"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the…
A logical argument, known as a syllogism, looks like this: PREMISE 1: All dogs have wet noses. PREMISE 2: Max is a dog. CONCLUSION: Max has a wet nose. Easy, right? Now, let's see what happens when we remove one of the premises: PREMISE 1: All…
Here's a recent example of the effective use of sharp-edged rebuttal (see the comments) to puncture bloated and unthinking terror-mongering (see the post). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-smerconish/play-the-tape_b_19449.html The point of these comments is that two wrongs don't make a right. The post-writer, a good example of tens of millions of like-minded others, is apparently oblivious. …
I listened to an NPR essay on the way home from work today by a woman who was a 31-year-old virgin when she got married. It started me thinking about the whole subject, because I used to react to such claims with impatience and perhaps a bit of disdain. I…
Mousaui is undergoing the ritual of being sentenced by a jury. Do we kill him or warehouse him? Yesterday the defense actually presented a 9-11 affiliate (family/friend of victim/survivor) to testify on behalf of Mousaui. Personally, his insanity defense--of which Mousaui himself is vehemently opposed to--is, to my mind, beside…