Sham Ceremony: Difference between revisions

* The famous [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Hoax:Sokal Hoax|Sokal Hoax]].The physicist Alan Sokal once had a bullshit article published in a the [[Post Modernism|postmodernist]] journal ''Social Text'', which for reasons that [[It Seemed Like a Good Idea At The Time|seemed good at the time]], was not peer-reviewed. The article was named "Transgressing The Boundaries: Towards A Transformative Hermaneutics Of Quantum Gravity", and it was designed to point out a number of flaws with [[The Nineties|'90s]] postmodernism's somewhat peculiar and quite often hostile take on modern natural science. That he was able to publish an article that by his own admission was something he crapped out relatively quickly by simply using as many hip and pretentious polysyllabic words as he could was used by him as evidence that the whole "[http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars:Science wars|science wars]]"--'90s High Postmodernism's bizarre-in-retrospect quarrel with the natural sciences--was at best a highly questionable enterprise.

* When [[Barack Obama]] was sworn in as U.S. president, the [[Idiot Ball|Chief Justice of the Supreme Court read the oath incorrectly]]. Obama [[What an Idiot!|hinted to him it was wrong, but when the Chief Justice continued to ask him to recite it incorrectly]], Obama [[Throw It In|just went]] [[The Show Must Go On|with it]]. Later on that day, they had the Chief Justice re-administer the oath, this time correctly, to forestall any attempts by people to claim that the incorrect oath made his swearing-in a sham ceremony and therefore he wasn't really president. (There is [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_President_of_the_United_States:Oath of office of the President of the United States#The_requirement_to_take_the_oathThe requirement to take the oath|debate]] as to whether he would have become President anyway regardless of whether he took the oath.)