Why do cartoon food items always want to be eaten?

I'm still laughing at my mistake -- over in the podcast post -- of calling Aqua Teen Hunger Force Aqua Teen Hunger Strike. But if they were behaving rationally, cartoon food items would favor hunger strikes. Advertisers, of course, have a motivation to turn things like hamburgers into cartoon characters and to entertain us with the cute animals whose flesh their clients sell. Here's the original great classic animal who would like nothing more than for you to eat him:



Help me think of more cartoons who have a death wish that is supposed to stimulate your appetite.

ADDED: The first comment points me to this parody of the phenomenon:



It's slightly less funny to be laughing at death along with Phil Hartman.

Madison schools canceled for cold.

All the Madison area schools are canceled today for cold, including the schools in Madison itself. Madison schools are always the last to close. I know that from my many years of checking for school closings when my sons were young. I'd watch a long list of cities and towns scroll slowly across the TV screen, and even when the list was long, Madison would still be missing. Madison almost never shuts down for snow, and the main reason is that we expect it and, because we have enough snow and enough money to make it worth preparing, we prepare. But there is nothing to be done about cold. No trucks can plow it out of our path, and dealing with it must be left to individuals and families. It's up to them to figure out how to prepare for the winter, and if they are to send their children to school on the coldest days, they've got to figure out what kind of clothing to buy and spend the money for it.

Right now, the temperature in downtown Madison is minus 15°, with wind chill calculated at minus 31°. If weather like this were quite common, the school authorities might assume that parents had gotten their act together and committed the family funds to buying proper outerwear for their kids. But it really isn't rational for them to spend this kind of money on their kids -- who, of course, constantly grow out of things. Like a southern city that shuts down whenever it snows, parents are right to have no plan for clothing their children to go out on really cold days like today.

Even if you assumed that all parents did what informed, rational parents should do, the school district would need to conclude that attendance will be so low that the schools should close. In real life, some parents would decide to send their kids out in the warmest clothes they had, and children could get hurt. It's best not to create the conditions for that to happen. Keep the kids home.

But how about the University? We never close! I canceled class once in over 20 years, because it was in the middle of a big storm, but even then, the University didn't close. We're all adults here, and you're expected to dress yourself properly. Certainly, by the time you're old and smart enough to go to law school, you should know what to do. Your mom and dad aren't dressing you anymore. You're responsible for yourself. The institution isn't going to protect you from your mistakes. If we were, I'd be going up to every other kid I see on campus on bitterly cold days and telling him or her to put on a hat.

Here's a picture Nina took on campus on Saturday. See the woman on the left? She represents a theory of mine:



There is never a day in Madison when more than half the students walking outside on campus are wearing hats. But folks, if you're reading this, mom wants you to wear a hat.

The young woman on the right also has a good idea with the scarf over the face. If it's less than 4 below, you need a scarf over your nose or you can feel the air icing up inside your nasal passage. Take that as a sign that you need a scarf. And look at how both women are completely unprotected from the waist down. The hatless woman appears to be wearing canvas sneakers. You really do need a long, down coat and some kind of warm shoes.

But you are adults, so look out for yourselves.

And lest anyone think that I've written this post to cast doubt on theories about global warming, let me say that if you've read this post with understanding and without the usual emotional static, you should see that the implication is that people are less prepared for cold when they encounter less of it. The new -- I think it's new -- phenomenon of closing for cold is -- if anything -- a sign that we've been having warmer winters.

Audible Althouse #78.

Time to catch up once again with Audible Althouse: it's a podcast of the odd last few days on a blog called Althouse.

Things are not what they seem. How do you know what you're looking at? There were those "Aqua Teen Hunger Strike" non-bombs that freaked out Boston, those polar bears not really stranded on an ice floe not necessarily caused by global warming, and the 29-year-old guy who posed as a 12-year-old to attend school and do sleepovers with kids who thought they found a friend. Are you going to believe your own eyes?

You can stream it right through your computer here.

