What’s Sauce for the Goose, is Sauce for the Chimpanzee

[Note:  The following observation is merely illative, and should be skipped by the general reader.]

Awhile back I posted an Aristotelian exercise,  whose effectiveness  if any, depended upon the reader’s holding, or at least being able to entertain  for the sake of the argument, two views:

(1)  that a certain Singerian illation, of the familiar form “if A then B” (for the instantiation, vide infra), has some claim to being valid -- at all events, that it suffers from no internal vice of logical form, and might be entertained (or not) by a reasonable person, such as that Princeton philosopher;

(2) that many reasonable people (sociologically, probably most) would not, however, embrace the apodosis.

From this, something would follow -- at least for the logician;  though for extra-logical reasons, it must remain sine nomine. 

Yet this morning we find (like an ominous portent, at the bottom of our driveway) “B”  emblazoned and celebrated, in full color, taking up the whole of the front cover of the large-format New York Times Magazine.   From thence stares out at us, uniformly hirsute, but suitably suited and necktied, such a one as addressed the learnèd gentlemen in the Bericht für eine Akademie, purportedly from the witness-stand.   A sotie?  No;  an actual case, currently sub judice.   Whereby said simian brings an action at law  against parties named (or rather, it has been brought in his/its behalf, the plaintiff himitself  having not the wit to do it -- wherein lies the greatest potential for legal mischief).   And so cowed is The Times by the potential imprecations of the hyperzoöphiles, that it immediately reassures its readership, that no beasts of field or forest were harmed “or even used” in trumping-up that photograph.   They did not even dare photo-shop in an authentic hominoideal face, but dressed up a human (consent-forms duly signed, no doubt) in a costume.

Such antics are barely worth comment, as a society sues itself into insensibility.  And satire is beggared -- the very next development on the ground  will render any raillery O.B.E. 

~

Well;  I hope that has been sufficiently obscure (caviary to the Boeotians), for I am fond of my own skin.   For (comparatively translucent) comments on a work far more obscure, cf. our newly-updated essay on Finnegan’s Wake.

 ~

[Update 21 April 2015]  As noted above, satire and dystopian fantasy have a way of being overtaken as reality continues to devolve.   And now, we have sunk to this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/04/21/chimps-given-human-rights-by-u-s-court-for-the-first-time/

Augury

Birds,     stre eeea      K       ing

                                     across the sky .  .       .            .

Right to left, or left to right?

To the Romans,  that meant something.

But we (O tempora)  have lost the key.

To me, it means  one thing only:

God’s in his Heaven -- all’s right with the world !!!

Coraghessanian monostich

~

~         ~

warm as a featherbed  with a good wife and two dogs in it

~        ~

~

[From World’s End, by T.C. Boyle.  More, D.V., anon.

Note how the connotation of "good" is subtley altered in this context.]

The Justice Department gets tough

Yep, high time to crack down:

The Justice Department sent a memo to all its employees Friday warning them that eating bananas is a violation of department policy, whether off duty or on. The caution follows recent allegations that Food and Drug Administration agents had “make your own banana split parties” with agricultural laborers hired by local agribusiness cartels in Colombia.

Latina temptress

“Regardless of whether bananas are legal or tolerated in a particular jurisdiction,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. wrote, “consuming bananas or other forbidden fruit creates a greater demand for fruit trafficking victims and a consequent increase in the number of minor and adult persons trafficked into commercial fruit-picking slavery.”

-- http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-warns-employees-against-frequenting-prostitutes/2015/04/10/ca0a7424-df9f-11e4-a1b8-2ed88bc190d2_story.html…

An off-duty federal agent

Further details here:  Bananas, scourge of the Americas.

Report all violations to law-enforcement authorities immediately

And here:  Human trafficking for Dummies.

Acronym of the Day: UMPS

This is a term used in particular by supporters of the FN (Front National), a blend of UMP (the center-right party of the shady exhibitionist Sarkozy) and PS (the Parti Socialo of the ineffable Francois Hollande).  These have been the traditional adversaries in French national politics  for many years, passing the sceptre of office back and forth from time to time, to little effect as regards such key questions as national identity and unchecked immigration.  The point of the hippogriffic acronym is to suggest, in the immortal phrase of the Le-Pen-ish George Wallace back when he nursed Presidential aspirations, that there wasn’t a “dime’s worth of difference” between the two major parties.   An American analogue to the blend is Republicrat.

This business of never have a practical choice between the two major parties (Democrats & Republicans in USA, UMP and PS in France) is called in French l’altérnance.   In the run-up to the recent départementales,  there has been much disenchantment with the ruling Socialistes, and increasing acrimony between PS and UMP, so that FN chief Marine Le Pen wisecracked that her party might this time enjoy the role of “troisième larron” -- literally ‘third thief’, but meaning tertium gaudens.

But it was not to be:  the FN trailed third, though the PS received a well-deserved thwacking.

