United Postal Union and Roosters Laying Eggs

edited December 2007 in General
The purpose of this thread is threefold:
  1. To Discuss the Topic of the Universal Postal Union
  2. To Discuss the Topic of a Popular Riddle
  3. To Discuss the Effectiveness of a Thread with Multiple Purposes


Did you guys know that a Universal Postal Union exists? Seriously! What the heck! I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I think it rather cuts down on the confusion that would normally be inherent with something like trans-sovereignty mail. But gee-wiz, why didn't I know it existed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union

If a rooster lays an eggs on the apex of a roof, to which side will said egg roll?
The answer to this riddle, of course, is that roosters do not lay eggs. Haha, you see it's a trick. I do not like this riddle because it presents you with a hypothetical situation (a rooster laying an egg) and then contradicts this situation in the so-called answer. I think this is deceitful, hypocritical, and mean.

Do you think it would have been better to split these things into two threads? I figure if people like peanut butter and people like jam, well what's wrong with eating them together? We ingest food, gases, and electromagnetism in heterogenic mixtures daily, why prevent ourselves from doing so with information? I'll tell you why, it can get confusing as hell and I hope nobody follows my horrible example and replicates this.
To format your writing in this thread, your first block of text will be a response to the first topic, your second block of text will be a response to the second topic, and your third block of text will be a response to the third topic. If you do not have a response to any topic in particular, you shall replace that block of text with a phrase indicating you have nothing to say, a placeholder symbol (such as an asterisk or ASCII-rendered piece of the human anatomy) or a smiley. I recommend the following:

:tmyk:

P.S. I hope you all make your responses as confusing as possible.

Comments

  • edited December 2007
    no comment

    The very fact that it is a hypothetical means that the cannot dismiss it as an impossibility. The person asking said, "if a rooster laid an egg..." They are (whether they, themselves, realize it or not, are committing us to a scenario wherein a rooster is laying an egg. Although the outcome may not be affected by this detail is irrelevant. after all, the whole point of a hypothetical question is to consider unlikely events. And the answer will be, to whichever side offers the least resistance.

    no comment
  • edited December 2007
    Although possibly an elaborate literary joke, one of the more curious lists we know of is that quoted (and perhaps invented) by J.L. Borges. In one of his essays (made famous by Michel Foucault), Borges claims that Dr Franz Kuhn discovered 'a certain Chinese encyclopaedia' entitled Celestial Empire of Benevolent Knowledge, which stated that all animals can be classified thus:

    [a] belonging to the Emperor
    embalmed
    [c] tame
    [d] sucking pigs
    [e] sirens
    [f] fabulous
    [g] dogs
    [h] included in the present classification
    that shake like a fool
    [j] innumerable
    [k] drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush
    [l] etcetera
    [m] having just broken the water pitcher
    [n] that, if seen from a distance, look like flies.

    :tmyk:
  • edited December 2007
    Mail needs to get between countries somehow and without some sort of organization to setup some system of cooperation, it wouldn't hardly work. It only makes sense that there would be a world wide body in existence.

    That not so much a riddle as it is a joke. It's a bit mean-spirited too as it relies on tricking the person it's being told to into sounding foolish, making them the butt of the joke. This is what I call a lame joke (lame: weak; inadequate; unsatisfactory; clumsy) or at least a bad one.

    Merging topics like this deviates from the purpose of threads. Still, this causes a person to put more thought into their replies in order to make sure they are managing it properly which could lead to less interuption to a topic. Of course, the flip side is that someone will get annoyed by the awkward format requirement and just post something totally off-the-wall which will potentially derail ALL the topics in the thread.
  • edited December 2007
    "I see," said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.
  • edited December 2007
    Does anyone else have the urge to play Final Fantasy: Tactics?

    Oh shit I was supposed to be responding to the topics, not Scott's avatar.

    Point: proven.
  • edited December 2007
    "Chess is ruthless: you've got to be prepared to kill people."
    -- Nigel Short

    "Excellence at chess is one mark of a scheming mind."
    -- Sherlock Holmes

    "Chess, like mathematics and music, is a nursery for child prodigies."
    -- Jamie Murphy

    "Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe."
    -- Indian Proverb

    "I like the moment when I break a man's ego."
    -- Bobby Fischer

    "[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time."
    -- George Bernard Shaw

    "Chess is the gymnasium of the mind."
    -- V. I. Lenin

    "When a man's house is on fire, it's time to break off the chess."
    -- Thomas Fuller
  • edited December 2007
    That George Bernard Shaw fellow was quite wise in the ways of Chess it would seem.
  • edited December 2007
    Among many other things, yes.