I'm sorry but a taco is it's own food category, to which the venerable hot dog also belongs. A burrito is obviously a calzone. Clearly this judge is not well versed in the Unified Theory of Food...
I'm sorry but a taco is it's own food category, to which the venerable hot dog also belongs.
A burrito is obviously a calzone.
Clearly this judge is not well versed in the Unified Theory of Food Classification, colloquially known as the Cube Rule. Hopefully this is overturned on appeal by a court more adequately educated in food memes.
On a more serious note, I think this is a sensible interpretation of the zoning law in question that is very much in the spirit of what was meant when the law was written, even if it gives birth to some very silly headlines like this.
I don't care about what some memepost on the internet says. Tacos, burritos, and wraps are all sandwiches. Tortillas are flatbreads. Tacos and burritos are tortillas filled with other stuff. That...
I don't care about what some memepost on the internet says. Tacos, burritos, and wraps are all sandwiches. Tortillas are flatbreads. Tacos and burritos are tortillas filled with other stuff. That is the definition of a sandwich.
I find comical internet musings on semantics to be tiring. The latest thing about vegetables not being real is particularly grating to me. As a general rule of thumb, words will expand to encompass the greatest possible meaning. Like woke, which went from meaning "a person who has become aware of the everyday impact of systemic racism" to "any leftist cause, or proponent of such cause, or the quality of being one".
By that definition, an enchilada is also a sandwich. People are having fun. No one's forcing you to be a part of it. As a more serious matter though, nailing down these definitions has real world...
Exemplary
... flatbreads...filled with other stuff. That is the definition of a sandwich.
By that definition, an enchilada is also a sandwich.
I find comical internet musings on semantics to be tiring.
People are having fun. No one's forcing you to be a part of it.
As a more serious matter though, nailing down these definitions has real world consequences. Reasonable people can debate whether a tomatoe is a fruit or a vegetable or whether such designations even have any real meaning as a matter of culinary or botanical significance with respect to colloquial usage. However as a legal matter in the US, it's settled law per the 1893 case Nix v Hedden where the Supreme Court determined that tomatoes are a vegetable for import tariff purposes on the grounds that they are typically consumed analogous to vegetables.
From the opinion:
Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of a vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits generally, as dessert.
The attempt to class tomatoes as fruit is not unlike a recent attempt to class beans as seeds, of which Mr. Justice Bradley, speaking for this Court, said:
"We do not see why they should be classified as seeds any more than walnuts should be so classified. Both are seeds, in the language of botany or natural history, but not in commerce nor in common parlance. On the other hand, in speaking generally of provisions, beans may well be included under the term 'vegetables.' As an article of food on our tables, whether baked or boiled, or forming the basis of soup, they are used as a vegetable, as well when ripe as when green. This is the principal use to which they are put. Beyond the common knowledge which we have on this subject, very little evidence is necessary or can be produced."
Not only is this still considered good law, but it has been cited in multiple succeeding Supreme Court cases as precedent to defer to common usage over technical definitions. So while a burrito may technically conform to your arbitrary definition of a sandwich, I doubt you'd consider it an act of good faith if someone brought you one when you asked for a sandwich as it does not fit the common usage of the term.
I'd argue that by that definition french toast and bread pudding are also sandwiches. But as I elaborated in my other comment, dictionary definitions are not a complete picture of how language is...
... flatbreads...filled with other stuff. That is the definition of a sandwich.
By that definition, an enchilada is also a sandwich.
I'd argue that by that definition french toast and bread pudding are also sandwiches.
But as I elaborated in my other comment, dictionary definitions are not a complete picture of how language is used.
You are eating some weird french toast and bread pudding. French toast is not a sandwich because you aren't taking an egg mixture and surrounding it with bread (which would be a sub category of...
You are eating some weird french toast and bread pudding.
French toast is not a sandwich because you aren't taking an egg mixture and surrounding it with bread (which would be a sub category of sandwich, the dumpling... or is a sandwich a broken dumpling?) you are surrounding the bread with an egg mixture. You could, however, reasonably call two pieces of french toast surrounding a filling a french toast sandwich, of which, I think you could reasonably expect a fair few Instagram followers for.
