Well, we’ve just got back to New York, and should be resuming normal operations shortly.
In the preceding post I neglected to mention the award given to the second-place winner: it was a copy of an amusing little book called Plato And A Platypus Walk Into A Bar…, in which the authors, Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, introduce readers to basic philosophical ideas by way of jokes. Those with any familiarity with the subject won’t be learning anything new, but it’s an entertaining, breezy read, and the jokes are good. I offer a couple of examples below.
To introduce Zeno’s paradox:
Salesman: “Ma’am, this vacuum cleaner will cut your work in half.”
Customer: “Terrific! Give me two of them.”
To illustrate the fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc:
An older Jewish gentleman marries a younger lady, and they are very much in love. However, no matter what the husband does sexually, the woman never achieves orgasm. Since a Jewish wife is entitled to sexual pleasure, they decide to ask the rabbi.
The rabbi listens to their story, strokes his beard, and makes the following suggestion.” Hire a strapping young man. While the two of you are making love, have the young man wave a towel over you. That will help the wife fantasize and should bring on an orgasm.”
They go home and follow the rabbi’s advice. They hire a handsome young man and he waves a towel over them as they make love. But it doesn’t help and she is still unsatisfied. Perplexed, they go back to the rabbi.
“Okay”, says the rabbi, “let’s try it reversed. Have the young man make love to your wife and you wave the towel over them.”
Once again, they follow the rabbi’s advice. The young man gets into bed with the wife and the husband waves the towel. The young man gets to work with great enthusiasm and the wife soon has an enormous, room-shaking, screaming orgasm.
The husband smiles, looks at the young man and says to him triumphantly, “You see, schmuck?! THAT’S the way to wave a towel!”
The topic of essential vs. accidental properties is broached like this (one of my favorites):
Abe: I got a riddle for you, Sol. What’s green, hangs on the wall, and whistles?
Sol: I give up.
Abe: A herring!
Sol: But a herring isn’t green.
Abe: So you can paint it green.
Sol: But a herring doesn’t hang on the wall.
Abe: Put a nail through it, it hangs on the wall.
Sol: But a herring doesn’t whistle!
Abe: So? It doesn’t whistle.
Even Zen is brought into play, with the following typical example:
If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
Know what that is? It’s an ice-cream koan.
7 Comments
“It’s an ice-cream koan.”
An ice cream groan, more like. Koan doesn’t even rhyme with cone!
Yes, I’m a buzzkill. Welcome back to New York. You enjoying cooler weather up there? It’s nice and cold here in Virginia. We just had our first morning frost.
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
Well, you had to be there.
It’s lovely here in New York at the moment. My favorite time of the year.
How’s that knee?
That sounds like an awesome book.
Wish I could be in New York to enjoy the weather (and New York). It’s not bad in Seoul, but it’s still Seoul: polluted, crowded, dirty. At least in my neighborhood.
P.S. I didn’t even get the ice cream koan joke until Kevin pointed out that it was supposed to rhyme with cone. Hmm.
Malcolm,
The knee isn’t 100% better, but it’s a lot better than it used to be. I’m still worried about how it holds up during long-distance walks; a ten-miler over a week ago led to a bit of discomfort. I’ve also had small problems lately while carrying heavy loads (80-pound bags of concrete, lumber, ripped-out appliances, etc.).
Charles,
If only you lived in the district close to Olympic Park. Much nicer there, though Songpa-gu in general isn’t much to write home about.
As for the joke… it’d work just fine fine if “groan” were pronounced “grow-ahn.”
Kevin
Okay, okay!! It’s a crappy joke. The book is a big bestseller anyway, I’ll have you know.
My own knees are totally screwed. 30+ years of Hung Gar, a reconstructed ACL, and just generally being a 52-year-old who weighs well over 200 pounds has not been kind to a piece of engineering that was never correctly adapted to walking upright in the first place.
So much for “intelligent design”…
I’m waiting for geneticists to come along and reconfigure the DNA to produce super-strong knee joints that look about the same as the current model. I don’t want to see a woman who’s sexy everywhere except the knees, you see.
Kevin