StCapps Not Even Allowed To Start Threads Anymore

[K@th]

5 reasons why it's so easy to hate hockey

By Dave Begel RSS Feed Twitter Feed
Contributing Writer
Photography: nhl.com
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More articles by Dave Begel

Published June 15, 2015 at 9:06 a.m. Tweet
Tonight, the 2015 Stanley Cup Finals may come to a close if the Chicago Blackhawks win at home, beating the Tampa Bay Lightning and winning the cup for the third time in five years.

The world is in a frenzy. Or at least some of the world is in a frenzy.

One place the frenzy does not exist is in my house.

Hockey? Meh!

I have a long history with hockey. I knew Lloyd Pettit, who wanted to build an arena (the Bradley Center) so he and his wife could bring an NHL team to Milwaukee. Pettit was a play-by-play guy for the Blackhawks when he met a zillionaire and married her, changing her name to Jane Bradley Pettit. As long as he was around, the discussion about an NHL team was alive.

I had lunch with Pettit at the Pfister Hotel once where he tried to convince me to write a column about how wonderful it would be if Milwaukee had an NHL team. I asked him about the problem of not being able to see the puck. Once he realized I wasn't going to buy into this, he said I must need new glasses if I couldn't see the puck. I didn't write the column.

And since that day I have never been able to see the attraction in hockey. And when you get down to it, there are five things about hockey I can't stand.

The Puck
I've seen hockey in person and on television. And I can't see the puck. Once, when I was between planes, my sports editor sent me to Minnesota to see a three-game hockey series with the University of Wisconsin playing. I remember vividly that there was a total of 18 goals scored. I never saw one of them. Oh, when the light went off, and the team started celebrating, I knew a goal had been scored. But I never once actually saw the puck go into the goal. The problem is exacerbated on television. Not only can't I see a goal made, I only see the puck about 50 percent of the time. Imagine watching a basketball game or a soccer match where you only see the ball half the time and never see it go into the hoop or net.

Substitutions
I don't have a clue what the rules are regarding substitutions. All I know is that it seems like players are shuttled in and out virtually every couple of minutes or so. It apparently doesn't have anything to do with whether the guys on the ice (there is also a dumb play by that name) are playing well or not. First, you have one line then another line and then another line and so on. It sounds like a bunch of rich people doing coke.

Brutality and boards
Watch hockey at the highest level, and the brutality is astounding. The loudest cheers you hear are for a goal. The second loudest is when some guided missile missing a few teeth barrels at over 20 miles per hour into some other guy with a few missing teeth and crashes him into the boards. The crowd goes nuts. It sounds like you're at a Mixed Martial Arts fight or something. Bring on the blood!

Too Fast
I love speed, but hockey never stops so you never have a chance to even try to figure out what's going on. Players moving in and out, sticks swinging, referees flinching whenever a player comes close. The action never stops. Basketball is a fast game, but you don't need to have a timeout to know what's happening. It would be a lot easier to follow a hockey game if they took away the skates. Or you could at least make three players on each team wear sneakers while the others wore skates.

Too Indoors
Hockey is a game that is meant to be played outside, on ice. When you have a game inside an arena, the crowd is hot, and the ice is cold. It would be a lot more interesting to play hockey outside, say in Lambeau Field or Miller Park or Camp Randall. Take down the boards. Put down a rink and a foot high pile of snow around it. Make the players wear scarves and mittens and knit hats. And let's have some cheerleaders serving hot chocolate.

Now, that's a game I could love.

[K@th]

There are many sports in the Winter Olympics, all with varying levels of sex appeal. Cross country skiing is on the lower end of the spectrum, while luge (lube...) is all the way at the top. But there is only one that makes me weep from three holes, and that’s ice dancing.

On Sunday evening, Americans who tuned into NBC’s broadcast of the Events at Pyeongchang were treated to a buffet of drama served to you in flamboyantly be-studded lycra atop four gleaming skates. And my loins were awakened for spring as I, and my fellow Americans, discovered our new sexual orientation, which is specifically having an athlete thrust me into the air via my crotch pocket, while a mis-ordered “El Tango De Roxanne/Come What May” mash-up plays.


