Archive for March, 2010

Nothing I can say about this can make it better. All I can say is that it is one of my favorite quotes. Wish we had a few guys like this today.

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” – Samuel Adams

In the America of Barack Obama and his lapdogs in the media, we are bombarded constantly with logical fallacies. Rather than being desensitized to them turn the target-rich environment into a competitive pastime. It’s the next “logical” step to buzzword bingo: Logical Fallacy Bingo! Enjoy.

• Ad hominem – Arguing “against the man,” attacking an opponent personally rather than refuting their claims with logic and reason
• Ad nauseam – Literally “to the point of nausea.” Repeating the same flawed argument to a sickening extent as if repetition makes it more valid.
• Anecdotal fallacy – Citing anecdotes in which an assertion appears to be true as proof that the  assertion is universally true
• Appeal to authority – Asserting that an assertion is true only because some presumed authority says so
• Appeal to the gallery – The “everyone knows that X is true” fallacy
• Appeal to intellectual capability – Asserting that an opponent’s argument is wrong by denigrating his intelligence, knowledge, or capabilities of understanding
• Appeal to motive – Ascribing ulterior motives to an opponent rather than addressing the substance of his argument.
• Begging the question – Circular reasoning, arguing for a conclusion using statements which presume that the conclusion is true
• Biased sample – Arguing that a claim is true based on prejudicial evidence
• Chronological snobbery – Presuming that ideas and arguments from earlier times are inherently inferior to present day arguments
• Circumstantial ad hominem -Attempting to refute a claim by asserting that the person making the claim is only making it for personal gain
• Etymological fallacy – Falsely assuming that the present day usage and meaning of a word is the original or historical usage and meaning
• Guilt by association – Someone you don’t like makes a claim, therefore the claim is false
• Hasty generalization – Drawing a conclusion about a population based on too small a sample of that population
• Ipse disxit – Literally “he himself said it,” using a dogmatic assertion without supporting it logically
• Loaded question – Asking a question which presupposes some unproven assertion
• Poisoning the well – Condemning a person in order to subsequently argue that whatever he asserts is false
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc – Literally “after this therefore because of this,” arguing that A occurred before B therefore A is the cause of B
• Red herring – Introducing an irrelevant topic in order to divert attention from the actual subject of an argument
• Reductio ad absurdum – Taking an opponent’s argument and reducing it to an absurd extreme
• Straw man – Ignoring an opponent’s actual position and substituting a distortion which is then refuted
• Tu quoque – Arguing that an assertion is false because the person making it does not live as if his assertion is true.

How can you make mo’ money without using yo’ money?
Get money from the gubmint.

It pains me that “ground zero” in New York City remains an ugly hole in the ground while presumably talented architects are wasting time, effort and ability on addressing Al Gore’s imaginary climate eschatology. I suppose these ideas, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art’s department of architecture and design, may have application in places where water is a limit on needed development but this still seems a pointless exercise given the recent stream of stories showing how the “settled” science is sullied with deception, data fudging, and outright fraud.

A New York Art article on MoMA’s Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront, seems a perfect companion to prophet of doom Al Gore’s recent New York Times op ed. In fact they seem as if they could have been written by the same person.

The Church of Global Warming’s Pontifex Maximus opened his op ed yesterday like this:

“It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.”

Justin Davidson in New York Art uses more flowery prose but the same accusation of denial is present.

It’s easy to imagine an apocalyptically soggy future for New York—high waves soaking the hem of Lady Liberty’s robes, flash floods roaring through subway tunnels, kayakers paddling down Wall Street—and just as easy to dismiss it all as another end-of-days Hollywood fantasy. Global warming may be powerful and real, but so is denial, and the urge to postpone thinking about that particular item on the world’s to-do list is almost irresistible. Coastal cities, however, don’t have that luxury. For centuries, New York has been steadily expanding into its harbor; when the steroidal storms of the not-too-distant future start pummeling our shores, the waters will push back.

The article echoes Gore’s pedantic claim that denying anthropogenic global warming amounts to a lazy reluctance to taking inconvenient action. There is a tacit acceptance of dire claims, many of which have been discredited, and an absence of curiosity about the skeptics’ point of view. One probably shouldn’t expect serious treatment of the topic in an art publication but this is just another imaginary data point that incurious “intellectuals” will use to cement their faith in Al Gore’s promise of salvation.