Is duck-typing misnamed?

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Sun, 28 Aug 2016 08:34 am, Terry Reedy wrote:

> On 8/26/2016 7:58 PM, ROGER GRAYDON CHRISTMAN wrote:
>> "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck,... "
>>
>> so there is indeed precedence for this so-called 'duck typing'
>>
>>
>> but wouldn't it be more Pythonic to call this 'witch typing'?
>>
>> "How do you know she is a witch?"
>>
>> "She looks like one."
> 
> Given that people were once burned to death for 'looking like a witch'
> (or sounding or acting), and can still suffer socially for such reasons,
> this it not funny to me.  We should stick with ducks.

Black humour is still humour. And it is an important way of dealing with
distress, and of instituting social change.

Belief in the supernatural and superstition is on the rise again, including
witchcraft. If it were limited to just a few benighted and ignorant
migrants from Africa, that would be bad enough, but I see disturbing signs
that the Satanic Ritual panic from the 80s and 90s is on its way back. (Or
perhaps it never quite went away, just faded from the headlines.) Likewise
the anti-paedophile frenzy, where the mere (false) accusation of
paedophilia is enough to start a frenzy of abuse and even killing:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10422771/How-wild-rumour-led-a-mob-to-murder-an-innocent-man.html

Black humour is a weapon against the ignorance and intolerance that feeds
hate crimes and witch hunts (whether legally sanctioned or not, whether
about literal witches or any other demonised subgroup). We can and should
take every opportunity to remind people of the absurdity of relying on
torture to gain confessions, and the abuses of this sort of single-minded,
hysterical moral panic. And humour is a most effective way to do so. Nobody
likes to be hectored and lectured as I'm lecturing you now *wink* but
turning it into a joke can get the point across.

We should not lose sight of the economic, political, racial reasons for
witch-hunts, but equally we should not forget that when a moral panic is in
full force, people behave absurdly, and the best antidote to absurd
behaviour is to take the mickey out of it.



-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.