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The XXII Winter Olympic Games—aka Pyeongchang 2018, aka Winter Sports are DOPE AS HELL—started off…

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Halt, before you ask—ice dancing is not figure skating, according to 2018 Olympic ice dancer Evan Bates—it’s something far sluttier. “We’re really more like ballroom dancers,” he said. “We’re interpreting music, putting a lot of emphasis on the connection between the couple and on the connection to the music.”

Ice dancers are not judged by the height of their flips or the speed of their spins like their figure skating counterparts; instead, they’re judged by “how they move together as one,” in other words, do you ice fuck good.

Take, for instance, the gold medal winners of the ice fucklympics—the “not dating” Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who performed such a sensual routine to some Moulin Rouge classics that it included an actual face sit.




Screenshot via YouTube.
But if it’s the sexiest of sport, what, then, do we do about the Shib-sibs—Maia and Alex Shibutani, the American silver medal winners and vlogging sibling duo? How am I to parse my feelings for Virtue/Moir and Shibutani/Shibutani?

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Maia and Alex Shibutani stumble to silver medal at U.S. Championships
Maia and Alex Shibutani earned 114.60 points for their free dance to “Paradise” by Coldplay and…

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Moreover, how are we to regard the Shib-sibs in such a sexually-resonant sport? Are they the wholesome, non-sensuality fueled alternative to Virtue/Moir, produced for and by Christian America? Will they ever win gold without the secret spice of the ice-dancing duo (sex)? Can I just relax about it and respect world-class athletes without having something smart-assy to say about it? But weren’t you thinking it too?

But the Shibs are just a small logistical moral hiccup in an otherwise unexpectedly exciting evening of ice play. I guess this is my community now.

[StCapps]

[K@th]

Curling Basics

There are a lot of resources out there these days for curling. Its popularity peaks with every winter Olympics and there are now 5 curling facilities in the greater Twin Cities metro area.

Curling Clinics
The curling clinics are the best way to get on ice instruction and the basics of the game. During a curling clinic you will learn the rules and sportsmanship of curling, and have some on ice instruction and practice time. See more information on the Curling Clinics page.

Group Rentals
Want a get your own group together for a curling party? Visit our Group Rental page for details on booking your session!

Resources for Curling Information
We have listed our favorite sites for more information on learning to curl. This should save you some time browsing and searching!

Best short videos: http://www.worldcurling.org/video-an-in ... to-curling
Best text – history, rules, everything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curling
Best etiquette and FAQ’s: http://startcurling.ca/etiquetteRules.php
Best rules- long version: http://www.worldcurling.org/rules-and-regulations
Also- check out the new book Bare Bones Stones by Frogtown's own Joel Ingersoll. Available in paperback, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited!

Basic Rules
Frogtown plays by USA rules. We listed some useful ones to get you started on our Basic Rules page.
See the USA Curling website for more information: http://www.usacurl.org/usacurl/

Etiquette
Curling is a friendly social game. You shake hands at the beginning. You shake hands at the end. During play you should not distract your opponent. Stand on the sidelines, near the center of the sheet, or on the ends behind the house. If you hit a rock you’re your broom or foot, YOU should say so; it happens all the time. More tips can be found on the Etiquette page.

Basic Rules to get you started
Curling is played by 2 teams of 4 players. The teams alternate throws towards the circular target (called the house). The object is to have more stones closer to the center than your opponent after all 16 stones have been thrown. Each player throws two stones, while their teammates sweep and direct the stone towards the house.

A typical game is played in 8 ends. In each end, 16 stones are thrown. Only 1 team can score in an end; the team with the closest stone to the center (the shot rock). That team scores one point for each stone closer than their opponent’s best stone.

Your team consists of a lead, second, vice skip, and skip. Once you set your line-up for the game, you must keep it that way for the entire game. The lead throws the first two stones for your team, while the second and vice sweep. The skip will call the shot, and can help sweep if needed. (Any of the 4 positions can act as ‘skip’, but you must always throw in the order which you started.)

