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Let Us Now Ban 10 Things
Tell me what you would like to ban, and I will tell you who you are. It occurred to me that a book of the ten things that a hundred intellectuals would like to ban would be very revealing. — Theodore Dalrymple
I’m uncertain if I qualify as an intellectual, but since Dalrymple has tossed down a gauntlet that few people will pick up, I’ll propose some bans. For the record, if I were suddenly made Philosopher-King of the world, I wouldn’t ban these things. Neither would I vote to ban them, should some deranged polity vote me in as their representative. These are less public policy proposals than pure personal dislike. Please, jump in with the same spirit.
1) Reality TV. I realize that it’s popular to watch people strip-mine their own lives, but it tends to bring out the worst in the stars and their fans.
2) Twitter. It can indeed do some good in breaking news, but more people use it to organize angry mobs. It generates more heat than light.
3) Cliche-ridden prose. Whenever someone says they want government out of the bedroom, ask if it’s okay for a man to beat a woman, provided it’s in a bedroom. Say what you actually mean, not what approximates what you sort of think you mean.
4) Satirical Websites that try to pass for real news. There’s way too much craziness in the world without people getting riled-up over jokes. The human capacity for outrage is limited, and every drop of anger wasted on a fake news story is a drop that can’t be channeled towards a legitimate outrage.
5) Vodka. If you’re going to get drunk, then you need to taste something. Besides, vodka is commie juice and we beat them. Go bourbon.
6) Drive-thru fast food. I totally get being too lazy to cook. But at least get out of the car. Park it, and then walk ten yards to get your supersized McHeartattack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJye229QbVs
7) Crummy RSS feeds. I’m a fan of my Really Simple Syndication reader: I can keep up with everything authors write. But some websites (*cough*) National Review and Patheos (*cough*) tweak their feeds so you need to click through to the site to read the whole article. I’m still subscribe to NR Digital, but if you’re going to jerk around someone who wants to read everything you write, then I ain’t donating.
8) Economists. I’m pretty sure that economics is roughly on par with astrology: they both use math, and they both claim to predict the future, but it’s mostly all guesswork. Left-of-center economists were glaringly wrong when they predicted that the Obama stimulus would drop unemployment down to normal levels quickly. Right-of-center economists were glaringly wrong when they predicted that the aforementioned stimulus would cause mass inflation. It’s all hogwash. Microeconomics might be a science, but macroeconomics is theology.
9) The Oscars. They’re too skewed to the present. We shouldn’t give a movie an award till it’s at least ten years old.
10) Listicles. They encourage bad writing. A good article ought to be carefully crafted, with a beginning, middle, and end. Listicles ruin it. They’re easy on the reader and too easy on the writer.
Okay, Ricochetti, what would you ban?
Published in General
Antecedent? Who dis you you talkin’ ’bout?
Banns are for men and women. ;-)
Bigot!
The first 10 things that came to mind:
Ban from where?
Ban from your home?
Ban from your city?
Ban from your state?
Ban from your country?
Ban from the planet?
It makes a difference.
(Aaaand, now I wanna see monkey knife-fights on the ISS.)
Also, are we allowed to include things that are already technically banned, but are still uneasingly common?
Like, murder is banned, but there’s still a fair bit of the stuff going around.
I don’t have time to think of ten things but here is one. I’d like to see each state ban civil asset forfeiture. A police department shouldn’t be able to confiscate your property without a conviction, a trial, or even filed charges, just because a cop has a hunch that maybe you got that money or property through some undefined illegal activity.
But we all like [Redacted because I don’t want to be Redacted for CoC……you know who I mean].
1. Whatever technical feature it is that makes commercials air at four times the volume of the program you’re watching.
2. Any university department that ends with the word “studies.”
3. The whip-poor-will (only those of you who have them in your neighborhoods will understand this — and you’ll probably join me in gathering the ammunition to get the job done).
4. The in-flight safety briefing. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell me, lady. I’m never going to know where the flotation device is. Let’s get this thing in the air.
5. Pink October in the NFL. I will match whatever charitable giving is lost if we can dispense with this.
6. The use of Bluetooth headsets within 5 square miles of another human being.
7. Mass e-mails written with deceptively personal, alarming subject lines so that you’ll open them.
8. Anyone whose coffee order requires more than two adjectives.
9. Guy with his feet sticking out the car window
10. That weird limbo when you’re not sure whether you’re still on hold or whether the call has been dropped.
I hear giraffes eat them. Maybe you should get a giraffe or two to hunt them down?
