December 26, 2012
The 100 Best Lists of All Time.
#1 is the periodic table of the elements and #2 is the Bill of Rights. I'll leave it to you to guess what #3 must be, with the additional clue that #4 is the 10 Commandments.
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26 comments:
A detailed list of Al Sharpton's hair care products?
I never would have guessed 3. The grocery list is pretty great. Of course I'm a fan of the Dewey Decimal System.
I followed the link; #3 is somebody's idea of a joke. Not to mention the snarky comment at the end of the article.
Personally I'd have guessed the AA 12 steps (not that a teetotaler like me needs them).
Craigslist?????
I have a feeling the Seven Deadly Sins (and the Seven Cardinal Virtues) will be around a lot longer.
"I followed the link; #3 is somebody's idea of a joke."
The piece is under the standard New Yorker heading for humor, so consume the list accordingly.
In that case, where's the Magnificent Seven?
Or Ocean's Eleven (the good one, with Frankie and Dino and everybody, not the remake with that Lefty slime, George Clooney, who can't even act)?
I didn't see Obama's drone assassination list.
Cheers
#3 should be: 25 reasons beer is better than women.
Fight Club's rules didn't even make the list? It should have been top-10.
I guessed Santa's list for #3.
I saw this this morning and thought it was pretty funny...
http://www.commonsenseevaluation.com/2012/12/26/7-true-facts-about-women/
Robert Warshaw, many years ago, in his essay "E.B. White and The New Yorker," well described the outlook of The New Yorker, which "makes it possible to feel intelligent without thinking." It's interesting how a sensibility and a culture can survive the complete turnover of the particular staffers who create it.
Warshaw's essay remains worth reading. The New Yorker, not so much, except from an anthropological standpoint.
Did you notice the bit of anti-religious, regional snobbery at the bottom?
* 1 and 100 may be switched in certain states.
"Did you notice the bit of anti-religious, regional snobbery at the bottom?"
Yes, and I'm guessing they think my state is one of them. They've probably at least heard of Oak Ridge, but I doubt they know much about it. The hillbillies at Oak Ridge have been known to fiddle around with elements now and then (discovered at least one that immediately comes to mind).
What the fuck good is some list of the Top 100 of Whoever without me in it?
Try again, SPORT.
I still get a small thrill rereading the Cluetrain Manifesto 95 Theses. "People of the Earth!" Fun.
#97 shoulda been #3.
If George Will were really as smart as he thinks he is, he'd have recognized the importance of golf to the Scottish Enlightenment and, therefore, to the founding of the American Republic.
I love baseball, but it was pretty much commie bullshit until Babe Ruth came along.
Hard to argue with a list of "best" lists, but if you arranged this in order of world-historic importance then wouldn't # 4 (Ten Commandments) and #6 (95 Theses), #20 (Decl. Independence), #22 (Rules of Civility -- enabled George Washington to figure out how to be an impressive leader & do all he did), then maybe #14 (Dante) be near the top? Most of the lists have little if any real importance, though many of them are interesting.
#81 should be up there too (Rolling Stone albums) -- still working my way through that!
I didn't see Obama's drone assassination list.
I didn't see the Republicans nominate a candidate who was against Obama's despicable drone policy.
EDH, Crimso, that was Robert Warshaw's point. Very few New Yorker readers could recite the periodic table of the elements, much less explain its significance, but the list (and the footnote) serves as reassurance that We are on the side of science, and They are obscurantist yahoos.
Similarly, Badger Pundit, by putting the Ten Commandments etc. near but not at the top, We demonstrate that We respect and appreciate religion, while not making an inappropriately big deal of it the way They do.
As far a lists go, I'd say they did a decent job, though a part of me thinks it was all a set up for the asterisk.
Some very cool lists on there. The asterisk is, of course, the form of casual bigotry that is to be expected in the New Yorker and many of its readers. Back in the '70's Earl Butz didn't think twice about telling a racist joke. It is a conceit of social class that writes for the New Yorker that they are somehow better than Earl Butz.
If anyone's read Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test," they'd know that the DSM is a very bad book for some very good reasons. The book is basically a series of great articles strung together. But the bits about the origin of the DSM and how it's now being abused are terrifying. #5, eh?
Fight Club's rules didn't even make the list? It should have been top-10.
Well... Duh! Number one rule about fight club and all! :-)
The french declaration?
Like all lists, subject to question and ridicule. I'm with the latter.
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