If you have only 3 players, the lead throws the first 3 stones, the vice throws the next 3, and the skip throws the final 2 stones. (Your fourth can join in wherever when they arrive ) Subs generally should throw either lead or second.

The hammer is the last stone of the end, which is an advantage. The vice skips will flip a coin at the start of the game to determine the color of stones and the hammer for the first end. The coin toss winner chooses first, typically choosing the hammer. The means the opponent throws first. After the end, the team that scored will throw first in the next end.

This of course in only the beginning ….. http://www.usacurl.org/usacurl/

[K@th]

Quidditch, “the sport of warlocks,” is the premier sport of the wizarding world. Everyone follows Quidditch. Quidditch is a fast, dangerous, exciting game in which two teams flying on brooms compete for points scored by throwing a ball–the Quaffle–through hoops on either end of a large grassy pitch. Quidditch is played by children on broomsticks in the back apple orchard, by teams of students at Hogwarts and by professional athletes whose exploits are followed avidly all over the world. The Quidditch World Cup matches attract hundreds of thousands of fans.

Quidditch falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, part of the Ministry of Magic. The professional organization is called the International Association of Quidditch. Professional matches are attended by trained mediwizards and while there are many injuries, there are few deaths from Quidditch accidents. However, referees have been known to disappear completely only to turn up weeks later in the middle of the Sahara. There are seven hundred possible ways to commit a foul in Quidditch, all of which occurred in a Quidditch World Cup match held in 1473.

Rules of play
Quidditch is played up on broomsticks up in the air. There are three goal posts at either ends of a field. That field is called a Quidditch pitch. There are seven players on each side: the Keeper, the Seeker, three Chasers and two Beaters. One player is also appointed as the Captain. Professional teams will also have a manager.

Quidditch has three balls: a Quaffle, two Bludgers and the Golden Snitch. The ball that scores the points is the Quaffle. The Quaffle is 12 inches in diameter and is made of leather bindings. The Quaffle has made some different changes over the years. The Bludger is probably the most dangerous ball of all of them. It flies through the air being hit by players called beaters. Serious injuries have been caused by Bludgers hitting people and causing them to fall off their brooms. The third and most important ball is the Golden Snitch. The Golden Snitch is a tiny ball that has wings and is enchanted. The first Snitch was a tiny bird that was very small and very fast, but changes to the rules made it illegal to use the actual live bird. The current enchanted, winged-ball version of the Snitch was invented by Bowman Wright of Godric’s Hollow. If the Seeker catches the Golden Snitch, his or her team earns 150 points and usually wins the match. At either end of the Quidditch pitch are three hoops through which the Quaffle can be scored. In the centre of the Pitch is a circle where the balls are all thrown into the air and the match begins. As the balls are thrown, the players all gather on the ground and then kick off as the referee blows his/her whistle. During the game a player can get a penalty for fouling (breaking a rule). Some fouls that a player can receive are: blagging (applies to all players, it is when a player seizes opponent’s broom tail to slow or hinder), blatching (applies to all players, it is when a person is flying with the intent to collide), bumphing (applies to beaters only, it is when a Beater is hitting a Bludger towards the crowd, necessitating a halt of the game as the officials rush to protect bystanders – sometimes used by unscrupulous players to prevent an opposing Chaser from scoring).

Scoring
On the face of it, Quidditch scoring is unfair. In fact, it’s so unfair that you can barely call it a sportsmanlike. Since catching the Snitch gains one side the equivalent of fifteen goals and ends the game so the other team can’t counter it, Quidditch is essentially a match between the two Seekers and nothing else. So what makes it so popular? Do witches and wizards just watch it for the violence and fancy broom tricks?

Not at all. Quidditch is always played in a series. Unless you’re playing an informal game in the apple orchard, every Quidditch match is part of a larger series of matches, and accumulated points are what count toward ultimate victory. The Quidditch Cup at Hogwarts goes to the team with the most total points, not the one who has won the most matches. The standings we see in the Daily Prophet for the British and Irish Quidditch League (DP1, DP2, DP3, DP4) list the teams in order of how many points they have in total, from the Tutshill Tornados with 750 points down to the lowly Chudley Cannons with only 230. Nowhere in the standings does it note how many matches each team won. Although we don’t see evidence of it, there must be a similar system for the World Cup, which would imply that Bulgaria and Ireland were the top scorers in the world that year. Would it have been possible, then, for Bulgaria to have won the 1994 Quidditch World Cup with Viktor Krum‘s capture of the Snitch, even though Ireland won the match? Apparently so.

