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Tim Lyons · 04-01-2008, 02:19 AM

Popeye, a kind of minor deity, seemed fond of saying, "I yam what I yam."

Someone (perhaps Hayakawa) once said something like this: If you can't reduce abstractions to operations, perhaps you should qualify the statement as nonsense. "Johnny is an idiot" may stand for "I don't like the dude," or, "Johnny scores less than 60 on IQ tests." Maybe Jawveh meant, "You learn a lot about my nature if you look at my creations." That doesn't help much, perhaps because of "nature."

I think Popeye's stands for something like this: "I don't see how to act differently from the way I have always acted; I can't seem to break myself of the habit of eating spinach and knowing the stuffing out of Bluto."

04-01-2008, 02:19 AM	#9 (permalink)
Tim Lyons Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 4	Popeye, a kind of minor deity, seemed fond of saying, "I yam what I yam." Someone (perhaps Hayakawa) once said something like this: If you can't reduce abstractions to operations, perhaps you should qualify the statement as nonsense. "Johnny is an idiot" may stand for "I don't like the dude," or, "Johnny scores less than 60 on IQ tests." Maybe Jawveh meant, "You learn a lot about my nature if you look at my creations." That doesn't help much, perhaps because of "nature." I think Popeye's stands for something like this: "I don't see how to act differently from the way I have always acted; I can't seem to break myself of the habit of eating spinach and knowing the stuffing out of Bluto."