virus: Forward--Rant! (was: Re: Fit to Print (was Re: CyberProzac))

Tracy Yucikas (tyucikas@cts.com)
Tue, 01 Sep 1998 23:53:22 -0700


Robin Faichney asked:

>Let's drop that one for now. But I have a question for you:
>What's the isomorphism of an expletive?

back in the days of math, it was sort of an algebraic given
that for any group, ring, field or vector-space, there was
always the old reliable "auto-isomorphism"; that is, any
(of the above) was isomorphic to itself.

Remembering this, I wanted to blithely say that an expletive
is isomorphic to itself. However, "shit-A is not equal to shit-B"
kept whispering out of the catacombs of general semantics, so I had
to shit-can THAT idea.

Recalling that an isomorphism implies functional equivalence between
at least TWO entities (even two instances of the same entity
is ok) it seems that functional equivalence depends on much
more than the expletive alone but also upon the context in which
it is uttered and the degree of pique felt by the "explit-or".

... sorry, too many variables influencing the functionality of
any given particular expletive to be able (for me at least)
to give a general answer other than

"a particular expletive is isomorphic only to itself or its equivalent
under similar cicumstances and only as far as you're willing to
probe into the levels of detail surrounding the event..."

This stretches the "normal, mathematical" usage out of
shape and removes predictable quality from the term.

...............

To say that something is an isomorphism is an incomplete

Fuzzy Custodian of logic in the home for non-verbal