[K@th]

"This ...is the Golden Snitch, and it's the most important ball of the lot. It's very hard to catch because it's so fast and difficult to see. It's the Seeker's job to catch it. You've got to weave in and out of the Chasers, Beaters, Bludgers, and Quaffle to get it before the other team's Seeker, because whichever Seeker catches the Snitch wins his team an extra hundred and fifty points, so they nearly always win. That's why Seekers get fouled so much. A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages--I think the record is three months, they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep."
--Gryffindor Quidditch Captain Oliver Wood (PS10)

Golden Snitch
The Golden Snitch, commonly referred to as a Snitch, is the smallest and fastest ball in the game of Quidditch.

Catching the Snitch originated in the 1100's from the Wizarding sport of chasing and catching a fast diminutive bird called a Golden Snidget (QA4).
Eventually Snidget numbers fell to a dangerously low level, and the Wizards' Council headed by Elfrida Clagg made them a protected species. As a substitute for the living bird, Bowman Wright of Godric's Hollow invented the Golden Snitch, a tiny metal ball with wings that zig-zagged and flew just like the original Snidget, but was more durable (obviously) and could be enchanted to stay within the boundaries of the Quidditch pitch (QA4).
A Snitch is never touched by human hands before a match, and the makers wear gloves. Only the Seeker is supposed to touch the Snitch (DH7).
In a Pensieve memory, Harry saw his father James releasing and catching a Golden Snitch, possibly trying to impress Lily Evans but mainly impressing Peter Pettigrew. James was a Chaser and not a Seeker, and when asked where he got the Snitch he said he "nicked it" (stole it) (OP28).
On his 17th birthday at the Burrow, Mrs. Weasley made Harry a cake shaped like a Golden Snitch (DH7). That same day he was told that Dumbledore's will had left him the first Golden Snitch he ever caught. Minister for Magic Rufus Scrimgeour told Harry it had a "flesh memory" as all Snitch's do, and would open only for him. Scrimgeour never knew, but inside the Snitch, Dumbledore had hidden the Resurrection Stone, one of the Deathly Hallows that came from Marvolo Gaunt's Peverell ring (DH22). The Snitch had the words "I open at the close" engraved upon it, and when Harry realised he had to sacrifice himself to Voldemort in order to save his friends he whispered "I am going to die" and the Snitch opened to reveal the Stone (DH34).

[K@th]

The Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin. The story opens with Santiago having gone 84 days without catching a fish, and now being seen as "salao," the worst form of unluckiness. He is so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with him and has been told instead to fish with successful fishermen. The boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling his fishing gear, preparing food, talking about American baseball and his favorite player, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf Stream, north of Cuba in the Straits of Florida to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end.

On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago takes his skiff into the Gulf Stream, sets his lines and, by noon, has his bait taken by a big fish that he is sure is a marlin. Unable to haul in the great marlin, Santiago is instead pulled by the marlin, and two days and nights pass with Santiago holding onto the line. Though wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that, because of the fish's great dignity, no one shall deserve to eat the marlin.

On the third day, the fish begins to circle the skiff. Santiago, worn out and almost delirious, uses all his remaining strength to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed.

On his way in to shore, sharks are attracted to the marlin's blood. Santiago kills a great mako shark with his harpoon, but he loses the weapon. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Santiago knows that he is defeated and tells the sharks of how they have killed his dreams. Upon reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder, leaving the fish head and the bones on the shore. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.

A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. Pedrico is given the head of the fish, and the other fishermen tell Manolin to tell the old man how sorry they are. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. The boy, worried about the old man, cries upon finding him safe asleep and at his injured hands. Manolin brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youth—of lions on an African beach.

