From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Morally equivalent
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 23:05:32 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87mt9lhqzn.fsf@dataswamp.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: Y1UUcV/pQjqsN7AN@eskimo.com
Will Mengarini wrote:
>> What is a 'moral equivalence' in Emacs Lisp?
>
> The phrase "morally equivalent" is intended to be a humorous
> reference to
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Equivalent_of_War_speech>.
>
> Back in a workplace in the 1970s, I asked whether some
> printer was a DECwriter or "the moral equivalent of
> a DECwriter" (meaning a functionally equivalent printer from
> different manufacturer), and got a laugh.
>
> The phrase was funny because the speech that popularized it
> was widely considered to be overly bombastic, and a failure
> in achieving its objectives; this was why "Moral Equivalent
> Of War" was popularly referred to by the acronym "MEOW".
> (Note that the general prediction made by that speech, that
> an energy crisis would worsen, came true, and many of the
> speech's recommendations have been followed. But that is
> irrelevant to the prevailing attitude at the time; it was
> that attitude that resulted in the comic implication.)
>
> Consequently, the word "equivalent" and cognates were often
> embellished as "morally equivalent" and cognates; but this
> was merely a comic flourish without semantic import.
>
> But that was half a century ago! Now, nobody remembers it,
> and I read this whole thread without seeing a link to the
> speech that would explain it. Even with that link, you had
> to live through those times to grok the contempt for U.S
> President Jimmy Carter that made him a one-term president
> and ushered in 12 years of Republican presidency. (Carter
> had tried to be what could be described as a hard-ass
> liberal, thereby alienating everybody across the
> political spectrum.)
>
> So, the documentation should be patched to remove the
> comic archaism.
>
> Comedy in documentation needs to consider its expected
> lifespan. Even short-lived documentation often has a target
> audience that is busy solving problems, and is uninterested
> in jokes. When the expected lifespan of the documentation is
> most conveniently measured in centuries (!), comedy leads to
> threads like this.
:O
Holy cow!
Any questions?
--
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal
prev parent reply other threads:[~2022-10-24 21:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 49+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-10-16 2:45 Morally equivalent John Haman
2022-10-16 2:55 ` Eduardo Ochs
2022-10-16 3:39 ` Michael Heerdegen
2022-10-16 14:29 ` [External] : " Drew Adams
2022-10-16 14:34 ` Heime
2022-10-16 14:42 ` Dr Rainer Woitok
2022-10-16 15:02 ` Drew Adams
2022-10-16 16:20 ` tomas
2022-10-16 19:27 ` Bob Newell
2022-10-16 19:43 ` [External] : " Drew Adams
2022-10-16 20:24 ` Bob Newell
2022-10-16 19:58 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-16 23:10 ` Michael Heerdegen
2022-10-16 23:17 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-16 23:32 ` Michael Heerdegen
2022-10-16 23:47 ` Eduardo Ochs
2022-10-17 1:13 ` Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
2022-10-18 10:44 ` Dr Rainer Woitok
2022-10-17 0:00 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-17 0:10 ` Michael Heerdegen
2022-10-17 0:32 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-17 0:53 ` Michael Heerdegen
2022-10-17 1:18 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-17 4:52 ` tomas
2022-10-17 5:27 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-20 14:08 ` Akib Azmain Turja
2022-10-20 16:24 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-20 18:29 ` tomas
2022-10-20 19:54 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-17 4:49 ` Akib Azmain Turja
2022-10-17 6:44 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-10-17 7:48 ` tomas
2022-10-17 9:15 ` Thibaut Verron
2022-10-17 23:01 ` Rudolf Adamkovič
2022-10-18 1:01 ` Michael Heerdegen
2022-10-18 1:07 ` Emanuel Berg
2022-10-18 2:39 ` Po Lu
2022-10-18 3:50 ` Michael Heerdegen
2022-10-18 14:11 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-10-18 16:50 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-18 23:11 ` Emanuel Berg
2022-10-20 14:05 ` Akib Azmain Turja
2022-10-20 17:14 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-17 15:42 ` Christopher Dimech
2022-10-17 11:47 ` Alessandro Bertulli
2022-10-23 10:16 ` Will Mengarini
2022-10-24 14:46 ` Marcin Borkowski
2022-10-24 21:06 ` Emanuel Berg
2022-10-24 21:05 ` Emanuel Berg [this message]
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