Remember that quote, “One should always beat a dead horse because the horse is never really dead”?
Paul Alper gives further background:
That dead horse quotation originated with a British colleague of mine during the time I was working for the OECD but based in London in the mid 1960s; our project concerned determining the consequences of raising the school leaving age. Peter was employed by the British Civil Service and thus, he was in frequent contact with people who always wanted to go back to the comfort of square one, invariably the status quo. Thus, the remark illustrating that nothing is ever truly settled and interred with its bones. He was quite a gifted mimic and although he had a northern accent, he could imitate our supervisors’ upper-class accents and speech patterns.
Speaking of northern accents, we watched In the Loop the other day. It was really funny!
I’ve never laughed harder at a movie than In the Loop. My wife and I still say “Difficult, difficult, lemon, difficult” to each other.
So do my husband and I!
I’m American but worked for the UK government for a time, including the time in question (and I worked in policy in DC for almost 15 years). In the Loop is one of my all-time favorite movies (and I love *all* of Ianucci’s work). Seeing it, however, destroyed my dream of writing a satirical fictionalized treatment of my experience.
Only thematically related: When someone says “don’t kick a man when he’s down” I usually reply “but that’s the best time to kick him! In fact, it’s really hard to kick him if he isn’t down!”
Obviously it is easier to kick someone on their side or back than someone standing up. But it is really not that difficult to kick a standing person! I know this from personal experience. This may sound like a terrible statement, but I practise Jiu Jitsu. So it is all in good fun. There are several other martial arts that have an even greater emphasis on kicking (e.g. Taekwondo, Karate).
I dunno, don’t your opponents often manage to block or dodge?
I’ve never tried to kick anyone, but I’ve tried to hit people in the face plenty of times and it’s pretty hard if they know it’s coming.
I think it is a question of framing. If I were to enter a Takwondo or Karate competition, I am pretty sure I would land very few kicks, because kicking without being kicked is their sport. If I were to go out on the street and kick the next standing person I saw (which would be both illegal and immoral), I am sure I would hit 10/10 times because nobody expects to be kicked out of the blue.
There is also the question of the definition of a ‘hit’. Does a blocked hit count? If a person dodges in such a way that they get hit, but not where the kick was supposed to land and without the power it was supposed to have, does that count? I guess we have to pass through the Garden of Forking Paths to get an answer…
You never can tell where a discussion thread on this blog will go!
Related:
My boss once said to me “You manage like a mathematician”
I said “What does that mean?”
“You think that when you solve a problem it stays solved!”
Much of the upcoming political campaign will involve abortion rights, something which was “settled” in 1972. And, that was that. Until it was no longer that. As Tom Lehrer once put it regarding Germany, “We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they’ve hardly bothered us since then.” Entropy, we are told, never decreases, but most everything else lacks monotonicity and thus, is a horse that is never really dead.
If you liked In the Loop but haven’t seen The Thick of It… do it.