I posted this because I remembered hearing it during his memorial service last week. I also thought it was cute then, and it was one of funnier moments in the service. But thinking about it again, I wonder if there's something a haiku can more memorably convey than the more useful format of tldrlegal cannot? The latter can obviously drill down to more detail. But the haiku version, while not only being more memorable, can provide the distilled context of the law in a way that a point by point summary doesn't.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of Aaron's particular haikus since I don't know the law that well. And I expect the haikus are flawed, since he wrote them when 16. Still, a pretty interesting idea of communicating complex terms, even if much of the value is in cuteness.
Yeah true. I'm no haiku aficionado, but it seems that the beauty of it partially comes from its rigid format, forcing the writer to distill something down to its essence.
On a side note, I kind of wish I knew Japanese, so I could read some authentic original haikus. Apparently they're much nicer in Japanese...
A strange thing legalese. The more words in the document, the less clear its intent.
Its like approaching a theoretical limit. A lawyer's dream contract. A document that contains all words, in all combinations, and means absolutely nothing.
Definitely better, although there's no obvious way to map on to English. Using morae works OK, but most non-linguists don't even know what that means, much less how to count the morae in English phrases.
i'm not entirely convinced basing english poetic constraints on morae makes sense. for faux-senryu in particular, i've found that simply sticking to 5/7/5 syllables, coupled with a good feel for the rhythms of english speech, produces very pleasing results.
