions of condemnation for blackface
I don't think that's an accurate description of what happened, but, even if it was, those are both instances of continuing a, broadly speaking, academic debate, not actually being unsupportive or unhelpful towards any individual student's residential life concerns. E.g., there's no allegation that they systematically ignored complaints of harassment of black students, etc.
And the Dawkins example is probably one where no one sane would want him in that role (I suspect he would be willing to point out why that would be an awkward fit). But the problem isn't that the Christakises are strong everyone-says-whatever-no-condemnations people: like the article snarkout linked to this was something people knew about them. It's what they said in this particular case.
So it's not like putting Dawkins in that role, it's putting Dawkins in that role and then having Dawkins send out a public email saying that religious beliefs and traditions get inordinate respect in society and we should challenge them more often and if they are bothered or offended by what people who aren't members of their religion do in response to their religious practices they're on their own and should deal with it themselves explicitly in response to an email from the administration reminding everyone that the Ramadan fast is this month and asking non-Muslim students to please think twice before throwing chicken wings at people observing it.
It's only an academic debate in some contexts - you can't just phrase something in a high minded tone in any old context and in response to anything at all and then complain if people don't want to sit down and reason together. And there are plenty of contexts - like this one - where people are absolutely going to respond badly to people pretending that they can.
The list of federal judges on the no go list for this glorified RA job is instantly, hilariously long.
This thread is making me like the analogy ban all the more.
The analogy ban is to Unfogged as theWar Powers Resolution is to the United States.
So is the slaw on a Polish boy vinegary or creamy? Because the latter is more in the BBQ tradition, but would IMO go worse with fries.
More or less pwned by 95, but the analogy ban is like the Pirates' Code - not really a law, but more like guidelines.
The analogy ban is to Unfogged as the Prime Directive is to Star Trek.
Do you know who first introduced the analogy ban? Adolf Hitler.
If not Hitler, then someone like him.
97: so the analogy ban is like STOP signs in Boston?
I think the failure of the analogy ban has become undeniable. We need to replace it - with an analogy REQUIREMENT!
You know, like the story where a parent catches a kid smoking and forces them to smoke the whole pack and then has to call the hospital because that could absolutely kill someone and probably ends up arrested or something.
Maxwell's Polish is surely how he keeps his silver hammer so shiny?
The analogy ban has ruined all other websites for me. Oh, and Plato. The cave analogy must be one of the worst analogies ever. A sort of platonic ideal of bad analogies.
The people meeting in counsel may judge, but no one is to receive more than a hundred blows.
"After a while the courts perhaps discover that the analogy ban cannot be upheld to the letter. Hence they begin redefining the concept 'analogy' by stating that certain analogies are not analogies at all but 'extensions' that are not covered by the ban."
104: Which is ironic, because Plato's Cave really is the best explanation for the analogy ban -- analogies are the shadows on the wall, and only Unfogged commenters are willing to look into the light.
108: I would understand exactly what you meant, had I ever managed to get past the incredibly contrived setup involving shackled prisoners, a fire, a walkway, puppets (?) strange noises etc etc.
It does make me wonder whether the "worst" analogies are ones that are tantilisingly similar to the actual events, with just enough difference to mislead, or completely Plato-style bonkers, all "imagine for a moment that the world is a giant website and that you and I are individual letters appearing on the screen. In this example, the HTML code represents the unconscious mind,"
And now I'm wondering whether "the economy is exactly like a household budget" fits into the first category or the second.
110: The former is the logic behind the analogy ban, I believe, while the latter reminds me of this (banned, but for other reasons) xkcd.
