When critics attempt to put the robes on Trump, to label him with the KKK, and almost goad its modern appearance as evidence of regressive moves in American society, we might think more carefully about what function the Klan serves in these discussions.
In The House on Mango Street, for example, a group of girl characters speculate about what function a woman's hips have: "They're good for holding a baby when you're cooking, Rachel says... You need them to dance, says Lucy.
The villagers were asked an open-ended question about "what function do you think alcohol has?" to understand further their motives for drinking.
"The young guys have asked me about what functions they have to attend.
As Professor Stephen Mayson of the Legal Services Institute put it at the first LSB seminar, it's not about title; "it's about what functions we want people to perform and what they need to be competent to do them".
I first discuss the adaptation of content analysis for evaluating plans and codes, and I argue that scholars need to have clear expectations about what functions a plan serves to make their evaluations meaningful.
The simplicity of Google's Android Wear forces developers to be especially thoughtful about what functions actually need to make the jump, which is easier said than done for some apps.
One central argument to the effect that legal theory must be evaluative in the relevant sense begins from the idea that understanding what the law is requires taking a view about what functions it serves (Finnis 1980, 12 17; Perry 1995, 114 20).
A few years ago, well before he was chosen as a Vice-Presidential candidate, I asked Grover Norquist, who knows a thing or two about Republican politics, what function Ryan performed in the G.O.P. and why, even then, he was taken seriously by pundits and party elders.
"The general point is that structures of assemblies are informative about what the function of the assemblies is and how that function is performed mechanistically—how one might want to control that function, or modify it, and perhaps eventually how one could design new functions," Sali says.
"There is increased scrutiny of what Steve Case's role is, and there are more questions about what his function is in the corporation," said Paul Kim, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers.