But all the cute animals have subscribed on iTunes:

This podcast is dedicated to the Althouse blog historian, Ruth Anne Adams.

IN THE COMMENTS: Daryl Herbert writes:

Aqua Teen Hunger FORCE, not "strike" The error is excusable when you consider that Master Shake was omnipresent at Cindy Sheehan's hunger strike... But frankly, I wouldn't watch a TV show based on anthropomorphicized fast food items singing praises of the Nazi death machine (what better way, Gandhi asked, could Jews prove their moral righteousness, than to limply submit to the Nazi extermination campaign?) I think it's a better political statement to eat a hamburger than set out on a hunger strike.

LOL. But I think Hunger Strike is better, because of the double meaning. Are they on strike or are they striking out? Frankly, if I was a food item, I'd favor hunger strikes. Why are cartoon food items always happy about getting eaten?

Prince!

I've just been reminded to watch Prince at the Superbowl. Here I am trying to finish up the podcast -- where I talk about not watching the Superbowl -- but finishing up the technical things, I put the TV on with the sound off and had stopped at the Superbowl, which does look snazzy in HDTV, even seen through pouring rain. So, let's watch and blog Prince. [Horrible too-much-law typo: Printz.]

***

With all this rain, I'm thinking: Keith Relf.

"All along the watchtower, princes kept the view..."

***

Well, it's purple rain.

***

Excellent. Nice of him to do hits we know. "Purple Rain" in the pouring rain. That was nice. And he escaped electrocution. Had to wear that scarf on his head though. I wonder how he felt about having to play in the rain. I only wanted 2 see him laughing in it.

You know from today's John Edwards post that I have the camera ready by the TV, and I did take some shots. I took 98 pictures! These should be better than the one from the paused TiVo of John Edwards (and that kissy shot really was just some place I chanced to pause). So wait a minute and I'll have some Prince photos (and a podcast).

***

Edwards: Obama was only right about Iraq because he wasn't burdened with the information I had.

On "Meet the Press," Tim Russert confronts John Edwards with a quote from Barack Obama that pre-dates the Iraq war:

[I] know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the middle east, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

Russert challenges Edwards: "His judgment was on the money."

Edwards' response is a classic:

He wasn't burdened like a lot of us with the information that we were receiving on the intelligence committee and as members of the United States Senate. We were getting very detailed, intimate information about what was actually happening in Iraq.

Get it? Obama was in the Illinois legislature. It's so easy to be right when you're not burdened with information.

Anyway, Edwards said he was sorry, sorry, sorry. How many times does he have to tell you he's sorry?



Kiss me, America.

"Clinical and podium faculty" ... podium faculty?

"Podium faculty"? Is that what we're going to start calling lawprofs who don't teach in the clinics? A Google search shows that this term, which I encountered on a faculty email list, is a new coinage.

Ironically, at my law school, all the podiums were ripped out when the building was last renovated. Without a ramp, podiums are not wheelchair accessible. I understand, though I still find it uncomfortable to teach in a room with banked seating designed in relation to the now-nonexistent podiums.

But much as I like real podiums, I balk at being called "podium faculty." It sounds pejorative, but is it apt? "Pod-" means "foot," and we're just standing there, being pedantic; and "ped-" also means "foot," the appendage beneath which you might want to see us crushed for thinking teaching could be done with nothing but language.

The polar-bears-on-the-melting-ice-cap photo.

You've all seen it. This photo atop all the articles about the new report on global warming.



(Go to the article to see the larger size.)

Here's my question. How many people look at that picture and think the polar bears were living on some ice and it melted around them and now they are stuck?

And, yes, I realize a polar bear can drown... if, say, it's exhausted and swimming over 50 miles. But basically, these things can swim 15 miles easily, at a speed of 6 miles an hour, and they use the edge of an ice floe as a platform from which to hunt. Where's the photograph of the bear chomping down on a cute baby seal?