[StCapps]

[K@th]

The Meaning of "Asshole"
Aaron James offers a cognitivist conjecture, which sheds light on foul language generally.



If you asked me what it means to call someone an "asshole" before I really thought about it, I probably would have suggested an “expressivist” analysis. The word, I might have elaborated, is just another term of abuse, a way of simply expressing one’s disapproval. Much as if one had said “Boo on you!”, one isn’t trying to say something that can be true or false, correct or incorrect. The job of foul language like “asshole” isn’t to describe the world, but simply to express one’s disapproving feelings, in an ejaculatory or cathartic burst facilitated by inherently emotive words.

I decided this was completely wrong one day in the summer of 2008, while surfing in a crowded line up. I was watching a guy brazenly break the rules of right of way and thought “Gosh, what an asshole”. That wasn’t a new thought, but I then noticed, for the first time, that this thought has what philosophers call “cognitive content”. I was trying to say that the guy in question was properly classified in a certain way. Other law-abiding surfers weren’t properly classified under that term, and so it could be true or false, correct or incorrect, to say that this guy was, in fact, an asshole.

That got me thinking about what it would be for someone to qualify as an asshole. Harry Frankfurt partly inspired this. I thought: Frankfurt put his finger on “bullshit”, and I am a philosopher, so I should define “asshole”. After considerable tinkering and with the help friends, I settled on this definition: the asshole is the guy who systematically allows himself special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunises him against the complaints of other people.

This definition is hopefully significant simply because it prompts one to think, “Hey, I’ve met that guy”. Maybe you encountered him this morning in the coffee shop. Maybe the guy wouldn’t quiet down on his mobile phone, despite obvious sneers. Maybe he drives as though he owns the road. He probably says, “Do you know who I am?” to the maître d’ at a restaurant when he’s not quickly seated. Although it of course matters how the definition’s details get worked out and applied, the main idea is that even those inclined to quibble in the small might agree that “asshole” doesn’t simply have expressive meaning. Its function is to classify a person, correctly or incorrectly, as having a particular kind of moral personality.

I soon discovered linguistic evidence for this “cognitivist” rather than “expressivist” treatment of the word. It makes perfect sense to say of someone, “Yes, he is my friend, and he’s fine to me personally, but I admit he’s an asshole”. You can also coherently say things like “General MacArthur was plainly an asshole, but in the end a force for good”. Now maybe those contexts don’t express all-out disapproval, because they still express disapproval in a muted form that is outweighed by other considerations. Yet even all-out approval seems perfectly coherent. It is coherent – and indeed commonplace – for an asshole to proudly own the name. He boasts “Yes I’m an asshole – deal with it”. He taunts his subjects with this pronouncement precisely because he seems to approve wholeheartedly.

An obvious worry here is that I have gone too far in a “cognitivist” direction. Surely the word “asshole” is often used to vent feelings with no concern for whether its target meets any set of necessary and sufficient conditions for its application. If nothing else, then, the emotional charge often associated with the term is something that must be explained.

An easy move here is to follow Stephen Finlay’s idea that ethical language “pragmatically indicates” attitudes of approval or disapproval within a normal conversation. If you call Trump an asshole while we are talking, it will normally make sense for me to interpret you as disapproving of Trump’s conduct. But that may only be a matter of what it is reasonable for me to infer about you given our conversational context and my general knowledge of how people feel when they speak. The very meaning of the word “asshole”, as set by the linguistic rules that govern its use, doesn’t itself imply that you disapprove. And so “Trump is an asshole” can count as true or false in a straightforward way. Expression is, in the standard parlance, a matter of “pragmatics” rather than “semantics”.

I take great comfort in Finlay’s idea, if nothing else as a last resort. It is also interesting that, if need be, a “cognitivist” account can go even further and simply admit expressive meaning as part of the very semantic meaning of “asshole”. As David Kaplan (and David Copp, in a different way) has explained, that needn’t undermine pretentions of objective truth.

