Godwin's Law

[Lemur]

Seems that Godwin's Law turned 18 recently. The man himself has an interesting essay on his brainchild.

This one-off creation of mine, like the Energizer Bunny, keeps on going and going. If Godwin's Law had been a child, this year it would be old enough to vote.

I can't say I anticipated that Godwin's Law, which states that, "As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches 1," would last this long or that it would propagate into popular culture to the extent that it has. But I'm mostly gratified that it has done so.

A real-life politician has violated the best-known corollary to Godwin's Law by appearing at a white supremacist meeting celebrating Hitler's Birthday. No, really.

Dig the dude's campaign website. Kewl! Great science blog entry, as well as an Economist mention. But really, his campaign website is a gold mine of comedy gems.

I'm considering discussing divorce aids and my plans for a "Derrenger's for Dildos" policy to put guns in American women's hands instead of divorce aids. Presently, when a criminal is arrested for a weapons crime, the prosecutors seek orders to destroy those weapons. What a waste! Put our criminal prisoners to work modifying those guns to be smart-guns that can only be fired when the female owner is holding it so that children don't hurt themselves and so that criminals can't use them (unless they use the woman's hand). When a women turns in her stash of divorce aids, then give her a free gun to defend America when the jihadists follow us home.

And that's not even a particularly amusing example. It's full of stuff like that. If I hadn't seen third-party confirmation, I might suspect this was just an Onion prank.