The Whippet #181: Much better than horses

Hello!

I am actually properly back. The Whippet and I have renewed our vows, you might say.

There will be a new issue every fortnight, but they won’t all be a consistent length the way they used to be.

I do want to apologise for disappearing, and more especially for not having checked my emails recently, but I also know people don’t read The Whippet because of my fine selection of grovelling apologies, so I will just get into some things I’ve learned and thought were neat!

(Oh but also: thank you to the reader who reminded me that I didn’t have to make this, you know, perfect and full-length, and as good as all the missing issues put together, which would be impossible even if I wasn't rusty. I know these things, but I don’t always know-know them.
If you’ve got some thing you’ve been thinking you can’t do because you’d have to do it REALLY impressively, I hope you will join in me just … doing something)

And now…

United States v. One Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster

It was, in 1962, illegal for an individual to own more than 1.6 kg (about 3.5 lb) of gold. (To avoid a run on the bank, roughly – if everyone cashed out their gold at once, they wouldn't have enough to pay it out.)

So this casino-owner in Nevada wants to put a foot-tall, 6.5 kg solid gold rooster in his casino, to attract visitors. The Washington DC Mint refuses to melt down the gold required for him to make it, but he talks the San Francisco Mint into it. Washington gets to hear about this, issues a warrant for the rooster's arrest and sends US Marshals to raid the casino.

The rooster is confiscated, Graves requests bail, but they refuse. Graves makes a bronze copy of the rooster statue for his casino, and dresses it in a striped prison uniform.

At trial, Graves says the rooster is a work of art, and so exempt from the Gold Reserve Act. He gets a bunch of critics to come and testify to its artistic merits. One called it "exquisite".

The government argues that if even 1 in 180 Americans followed Graves' example, the economy would collapse.

From Quartz.com:

Ignoring the unlikely scenario of a million golden roosters glimmering across America, Graves' lawyer framed the tale of the Golden Rooster as a retelling of David and Goliath, with the role of Goliath played by a large and bumbling federal government.

Yes, the rooster was a work of art created at considerable expense, but he maintained there was a “symbolic value,” which he spelled out: “It is rewarding to feel, people, that any one of us, whether we are big, small, important, unimportant, still have the right under our Constitution, under our laws, to disagree with a Government official.”

As if to demonstrate the unfeeling nature of the federal government, Graves' lawyer encouraged the jury to consider the fate of the innocent statue should the jury find for his opponent: “It would be a terrible shame to see this rooster confiscated, melted down and put into the gold stocks at Fort Knox.”

The jury ruled in favour of the rooster.

Tautophrases!

You know them, you just didn’t know you know them.

• If it works, it works
• What’s done is done
• It ain’t over till it’s over
• A win is a win

And many more: [Wikipedia]

It shows something interesting about how we get meaning from the words people say, because of course these are NOT tautological.

“If it works, it works” means something like, “If it works, then its other flaws don’t matter.”

This is why people who try to win arguments by giving the definitions of individual words are not saying anything relevant. The meaning of a sentence is not the meaning of all the individual words put together.

There’s a tautophrase I’ve heard that’s not on the wiki page, and I can’t find the exact phrasing. But it was in the build-up to the Apollo 11 mission, and the engineers etc were continuously adjusting and testing and re-calculating and so on, and one of them told the head of mission: “You know, if you want to fly to the moon, you’re going to have to eventually fly to the moon.” Meaning, this is a very scary and risky thing to do, and of course we should be careful, but there’s no way to accomplish the mission without doing that scary and risky thing.

If you have any Tautophrases that aren’t in the wiki, please share!

You can also make new, dumb tautophrases out of existing aphorisms.

• If it bleeds, it bleeds
• A bird in the hand is worth a bird in the hand
• All that glitters is glitter.

(You’re not meant to find any meaning in the above, although feel free - there’s just a kind of joy in deliberately saying something really dumb.)

Tautological Advice

I suspect a lot of people will find this annoying, but I like it.

“You have everything you need to take the next step forward.”

If you are thinking, “No I don’t, my next step forward is going to the ball, but I don’t have a dress to wear” (you’re Cinderella now sorry) – then your next step is not going to the ball, it’s getting a dress. And if you’re like, “it’s literally not possible for me to get a dress” then it’s not possible to go to the ball and that cannot be your next step forward, you have to choose something different.

So yeah, it’s tautological: You have everything you need to take the next step forward, by definition: if you think you don’t, you’ve misidentified the next step.

I find this empowering! You’re never 100% blocked.

“Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres.”
– Franz Kafka

"Why did humans keep mules around when they already had horses?"

A reddit post that will make you love mules

from u/panzaram on r/AskHistorians, as always showing that strict moderation makes for greatness

The answer is simply that mules are unique animals, and are different then their parent animals, horses and donkeys, in a lot of key ways.

To name a few factors that lead people to prefer mules over horses, especially in labor and in military logistics: they are stronger, capable of carrying heavier loads; they are very surefooted, meaning they can navigate difficult terrain much better than horses; they are more intelligent than horses and donkeys, and have much keener senses. You can find a lot of historical reports, and also people who work with mules today will tell you, mules are very perceptive, and they can spot danger like a snake in the grass or a hornet nest or unsafe terrain long before humans can. In this way mules can work as kind of a living radar for humans travelling in dangerous environments. Charles Darwin talked about mules, you can read it here, but this quote is really great:

"The mule always appears to me a most surprising animal. That a hybrid should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life, than either of its parents, seems to indicate that art has here outdone nature".

The intelligence thing is interesting I think because many people have heard the phrase "stubborn as a mule," which suggests its difficult to force a mule to do something it doesn't want to do. But mules are not stubborn simply because they feel like; they refuse to do things if they think its a bad idea, or if they do not trust the human commanding them. I think its really interesting that for many centuries, humans have been able to get horses (and humans, for that matter) to charge into battle to meet violent deaths. You simply cant get a mule to do that, because mules know better lol.

Things to tell your loved ones for in case you die

CW: some non-graphic but direct death talk.

Even if you are a hardcore materialist atheist who doesn't care if your body gets put in dumpster when you die, you should give your loved ones a funeral instruction, as an act of kindness. Like: 'I want yellow roses at my funeral' or 'I want a donation made in my name to x charity'. Make something up.

The reason is this: when someone you care about dies, you have a really strong urge to do right by them, to do something they would have wanted. And you can feel kind of lost, too. So being given a task, and knowing that you're acting in alignment with the loved one's wishes, this is a great comfort to the grieving.

So don't say, "I don't care what you do, I won't be there." Give them a way to do something in your honour, for their sake, not yours.

(I noticed this around GoFundMes, actually. After there's been a death in the community. It's as much for the community as it is for the family. It gives people something they can do that's helpful, when they feel useless and powerless. A way to act on the things they're feeling.)

My Grandad died about a month ago, a heart attack. He hated the idea of a long, slow hospitalised death, so he had a 'Do Not Resuscitate' order, and my grandma had to get the piece of paper and tell the paramedics, you know, stop trying. I thought, my god, that must have been horrible. To be the one who had to say it.

But she said it wasn't: that it was a comfort to be able to do something for him, that she knew was what he wanted, in his final moments. To advocate for him when he couldn't advocate for himself.

It makes sense, right?

So that's what got me thinking about the arbitrary funeral instructions. Sometimes an ask is secretly an act of generosity.

To end on an upnote: