I liked the cartoon also, but in general I'm losing my patience with that site. I know many others did a long time ago, but Volokh and Kerr still write interesting stuff pretty regularly. On the other hand Bernstein is hard for me to read, and Kopel is just nuts.
So, what if you draw a large cardboard box and put a notice beside it saying "MOHAMMED IS INSIDE THIS BOX"?
Sounds kinda like a sideshow attraction.
How 'bout dressing someone up as Mohammed and seating him in the dunking booth?
Regarde l'image tu voulais evoquer, Labs, et desespere!
And then rigged up the box in a Schrodinger kind of way.
Ceci n'est pas une correction.
(I realize that the force of French pedantry is someone diminished when the pedant doesn't know how to do accents.)
...So that Mohammed's presence-in-the-box or non-presence-in-the-box depended on some probabilistic event at the molecular level? I'm reminded of traffic signs that warn me to stay in-the-box under penalty of fine.
I have this nagging feeling that this is a lot like what it would be like to be transported a hundred years or so into the past and watching pop culture try to poke fun at christians.
when the pedant doesn't know how to do accents
html accents
Hélas, Tia m'a pwni (à la manière de Weiner).
Standpipe has revealed that whatever Standpipe is of masculine gender.
Osner, don't those signs tell you to stay out of the box, or at least not to block it? I am personally blaming you for every NYC traffic jam henceforth.
9: Isn't it "Don't block the box"? In which case, staying in the box is likely to lead to exactly the penalty you're worried about.
here are no pictures or statues of Muhammad because he should not be confused with God. . . .
This confuses me. They're distraught over the idea that people are going to see a blurry cartoon and suddenly think, "GOD!"?
Matt Weiner and washerdreyer have ably corrected my lacksadaisical memory.
Standpipe has revealed
If I did, it wasn't as a side effect of passé composé gender/number agreement, which my sentence doesn't require.
JO: Please send payment to Unfogged Superior Court, Pwnage Infractions Bureau, ATM USA. Failure to pay your fines in a timely manner may result in community "service" hours.
Doesn't it? My French is way rusty, but I thought an direct object before the passé composé did require gender agreement on the participle, par exemple.
In any case, I'm pretty sure that those of undisclosed gender would count as masculine in sexist old French.
Oops, "à la manière de" s/b "au sens de". Unless Matt is a more frequent Weiner-pwner than I remember.
Tia is standpipe's pony? That's a subtext I missed.
21: I thought so -- cf -- but I'm sure that those of undisclosed gender are also masculine in sexist Old French.
Sexist Old French is like Old High Slavonic, but different.
The old Slavonics were high on ergot.
Oops again, it does have to agree. I was wrong, wrong, wrong.
24: When libertarians are fantasizing about ponies, it's really me they're talking about.
Huh, 22 took a while to show up; when I submitted 25 I'd already reloaded the comments once or twice and it still wasn't there. Apologies for the redundundance.
The Old Slavonics climaxed right around the time they conquered the High Colonics.
If you describe Muhammad verbally -- the prophet had great abs -- is that offensive, too?
If you describe Muhammad verbally, is that offensive, too?
If you describe Muhammad verbally -- the prophet had great abs -- is that offensive, too?
Straight answer, AFAIK: No, because the idea stems from a fear of idolatry, and idols have to be pictorial rather than verbal.
Hey Matt, do you have any idea how the idolatry thing would play out in terms of abstract art? Would a 9' by 12' canvas painted ocher with a thin blue vertical stripe 3' from the left edge, titled "Mohammed", be blasphemous?
I don't know, Weiner. It seems like there are proscribed ways to talk about Muhammed (PBUH).
No idea -- 34 pretty much exhausts my knowledge of the issue.
Such a painting would probably be done by Barnett Newman.
Would a really beautiful, idealized picture of Muhammad make Muslims riot? There are quite a number of depictions of Muhammad done by Muslims themselves through the ages, but nice ones, not cartoons.
36: I guess my thought is that description of Muhammad in and of itself wouldn't be proscribed, although some descriptions might be considered blasphemous. Dunno though, maybe any physical description (as opposed to "He did this") would be considered bad.
34 answers 38, AFAIK: the theological issue isn't disrespect, it's that Muslims will be tempted to worship pictures of Mohammed in a manner that should be reserved for God. The disrespect issue that is setting off the riots is, to the best of my understanding, kind of at odds with the theological prohibition on representations.
Also, as far as the "make Muslims riot" thing goes, the riots started after Saudi Arabia started a campaign to stir up outrage.
hmmm, I'm having Dutch bacon for dinner today. Gonna wash it down with some Dutch lager and then maybe eat a Dutch pastry for breakfast tomorrow.
Hrmphf. Clearly fueled by Dutch courage.
I would never have realized that "Danish bacon" was a thing. And you're right, 42 comments without catching that -- we're slipping.
I almost wrote, "WTF are you talking about, dsquared? Those were Danish cartoons." I came this close to being so badly autopwned I might never have been able to blog again.