~

There is an unfortunate sociohistorical dynamic that repeats itself, whenever there is a swelling elephant in the room, which the major parties studiously ignore;  any allusion to this pachydermal presence  is quickly suppressed.   To ignore the tacit gag order is to risk social and even legal sanctions. In such cases, some percentage of those who wish to found a third party to deal with the problem head-on, are those who  in any case  have little to lose, being marginalized in one way or another -- which reinforces the marginalization of the party as a whole.

In the case of the FN, the policy statements and public presence of Marine herself  have been exemplary, far more adult than those of Taubira or DSK.   But the press can always dig up some Anhänger or other, with louche views, to highlight, and to tar the party with that brush.  Lately, one of the problem children has been Jean-Marie Le Pen himself, who enjoys (in his old age -- a sort of hobby) playing the provocateur.   Alarmed, there have been repeated calls for Marine to expel her father from the Front National -- the very party he founded.  (Uncomfortable echos of Goneril and Lear.)

Daddy ... Daddy ...    One of us has to die ....

[Update 9 April 2015]  So:  The daughter has now publically called her father out.  His riposte:

    Jean-MarieLe Pen: "je vais me défendre et probablement attaquer"

We shall see, then, whether the upshot prove to be parricide, or filicide.

(For our essay on magistricide (intellectual parricide), click here.)

[Update 11 April]  A WaPo blogger offers a chrestomathy of provocative one-lines by European “Euroskeptic” third-party figures:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/05/24/8-ridiculous-racist-things-actually-said-by-far-right-eu-politicians/

The quote from J-M L-P was a reprise of something he had said before, and thus not something to be dismissed as off-mike or off-the-cuff:

En juin 2014, Jean-Marie Le Pen évoque "Monseigneur Ebola", et explique que le virus, qui a aujourd'hui causé la mort de plus de 4000 personnes, pouvait "régler" la question de la surpopulation mondiale et le "risque de submersion de la France par l'immigration"

-- http://www.metronews.fr/info/jean-marie-le-pen-petain-patrick-bruel-roms-chambres-a-gaz-les-pires-derapages/mnjn!1VdenOMHmUVZU/

What to make of such ejaculations?

Consider the background.  In Europe, there is a heavy lid on public discussion of certain subjects.  It follows from sheer physics  that such jets of steam as manage to escape this iron confinement, will tend to be superheated.

Locked Room Mystery (redivivus)

The caterpillar   with shrivelled skin

in a tent of silk    was laid therein.

This crumpled thing,   shrunk like a shroud,

was laid in silk   white as a cloud.

The sons of men   stood round about

warding the worm   should not get out.

Three days they stood   with solemn face,

never eyes wavering   from that place.

Then did they open   that mute cocoon,

and stood amazed:   the worm was gone !

Then some believed   and some did doubt

how that the worm   could have got out.

Yet to the sky   in spiral rings

the new flew forth   on crystal wings.

~

[ For a tale of Paschal miracle:
Murphy Makes a Mitzvah ]

.

Taylor Swift nude pixxx!

Among the challenges for anyone attempting haute vulgarisation in the exact sciences, is the following phenomenon, epigrammatically summed-up by Stephen Hawking:

“Every equation  halves the number of readers.”

Now, blogspot.com helpfully supplies realtime stats;  so we shall test that proposition experimentally.

This post has been up for twenty minutes now, and … lessee … by the meter, it is presently enjoying roughly a million pageviews, based upon the subject-line alone.  (Were we to add an actual photograph, it would probably crash the server.)

Let us then add one equation, and re-sample:

2 + 2 = 4

[Update, twenty minutes later]  Well, even that proved too much for most:  viewership has plummeted by half.

(Rather a simple repellent, that;  like the storefronts that play classical music to shoo away the teenagers.)

Let’s try again, with something more substantial:

Einstein field equation

Whoa -- overkill!  That one knocked out all but a hardy hundred-thousand!

Okay, let’s dial it back:

Fresnel formula

Aww, c’mon, gang, that’s just trig!  But ninety-percent of Web-surfers to this page have just dropped out, leaving a bare thousand.

 

Probably just a statistical fluke.   Let’s try again:

Klein-Gordan

D-d-dang!  Hawking if anything put it too mildly.   Now there are only a sturdy hundred viewing this page.

 

Well, those formulae were all from physics (Hawking's field).   Let’s try again, with one from number-theory:

Riemann zeta function

Alright, end of experiment.   At this moment, there are only a bare ten readers viewing this page.

But these are the readers we want!

~

For many mathy goodies, click here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2015/01/miscellanea-mathematica-quater-renovata.html

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/11/topics-in-math-remise-jour.html

[Update]  Advice to onanists:
Do not indulge that private vice.  It can lead to insanity, and it grows hair on your palms.

A fable for Triduum

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/2011/04/murphy-takes-up-instrument.html