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"What is the average number of Popes per square mile in the Vatican ?" |
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(This is a trick question) |
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(aside) Would any person stupid enough to get elected in charge of Brexit be called the Brexident? |
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Wrong ! It's about 1.3 ... the Vatican City is only about 0.7 of a square mile, and there is one Pope in it most of the time, thus the average number of Popes is actually greater than unity. |
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Ah ... it's 0.49 km2, not miles ... your answer is in fact correct going on the official area of 0.19 square miles. |
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Hmm. Have a consolatory virtual croissant. |
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We wouldn't want the job if it was offered; the promotion prospects are too limited. |
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I once applied for job as Pope. I used the argument
that it was time to appoint a non-catholic atheist
to the post. I am told they said they would keep
my details on file. I used 8th's address of course. |
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So THAT'S why we keep getting all that junkmail and begging letters ... |
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A Borg pope would be an interesting concept. And while
we're at it, a Borg Borges would also be something of note
were it to have occurred in some alternate history. |
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//begging letters // Confess or be burnt! |
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//the Vatican City is only about 0.7 of a square mile, and there is
one Pope in it most of the time, thus the average number of Popes
is actually greater than unity// - but the pope spends a certain
amount of time outside the Vatican (e.g. when he goes on holiday to
Ibiza), so as to maintain the long-term average at exactly 1.
Keeping this metric at 1 (+/-0.05) is your top responsibility when you
become pope. |
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// Confess or be burnt! // |
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Can we not just sit in the Comfy Chair, and be prodded with the soft cushions ...? |
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We admit nothing. Not even if you threaten us with the Rack ... |
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Why is there no Vice-Pope, as a backup for when the Pope is ill, indisposed, or dies in office ? |
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They're going to need more than one, then ... dozens, more like.
Possibly hundreds ... |
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And that's just the Catholics... |
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Nixon's supporters had a "Campaign to Re-Elect The President"; Terry Pratchett created the "Committee to Unelect the Patrician" in his book "The Truth". |
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Logically, there should be the possibility of a "Campaign to Unelect the President/Pope/Prime Minister/Führer ...." |
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// People are referring to Joe Biden as "president
elect" //
Aside from the Project Mockingbird media, who's
doing that? I don't know anyone doing that. |
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I like the idea in principle, despite the grid-lock that
would result. |
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//who's doing that?//Every world leader, apart from Bozo in Brazil, has congratulated Biden on becoming the President Elect. Of course if you're a rotten egg on the way to a concrete floor like The Gump is, then denial that gravity exists is your only comfort, but ultimately that stench is going to break out. quack, boink, quack, boink, quack, boink (sound of a lame duck) |
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I know, let's put Trump in a box with a phial of poison that will
administer when a radioactive decay occurs at some point in the
future. |
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We are never allowed to observe the Trump in the box or ever get a
Tweet from him again. With these simple to understand limits, he can
confidently claim, before he goes in, that he could be alive forever and
will therefore never be a loser. |
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You're going to need a bigger box.... |
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hippo, if only. If only Trump would call himself that. If only.
THEN I WOULD VOTE FOR HIM. |
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[sninctown] Just so you know you're not alone, I'm aware of Project Mockingbird, and I would suggest that believing anything at all just because it was in the media is about as smart as sticking your tongue in a light socket. |
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As for snopes? <sarcasm> It MUST be true, otherwise snopes wouldn't have said it. And snopes are honest, reliable fact-checkers; after all, snopes said they are, and snopes are honest, reliable fact-checkers. </sarcasm>. |
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And another thing. At least the bloody Soviets were more up front in their lies, by calling their propaganda rag "pravda". You guys keep bickering about your imaginary friends called "presidents", I'm off to hang out in the Real World for a bit. Take a really long bike ride. Maybe make a nesting box for the super cool owl that was in my tree the other day. Snopes. SNOPES!!!?! Sigh. |
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<Obligatory Blade Runner "Do you like our owl ?" reference/> |
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Of all the birds that ever I see, the owl is the fairest in her degree
For all the day long she sits in the tree, and when the night comes away flies she.
Te wit! Te woo! To whom drinks thou?
Sir knave, to thee.
This song is well sung, I make you a vow, and he is a knave that drinketh now.
Nose, nose, jolly red nose, And what gave thee thy jolly red nose?
