A link to a post analyzing the comic is here. It has the appeal of being a delightful "in joke" particularly pertinent to someone who blogs about both physics (where Murray Gell-Mann was undoubtedly a giant among men) and linguistics (where his high profile publications have been mediocre yet sensational and controversial).
I can't help but be uncomfortable at just how mean spirited the comic is in a case like this with an obvious, if unnamed, target, however deserving. At common law, and in older criminal statutes (e.g. Colorado Revised Statutes, Section 18-13-105 (2011)), there were two categories of criminal libel that did not involve reputation damaging falsehoods. One involved statements "tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead" and the other involved statements the "expose the natural defects of one who is alive," in either case, exposing the perosn to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule. I don't favor criminalizing either of these kinds of statements, but that doesn't mean that either kind of statement is in good taste in the company of decent people.
2 comments:
Oh, that was Gell-Mann? I follow that comic strip (which is quite merciless, indeed, what I consider a virtue - excessive politeness is an annoying defect for me, specially in satire, degenerating rapidly into hypocrisy and lies) but I could not figure out what was this one about.
Perhaps the target was not Gell-Mann, but Chadwick...
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