Kaplan suggests that, alongside "descriptive" terms whose meaning can be given by a definition (like "fortnight"), we can explain the meaning of "expressive" terms ( "damn", "bastard", "ouch", "oops", and "goodbye") in terms of an idea of "expressive correctness”. So suppose someone sincerely uses an expressive term. This doesn't simply report certain purported facts; "ouch" doesn't just mean "I am in pain”. It does, however, purport to "display" things as being a certain way. I display the fact that I am in pain when I say "ouch", and I display the fact that I despise someone if I say "that bastard”. Use of the term is expressively correct, says Kaplan, when the supposed fact holds: I say "ouch" and I am, in fact, in pain; I say "that bastard" and I do indeed despise the person. Use of the term is expressively incorrect when the supposed fact doesn't hold – as when I'm not really in pain, but faking to get attention; or when I don't despise the person at all.

But now consider "oops”, which, unlike "ouch”, has an element of objectivity. To say "oops”, Kaplan suggests, is (roughly) to purport to display the fact that “one has observed a minor mishap”. So saying "oops" will be (expressively) correct when one has just seen someone inadvertently break a wine glass, but incorrect when the mishap isn't minor (for example, a whole building falls down, killing hundreds, in which case "oops" could at best be a macabre and vile joke). So whereas the correctness of "ouch" depends entirely on one's state of mind, the correctness of "oops" also depends on the world, independently of one's subjective attitudes.

Now turn to foul language. For a given foul term, we can ask whether its correctness conditions are fully subjective, as with "ouch”, or at least partly objective, as with "oops”. And, when you survey many foul terms – even the foulest of the foul – they easily seem to be objective expressives: their correctness can seem to depend, at least in part, on what is going on in out in the world. Here are several examples along with some tentative suggestions about what those “objective correctness conditions” might be.

[K@th]

"shit" – as when "shit!" is said after a fender bender (in contrast with something's being "shitty”, or of poor quality). This implies that an unexpected event has occurred that frustrates the speaker's aspirations (such as avoiding costly auto repairs, getting to work quickly). The aspirations are subjective, or up to the person, but the event in question has to actually occur. Shit happens, and has to happen, for it to be shit: shit has existence as its essence. Or, more plainly: if the fender bender or other untoward event hasn't actually occurred, it won't be expressively correct to say "shit!" (Except in fictional cases, when things are fictionally presented as actually happening – a pretty special context.)

"fucking"–as in "the fucking car wouldn't start, right there in the middle of the road”. This implies major frustration of someone's plans, though not necessarily the speaker's. I could be hearing the story of a woman whose car had stalled in the middle of the road and say "really, and the fucking car just wouldn't start?" Her plans would be majorly frustrated, but (unlike "oops") I wouldn't have had to observe the events myself or even myself have the frustrated plans (the event may have passed, in which case there is nothing, as regards that event, to plan for).

"fucker" – as directed at a toaster that burns one's toast or an electrical outlet that shocks one. The object is personified as having malicious intent. The expressive correctness of the terms depends on whether the metaphor is apt, given the situation’s descriptive features. (We'd usually say this of more readily personified objects, such as toasters or computers, but perhaps not a stationary rock.)

"mother fucker" – a metaphorical way of saying someone can't be trusted. You can't trust him not to have sex with your own mother if he had the chance. The term is inapt if someone is completely trustworthy.

"bastard" – much as with "mother fucker”, implies treachery, that the person in question is a traitor, or would-be traitor. When we aren't thinking of its non-derogatory meaning ("one without a father"), a person doesn't count as a bastard, in the central, paradigmatic sense, unless they are treacherous or prone to betray others in relationships. It would be a mistake to call someone a bastard if he (or she?) were reliably faithful in what his relationships required.

Kaplan seems to disagree about “bastard”. (He treats "That bastard X" as akin to "That damn X”.) But no matter. Though "damned" or "damnable" does have an older and very rich set of meanings, especially religious ones, I think Kaplan is right about one use of "damn”, which seems to be a purely "subjective" expressive, without external correctness conditions. If I say "Damn you!" it seems pretty clear that I in some sense express my disapproval of you. The word "damn" itself carries that implication when it is sincerely used, by virtue of the linguistic conventions that set its meaning. I can't sincerely (and properly) say "That damn Trump; but I really like him!"