Bread pudding on the other hand is clearly a salad or, if you forgot to measure your liquid, a hearty soup. Unless you pan fry a slice of bread pudding to create the outer layers of a sandwich, but that would be transformative of the bread pudding itself.
Oh man, if that's what french toast is to you, you are missing out. It's supposed to be impregnated with a milk and egg mixture which turns it into a kind of custard. It's a sandwich because it's...
Oh man, if that's what french toast is to you, you are missing out. It's supposed to be impregnated with a milk and egg mixture which turns it into a kind of custard. It's a sandwich because it's filled bread; just without the cuts!
Likewise a good bread pudding should be free-standing. Soupy bread pudding is still good, it's just not quite right.
And now I am desperately craving foods I really should be avoiding.
Oh sure, my description of French toast is lacking. I just don't know if impregnated is the same as filled. We're now both craving some foods we should be avoiding though!
Oh sure, my description of French toast is lacking. I just don't know if impregnated is the same as filled.
We're now both craving some foods we should be avoiding though!
It seems like you're the one expanding the definition of sandwich to be all-encompassing, while the Cube Rule proposes a much more strict and consistent definition. Also, can't we just have fun? I...
It seems like you're the one expanding the definition of sandwich to be all-encompassing, while the Cube Rule proposes a much more strict and consistent definition.
Also, can't we just have fun? I responded to a very silly sounding ruling on the classification of foodstuffs with another silly means of classifying foodstuffs. I've certainly never heard someone in the real world refer to a taco or a burrito as a sandwich, it sounds just as ridiculous as saying a hotdog is a taco.
I'm not the one expanding the definition; I'm using one that already exists. The Cube rule also calls poutine nachos and hot dogs tacos, which are things that nobody does without at least a degree...
I'm not the one expanding the definition; I'm using one that already exists. The Cube rule also calls poutine nachos and hot dogs tacos, which are things that nobody does without at least a degree of jest. But the thing that all of these arguements seem to ignore is that words take on meaning beyond what can be described in a dictionary definition. I'm not just talking about the context, either. Tacos and burritos are sandwiches in the taxonomical sense, but they aren't sandwiches. If someone says they're bringing sandwiches to share at the park, you're going to be disappointed if they bring a bag of Taco John's.
Alternatively, my definition has been proven in the court of law. So there. :P
Right? There is a venerable body of rulings on this very issue that the judge entirely ignored. The internet has put in so much time refining the question of "What is a sandwich?", and to have...
Right? There is a venerable body of rulings on this very issue that the judge entirely ignored. The internet has put in so much time refining the question of "What is a sandwich?", and to have that work ignored is a slap in the face of food pedants everywhere.
It's right there in the name: toast-, from toast, and -ada, from the civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. The etymology couldn't be more clear.
It's right there in the name: toast-, from toast, and -ada, from the civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. The etymology couldn't be more clear.
I first heard of the cube rule here, which I can't help but notice is older than that domain name and all of the reference links in it. I wonder where it originally came from?
I first heard of the cube rule here, which I can't help but notice is older than that domain name and all of the reference links in it. I wonder where it originally came from?
I know its all in good fun, and I promise I mean this in a good-spirited way, but these non-arguments irritate the crap out of me lol. A sandwich is a sandwich. A hot dog is a hot dog. A taco is a...
I know its all in good fun, and I promise I mean this in a good-spirited way, but these non-arguments irritate the crap out of me lol.
A sandwich is a sandwich. A hot dog is a hot dog. A taco is a taco. If those three items were on a table, and I said "hand me the sandwich" you wouldn't say "which one?" unless you were being deliberately obtuse.
Any rational person would hand me the sandwich because that's how language works. If a restaurant menu said "taco sandwich" on it, what do you think would show up at your table? Because I sure as shit wouldn't be expecting a traditional taco. Hot dog sandwich? Burrito sandwich? Those aren't things! Nobody thinks they are things!
