Derb!
John Derbyshire attempts to be clever, offering this lame effort to break all ten commandments at once:
“One idle damn Sunday, Dad killed cheating thief and lied to cover it.”
Derbyshire concedes this is unsatisfactory because it relies on mnemonic devices to find violations of the First, Second and Tenth Commandments, while the other “eight” (seven) are allegedly semantic. The mnemonic puns don’t bother me at all, it’s the botched semantic examples that do. Of the seven purported literal (non-mnemonic) violations of the Ten Commandments, Derbyshire misses four, to wit:
- The Third Commandment prohibits taking the Lord’s name in vain. It doesn’t prohibit swearing generally, unless you think God’s real name is “Damn.”
- The Fourth Commandment requires believers to keep the seventh day holy. This crime takes place on the first day.
- The Fifth Commandment requires believers to honor their parents. Obviously, if the speaker is lying, and his dad didn’t really kill anyone, that would count. Otherwise, truthfully identifying Dad as the killer probably doesn’t constitute dishonoring him, particularly in a case like this where the victim had it coming.
- The Ninth Commandment prohibits bearing false witness against one’s neighbor, not false witness to exculplate anyone. Of course, if perjury involved falsely implicating someone else in his crime, well that would be different.
OK, I’m done bagging on Derbyshire. Can anyone else come up with a better example? I’m sure it can be done.
UPDATE: Apparently, I misread Derb’s example, which was meant merely to serve as a mnemonic device to help one remember the Ten Commandments, not to illustrate a violation of all ten in one fell swoop. I still think it would be cool if someone came up something like that, though.
June 27th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
You can’t alienate the Catholic vote like that and expect to win elections! You should add a footnote indicating that those are Commandments two, three, four, and eight, respectively, for the Catholics in your readership. :)
Anyway, it would be awfully difficult to break all the commandments at once.
Let’s see, I got (protestant) #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7 (sort of), #8, and #10. I couldn’t work #9 in, although I suppose if he falsely accused his father of a capital crime, then he would have in effect broken #9 and #10. Protestant Commandment #2 not applicable to Catholics.
June 27th, 2005 at 5:31 pm
Oh, how I shame my parents by worshiping the life-size Billy Idol poster which I bought with stolen money from the neighbor whose wife I am seeing in an affair; Christ knows I tried working seven days a week to legitimately earn enough to buy that coveted treasure from him, but it ended up being so much easier to simply murder a rich man, rob him of his money and valuables, and blame a local transient.
I acknowledge that the semicolon might be a bit of a stretch…and by stretch, of course, I mean grammatically incorrect. I did try to tie it together, though.
June 27th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
I’m confused, I didn’t think Derb was trying to break all 10 commandments, just use a sentence to help remind him of all ten commandments. (It’s possible he edited his post).
If we were looking for the shortest sentance in which all 10 commandments were broken, I could probably come up with something, but it’d be disturbing, so I’ll leave it be.
June 27th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
You may be right; I interpreted it as being intended to lump 10 violations into one. I still don’t see what “damn” does, though.
June 28th, 2005 at 6:47 am
So does the breaking them in one go count as extra credit? Doing so does, technically, lump them together as well. I think you’d probably end up with the same length either way. Getting it shortened is not an easy task, but certainly interesting to try (if you’ve got a lot of spare time).
June 28th, 2005 at 8:15 am
“The Fourth Commandment requires believers to keep the seventh day holy. This crime takes place on the first day.”
For Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists it does. Most Christian denominations regard Sunday as the Sabbath. Though I think both of us may be making an error in regarding the seven days of creation as perfectly homologous to the days of the week.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:30 am
It’s called a mnemonic - a memory aid…..
“damn” suggests #3, which you’re supposed to know in its standard form; same for the others.
June 28th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
One idle Sunday after visiting the coven, I killed Dad and then framed my neighbor hoping to move in with his wife in their palatial home after he gets sent up.
June 29th, 2005 at 5:21 pm
Translation error. The 3rd actually says “Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vein.” Mainlining Jesus, as suggested in a song by a brief Chicago country rock band called Wilderness Road, would thus be a sin.