Baffling assertion watch
February 6th, 2007 | Tags: osv., Snark | 6 Comments
Here are two baffling assertions, both from a Starbucks in Wayne, PA. In the first, the asserted fact is baffling; in the second, the assertion itself is baffling.
- According to a plaque on the wall, the Starbucks in Wayne, PA was voted “Best Coffee on the Main Line” by readers of some regional publication. (It doesn’t matter which one — it could have been Philadelphia Philistine Monthly and it would still be troubling.) Certainly the bourgeoisie must have ready access to superior coffee.
- My espresso came with this quote from Nancy Wilson of the rock band Heart:
OK, so it’s not a complete sentence. But what could it possibly mean? I’m not sure it’s even wrong. (Your suggestions for how to make sense of this are welcome in the comments. Bonus points if you can fashion this utterance into some part of a coherent argument.)
February 6th, 2007 at 07:46:17 PM (#)
Clinton 2008 - “History Without War - A Good Plan for the Future”
February 6th, 2007 at 08:11:51 PM (#)
I still don’t understand what “History without war — a good plan for the future” is supposed to mean, though, or why an articulate senator would choose a slogan that had been commissioned for a disposable cup.
Furthermore, it’s not clear to me how it could be a description of Sen. Clinton’s public statements about war in general or the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular (although it does appear that she would greatly prefer that at least one of those conflicts were confined to history by the time she’s having her spouse pick the White House china pattern).
So: what does it mean?
February 7th, 2007 at 02:35:23 AM (#)
It seems pretty clear to me - The going forward from here we could try and make a history without war. Like a future where we don’t use war to resolve a conflict, or get revenge, or use it for any of the fascades it’s propogated under. Imagine a classroom of the future where the children are learning that people haven’t waged wars on one another for the last 100 yrs. or 200 yrs.
February 7th, 2007 at 09:12:30 AM (#)
songrl, if my coffee cup had said what you just did, I wouldn’t have posted it. Unlike my cup, you’ve certainly said something. (However, and I intend no offense when I say this, I find the utopian scenario you’ve proposed to be utterly implausible for myriad reasons.) What you said may even be what Ms. Wilson meant, but it is absolutely not what she said.
Look at the utterance. Wilson is not saying that we should stop fighting wars now so that future history books will not contain records of wars over a certain period of time. She says “History without war — a good plan for the future.” Your explanation hinges on some future scenario in which students are learning about some period of history in which no wars were fought, and on the desirability of this state of affairs. A desired state of affairs is a goal, not a plan. We construct a plan as a means to achieve a goal. If your interpretation were correct, we could develop “plans” for the future like “I am ten pounds lighter,” “I am a hall-of-fame NBA point guard,” or “There is no pollution in the world.” Great! Now how shall we get there?
Since Wilson’s “plan for the future” is “history without war,” I think the most obvious interpretation of Wilson’s sentiment is that, by censoring history (as if war were some sort of Yezhov), we will somehow affect an improvement in the lot of future generations. What I fail to see is how a rational person could possibly believe this to be the case. Therefore, I am disinclined to accept the obvious interpretation.
February 7th, 2007 at 05:21:57 PM (#)
Well, I don’t actually think that it makes any sense. I just got a kick out of adding it as a campaign slogan (which would also make no sense). I agree that the statement makes no sense, but the clever mind can construct what the thought behind it was.
Although, the English makes no sense grammatically or idiomatically. I do get a chuckle out of the interpretation that it means, “Censor the world’s history so that we never hear about war again.” It would be the left-wing version of a storyline like that in V for Vendetta.
February 7th, 2007 at 05:23:27 PM (#)
By the way, off topic, I think the spam prevention here is brilliant. It serves two purposes, naturally. One is that computers can’t spam you, the other is that the lower echelon of intelligence (a.k.a. MySpace users) can’t figure it out. It saves you from reading “u r stupid lol.”