And while I'm at it, water IS wet. Because any rational person knows what you mean when you say that. You can't just say "actually..." because the alternative delineation doesn't provide any benefit to humanity whatsoever! THATS HOW LANGUAGE WORKS.
The internet arguments are, but the legal case is quite consequential for the parties involved! That's exactly why this ruling makes sense, though. Why did that written commitment exist? Is it...
I know its all in good fun,
The internet arguments are, but the legal case is quite consequential for the parties involved!
You can't just say "actually..." because the alternative delineation doesn't provide any benefit to humanity whatsoever!
That's exactly why this ruling makes sense, though. Why did that written commitment exist? Is it because the mall hates mexicans? What is the benefit in denying the ability for tacos to exist in this mall?
No, if you read the commitment itself and the history, it's clear that what they don't want is chain fast food restaurants; they want artisanal handcrafted streetfood or whatever. And I think a taco shop can satisfy that.
I see part of the problem being semantics and a lack of proper terminology. There is a distinct connection between hot dogs, tacos, and sandwiches but we don't have a taxonomical word for the...
I see part of the problem being semantics and a lack of proper terminology. There is a distinct connection between hot dogs, tacos, and sandwiches but we don't have a taxonomical word for the order/family/genus to describe that connection and therefore a subset of people revert to that word being "sandwich."
And now that I've made two comments on it, I, too, hate the naval-gazyness of these internet arguments.
As an aside, what would a taco sandwich even be? Two tostada face to face? A burrito sandwich is even harder. Burrito filling is too loose to be unconstrained between slices of bread. Would you...
As an aside, what would a taco sandwich even be? Two tostada face to face? A burrito sandwich is even harder. Burrito filling is too loose to be unconstrained between slices of bread. Would you just put a whole wrapped burrito into a roll as a joke?
My old axiom: our language is insufficient to describe our reality. We just can't have a vocabulary that is expansive enough to label all the categories of items and ideas in an ambiguity-free way...
My old axiom: our language is insufficient to describe our reality.
We just can't have a vocabulary that is expansive enough to label all the categories of items and ideas in an ambiguity-free way without taxing our brain's processing power too much.
Put another way: the map is not the terrain. I think some of the most interesting topics of debate are those that attempt to disambiguate the grey areas of language/philosophy. We develop...
I think some of the most interesting topics of debate are those that attempt to disambiguate the grey areas of language/philosophy. We develop convenient abstractions to help model our universe in a way that can be acted upon, but that gives way to another aphorism: all models are wrong, but some are useful.
Some fundamental quandaries are predicated on how you define your model:
If I understand Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem well enough, we may not be able answer any/all of the problems above. In fact, doing so may require hitching your logic to a model that presupposes its own conclusion.
With regards to tacos and sandwiches, most cultures have found some way to combine carbs, vegetables, and protein into a convenient delivery mechanism. Debating over the topology is how you get claims that a coffee mug is no different from a donut, which serves little practical purpose.
In practice, tacos are tasty, and that’s about as far as I’m concerned with them.
I think they could just simplify the bejesus out of the whole law by focusing in on this: Add in something like a "no more than 5 regional locations" clause and you've basically eliminated the...
I think they could just simplify the bejesus out of the whole law by focusing in on this:
Would not have outdoor seating, drive through service, or serve alcohol
Add in something like a "no more than 5 regional locations" clause and you've basically eliminated the worst of the toxic food joints, without needing to get into the semantics about what exactly is a sandwich (and for the purposes of this law, they'd probably want to exclude KFC as well, even though fried chicken is definitely not a sandwich).
America would do well to explicitly ban accessing any service other than fueling or washing cars from being drive-through. It'll both reduce demand for fast food and be a small victory for dismantling car culture.
Sandwiches are an English invention and this pretense of their placement as some super category over varied cultural foods of unrelated origins is simply typical Western colonialism and a...
Sandwiches are an English invention and this pretense of their placement as some super category over varied cultural foods of unrelated origins is simply typical Western colonialism and a desperate ploy for cultural relevance from the decaying vestiges of the English empire (mostly joking. Mostly.)