Cinnamon and nutmeg, ginger and cloves, And that gave me my jolly red nose. |
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[spidermother] out of interest, apart from your general criticism of
Snopes, what do you mean? Do you think that the opinions and
quotes in that Snopes piece are all made up? |
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Incidentally, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves are typical spices in mulled wine. Wine, women, and song; sex and drugs and rock and roll. Potayto; potahto. |
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[hippo] I don't think the quotes are made up (although I haven't checked). |
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Propaganda is a topic I've looked into quite a bit. The pattern in a lot of modern propaganda seems to be that the propagandist doesn't explicitly tell you what to believe, but tells a narrative that _assumes_ something to be true; the lies become like the water that a fish swims in - ubiquitous, and invisible. |
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To me, there seems to be an undercurrent to this story that says "The nice democrats have clearly won, as they deserve to, but the stupid arrogant republicans just won't admit it yet." |
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There is also an unquestioning assumption of the legitimacy of the entire process. |
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There is a specific assumption in the use of "your representatives" and "readers can check what their representatives have said" - namely, that everyone has a representative. Just for fun, I once made a few rough calculations as to the probability of everyone in any reasonably sized group (such as those reading a particular snopes article) actually being represented at any particular time. However generous I make the numbers, it always turns out to be one of those 1 in (more particles than the known universe contains) kind of results. This is an involved topic, and relates to what representation even means; two key phrases are "The myth of political representation", and one of my favourite lines (from Marc Stevens - "Adventures in Legal Land): "Represent me against my will? That's insane." |
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Another way to put it is like this. |
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I have been in the embarassing situation where I am trying to keep up with a conversation, but it just seems to make less and less sense, until I finally realise "Oh, they're talking about the dungeons and dragons game they played over the weekend. That explains everything" |
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I feel like I'm on the other side of the fence with something like that snopes article. I want to say, "You do realise none of this is real, right? These are just people playing a role. There were various IDEAS thrown around near the end of the 1700s, and one set of ideas, largely based on the Unionists' model rather than (say) the Federalists', happens to have become rather entreched; but they're still just ideas. Bill Clinton was certainly being a sleazeball when he said "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is."; but there is an important principal underneath that. Someone "is" the president for some definitions of "is" - such as legally - but not for other definitions of "is" - such as factually." |
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In other words, that snopes article - and much political discourse - is summed up by George Orwell: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." There is NOTHING true in that article, except perhaps the quotes - and they are hearsay! |
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Interesting. I'm absolutely not here to change your view. I
do notice though that a lot of what you say is quite
theoretical, so you talk about "representation" and
"ideas" and propaganda. You talk about the notion of
pushing an "undercurrent" to a story, which is of course
exactly what Trump is doing now, and has been doing for
the last few months - i.e. spreading the idea, without
evidence, that the election will be/is illegitimate on a
grand scale, that democratic processes cannot be trusted
and that the only possible outcomes are that he wins big
or that the election is 'stolen'. |
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The Gump's attitude to winning and losing is
simple: when he wins, the process was fair and
legitimate and when he loses, it's corrupt and
unfair. All immature bullies think the same way.
One of
his KKK proud boys needs to convince him that
gravity
is another hoax generated by the fake media to
keep him from using the secret flying shoes they
have hidden in the Whitehouse. |
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And on the subject of the quotes, here's one: |
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“A free and fair election is the bedrock of our political system. It is crucial to our democracy that every single legal ballot count. Election integrity is of the utmost importance and both sides should be able to review the process. While I believe much of this will be determined within the courts, I have faith that the law will be followed and the American people’s voice will prevail.” |
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Is it just me, or are those the words of someone who is so devoted to playing a role that he can't afford any introspection at all? "I have faith that the law will be followed and the American people's voice will prevail."? What does that even mean? |
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The great Lebowski comes to mind: "Yeah, but that's just, like, your opinion." |
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Just to be clear, I'm NOT a supporter of Trump. As Treebeard said, I'm not exactly on anyone's side, because no-one is exactly on mine. |
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I'm a bit like a political anthropologist; I try to keep myself psychologically detached from the whole game. The only way I've found to do that consistently is by changing my whole way of speaking - exactly as [hippo] pointed out. It's not just an intellectual pursuit, either; I have a keen interest in self defense against bureaucratic attacks, in and out of court, and the best approach I've been able to find - after A LOT of searching - relies on exactly this kind of psychological and ideological distancing. |
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"waahhhh wahhhhh wahhhh" - wailing sound of loser Gump in full scale baby tantrum mode, as the adults push the pram out into the back yard and close the soundproof door. |
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The problem is in the concept of prediction of the outcome of
a presidental election. By knowing a percentage of the vote
very accurate predictions of the outcome can be calculated. |
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Must we run into a wall before we know we are hitting a wall? |
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Well if it's a wall paid for by Mexico, then there
may be nothing to run into at all. |
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But considering that nearly half of the voters voted for each of the
presidential candidates (while they were still candidates), the best way to
resolve the problem would be to have them share the office, and have
something of the sort that the brain has -- two hemispheres that think
differently, negotiating over the corpus callosum all the time. |
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That actually made me laugh out loud. It would
be like trying to play chess with a pigeon. |
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// a wall paid for by Mexico // |
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Perhaps it would work better if the U.S. just bought a set of VR goggles for everyone in Mexico, then it would look like there's a wall - even though there actually isn't ... |
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But where are all of the dead popes buried? Aren't there
any
within the city limits? |
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And there are no other fact-checkers in the universe
capable of examining snopes results, I take it, or emailing
them with the subject line of 'hey, you're wrong about this,
bloody gits!' |
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Frankly their record is pretty good, from what I've seen. As
an online presence, their reputation is just about all they
have. Maintaining that by means of keeping their record
going with updates is therefore critical. |
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