Horse 3109 - THE PEOPLE v A PILE OF LEAVES [2022] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

THE PEOPLE v A PILE OF LEAVES [2022] - Judgement

H3109/1

"If leaves are necessary for a salad, is a pile of leaves a salad?"

- Name Withheld, 27th Nov 2022.

It has come to this fake internet court's attention that there are many questions to which people demand answers but where courts with actual jurisdiction fear to tread. As this fake internet court has exactly zero power to change anything in the real world and is not concerned with the nature of practical reality, it is free to answer such questions.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

This question is often presented as a metaphor for the wasting of time when debating topics of no practical value, or questions whose answers hold no intellectual consequence but given that this fake internet court revels in the absurd, this ceases to be a philosophical question and becomes one of fact. As a small structure of less than one square meter, we can conclude that the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is exactly one, since building occupancy laws speak of the number of people per square metre and/or the distance between them and since the head of a pin is for all intents and purposes a point, then we must concluding that legally, there isn't enough space for another.

One angel can dance on the head of a pin. Sorted.

In answering the question "If leaves are necessary for a salad, is a pile of leaves a salad?", this court first needs to consider the ontological problem of what a salad is. Once we define what a salad is, we can determine whether or not a pile of leaves falls into this category.

It is worth remembering that there are many kinds of salad. If we consider Tuna Salad, Fruit Salad, Chicken Salad, Macaroni Salad, Potato Salad, Waldorf Salad et cetera then the general sort of thing that makes a salad a salad, is that it is several kinds of things which are held together with goo. Please note that in every single example stated, including fruit salad, most of the component parts are plant material of some sort; which means that other kinds of things held together with goo such as lasagne and chili, are not and should not be considered as salad. Also note that in all of these cases, these are all salads with modifiers. This means to say that the default salad, without any kind of modifier at all, is in reality a pile of various kinds of plant material. 

Please also note that the default salad does not even need anything to go with it, to be a salad. Various kinds of lettuce, carrot, cabbage et cetera, including things that one would find in the garden, like arugula, roquette, and kale, are all perfectly acceptable things which make up a salad. We may wish to call the resultant thing a green salad or a garden salad but if someone said that they were making a "salad" we would expect to see various kinds of leaves as the thing which defines the salad.

We also need to ask the question "Does salad need dressing?" Evidently not. If someone was making a salad with lettuce, roquette, and cabbage, we are free to conclude that it is not a particularly interesting salad but this does not change the fact that it is still a salad. Lettuce leaves, roquette leaves, and cabbage leaves, are still just a pile of leaves however, in no circumstances would we conclude that this was not a salad.

In stretching the other dimension of this question, we need to ask if a salad needs to be edible, for it to be in fact a salad. What is properly called schizophasia; which is actually a series of seemingly random words and phrases which are unintelligible at conveying meaning, is also in normal parlance called a "Word Salad". Although people might sometimes say that they intend to "eat their words" and that some words are "food for thought" as words both written and/or spoken, they are still intangible; which means that they are not in fact edible.

Final Judgement:

Having looked at the principle and the evidence, it is the opinion and ruling of this court that:

1. A Salad by default is made up of plant material.

1b. That they default plant material is leaves of various kinds.

2. That a salad need not be edible.

In this case, there is not other conclusion that can be drawn than that a pile of leaves is in fact a salad. Granted, it might not be edible but since edibility is not actually a necessary determinant of the saladity of a salad, then this is of zero consequence. Likewise, since tomato is a fruit, then this fake internet court considers ketchup to be a smoothie. 

To the party whose name that we have withheld, despite the fact that you have tried to bring hateration and holleration into this fake internet court, all you have brought is shame and disgrace on your family name for generations to come. We shall spare you the pain and suffering of looking like a fool in front of millions of people.

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3109/1 - Ed)