This is ridiculous. We already have an irrefutable framework that defines all of the above as salads, in such a rigorous manner that none can hope to find edge cases. https://saladtheory.github.io/
This is ridiculous. We already have an irrefutable framework that defines all of the above as salads, in such a rigorous manner that none can hope to find edge cases.
That's not how "or" works. It's a 'made to order' OR 'subway-style' sandwiches. So the argument is, to tacos count as 'made to order' sandwiches, explicitly excluding traditional fast food...
That's not how "or" works. It's a 'made to order' OR 'subway-style' sandwiches. So the argument is, to tacos count as 'made to order' sandwiches, explicitly excluding traditional fast food restaurants?
The lack of a definition for 'sandwiches', and understanding the intent behind the written commitment, namely
The commitment that caused contention had been designed to keep out traditional fast-food restaurants.
are the key factors. If they wanted "American" sandwiches only, then they should have defined what a sandwich is.
Technically, tacos are more "American" than sandwiches. They are a food of a culture native to the Americas, argued to predate Spanish contact, while the modern sandwich is a British food named...
Technically, tacos are more "American" than sandwiches. They are a food of a culture native to the Americas, argued to predate Spanish contact, while the modern sandwich is a British food named after the fourth Earl of Sandwich in the 1700s.
I think that burritos, as mentioned in the article, can be classed as functional sandwiches. The purpose of both is to serve as holdable, portable food where some bread encloses some filling.
I think that burritos, as mentioned in the article, can be classed as functional sandwiches. The purpose of both is to serve as holdable, portable food where some bread encloses some filling.
I already know this judge has skin the tinge of milk. I have family that lives in Indiana and comes to visit me in a largely Hispanic population, they don't know anything about tacos.
I already know this judge has skin the tinge of milk. I have family that lives in Indiana and comes to visit me in a largely Hispanic population, they don't know anything about tacos.
I'm sorry but a taco is it's own food category, to which the venerable hot dog also belongs.
A burrito is obviously a calzone.
Clearly this judge is not well versed in the Unified Theory of Food Classification, colloquially known as the Cube Rule. Hopefully this is overturned on appeal by a court more adequately educated in food memes.
On a more serious note, I think this is a sensible interpretation of the zoning law in question that is very much in the spirit of what was meant when the law was written, even if it gives birth to some very silly headlines like this.
I don't care about what some memepost on the internet says. Tacos, burritos, and wraps are all sandwiches. Tortillas are flatbreads. Tacos and burritos are tortillas filled with other stuff. That is the definition of a sandwich.
I find comical internet musings on semantics to be tiring. The latest thing about vegetables not being real is particularly grating to me. As a general rule of thumb, words will expand to encompass the greatest possible meaning. Like woke, which went from meaning "a person who has become aware of the everyday impact of systemic racism" to "any leftist cause, or proponent of such cause, or the quality of being one".
By that definition, an enchilada is also a sandwich.
People are having fun. No one's forcing you to be a part of it.
As a more serious matter though, nailing down these definitions has real world consequences. Reasonable people can debate whether a tomatoe is a fruit or a vegetable or whether such designations even have any real meaning as a matter of culinary or botanical significance with respect to colloquial usage. However as a legal matter in the US, it's settled law per the 1893 case Nix v Hedden where the Supreme Court determined that tomatoes are a vegetable for import tariff purposes on the grounds that they are typically consumed analogous to vegetables.
From the opinion:
Not only is this still considered good law, but it has been cited in multiple succeeding Supreme Court cases as precedent to defer to common usage over technical definitions. So while a burrito may technically conform to your arbitrary definition of a sandwich, I doubt you'd consider it an act of good faith if someone brought you one when you asked for a sandwich as it does not fit the common usage of the term.
I'd argue that by that definition french toast and bread pudding are also sandwiches.
But as I elaborated in my other comment, dictionary definitions are not a complete picture of how language is used.
You are eating some weird french toast and bread pudding.
French toast is not a sandwich because you aren't taking an egg mixture and surrounding it with bread (which would be a sub category of sandwich, the dumpling... or is a sandwich a broken dumpling?) you are surrounding the bread with an egg mixture. You could, however, reasonably call two pieces of french toast surrounding a filling a french toast sandwich, of which, I think you could reasonably expect a fair few Instagram followers for.
