If your opponents get tired and go home it doesn't mean you've won.

So I stumbled onto this. It angers me in ways that are hard to express. I'm not going to argue his points because he doesn't read my blog so I'd more or less be jacking off. But I am going to critique his style.

1. He sites authority constantly. If an argument is bullshit saying it's a famous person's bullshit doesn't improve the smell. Also I'm no expert in the field but it looks like most of his authorities are of the 'person who wrote a book that agrees with me' variety.
2. It's true because it's true. He characterizes his opponents with six points. His counters range from "It is by universal definition" to "it can't." If you want to take something as given your opponents have to agree not your handpicked third parties.
3. Words don't work that way. While I support making up new words as appropriate (I quite like bioinformatics which he or his people made up) but his "Mathematical theory of communication" (which has no numbers) is a real wallbanger.

Some time I should write up my arguments against the existance of god and see if I can avoid a similar catastrifuck of fallacies.

Ok, now it's time for a fucking riot.

BYU yanks diploma for ex-Mormon calendar-maker.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-20-byu-diploma_N.htm?csp=34

"If in the future you are reinstated as a member of the church in good standing, you are invited to contact my office regarding your possible eligibility for the awarding of a degree," Finlinson wrote.

I also appreciate the line from the Church official in Las Vegas saying the main reason for Hardy's excommunication was "failure to pay tithing." I generally take an ignore and move on attitude toward the dumber actions of the church, but some one really needs to lose their job and then be dragged from their home and beaten for this.

I don't know who Peggy Noonan is but I know she's a hypocrite.

This is an article in the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan, in which she praises Sara Palin.

A Clear and Present Danger To the American Left

A few xhoice quotes:

[Palin] is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not

She could become a transformative political presence

This is a video of Peggy Noonan not realizing her mic was still on:


A few choice quotes:

It's over.

The most qualified? No.

I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives.

What was the price of your soul Peggy Noonan?