I have been called, for my denial of outright atheism, a Chamberlainist. Well I never felt so much like Neville Chamberlain today as I walked through the corridors of the Seat of Learning* with a contract from the publishers for my book Species: A history of an Idea. I felt like shouting as I waved it, "Peace in our time!" except that the corridors are empty and I'd have felt like a right loon doing that.
As has been noted recently, by the way, Neville Chamberlain noticed that his rapprochement with Hitler had failed and rearmed Britain for the coming war, and responded to Hitler's invasion of Poland with a declaration of war. The poor bastard acted rationally and is remembered for one failed attempt to make peace. For that he should be applauded, not reviled, and used to denigrate other rational people.
Anyway, coincident with the arrival of said treaty, err, contract, which merely requires the soul of my first born son (please! take it away!), along with any and all rights to my future life, happiness and breath, came an email from the esteemed Michael Devitt, with a manuscript copy of a forthcoming Philosophy of Science piece defending biological essentialism. This has inspired me to write a critique of that paper, which I am sure Michael won't in the slightest mind, riffing on some themes I have used in this here very blog before. I will put it up here as I draft it.
So I apologise for the absence (teaching, can't talk) lately. Which leads to a very bad joke:
Man goes to the doctor and says, "Doc, whenever I fart it sounds like this", and demonstrates. There is a drawn out noise that sounds for all the world like "Honda!". He does it again, and again it sounds like he's calling out the name of the Japanese manufacturer. "What is wrong with me, doc?" (In all jokes, doctors are called "doc". It's required.)
The doctor hems and haws for a few minutes and consults a learned tome, and then asks, "Have you been drinking absinthe lately?" For those who don't know, that's a nasty alcoholic drink that is banned in many countries. "Well, yes, I have," replies the hapless man. "Well, that explains it!" the doctor triumphantly says. "Absinthe makes the farts go 'Honda!'"
*Or, as we like to refer to it here, the arsehole of education. Appropriately, given the bad joke.
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A friend of mine asked his publisher to put a clause in his book contract specifically waiving any rights to his first-born son, but the publisher refused!
Posted by: HennepinCountyLawyer | May 18, 2008 9:36 PM
I recall Michael Smith talking about the Humean view on action. A historian objected that that wasn't Hume's view. Smith replied that he didn't care whether Hume was a Humean. I agree absolutely that Chamberlain has been very unfairly treated by history. You, sir, are a Chamberlainist, though Chamberlain wasn't.
Posted by: Neil | May 18, 2008 9:46 PM
Somehow I left out the most important bit....
CONGRATULATIONS.
Now get back to work.
Posted by: Neil | May 18, 2008 9:47 PM
Congratulations on the book contract. (Pity about the joke, though.)
Posted by: RBH | May 18, 2008 10:23 PM
Congrats again.
Nothing like a truly lousy joke to bring a grudging smile; that one was not only lousy, it had whiskers on it (oops, wrong image).
Posted by: John Monfries | May 18, 2008 10:25 PM
A general in a south-american country was accused of corruption by the civilian leadership. In an effort to avoid trial (the charges were entirely true), he arranged for a military coup, which failed spectacularly. He fled into the jungle, carrying only a briefcase with a fake passport and identity cards, and hastily gathered incriminating documents detailing his drug dealing and the Swiss bank accounts where much of the country's stolen wealth had been stashed.
He spent the night inside an old ruined stair-step pyramid. As dawn broke, he thought through his situation and realized that the documents had to be disposed of before he could use his alternate identity to slip out of the country. So he piled the documents up, and set fire to them. The humid jungle air had dampened them, though, creating a thick, black plume of smoke. This smoke was seen by search parties looking for the missing general, and he was quickly apprehended. This is a valuable lesson:
The insurgent General warns that smoking zigguraths can be dangerous to your stealth.
Posted by: Janne | May 18, 2008 11:05 PM
What's the postage between 'Merika an Oz, I wonder? As soon as I get my copy, I'll need to send it to you to be autographed!
Congratulations! A first born is a small price. They could have asked for intimate body parts.
Posted by: John Pieret | May 18, 2008 11:12 PM
Or you could wait until I do a signing tour (yeah, like that's going to happen; but I will be in Merika sometime again). If you fawn over me in just the right noisy manner, I will gladly sign your (purchased) copy.
Janne: Keep 'em coming...
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | May 18, 2008 11:24 PM
Congrats on the contract. Does this mean you're not allowed to make any extensions to your living room?
Posted by: Bob O'H | May 19, 2008 1:00 AM
Congratulations on the contract, John. What you need now is, first, for Christian fundamentalists to conclude that species concepts are a body-blow to their most cherished beliefs and, second, to acquire an ex-companion from Dr Who as a wife who can accompany you on the many reading and lecture tours that are bound to follow publication.
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | May 19, 2008 1:18 AM
Nice book deal.
@Janne:
If more people would be able to pun like that maybe the general audience wouldn't behave like groan ups when they hear one.