Bread pudding on the other hand is clearly a salad or, if you forgot to measure your liquid, a hearty soup. Unless you pan fry a slice of bread pudding to create the outer layers of a sandwich, but that would be transformative of the bread pudding itself.
Oh man, if that's what french toast is to you, you are missing out. It's supposed to be impregnated with a milk and egg mixture which turns it into a kind of custard. It's a sandwich because it's filled bread; just without the cuts!
Likewise a good bread pudding should be free-standing. Soupy bread pudding is still good, it's just not quite right.
And now I am desperately craving foods I really should be avoiding.
Oh sure, my description of French toast is lacking. I just don't know if impregnated is the same as filled.
We're now both craving some foods we should be avoiding though!
It seems like you're the one expanding the definition of sandwich to be all-encompassing, while the Cube Rule proposes a much more strict and consistent definition.
Also, can't we just have fun? I responded to a very silly sounding ruling on the classification of foodstuffs with another silly means of classifying foodstuffs. I've certainly never heard someone in the real world refer to a taco or a burrito as a sandwich, it sounds just as ridiculous as saying a hotdog is a taco.
I'm not the one expanding the definition; I'm using one that already exists. The Cube rule also calls poutine nachos and hot dogs tacos, which are things that nobody does without at least a degree of jest. But the thing that all of these arguements seem to ignore is that words take on meaning beyond what can be described in a dictionary definition. I'm not just talking about the context, either. Tacos and burritos are sandwiches in the taxonomical sense, but they aren't sandwiches. If someone says they're bringing sandwiches to share at the park, you're going to be disappointed if they bring a bag of Taco John's.
Alternatively, my definition has been proven in the court of law. So there. :P
I’m not sure this is ever the case no matter what is promised beforehand.
If you go by the cube rule, then subway sandwiches are actual tacos, so the written commitment is self-contradictory.
Personally I'm fine with calling Subway sandwiches "tacos".
Right? There is a venerable body of rulings on this very issue that the judge entirely ignored. The internet has put in so much time refining the question of "What is a sandwich?", and to have that work ignored is a slap in the face of food pedants everywhere.
Is a tostada a pizza?
Tostadas and pizzas are both categorized as toast.
It's right there in the name: toast-, from toast, and -ada, from the civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. The etymology couldn't be more clear.
(For the non-Americans out there, they're referring to the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA for short.)
Calzones are just Italian pierogies.
Pierogies are just Polish potstickers.
Potstickers are just Chinese burritos
And I am a soup dumpling.
You're not wrong.
I first heard of the cube rule here, which I can't help but notice is older than that domain name and all of the reference links in it. I wonder where it originally came from?
This is the closest to origin I could find
That's more than a year and a half newer than the video though!
Yeah the Twitter user themselves didn't want to claim actual credit for it. I suspect it's been rolling around the internet much longer
I know its all in good fun, and I promise I mean this in a good-spirited way, but these non-arguments irritate the crap out of me lol.
A sandwich is a sandwich. A hot dog is a hot dog. A taco is a taco. If those three items were on a table, and I said "hand me the sandwich" you wouldn't say "which one?" unless you were being deliberately obtuse.
Any rational person would hand me the sandwich because that's how language works. If a restaurant menu said "taco sandwich" on it, what do you think would show up at your table? Because I sure as shit wouldn't be expecting a traditional taco. Hot dog sandwich? Burrito sandwich? Those aren't things! Nobody thinks they are things!
And while I'm at it, water IS wet. Because any rational person knows what you mean when you say that. You can't just say "actually..." because the alternative delineation doesn't provide any benefit to humanity whatsoever! THATS HOW LANGUAGE WORKS.
A straw has one hole, and Han shot first.
The internet arguments are, but the legal case is quite consequential for the parties involved!
That's exactly why this ruling makes sense, though. Why did that written commitment exist? Is it because the mall hates mexicans? What is the benefit in denying the ability for tacos to exist in this mall?