So traditional emotivism gets one case right. Still, this seems an exceptional case. If so many foul terms seem to be “objective expressives”, then it is natural to see any expressive element in “asshole” in a similar way. My definition says when the term is descriptively correct. If we like, we can add that it will be expressively correct when, and only when, the speaker in fact disapproves, or finds disapproval appropriate, in virtue of the asshole’s acting upon entitlements that he does not in fact have.

This kind of reasoning has led me to be pretty sceptical about expressivist analyses of foul language generally. So much so that I’ve been flirting with the idea that there are four main categories of foul language and that expressivist treatments don’t apply to any of them straightforwardly.

The categories are these:

(1) vice terms, which purport to classify a kind of moral personality, correctly or incorrectly (e.g., “asshole”, jerk”, “bastard”, “motherfucker”, “schmuck”, “boor”, “cad”);

(2) pejorative terms, which assume false normative or moral claims about certain independently identifiable groups of people (e.g., "honkey”, "wop”, "kike”, “limey”, "chink”, "n----r");

(3) slurs, which invoke a metaphor (“four-eyes”, "pig”, "dickhead”, "cocksucker") that is often literally false and yet may be “true”, metaphorically speaking.

(4) objective expressives (e.g., “shit” and “fucking”), which are expressively correct or incorrect depending on what is going on in the world.

My conjecture is that these categories cover a lot if not most of foul language, and that each requires an appropriate “cognitivist” treatment. That is only a conjecture at this point, but it is not hard to appreciate its potential significance. If my hunch pans out, then expressivism is wrong even about most foul language. That is, it is wrong about the area of language where it has the best, fighting chance of being right.

I might add that this is presumably a further count against expressivism about ethical language generally. The case for a cognitivist “constructivism” about ethics of the kind I favour gets even better.

To be sure, everything then depends on how the different categories of foul language get developed. So here are few thoughts about “asshole” in relation to pejorative terms and slurs, taking each in turn.

Consider racist pejorative terms. In contrast with “asshole”, I’m inclined to see these terms quite differently, as systematically wrong. Here I mean the class of pejorative terms that get directed toward a particular group of people (“Yankee” or “honkey” and whites; "wop" and Italians; "kike" and Jews; "chink" and Chinese people; “limey” and English people; "n----r" and African-Americans). If we follow recent work by Chris Hom and Robert May, as I do, then the very meaning of these terms assumes certain normative beliefs or assumptions about the group in question. “Wop”, for instance, assumes that Italians are the appropriate object of contempt and discrimination, simply because they are Italian.

Now suppose the assumed judgements of appropriateness are radically mistaken. From a moral perspective, no one is the appropriate object of contempt or discrimination simply because they happen to belong to a racial group. In that case, the racist judgement that Berlusconi is a wop will lay claim to truth and yet fall into error by virtue of resting on a false presupposition. Since “wop” has a false presupposition, the claim that Berlusconi is a wop is neither true nor false.

We presumably won’t want to say that about “asshole”. We can surely be mistaken about what someone is or is not entitled to. Yet it is a pretty radical form of scepticism to hold that the moral presuppositions of an asshole judgement are systematically wrong. In that case, there are no kikes, no chinks, and certainly no “n-----rs”. And Berlusconi is not a wop – even if he is an asshole.

Now consider the different category of slurs, like “four eyes” and “dickhead”, understood as metaphors. “Asshole” probably initially got its meaning as a metaphorical slur.

Calling someone an asshole is of course literally false in the non-moral sense of “asshole” that refers to a physical body part, just as it is literally false to say of someone that he is his own left arm. To say either thing is at best some kind of metaphor. Yet, if I am right that “he’s an asshole” can be a literally true or false, from a moral perspective. This raises an interesting question: how could “asshole” come to have acquired a literal moral meaning? The real, full story is presumably complicated. Still, it is helpful, or at least interesting, to speculate with something like the following conjectural history.