And, no, I'm not denying that there's global warming, even as I sit here a double pane of glass away from minus 12° air. I'm just amused at human behavior, such as the way it is possible to feel arguments at us. In particular, we are susceptible to argument by animal. We love the animal, if it's pictured right, in a way that pulls our heartstrings.

There is a sharper edge, voiced by a great director in his movie about bears and man: "I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder."

ADDED: I just remembered that last night I had a dream in which I was carrying around a stuffed-toy polar bear! And I saw this picture yesterday. See? This is how to get into people's heads! This is how opinion is really formed.



With bears!

-14.

That was the low temperature overnight here in Madison. It's -12° now, and we're expecting it to get up to -1. And I'm not talking about your candyass "wind chill" enhancements of the hardcore facts. That's the temperature.

"Social acupuncture."

For example, Haircuts For Children:

[Darren] O’Donnell trained 10-year-olds to cut hair, and arranged to have them offer free haircuts to adults in salons around town. The objective was to flip the typical power dynamic, so that the adult yields control, trusting the child not to chop off his ear. “The sophisticated intimacy that develops between the young stylists and their adult clients intimates new kinds of social interactions among generations,” says O’Donnell.

Then there's The Talking Creature:

Participants would approach people at random and invite them to a predetermined public place for a conversation — not to talk about anything in particular, but just to talk. In the process, the taboo (and fear) of talking to strangers was broken, and the encounters were remarkable for their “openness, relaxation, trust and joy.” What more can one ask of an artistic experience?

There, now, have I cured you of your performance art anxiety?

ADDED: Actually, it gives me an idea for a horror movie. Our serial killer uses the guise of performance art like The Talking Creature to lure his victims. Sorry, that Boston thing is still on my mind. Yeah, those guys were artists/admen, but the wily psycho killer will take advantage of the "social acupuncture" they applied. All that openness, relaxation, trust and joy is just what he needs. He moves on from single victims to a big project that will blow up the whole city. Everyone points at the little Lite-Brite cartoon figures on buildings around town and laughs. They get it. Except they don't.

Bush says the war is "sapping our soul."

He was speaking in a closed meeting of House Democrats. And before the press was shunted out:

He said disagreeing with him over the war — as many in the room do — does not mean "you don't share the same sense of patriotism I do."

"You can get that thought out of your mind, if that's what some believe," the president said. "These are tough times, but there's no doubt in my mind that you want to secure this homeland as much as I do."...

Bush said, "We don't always agree. That's why we're in different parties. But we do agree about our country. We do agree about the desire to work together and I really appreciate you letting me come by. I felt welcomed."...

"I listened to many members here, I listened to members of my own party, I listened to the military and came up with a plan that I genuinely believe has the best of succeeding," the president said....

"I do know we agree on some things and that is that the Maliki government is going to have to show strong leadership," Bush said. "There's benchmarks that they have got to achieve."...

The president also had a little fun at his own expense, hoping it would prove his willingness to find bipartisan consensus. His reference in his State of the Union address to their party as the "Democrat majority" — as opposed to the "Democratic majority" — caused grumbling and offense and he sought to make up for it.

"Now look, my diction isn't all that good," Bush said to laughter. "I have been accused of occasionally mangling the English language. And so I appreciate you inviting the head of the Republic Party."

Come on, even if you hate Bush, you have to admit that he handled that well. On the other hand, the war is sapping our soul.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade wonders if Bush really said "sapping our soul." There were a lot of people there. If he didn't say that, I think we'll hear what he really said. To me, it seems that in the open part of the meeting, he reached out and clearly said that he's not blaming the war opponents for undermining morale. Then, in the closed session, there was more talk. I suspect that at some point, he said that morale was in fact undermined. If he said "sapping our soul," he -- it seems likely -- meant just that. Rather than view him as having made some devastating, tragic confession, we should probably credit him with sticking to his point of stirring up concern about the war without blaming anybody. What does this man have to do to get some support?

The Boston non-bombs.