No, if you read the commitment itself and the history, it's clear that what they don't want is chain fast food restaurants; they want artisanal handcrafted streetfood or whatever. And I think a taco shop can satisfy that.
I see part of the problem being semantics and a lack of proper terminology. There is a distinct connection between hot dogs, tacos, and sandwiches but we don't have a taxonomical word for the order/family/genus to describe that connection and therefore a subset of people revert to that word being "sandwich."
And now that I've made two comments on it, I, too, hate the naval-gazyness of these internet arguments.
As an aside, what would a taco sandwich even be? Two tostada face to face? A burrito sandwich is even harder. Burrito filling is too loose to be unconstrained between slices of bread. Would you just put a whole wrapped burrito into a roll as a joke?
Probably a torta.
I love tortas. More sandwiches should be made with beans. People who haven't tried them are missing out.
Well those just look delightful.
My old axiom: our language is insufficient to describe our reality.
We just can't have a vocabulary that is expansive enough to label all the categories of items and ideas in an ambiguity-free way without taxing our brain's processing power too much.
Put another way: the map is not the terrain.
I think some of the most interesting topics of debate are those that attempt to disambiguate the grey areas of language/philosophy. We develop convenient abstractions to help model our universe in a way that can be acted upon, but that gives way to another aphorism: all models are wrong, but some are useful.
Some fundamental quandaries are predicated on how you define your model:
If I understand Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem well enough, we may not be able answer any/all of the problems above. In fact, doing so may require hitching your logic to a model that presupposes its own conclusion.
With regards to tacos and sandwiches, most cultures have found some way to combine carbs, vegetables, and protein into a convenient delivery mechanism. Debating over the topology is how you get claims that a coffee mug is no different from a donut, which serves little practical purpose.
In practice, tacos are tasty, and that’s about as far as I’m concerned with them.
thanks for the elaboration, good stuff
I think they could just simplify the bejesus out of the whole law by focusing in on this:
Add in something like a "no more than 5 regional locations" clause and you've basically eliminated the worst of the toxic food joints, without needing to get into the semantics about what exactly is a sandwich (and for the purposes of this law, they'd probably want to exclude KFC as well, even though fried chicken is definitely not a sandwich).
America would do well to explicitly ban accessing any service other than fueling or washing cars from being drive-through. It'll both reduce demand for fast food and be a small victory for dismantling car culture.
Relevant Planet Money episode about tax code: https://pca.st/episode/8dbc6cb2-787f-4de7-9bbe-fc33fd7b2714
Reminder that this is the state that tried to legislate that π=3.2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill
Sandwiches are an English invention and this pretense of their placement as some super category over varied cultural foods of unrelated origins is simply typical Western colonialism and a desperate ploy for cultural relevance from the decaying vestiges of the English empire (mostly joking. Mostly.)
So...sandwiches are tacos?
This is ridiculous. We already have an irrefutable framework that defines all of the above as salads, in such a rigorous manner that none can hope to find edge cases.
https://saladtheory.github.io/
I was previously an acolyte of the Cube Rule, but you have shown me a better way.
That is spectacular.
That's not how "or" works. It's a 'made to order' OR 'subway-style' sandwiches. So the argument is, to tacos count as 'made to order' sandwiches, explicitly excluding traditional fast food restaurants?
The lack of a definition for 'sandwiches', and understanding the intent behind the written commitment, namely
are the key factors. If they wanted "American" sandwiches only, then they should have defined what a sandwich is.
Technically, tacos are more "American" than sandwiches. They are a food of a culture native to the Americas, argued to predate Spanish contact, while the modern sandwich is a British food named after the fourth Earl of Sandwich in the 1700s.
I think that burritos, as mentioned in the article, can be classed as functional sandwiches. The purpose of both is to serve as holdable, portable food where some bread encloses some filling.
iirc this was also the original purpose of the taco, wasn't it?
I already know this judge has skin the tinge of milk. I have family that lives in Indiana and comes to visit me in a largely Hispanic population, they don't know anything about tacos.
So if the judge was less white he would prevent taco restaurant from opening in this mall?
Not sure that checks out.
And so it begins