Posted by: Who Cares | May 19, 2008 2:21 AM
Congrats on the contract. And speaking of puns and the reaction thereto:
My father told me once of an insight from a colleague of his at a large university in Canada. They like people to be bilingual there, you know (at least, say the Anglophones, in the Anglophone areas); and this colleague, of French extraction, taught courses with equal facility in French and in English.
And he had noticed an odd thing. When he delivered a pun in a French-speaking class, the students would laugh, as he expected in his Francophone way. In an English-speaking class, the students would groan. He eventually decided that the two reactions were the same.
Posted by: Porlock Hussein Junior | May 19, 2008 5:05 AM
Yay, a book contract! Congrats!
Posted by: Russell Blackford | May 19, 2008 7:54 AM
I'm not sure if one should congratulate or commiserate on the book contract; after all it means you've got to write the book! Not an easy task at the best of times.
On the subject of bad puns based on sayings I will offer you one for which I can't remember the preceding joke! Maybe somebody else with a less damaged memory can fill in the missing part.
You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think.
Posted by: Thony C. | May 19, 2008 10:55 AM
Mazel tov! O frabjous day!
Posted by: Susan Silberstein | May 19, 2008 3:12 PM
#14: for this kind of joke, surely you can make up the story, given the punch line...
On the Honda joke, when I heard it, the victim of the absinthe-caused flatulence worked at a Toyota factory -- hence the urgent need for a cure...
And on Canada and puns -- I grew up in Canada, and my children groan a lot. A variety I like includes bilingualish puns that only work for people who have learned some, but not much, of another language. For a French-English example:
three French cats get into a boat only big enough for two. What happens? Un, deux, trois, cat, sank.
Or, much funnier (no French here): According to Sigmund Freud, what comes between fear and sex? Funf.
(Apologies to those who've seen me post these before...)
Oh... and congratulations!
Posted by: Michael Kremer | May 19, 2008 8:14 PM
This one 'cause it involves a doctor's office:
- Man walks into a doctor's office, tells the receptionist he's there, sits down in the waiting room. While he's waiting, a cat walks out of a door, rubs itself against his leg, and walks back. Shortly afterward, a dog comes out, sniffs him, and walks back. The receptionist then announces she has his bill. "A bill? What for?" "Why, for the cat scan and the Lab test."
And these two because they're groaners:
- Horse walks into a bar. Bartender says, "Why the long face?"
- Giraffe walks into a bar and announces, "High balls on me!"
Posted by: Jud | May 20, 2008 11:41 AM
I believe that was Dorothy Parker when asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence.
Posted by: Scott Belyea | May 22, 2008 1:58 PM
Congratulations. I once had a music teacher who told us he was Neville Chamberlain's great-nephew. I guess he was fairly sick of history's one-line judgement, too, and merely said it was a little more complicated than that.
Posted by: Monado | May 22, 2008 11:54 PM
Re Neville Chamberlain
I am afraid that I am going to have to disagree most strongly with Dr. Wilkins' comment about Neville Chamberlain.
1. What Chamberlain did at the Munich conference was not only immoral but stupid. It was immoral because he sold out Czechoslovakia by ceding the Sudetenland to Hitler. What he did was stupid because Czechoslovakia had the most modern armament industry on the continent. In handing the Sudetenland and thus, inevitably, later Czechoslovakia over to Hitler, Chamberlain gave that industry to Hitler without firing a shot, thus shooting himself in the foot.
2. The fact is that Germany was in no condition to initiate a general European war; the panzer units which were most responsible for defeating the French army in 1940 barely existed. Furthermore, the combination of Britain, France, and Czechoslovakia in 1938 would have been in a much stronger position relative to Germany then were Britain, France , and Poland in 1939, given that the modern Czech army was far better armed then the Polish army which opposed the panzers with horsed cavalry.
3. Furthermore, the German General Staff, in the persons of Generals Frisch and von Blomberg were horrified at Hitlers' brinkmanship and were planning a coup to oust him from power. By caving in, Chamberlain cut the legs out from under them.
4. The argument that Chamberlain, by caving in at Munich, bought time for rearmament of Britain is grasping at straws. The Germans made much better use of the time between 1938 and 1940 in that regard, in particular, greatly assisted by the addition of the Czech armament industry.
5. Last, but not least, there is now at least some agreement that Hitler, knowing of Germanys' military deficiencies in 1938, was bluffing and might well have backed down if Chamberlain had informed him that an invasion of Czechoslovakia would be opposed militarily by Britain and France (it was his job, as the senior partner, to stiffen the Daladier spine).
Posted by: SLC | May 24, 2008 4:16 PM
Dr Wilkins,
I came across a book written by a namesake of yours (unless you really have been around since the late 1700s). Haven't read it yet, but it is a free download.
Lots of interesting old books at google books.
http://books.google.com/books?id=T6sLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:John+inauthor:Wilkins&lr=&as_brr=1#PPR1,M1
So when can we buy your book?
Posted by: Chris' Wills | May 25, 2008 4:37 PM