1) Broccoli
2) All portmanteaus created in the last 10 years
3) All dogs under 20lbs.
4) The Huffington Post
5) IPAs
6) SJWs
7) People who complain that Wikipedia is inaccurate
8) All Boston Redsox fans
9) New Jersey
10) Broccoli <just for good measure>
It was nice of Jon and Troy to try to save this thread. But I’m sorry, you don’t fit in here. Banned!
Since I don’t have one of my own I’ll steal Tommy’s….
Let’s see… yoga pants, jeans over 40…
So, would I either lose my degree or would it simply be renamed “Communicology”?
Seriously, why is it superior to use a Greek suffix which means “the study of” rather than using the English word “studies”? Biology and Life Studies literally mean the same thing.
In fact, one could argue that it’s more accurate to use the English word, because the Greek suffix can also mean “to tell a story”, as in the word eulogy or trilogy.*
The only reason biology doesn’t mean “speaking of life” is due to convention of usage.
(*Actually logos really means way too many things. Word. Text. Story. Narrative. Thought. Reason. Study. Idea. Quote. Ratio. Calculation. Etc.)
I resemble that remark. Literally.
You’re an anti-neologist.
The word fair as defined by liberals
Nukes for Iran? Nah, that’s crazy talk.
I find most toy dogs annoying — with some individual exceptions — but I’d ban the continuance of pre-bred lines with dwarfism. Nothing wrong with corgis, dachshunds, and bassets, but it’s just absurd to breed animals that look that ridiculous.
Yeah, Liberal Word Fairs really suck. Not enough books about sailing.
People who treat questions as rhetorical simply because they don’t have a good answer.
Senik FTW.
1.) Hell
2.) The question “why couldn’t they just shoot him in the leg?”
3.) at least a temporary ban—two years?— on discussions about racism. Maybe the word racism. It’s a real thing, don’t get me wrong, but talking about it isn’t getting us anywhere. We need to talk about other stuff now. We can talk about racism again in 2017.
4.) graduation ceremonies that take longer than 59 minutes, door to door.
5.) fundraisers for “Breast Cancer Awareness.” If it’s not for research, or funding testing, or providing care, forget it. I’m too damned aware of breast cancer already.
6.) any sit-com character who has sex with more than one other character from the same show (let alone the same apartment/loft) is banned. I don’t care if everyone remains good friends. It’s disgusting.
and everything Troy said.
I believe this is accomplished by using more of the available (audible frequency) bandwidth. (Commercial producers don’t actually have access to your volume control).
Pretty sure you can’t ban bandwidth. Or shouldn’t. This is what “Mute” is for. Or better, DVR and Fast Forward. Or even better: kick the damn TV to the curb.
Oh, do we get to argue with other people’s bans? In that case—I like broccoli and kale, and my mother-in-law has a teacup chihuahua which, however seriously repulsive the poor little thing might be, it’s a dog. One that an 85 year old woman can easily manage and take care of . The thing may be the size of a gerbil, but it has personality, and it provides company (though not, of course, protection).
And I want to add “therapy animals other than extremely well-trained dogs in public places.” No therapy-wallabies or therapy-emus on airplanes. Sorry about your issues, but I don’t want to fly with an emu.
I like broccoli and Swiss chard. Kale if it’s prepared well.
And the best dog I’ve ever had, so far, and I’ve had some pretty spectacular dogs is a 15 pound border terrier. As someone said, “they don’t know they’re terriers.” She’s portable, highly trainable, easy maintenance, and full of spunk and smarts. Snuggly when you want to snuggle. Playful when you want to play.
This is my breed going forward, as long as I can continue to afford having a dog. I love the big dogs, and I can appreciate other people’s small dogs (as long as they don’t visit my house and mark the legs of my furniture), but this breed is juuuuust right.
Top Ten Lists to start :)
Would you join me in mourning the decimation of PJ Media by listicles? They’ve taken it over like the Borg. You can hardly find anything by Green, Klavan, or Driscoll anymore, just excerpts from movies. A sad fate for the site that offered “Five Questions for James Lileks.”
Now that was a podcast!
If we are adding driving issues to the “ban list” – we are gonna need a bigger website.
Ban anything with the word “diversity” in it.