All the Really Dangerous Fallacies I Learned in Kindergarten
Have you ever wondered why your speedometer goes to 160, when you’re pretty sure your old hoopty couldn’t do more than 75, 80 tops? It’s because gauges are designed so that “normal” is somewhere toward the middle of the dial.
That porridge-nicking hussy Goldilocks probably started this, and the idea reinforces itself every time we burn our mouths: best is something in between. Not too hot, not too cold. Fair. Moderate. Reasonable. Normal.
This idea goes right down to the bedrock. It’s in our bones. We buy it instinctively. We want to be that thing. That normal, reasonable, moderate person.
Problem is, the best answer is usually not the one poised halfway between two extremes. Even simple concepts that lie along simple scales are more useful at the extremes. Hot is for pizza. Cold is for beer. Room temperature is for…bananas, I guess.
For more complex concepts, there often isn’t a middle ground, because the competing ideas are too different. There are too many parts, and the parts don’t lie along the same scale.
The pernicious belief in moderation even in the face of unreconcilable ideas is how we get extraordinarily bad Third Ways. Tony Blair. Bill Clinton. Edutainment. Christian rock. Culottes. Zombies. Intelligent design. Unitarians. Palestine.
Okay, there’s the spork. I’ll give you the spork.
March 10, 2008 — 10:54 am
Comments: 44
Dude is definitely not stupid
Obama was here on Saturday. Walking distance. I could’ve gone, but it would’ve meant…you know…putting on pants and stuff.
It was big. Five thousand inside, five thousand outside. That’s big for Rhode Island.
When he showed up, first thing, he stood outside in the rain and gave the overflow crowd a short version of the speech he gave inside later on. I heard he does this everywhere he goes, when the crowd overflows the venue. Which it’s doing pretty consistently now.
And tonight, I walked to WalMart. Because I needed a walk. And a cheap pair of slippers. Every car in the parking lot had a flyer on the windshield titled Obama and Religion. The things looked amateurish, like they didn’t come from the official campaign, but from the heart. I assume they were pro-Obama. I didn’t read one.
That first thing shows his campaigning smarts. And that second thing shows his constituency has identified itself and is good and fired up.
If I had a clown in this parade, I’d be plenty worried.
March 3, 2008 — 7:53 pm
Comments: 19
Good manners type class? Or shut up, peasant type class?
Okay, I promised myself I wasn’t going to take any more shots at McCain, but this is really pissing me off.
Backstory: at a rally in Cincinnati, one of the speakers who worked the crowd before McCain appeared was some bozo local talk show host named Bill Cunningham. He delivered the rhetorical equivalent of a typical Free Republic comment, with references to the Clinton News Network and Barack Hussein Obama. Meh.
Afterward, McCain sought out the press and distanced himself from the remarks. Apologized, even. The blogosphere is taking this as a sign of McCain’s classiness and good judgement. HotAir even wondered if this consititutes a Sister Souljah moment (as if McCain needs to juke left in ’08 the way Clinton needed to juke right in ’92!).
HEL-LO! McCain didn’t hear Cunningham speak. Leading with Cunningham’s remarks or pretending McCain was reacting to the specifics is pointless. When he apologized, McCain had no freaking idea what exactly Cunningham had said. All’s he knew was, some peasant had dared to speak ill of a Senator. And I quote:
“It’s my understanding that before I came in here a person who was on the program before I spoke made some disparaging remarks about my two colleagues in the Senate, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton,” he said. “I have repeatedly stated my respect for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, that I will treat them with respect. I will call them ‘Senator.’ We will have a respectful debate, as I have said on hundreds of occasions. I regret any comments that may have been made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans.”
Bolding mine. It isn’t McCain’s lean to the left that’s pissing me off here (though it’s hard to escape the impression McCain thinks more highly of Hillary Clinton than he does of Mitt Romney). It’s the whole collegial atmosphere of the Senate thing.
This is why we so seldom elect one of these self-regarding bubble-headed jackasses to the presidency: they think a hell of a lot more highly of each other than they do the rest of us. How this became a blogospheric conversation about whether Obama’s middle name is a cheap shot…is a mystery to me.
Okay, no it’s not. We’re having that conversation because that’s the conversation the media wanted us to have. Happy now?
