Technicality Club

September 3, 2014 @ 6:48 am · Filed by under Linguistics in the comics

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The first panel of the most recent SMBC:


Turns out that Technicality Club is really Natural Language Semantics. Or maybe Statutory Interpretation, I'm not sure:

The AfterComic:

[Note for those without a classical education…]

September 3, 2014 @ 6:48 am · Filed by under Linguistics in the comics


12 Comments

  1. Stan Carey said,

    September 3, 2014 @ 6:59 am

    Bureaucrat in Futurama: "You are technically correct – the best kind of correct."

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hou0lU8WMgo

  2. dumbuzi said,

    September 3, 2014 @ 9:58 am

    if nobody ever talked about technicality club then how did membership exceed more than 1or 2 if you count Harvey?

  3. Dan Lufkin said,

    September 3, 2014 @ 10:06 am

    Is Groucho Marx a member?

  4. Oskar said,

    September 3, 2014 @ 10:25 am

    "No information pertaining to technicality club can be created by one or more individuals and then by any means acquired by one or more individuals"

    But the speaker herself is in violation of this rule! She's informing the other two individuals about the specific rules of technicality club, and the rules of technicality club surely qualifies as "information pertaining to technicality club".

    The rule should read:

    "No information pertaining to technicality club can be created by one or more members of technicality club and then by any means acquired by one or more non-members of technicality club"

  5. Q. Pheevr said,

    September 3, 2014 @ 10:54 am

    A not entirely unrelated question: In Wittgenstein's famous dictum "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen," what is the referent of wovon man nicht sprechen kann?

  6. Breffni said,

    September 3, 2014 @ 12:09 pm

    Q. Pheevr: it doesn't have a referent, it's a free variable.

  7. Bloix said,

    September 3, 2014 @ 4:07 pm

    For those of you who wonder why your insurance policy is so goddamned hard to understand ….

  8. Sili said,

    September 3, 2014 @ 6:44 pm

    Not really relevant, but since that Wittgenstein quote was brought up, I have to admit that due to my poor German, I originally though "schweigen" meant "swear(curse)" when I first saw it.

    I still like that version better.

  9. ajay said,

    September 4, 2014 @ 8:29 am

    By contrast, the first rule of Chatham House is that you can talk about Chatham House but you can't attribute it.

  10. Ø said,

    September 4, 2014 @ 3:24 pm

    Sili: Equally irrelevant, but I used to think that a brother-in-law was called a Schweiger because he didn't say anything at the wedding when they said "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."

    And I once knew a choral director who thought that "Ne swic thu naver nu" meant "You never knew any swic" (whatever that is — maybe sorrow?).

  11. AntC said,

    September 4, 2014 @ 9:04 pm

    Lewis Carroll [Hunting of the Snark]. "No-one shall talk to the helmsman; and the helmsman shall talk to no-one."

  12. Bloix said,

    September 5, 2014 @ 6:52 pm

    We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, 'You don't know what you are talking about!' The second one says 'What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?', and so on." – R. Feynman

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