{"id":29705,"date":"2020-11-11T15:50:26","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T23:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=29705"},"modified":"2020-11-11T19:01:24","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T03:01:24","slug":"eats-fish-leaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=29705","title":{"rendered":"Eats, fish & leaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

There is a classic joke that depends upon the sloppy employment of a comma: Eats, shoots and leaves. This is how Wikipedia<\/a> tells it:<\/p>\n

\n

A panda walks into a caf\u00e9. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.<\/p>\n

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.<\/p>\n

“I’m a panda,” he says at the door. “Look it up.”<\/p>\n

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation.<\/p>\n

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots, & leaves.<\/i>“<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The joke turns on the ambiguity of the final sentence fragment. As intended by the author, “eats” is a verb, while “shoots” and “leaves” are the verb’s objects: a panda’s diet comprises shoots and leaves. However, the erroneous introduction of the comma gives the mistaken impression that the sentence fragment comprises three verbs listing in sequence the panda’s characteristic conduct: it eats, then it shoots, and finally it leaves.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of the joke this morning as I watched an eagle eat, fish and leave — er, eat fish and leave. The smaller male Bald Eagle is eating (and not sharing) a fish in the company of his larger (presumed) mate.<\/p>\n

The eagle…<\/p>\n

eats fish
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

and leaves.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  There is a classic joke that depends upon the sloppy employment of a comma: Eats, shoots and leaves. This is how Wikipedia tells it: A panda walks into a caf\u00e9. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-commentary","category-fish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29705"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29718,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29705\/revisions\/29718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}