This pissed me off

http://cheezburger.com/7497542912

What is wrong with people, I don't know who pisses me off more with this crap, the mother who is failing to teach her daughter the difference between advertising and '"tricking people," or the jagoff that thinks that the opinion of a nine-year old has the experience and objectivity necessary to be taken seriously.


First off, the little girl's mother is supposedly some sort of 'food activist," which at this point in my life means " Ill informed, anti-business jackhole who wants nothing more than to dictate to others what they may be permitted to place in their mouths." I can't stress this enough: Anyone who teaches their kids that McDoogalss is the bad guy for trying to interest kids in eating at their resturaunt, as opposed to the same parent who lacks the basic maturity and willpower to say no to the kid when the kid asks for a happy meal.

This isn't rocket science, it takes only one syllable to keep your kid from eating too much fast food: No. That's it. No matter how enticing the restaurant might make their food, the kid still isn't the one making the purchasing decisions.

What this means is that, if your kid is overweight because they ate too much McDoogals, it's not McDoogals' fault.

                                           IT'S YOUR FAULT!

Then there is the Asshat at Cheezburger that wrote the write up on the incident, gushing about how awesome this little girl was, and how she really showed the Ceo of McDonalds when she started spouting rhetoric. Not only was it a bunch of anti-coporate garbage masquerading ad health advocacy, but the author displayed a complete lack of scepticism at why a nine-year-old would have these opinions, opinions that are more like something an adult would say.

The fact that the author was gushing about the nine-year-old, as if her repeating tired rhetoric made her some kind of genius was disturbing. It bothers me because the author showed an inability to recognize that the girl displayed the very lack of critical thinking necessary to be a successful investigative journalist as the author claimed the girl had the talent for.

Ultimately, this boils down to an inability to recognize that any business has not only the right, but the responsibility to make their product as desirable as possible, and that parents have the responsibility to ensure that their kids are eating a healthy diet. To blame McdDoogals for your kid being fat is unfair to McDoogals, since they are simply trying to earn business, they do not have any magical powers to force you to eat there.

BTW, I took a break from writing this to do some running around with my friend, and he said that all the talk about cheeseburger made him want one, so we stopped by McDoogals and got a couple of dollar cheeseburgers. Sorry little girl, you lose this round.

name calling is not an argument, and other thoughts.

To start, I wanted to rant a bit about the trend in calling people who disagree with a particular viewpoint "sheeple," "robots," "Brainwashed," or other pejoratives that imply that the person disagreeing is not thinking for themselves. This bothers me for two reasons, the first being that the simple act of disagreeing is an act of thinking for onesself, and the other  being that such name calling is usually on the part of someone that isn't bothering to state an argument based upon facts.

Now, I strongly dislike the use of fallacy in argumentation, but using one fallacy to defend another just plain puts me in the sort of foul mood that makes what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah look like a minor hissy fit. This is because neither is really defensible, especially in the majority of cases where the second fallacy is being used to defend the sort of conspiracy theory that even the most dedicated wearer of tinfoil headgear sceptical.

I guess it boils down to a strong dislike on my part for people who fail to see the flaw in arguing that the absence of proof of something is evidence of that thing, and then expecting someone who asks for evidence that can be taken seriously to not get upset when their ability to engage in critical thinking is called into question for no reason other than they use their critical thinking skills........


Well, that can get into a fatal loop, and so I will opt to use the option where I move on to something else.


It has become a running joke that The Daily Show and the Colbert report are the best news shows around...

The sad part is that it is because the rest seem less interested in reporting news, and more interested in creating it. For example, Fox seems to have not gotten the memo about intentionally editing footage of speeches to change the meaning of the speech, as they seem to do it regularly. Then again, they might merely be having a problem where their cameras actually take footage of an alternate reality where their claims are real, and not paranoid fantasies of a global conspiracy to make them look foolish... Then again, how does that explain how they are unable to understand how everyone else has a different view?

Then there is Cnn, who is unable to figure out that we can see the bus passing behind one reporter's screen, to the next screen with a different reporter, all while they are commnicating  theough a "satellite link." Apparently, on the planet that CNN reports from, it takes a satellite to communicate with people 50 feet away...

Local news isn't much better, between the puff pieces being reported as real news, and the condescending attitude they mistake for charm, it ends up as unwatchable.

At least Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert make no claims about being real journalists when they present the news...

More thoughts on facts

Earlier this week, I posted an article relating to making sure to get your facts straight before reacting to news, and I thought I should elaborate, as it is an interesting subject for me, and hopefully I might change some viewpoints.

Part of what inspired the follow up article was watching Penn and Teller : bullshit, and the episode was addressing the subject of violent video games, and their alleged effect on violent behaviour.  They presented a few facts that bear consideration, one was the idea that many of the people making the claim that video games create violent behaviour make their claim based in part on the notion that the games were present in the homes of those committing violent acts, and that idea was refuted by pointing out that since the games are extremely common, making such a claim is no more factual than claiming that toothpaste creates violent behavior since it is also as prevalent. another point they made was that prior to violent video games, there were still mass killings, one 80 years before video games were invented.

The point of this is, when someone is screaming that the sky is falling, and they cite a statistic, you should look for a context, and determine if the risk they are screaming about is real. That is, if after checking their statistic in context, and you see that the odds of the risk affecting you are astronomically low, there probably isn't a problem.

Relax, get your facts.

I was talking wit ha friend the other day, and the conversation went towards the subject of fact checking, and how so few people seem to bother with it. Maybe it's my being a bit too sceptical, but I tend to take the "pics or it didn't happen" view on a lot of the crap that gets posted online. This is to say, if it seems to be a bit shaky,  filled with hyperbole, or belongs in the "tinfoil hat" section of a bookstore, I tend to disbelieve until I check the facts.

The process usually only takes a few minutes, and can prevent a lot of anxiety over a "news report" that makes an event seem like it is a horrific tragedy. For example, recently the Military reiterated it's policy regarding the use of rank for personal benefit as it applies to religious proseletyzation. They simply said that it would not be tolerated, as it was a clear conflict of interest. Many people who did not read the memo reacted to the statement as if the government was saying that they could not practice their religion while in the military, a position counter to what was actually said. These people got upset because they did not bother getting their facts, and believed someone who did not necessarily want to protray the statement in a fair light, since they were likely the very people encouraging the violations in the forst place.

Another example is as simple as the many e-mail scams out there, people get suckered by slick e-mails making promises that sound great, until you look into whomever is sending them, or whether or not the offer is even legal.

OR, to wrap it up in a nutshell, the best weapon we have against political manipulation and scams us to always check the facts behind the claims.

Can't sleep. clowns will eat me.

So, I decided to make a new blog, one where I talk about whatever is on my mind at the time, but not necessarily about any particular subject. Some of it might be funny, some might make you uncomfortable, some might seem boring, but here it is in it's unvarnished glory.


I am posting this post right now since I can't seem to get to sleep, so I figure I might as well use the energy creatively. I think this is because I am out of school and out of work, so I have too much time on my hands, and that gets rather disruptive for me. It is one area where I have noticed that my need for stability is severe, that is, if my life is such that i do not have things to do at particular times, and on a steady schedule, I tend to have problems with sleeping, either sleeping too much, or too little. If it goes on too long, it starts to cause me anxiety over my sleep, where I feel guilty about not sleeping the "right" amount, or at "appropriate" times.