Apologies have been made and reimbursement proffered. Isn't that enough? I mean, look at those things. It was some delightful performance art that should have puzzled and then amused people. I'm not saying people who got alarmed were ridiculous, but they need to move on. Free Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky. Or do they irritate you?



They're being yippies! [NSFW.]

"Black people get a little testy when white people call them 'articulate.'"

Notes Lynette Clemetson in the Week in Review explains why.

“Historically, it was meant to signal the exceptional Negro,” [said Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.] “The implication is that most black people do not have the capacity to engage in articulate speech, when white people are automatically assumed to be articulate.”

And such distinctions discount as inarticulate historically black patterns of speech. “Al Sharpton is incredibly articulate,” said Tricia Rose, professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. “But because he speaks with a cadence and style that is firmly rooted in black rhetorical tradition you will rarely hear white people refer to him as articulate.”

While many white people do not automatically recognize how, and how often, the word is applied, many black people can recall with clarity the numerous times it has stopped them in their tracks.

What's really amazing is not that black people can speak well, but that white people haven't yet gotten the message that it's a bad idea to keep pointing it out.

NOTE: I edited the last sentence to make the point sharper.

Senators keep running for President, but they keep losing.

They have some kind of problem, right? Robert Geilfuss debunks the Senators can't win theory. Well, he tries to at least. I'm not convinced. I think there is something about the senatorial personality that doesn't seem right for a President.

"I find this very much akin to what we did with C-SPAN about 25-30 years ago."

HuffPo has a piece about Bloggingheads.tv — including the news that C-SPAN founding chairman Bob Rosencrans is putting money into it:

Rosencrans said he was instantly charmed by Bloggingheads TV when longtime friend Wright introduced him to it last November. "It got better and better as I watched it, and seemed like something really unique," said Rosencrans... Though contributors will continue to vlog for free, [Bob] Wright says he hopes to someday be able to pay them (and points out that he himself draws no salary, and has invested his own capital.) So far Heads like Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, our own Arianna Huffington, Spencer Ackerman, Jonathan Chait, Joshua Marshall, Glenn Reynolds and the Alts — Eric Alterman, Ann Althouse and Jonathan Alter — don't seem to mind, nor does the still-ubiquitous and generously-browed [Mickey] Kaus.

The Alts!

Though obviously enthusiastic about the venture, Rosencrans said he has no plans to meddle in its success. "Bob has control - it's important that it's done based on his integrity and his vision," he said. "I find this very much akin to what we did with C-SPAN about 25-30 years ago — let it run, let it develop and the right people will take it on. Their integrity is the key to developing a very solid business." Also reminiscent of C-SPAN is its emphasis on substance over flash: "I love the civility of the discussion," he said. "That's unique on television." (That could just be because it's very difficult to imagine yelling at the mild-mannered and highly-respected Wright.)

I guess he didn't see the one with Byron York and David Corn. And I think Mickey kind of yells at Bob sometimes, doesn't he? It's not all that mild-mannered -- at least not all the time, isn't it? And there's some flash. Like that time Bob put a pencil in his ear.

What kind of commenter are you?

Dr. Helen, noting a comments thread over here, speculates about the types of commenters. She identifies four types, two positive and two negative. The positive types are the sympathizers and the problem-solvers, and the negative types are the passive aggressives and the openly aggressive.

Succulent truculence.

Mark agrees with Andrew about Maya's malapropism. But then he takes a closer look:

There are plenty of solecisms printed every day, and we comment on a small sample of them here on Language Log -- but Andrew Sullivan usually doesn't.

In fact, I'm not sure that he's ever commented on a grammatical point before, or indeed on any other question of usage that doesn't involve the interpretation of a politically-charged word like "islamist" (or "christianist", a term that Sullivan has done much to popularize)....

So it's hardly a stretch to guess that Andrew is truculent to Angelou because she is very much not of his political kind.

