Earlier this week Paul Krugman wrote about the rhetorical effectiveness of spreading little falsehoods. These little lies, as he called them, get repeated over and over again first by the irresponsible media (Drudge, talk radio, Hannity, and so on), then they work their way up to Howard Kurtz and various other mainstream outlets, who take … Continue reading Little things
The war on Al Gore is really the specialty of the Daily Howler, but with all deference to Bob Somerby, let me take a stab at it today. The old war on Gore involved the claim that he had a kind of pathological obsession with becoming President of the United States. On this theme, the … Continue reading The two Gores
Yesterday in my seminar on the philosophy of religion we had a discussion about burden of proof. Burden questions seem to be a tricky mix of psychology, politics, and epistemology–to name a few things. And this goes back to the second feature of critical thinking–at least the second one we came up with here (yesterday)–i.e., … Continue reading Weird Science
We’ll give Dinesh D’Souza a break today–and maybe tomorrow as well. But don’t worry, we’ll come back for him (in the meantime, he seems to be having trouble remembering his book’s thesis). A colleague of mine sent me an article from the Chronicle Review where Russell Jacoby reviews some recent works by conservative writers and … Continue reading Intellectual liberals
One final post on George Will’s spectacularly dumb piece on global warming (later we will discuss the recurring Will canard that contractual benefits constitute “welfare”). We should remind the reader that the whole point of Will’s essay is to challenge *the truth* of the claim of those white-coated types–also known as scientists–that the earth’s atmosphere … Continue reading Contra populum
As we have said, this op-ed by George Will may take a while to sort out (luckily today he did some reportage on the sorry state of Illinois politics). Having already confused science fiction with science fact and having grossly exaggerated the amount of conflict among present day scientists concerning global warming, Will argues that … Continue reading Antediluvian
It may take a few days to sort out the sheer idiocy of George Will’s Sunday Post column. The other day–with a little help from our new friends down under–my colleague discussed the argument from ignorance that Will has been flogging for quite a while now. On “This Week” last week (click here for the … Continue reading Heads up!
We find ourselves hard pressed to identify and analyze all of the fallacies in one post that are woven into George Will’s editorial on global warming today. As our readers will know by now, Will operates at the cutting edge of fallacious reasoning, continually pushing the envelope as he seems to discover new fallacies for … Continue reading A glimmer of a reflection of a truth, at best
Only just recently George Will argued that Michael Crichton’s appendixed and footnoted science-fiction thriller about global warming–sorry, climate change–merited unironic juxtaposition with the body of unthrilling and nonfictional scientific research from the majority of the world’s qualified scientists. Now this past week in The Washington Post he argues that Larry Summers’ off the cuff and … Continue reading Ad Feminam
The editors of *Thenonsequitur.com* would like to apologize for their rather long vacation, which they enjoyed doing their regular jobs. The editors also apologize for not posting a notice to that effect. The fact is, however, they never intended to take a vacation; it took them. But, in addition to that, they have to admit … Continue reading State of Ignorance