As my only tangible contribution to the electoral process this year was the 45 minutes I spent voting, the fact that I woke up on the morning of November 5th feeling like I had just run several miles speaks poorly of my physical fitness. But until these effects of election fatigue finally wear off, I'll probably keep clicking the refresh button on Pollster.com like a lab animal in a Skinner Box waiting for a food pellet that will never come.
As long as everyone's still in this combative spirit, I'd like to use today as an opportunity to gauge public opinion on an unrelated cultural debate from earlier this year which was put on hold for several months by the presidential election. The argument, which has already created bad blood between several close friends, concerns the following well-known classroom exchange on The Simpsons.""
Ms. Hoover: Just try to sleep while the other children are learning.
Ralph Wiggum: Oh boy, sleep! That's where I'm a viking.
Participants were split along the lines of whether Ralph means he has dreams in which he is literally a viking or is using the word ""viking"" to denote his own skill at sleeping. So that even readers unfamiliar with the show can play this game, the argument is rendered below in a number of popular standardized test formats, with considerable effort made not to disclose my own bias toward the argument.
If appearing on the LSAT, the question might take the following form:
Ralph, a child with many known cognitive deficiencies and a history of mental hallucinations, is instructed by his schoolteacher to ""sleep while the other children are learning,"" to which Ralph replies, ""Oh boy, sleep! That's where I'm a viking."" Which of the following choices provides the BEST explanation for Ralph's response?
A) Ralph has recurring dreams in which he is a sea-faring Norseman. Lacking either the cognitive or verbal capacity to describe these episodes as dreams, he (comically) misinterprets them as real experiences.
B) Ralph believes himself to be particularly skilled or accomplished at the act of sleeping. Here, he uses the image of 11th century Scandinavian pirates as a symbolic metaphor for high achievement. This, despite the fact that no one in the history of human civilization has ever used the term ""viking"" as a laudatory epithet, nor would one be likely to do so, unless the Nobel Committee were to award a prize for advancements in the field of ""sending one's dead out to sea in flaming longboats."" This is further compounded by the knowledge that no one ever speaks of being ""adept"" or ""accomplished"" at sleeping, and that a reputedly slow-witted person would be especially unlikely to do so by complicated metaphorical means. 14th century English logician William of Occam famously stated, ""All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."" All other things being equal here, what makes you think that you're so much smarter than William of fucking Occam? Because we're all here at LSAT headquarters right now, paging through a philosophy textbook, and under ""Significant Advancements in Western Scientific Thought,"" we've found about 10 pages on ""Occam's Razor"" and no mention at all of ""Anonymous, Smart-Assed Graduate of a Kaplan Course."" Guess what? No vikings here either.
Prior to 2005, the SAT might have handled the issue thusly:
""Dog"" is to ""Domesticated, four-legged member of the Canidae family"" as ""Viking"" is to:
A) Sea-faring Norseman
B) Term of praise lavished upon one who demonstrates significant accomplishment in a particular field, i.e. ""Albert Einstein was a great viking in modern physics.""
The revised exam might prompt test takers to write a short essay on human achievement and why ""viking"" provides an insufficient analogy for the progress of any group of people that doesn't worship Odin and believe in the existence of elves.
In the end, I suppose it's more important to celebrate our shared cultural heritage than to bicker over details like this. By acknowledging each other's beliefs, we could show that we're open-minded. That we deserve to be called enlightened individuals, free thinkers or whatever other paragon of virtue and innovation.
Except for vikings. I mean, that just doesn't make a bit of goddamn sense.
Not tired of sharing your opinion yet? E-mail Matt at hunziker@wisc.edu.