February 27, 2008 — 11:40 am
Comments: 27
Creepy Monday
So I had this dream about Mike Huckabee, and the punchline was, “not David and Goliath, Davey and Goliath,” which I woke up thinking was the funniest joke evarrrrr. Then my eyes adjusted and saw that I was lying on a mattress on the floor covered in cats and dustbunnies.
Monday. So very, very Monday.
Anyhow, Davey and Goliath — for all you philthy pherriners — was a stop-action TV program of the ’60s, brought you by the Lutheran church and Art Clokey (of Gumby fame). Yes, it was every bit as fun as it sounds. It ran Sunday mornings, and you watched because…what the hell else you going to watch Sunday morning? Davey and Goliath has to be in my top five Programs I Wouldn’t Want to Watch after Dropping the Brown Acid.
I didn’t realize until I Wiki’d it this morning that the sweet, stupid Davey of the Sixties turned into a major dick in the Seventies: cheating, contaminating a well and “telling a handicapped child to shoot himself for being so ‘dumb’.” I’d love to know how Goliath handled that one.
It’s still running on some religious stations, minus certain episodes. Violence, racial issues…that sort of thing. Yes, we have lived to see the day that Davey and Goliath is too edgy for children.
And speaking of edgy and creepy…a doctor in Australia is under investigation for mutilating and abusing hundreds of women.
Carolyn Dewaegeneire, a patient who broke her silence on a national TV news program last week, was admitted to Pambula Hospital on August 2002 to have a minor lesion removed from her labia.
Before she lost consciousness to a general anesthetic, she said Reeves leaned over and whispered in her ear: “I’m going to take your clitoris, too.”
After the operation she discovered all her external genitalia had been cut off her body. It is alleged Reeves later boasted of removing “all the fun bits” — and said she wouldn’t need them as her husband had died.
He wasn’t struck off for that. He was merely ordered not to practice as an obstetrician. He was struck off for disobeying and working as an obstetrician anyway.
Note to self: swing by the liquor store on the way home.
February 25, 2008 — 3:14 pm
Comments: 39
They want me. They want me bad.
Say, who’s up on parliamentary procedures? Is there any chance Huck will force it to a brokered convention and somebody totally else can grab the nomination?
Like Zombie Reagan or Maggie Thatcher or Chuck Manson or
Marvin the Martian or…somebody?
February 24, 2008 — 6:22 pm
Comments: 11
I have this here megaphone and I’m not afraid to use it
Last week, National Review called for a truce between McCain’s supporters and the flaming wingnut contingent, of which IR1.
I was going to go along — really, what’s the point of taking shots now? — but I had second thoughts. What if a McCain supporter says something that really torques me off seconds after I take the pinkie swear? My spleen would explode. I like my spleen. So, no. No promises.
But I’m not grinding any axes yet, either. I’m still doing math. Which is more dangerous: a misguided man who achieves many of his goals, or a very misguided man who achieves few of his goals?
Then there’s my other question: which is more insignificant, my vote or my blog?
Over sixty-three million people voted in the last presidential election, but there are over ninety million blogs. So, if my math is correct (and it never is) my vote is 1/180,000,000ths more significant than my blog.
But there’s more to it than math. What if one or more of you silly boo-boos actually writes in Zombie Reagan for president? Then my blog becomes several sixty-three millionths more powerful than my vote.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the…you know. The hat. The hat thing with the bells on.
February 20, 2008 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 42
One dead president to another…
To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.
–Ronald Reagan’s first Inaugural address
G’night, Fidel!
February 19, 2008 — 12:21 pm
Comments: 83
What do *I* care?
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “what the hell do you care, Weasel? You ain’t hanging around for President McClintobama. You’re setting sail for the island of warm booze and offal pie.”
Well, shut up, that’s what. American politics will affect me nearly as much in Badgerland as it does in Weaseltopia. I still have to file a US income tax return every year — America is the only country that makes its expats do this, forever — though I’ll never make enough money to owe anything to Uncle Sam (I think the threshold is, like, eighty grand). I own land in the US, so there’s property taxes to deal with. I desperately need whatever pittance I can screw out of Social Security after thirty-some years of paying in (Uncle B and I both signed up for the “work until you die” retirement plan). I’ll be back every year to buy mayonnaise and cheap blue jeans. Heck, we’ll both come over and build that romantic bunker in the woods I’ve always wanted, if the Musselman overruns the South of England.
