Boobs

Mi.org has employed Captain Renault's corrupt hypocrisy in the movie Casablanca as a touchstone for metadifference which manifests as the macroinformation called "irony" in drama: what we hear on the soundtrack doesn't match what we see on the screen. It of course is one of an endless assortment of instances. Another just marched into my head.

George Carlin had a TV sitcom which took place in a bar. George is a regular. Also regular is a plastic surgeon. George, his father, his cronies, are salt-of-the-earth blue collar guys. The plastic surgeon is held in low esteem because he treats vanities, not diseases.

The plastic surgeon decides he's going to do something about his own image and exits the bar with missionary fervor. He returns with a homeless woman and announces what he'll do for this sorry example of fellow humanity. "Could I have a sandwich?" she asks. The plastic surgeon stands the object of his charity before the group. She's malnourished, she's dirty. She certainly needs some soup to go with the sandwich, a bath, fumigation ... clean, warm lodgings, a solid week's sleep ... Sculpting his imagined improvements with his hands around the sad female form, the surgeon announces his plans: he's going to pump her bust out to here, he's going to puff her bottom out the there, he'll liposuck cellulite from her thighs ... the tab strictly on him.

Information is triggered by difference. Metainformation arises from different differences. Macroinformation emerges where the metadifferences cross some threshold of complexity.

This doctor's sense of human service is as metadifferent from familiar ideals as Captain Renault's pocketing Rick's cash as he closes down Rick's casino is metadifferent from minimal standards for society working.

Simultaneously, if WWII was an example of civilization going rapidly to hell in a hand basket, and absurdity is still accelerating decades later in Carlin's sitcom, how come the world is still such a funny place?