In the beginning was the word, used as a mere metaphor. Geoffrey Nunberg tells us that “asshole” caught on in recent times among World War II soldiers. Imagine its first non-literal use: a solider called his superior officer – let’s call him Sargent Pug – "an asshole”, thereby inviting his fellow soldiers to imaginatively engage Pug in a certain unflattering light.

Although it is literally false that Pug is a body part, likening him to a foul and hidden part of his own body called attention to his arrogant disposition and repugnant personality. As with any good metaphor, at least as Richard Moran explains it, the point was to see or experience Pug as an asshole, to interpret him and his actions from an imaginative frame of reference that treats a man as the physical embodiment of a body part that behaves much as that body part might. They were to feel and almost believe that Pug is as problematic and as foul and yet shamefully exposing himself in public.

The more literal minded of soldiers might have objected: "Look, it’s not strictly speaking, literally true that Pug is an asshole any more than it can be literally true that Pug is his own left arm”. In reply, the soldiers would have laughed off the objection as beside the point. Sure, they'll say, the statement "Pug is an asshole" is literally false; "asshole" is just a metaphor. The point is that it is especially apt. Or as we might elaborate the idea, the use of the word by the soldiers says things about Pug that could not have been literally said of him up to this point. Perhaps some of those things can be put as literal truth-claims, such as the claim that Pug isn't worthy of respect, or that he abuses his office, or that he is contemptible. But those truths aren't the whole point of the metaphor, which is mainly to see Pug in an unflattering light that cannot be fully expressed in so many truths.

Because the metaphor was apt, it quickly caught on as a way of speaking. Use of the term became popular among the other soldiers on the base, in the wider army, and then in further reaches of society. The term was especially useful as communication. People found calling someone an asshole an especially handy way of conveying and perhaps even venting their contempt for abusive authority figures who are not, for them, worthy of respect. Those who heard the metaphor invoked found it especially easy to grasp what the speaker meant: they meant not simply to vent feelings of contempt, but to invite an interpretation of their target that would make those feelings of contempt fully appropriate. That’s because, when someone calls someone an asshole, you could easily tell that he or she has a certain moral view of things: the view that person called an asshole is not worthy of respect, because of how he treats those around him.

Soon enough, when someone used the word, you could readily land upon this interpretation of the user's meaning, without knowing very much about his or her context of utterance. The metaphor thus came into a different kind of meaning: calling someone an asshole moved away from mere metaphorical communication and became a literal, more routine claim to truth, a claim to the truth of a moral judgement: that the person in question is not worthy of respect because of the way he treats others.

Even now few were especially careful or aware about exactly what kind of unsavoury people they were calling an asshole. Still, there was a rough but remarkable convergence. The invited perspective would be appropriate for certain kinds of people and not for others. Knowing or not, people began to grasp the rules of normal usage, which called for one type of person to be called an asshole and left other types for better names.

Eventually, the rules settled. They became well enough established that a competent speaker of the language could entertain asshole judgements without meaning to express contemptuous attitudes. The curious user of the language would wonder whether this person is the right kind of person to qualify as unworthy of respect, even without feeling at all exercised about this, let alone speaking out about it. The curious person would ask questions that don't express negative attitudes, such as "Is Trump an asshole?" And people could reason with hypotheticals, such as, "If Trump is an asshole, I probably shouldn't watch his show; Trump does seem to be an asshole: so I probably shouldn't watch his show”.

Beyond private reflections, all of this could be discussed in a mode of cool-headed argument among friends. Over coffee, friends might agree that, yes, Trump indeed qualifies as an asshole, literally speaking. They might conclude on that basis that they probably shouldn't go out of their way to listen to him or watch his show, having reasoned together and reached agreement upon what they all regard as an objective matter of moral fact: Trump is, in fact, an asshole.

Now when a less agreeable fellow in the coffee shop says it isn't literally true that Trump is an asshole, the friends don't say what the soldiers said to their literal-minded fellow solider. They don’t agree and say that this is beside the point. They beg to differ. They reply: "no, that's wrong; Trump definitely qualifies; he's literally an asshole; you've made a mistake”. At that point, the journey of “asshole” from metaphorical slur to vice term was complete.