And you would not believe how US current events saturate British media.
I don’t mean entertainment. Hollywood dreck is a major American export. I expect to see a lot of it abroad, most especially in English-speaking countries (which includes parts of Britain). (Though, you know, geez…we’ve done other things since Sergeant Bilko. Splash out, Limeys. Try something new in that 10am time slot. Flipper. Or Bonanza, maybe).
No, I’m talking about how American news and general cultural stuff permeate British media, the BBC in particular. Sure, a lot of that is Bush Derangement Syndrome. Some of it is simply responsible international reporting, since we have our fingers in so many…ummm…dykes. But, whoo! Seriously, honest-to-geez, they can work America into the weather forecast. Spend a day listening to the BBC’s Radio 4 — America is with you from the Shipping Forecast right through to Book at Bedtime.
Whenever I hear some lefty tool mouthing off about “American cultural hegemony” I think, “oh, here’s an idea — you could maybe SHUT THE HELL UP about us for, like, two seconds. You think that might help lower our profile? Yeah. Go talk about Belgium for a day and let us rest our hegemoning muscle.”
So, rest assured, whatever you guys do, I’m going to spend all day hearing about it. Especially if it’s something stupid and embarrassing. Most especially if that stupid embarrassing thing involves beer, guns or Jesus.
And so, my fellow Americans, do a weasel a favor? Don’t make this immigrant thing any harder than it has to be. Refrain from getting drunk and shooting up a megachurch, please. And send me my goddamn absentee ballot.
February 18, 2008 — 3:59 pm
Comments: 51
They’ve dug up the Gipper!
George Gipp (1895-1920) All American football player. Died of pneumonia and may or may not have said the following:
I’ve got to go, Rock. It’s all right. I’m not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.
Which was immortalized in Knute Rockne, All American, with Ronald Reagan in the role of Gipp. Which is why…etcetera.
Anyhoo! Somebody dug him up this Fall to see if he was that somebody’s babydaddy. Which he wasn’t. ESPN was invited to film the exhumation, which sounds like it was very badly done. Messy. Bad feelings and lawsuits all around.
I’m pretty sure that quote is bogus. I’m pretty sure most deathbed quotes are bogus. Surely, nobody dies talking about football, unless it’s a hammer murder.
I bet you anything the vast majority of last words are something
along the lines of, “HOLY SHIT MARGARET I’M DYING!!!!”
February 15, 2008 — 3:46 pm
Comments: 45
Wawwy Wound the Fwag, boys!
Okay, so I ditched work and went to the McCain rally. The crowd was much bigger than I expected. I saw so much blue hair it looked like Free Sample Day at the cotton candy factory.
My pictures are teh suck because I was late and stuck way in the back.
If ever there was such a thing as a John McCain faction of the GOP, Rhode Island is it. He won the Republican vote easily in 2000, partly because he was the only politician who actually visited. Nobody else bothers. I think the mid-Atlantic states felt sorry for us and scraped together a delegate they let us use sometimes.
So maybe he’d give a different speech someplace else. There was lots of the usual talk about his military experience and invoking of Ronald Reagan. He did mention “Islamic radicals” specifically, so…good. That “my friends” thing is going to wear on the nerves over time.
He said his support for the surge almost cost him his career. What did he mean by that? Surely he wasn’t blaming his campaign problems on the war…? Is that what “I would rather lose a campaign than a war” means? Because, who the hell was going to hold that against him…the other party?
Speaking of what almost did deep six his run, he didn’t. Not one mention of immigration.
He talked for a while about global warming in a wheedling sort of way. Basically, “even if we’re wrong about global warming, we’ll develop some neat new technologies.” Meh.
Every time he said something they liked, a forest of AARP signs rose up all around him. That’s American Association of Retired Persons, for you foreigners. Old coots are the most reliable voting bloc, but that image is going to kill him if it’s Obama.
He’s a little fart, too. Senator Sawed-off McRunty, Angry Old Man, versus tall, thin, elegant young black man bursting with Hope and Change. Yosemite Sam versus Tuxedo Mask. Oof!
On the way out, one sweet little old lady turned to the other and said (for no particular reason I could discern), “I just love that Lindsay Graham.” And the other coo’d, “oh yes — me too!”
I hate the Stupid Party.
February 14, 2008 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 48