Well, I've been slacking on the series, and it's time I picked up the pace so that I can get up to 200. I should probably check over the various places I asked for requests for the ones I've missed.So far:
"Certainty": Covering why the absolute kind's generally left for mathematicians and fundies. Only one of those groups has the proper justification.
"You just want to tear things down!": Might leave this for the big 200, since it'll touch on why I really blog.
8 comments:
I call XKCD.
Has "censorship" been covered? Lemme check...
That may be under "persecution". Your call.
"Patent(ed)"
In one sentence: A patent is just a way to protect an idea, not a certificate of its feasibility/effectiveness/etc.
The essential example: the British Rail flying saucer. :)
In principle, the Patent Office is supposed to reject applications for things that don't work, but they've gotten pretty slack about it.
Some idiocy earlier this month from Americans for Truth has me wondering about 'false victimization' (His exact words were "The 'gay-victim' gig is getting very old"*) and 'icky'. From a quick skim, it doesn't look like they're covered.
Also, either as another entry, or an extension to the 'God' entry (#42), the idea that 'God says' has any force. (I wasn't looking when I skimmed... Was there an entry for Bible quotes, or does that fall under "I'll Show You... In my Book!"?)
*Basically, he claimed that, because gay rights activists exist, gays now enjoy some kind of privileged status with unconditional government support, or something.
Could you elaborate on the 'icky' thing, MW? I get a vague feeling it relates to something like a supposed exception to "natural": Icky stuff like parasites don't count.
Or maybe you mean something like "That kinky stuff is icky, so it's evil!" as the intended doggerel?
I meant the latter. Peter LaBarbera, who was responsible for all of that comment, made an argument that looked to me like:
[Quote some urbandictionary definitions of 'Power Bottom']
"Ew, gross!
"Therefore, all gay men are perverts who should never be allowed to consummate their love."
Yeah, "eew, gross" is at the heart of quite a lot of the arguments of pro-lifers and homophobes. Dan Savage mentioned the latter on one of the most recent Savage Lovecasts, how homophobes will seize onto the most extreme fetish and use it as an argument against homosexuality as a whole. Meanwhile, they'll fail to understand that any sex act or fetish that gays engage in is almost certainly done by heterosexuals in equal or greater numbers (but perhaps smaller proportions).
I brought this up before with the campus anti-abortion group, that their placards of dead fetuses were not only misleading, but also a terrible argument. It's all appeal to pathos, no logic involved.
There's some of it in creationist arguments, too--the "I don't want to be related to a monkey" sort.
I'd like to see "The ____ Agenda" on the list. Also, "political," as in "the IPCC is a political organization." "Peer-reviewed" is getting abused a bit these days too.
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