Rhetorical Questions, Answered!
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Gary Barwin asks: I want to contract the word "don't" by leaving the appostrophe out. Do I have to put it back in in order to take it out?
Here's our solution:
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Q. And, after all, is not eating well what the culinary arts are all about? A. Yes, it is. Q. That was actually a rhetorical question. Aren't you supposed to be on break? —humorist, playwright, neologist, palindromist, parodist, and wit Jonathan Caws-Elwitt
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Carly Simon's song "You're So Vain" doesn't identify its subject, yet actor Warren Beatty has asserted that it's about him. Beatty's assertion begs a question: if anyone takes "You're So Vain" personally, is he or she technically correct? The answer is Yes! According to Hugh Everett's " many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, every possible quantum vanity is realized. In the many-branched tree of parallel universes, each and every vain human being is the true subject of Carly Simon's song.
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This is very comforting! Imagine being vain enough to think YSV was about you, but finding out it wasn't. The very world might cease to revolve around one.
Technical question: Does Everett's theory still hold for values of "a" (a = age of vain individual) that are < Y (Y = years elapsed since song was written)? In other words, was Simon farsighted enough to build infinite references to unborn vain people into her song?
Similarly, I note the problematics around individuals who were alive when the song was written but not yet vain, their vanity only to develop later on. In their case, I hypothesize a "critical vanity threshold," or CVT--the discrete moment at which someone's vanity has matured to the point where Simon's song begins to refer to him or her.
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Courtesy of William Keckler: QUESTION: If Roman augurs read entrails, does that mean libraries once had guts? ANSWER: YES, parchment was indeed made from intestine.
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From Dr. Boli's Encyclopedia of Misinformation: “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?” —This hoary folk conundrum reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary history. The chicken and the egg are distinct organisms living in a symbiotic relationship.
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Original Content Copyright © 2010 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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