Some other conservative bloggers have reacted in similar ways. Thus John Derbyshire, apparently without a hint of irony, compared Maya Angelou to William MacGonagall under the title "Voice of the master" (NRO the corner, 2/2/2007).

Come on, you pundits. The analysis of word choice, sentence structure, and meaning is an honorable calling, and we linguists are always happy to have company. But if you're going to pounce on Maya Angelou's malapropism without saying anything about the alleged proliferation of Bushisms, or Tony Snow's misuse of "inveigling", or Lawrence Henry's odd use of "slurry", or any of the rest of the daily parade of politically-relevant points of usage, people might get the idea that your linguistics is really politics.

Okay, this is actually quite complicated.

1. Of course, for most political pundits, linguistics is probably going to be used as a weapon and aimed at targets of choice.

2. Some political pundits -- I include myself -- are interested enough in language to write commentary on the subject, and that commentary may stand apart from politics or be completely interwoven with political opinion. It varies.

3. Speaking of politics, Mark Liberman is himself making a political move of sorts. He's claiming sovereignty over the linguistics field. The implicit argument is that a scholarly domain belongs to the scholars, and that scholars are known by their neutrality. He is nice enough to say he's happy to have company though.

4. Sullivan may be choosing his targets based on politics, but Liberman hasn't proven it. He assumes -- because Sullivan calls himself a conservative? -- that Sullivan doesn't have Bush as a target -- but Sullivan is contemptuous of Bush. If you search for "Bushism" on Sullivan's blog, you can find him quoting a Bushism.

5. Attacking Maya Angelou may very well have nothing to do with politics. I mean, look at the quote Sullivan mocks:

The walls of ignorance and prejudice and cruelty, which she railed against valiantly all her public life, have not fallen, but their truculence to do so does not speak against her determination to make them collapse.

That writing style is incredibly annoying. Sullivan calls it "pretentiousness, self-righteousness and lame, exhausted metaphors." He's right! When you're reading something that bad and then you find a plain error, you're motivated to point out the error. The ridiculous reverence shown toward Maya Angelou -- reflected in the WaPo's nonexistent editing -- is one more thing that makes you want to pick on her. It's not necessarily politics.

***

The "she" in the Angelou quote is Molly Ivins, who died recently. After looking at that bad writing, you may want to refresh yourself with some really good writing.

UPDATE: Liberman responds and disagrees with my point #3:

Claiming sovereignty? On the contrary.

At the end of my LSA talk on "The future of linguistics", I did suggest that our field could learn from Linus Torvald's 1995 plan for Linux: "World domination. Fast". But the recipe for success, I argued, is inclusiveness. We ought to welcome the participation of anyone interested in speech and language, including Andrew Sullivan and Ann Althouse. (Who had some interesting things to say yesterday about "When one word is funnier than another".)

Well, sovereigns allow visitors.... on their terms.

I admit -- and I think my choice of words shows it -- that I was reading between the lines. Mark says maybe I didn't read well enough or maybe he should write more clearly, but I was looking for implications. While it's true that he could try harder to block implications, he can't -- even by appealing to my pride and casting aspersions on my reading ability -- stop me from speculating about the motivations of writers. I'm a law professor. I have to read judicial opinions all the time. The judges are constantly laying out their purported reasoning, and I'd be a fool to accept that at face value.

Another thing is that Mark edited the key paragraph after I formed an opinion about it and was in the middle of writing about it. The original version lacked the references to Snow and Henry and -- I believe -- ended with the words "people might get the idea that linguistics is really politics" (as opposed to "your linguistics").

The notion was -- and remains, though not as clearly -- that linguistics is a field of scholarship, an "honorable calling," and as such, it requires the exclusion of politics. I say this implicitly claims sovereignty over the field: I say what linguistics is, and it's something politics-free. You can come to my territory, but on my terms. If your use of linguistics is politicized, I claim the power to deport you. This is a political move, and it's not just the politics of the academy. It is an attempt -- albeit implicit -- to preserve the special authority of the expert in all sort of public dialogues.