Ben Yagoda’s Lingua Franca column in the Chronicle of Higher Education: 

In the slim annals of professorial humor, one of the cherished entries concerns an anthropological linguistics conference where the speaker declaims, “In languages all over the globe, one finds examples of the double negative denoting affirmation, but never the double positive denoting negation.” At which point a guy in the back of the room stands up and says, “Yeah, sure.”

I’ve been pondering sarcasm since Adam Liptak’s recent New York Times article about a law review essay by Richard Hasen called “The Most Sarcastic Justice.” And just who might that justice be? Hello! Duh! Spoiler alert!! It’s Antonin Scalia. You were expecting maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg????

Sorry, don’t know what came over me.