Well, since this is my blog and I have a lot of anger about stuff, here's the TOP 10 REALLY ANNOYING FALLACIES, brought to you by Cynicism Personfied, and our sponsor, lack of sleep.
Note: I am sick and tired. Literally. So if my writing is run-onny and weird, that's why.
THE TOP 10
10. ATHEISTS ARE SATANISTS. ATHEISTS HAVE NO MORALS. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Atheism means one believes god(s) doesn't/don't exist. Very simply, we don't believe Satan exists either. It's all irrational mishmash. Furthermore, atheists are just as likely (if not more likely) to have morals as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, etc etc. A lot of trouble happens due to religious persecution, fundamentalism, terrorism, jihad, ethnic cleansing, genocide, priests raping little boys, discrimination, etc, and atheists have no part in that bullshit. Whether or not an atheist is moral by your standards depends on the person, of course.
9. FILE-SHARING IS ILLEGAL, AND YOU CAN GO TO JAIL FOR DOWNLOADING. This is a recent grievance, and it might go up in the Top 10 in the future. Recent actions taken by the Record Industry Association of America have led people to believe that file-sharing (e.g. KaZaA) is illegal. This is NOT TRUE. What's illegal is downloading music without actually owning a CD or paying for it via iTunes or something. However, you're not going to go to jail for it. The RIAA can't be bothered chasing down people who just download a few songs a day. They only go after the big supernodes who share thousands and thousands of songs. If you download KaZaA Lite then you'll be safe from their prying eyes. It has a built in primitive firewall that blocks bad IP ranges. Also, KaZaA Lite doesn't have advertising or spyware. If you want to be extra safe with file sharing, don't keep your music in your shared folder for long, download Spybot - Search and Destroy and run it frequently, get a firewall like ZoneAlarm, and get an antivirus program like Norton AntiVirus. You should probably download these free privacy apps even if you don't do filesharing.
8. "FLAMMABLE" MEANS SOMETHING CAN BE LIT ON FIRE, AND "INFLAMMABLE" MEANS SOMETHING CAN'T. Wrong. Both mean the same thing: can be lit on fire. I am not positive flammable is even a correct word, though it has entered the language due to constant usage, and dictionary.com traces its etymology, so I'll accept it. See their note about usage: "Historically, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. However, the presence of the prefix in- has misled many people into assuming that inflammable means “not flammable” or “noncombustible.” The prefix -in in inflammable is not, however, the Latin negative prefix -in, which is related to the English -un and appears in such words as indecent and inglorious. Rather, this -in is an intensive prefix derived from the Latin preposition in. This prefix also appears in the word enflame. But many people are not aware of this derivation, and for clarity's sake it is advisable to use only flammable to give warnings." QED.
7. VEGETARIANISM OR VEGANISM IS RIGHT BECAUSE IT RESPECTS LIVING THINGS. If you think you can't eat living things, that means you can only eat fruits, eggs, seeds, cheese, other byproducts, minerals, etc. Plants are alive too! Vegetables are the roots, leaves, and flowers of plants, and they are just as alive as animals. Naturally, when you harvest them, they die just as animals in slaughterhouses do. Fruits, however, fall off trees by themselves, because they are seeds. And vegans have it a lot worse. They don't eat eggs or any dairy products. By that logic, they shouldn't eat fruits or vegetables, because they are byproducts of living plants. Plants are different than animals, but they're still organisms. Think hard about this before you bite into a carrot: it's like biting into a hamburger. The carrot IS the plant. And PETA is a moronic organization.
6. TOMATOES ARE VEGETABLES. No, they're fruits. Fruits are the edible seeds or ovaries of a plant, and tomatoes fit that description. They aren't vegetables, which are the edible roots, stems, or flowers of a plant. QED.
5. THE UNITED STATES IS A DEMOCRACY. This is technically not true. Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people. As you might know, the popular vote does not determine the president. The electoral college decides, and their decision doesn't need to reflect the popular vote. The USA is an electoral capitalist republic. Think about this next time you want to spread democracy to Iraq or somewhere.
4. PONG WAS THE FIRST VIDEO GAME. While it was up there, pong wasn't actually the first video game. Now, there are two possible candidates for the first video game depending on whether you consider computer games video games as well. There's no reason not to. Video game systems house computers, and the display apparatus (a television) is similar in function to a computer monitor. You can use computers on your TV, you know. The first video/computer game was a Tic-Tac-Toe game displayed on a cathode ray tube, invented by A.S. Douglas in 1952 at the University of Cambridge, UK. A lot of people don't consider computer games video games, and they credit Ralph Baer's invention of a game played on a television as the first video game: the Magnavox Odyssey, in May of 1972. While it was definitely the first video game console, I do not consider it to be the first video game. It's up to you. However, the Odyssey had a Tennis game, which was the basis for Pong. Pong itself wasn't created until a number of months later in June of 1972 and later.
3. THERE IS A NUMBER THREE. Wrong. There is no #3.
2. SHORT-LIVED IS PRONOUNCED LIKE THE PAST TENSE OF LIVE.
Out of all usage errors, this annoys me the most. Just about everyone I know says "short-livd" when in reality it's "short-lievd." Same goes for long-lived. Think about it: it's like saying flat-footed or large-breasted. Short-lifed. But you don't say lifed, you say lived, because in Middle English they elongate syllables like these. Here's what dictionary.com has to say about it."The pronunciation (-l
vd) is etymologically correct since the compound is derived from the noun life, rather than from the verb live. But the pronunciation (-l
vd) is by now so common that it cannot be considered an error. In the most recent survey 43 percent of the Usage Panel preferred (-lvd), 39 percent preferred (-lvd), and 18 percent found both pronunciations equally acceptable." I don't really agree with them that them more common pronounciation can't be considered an error. As my esteemed grandfather used to say, "The masses are asses." This is a fallacy: argumentum ad populum. Just because something is common, doesn't make it right. Just look at religion! Here's what they say about long-lived: "Some uncertainty exists as to the correct pronunciation of long-lived. Should one say (lông
lvd) or (lônglvd)? The answer depends in part on how one looks at the word. Historically, the first pronunciation is the more accurate. The word was formed in Middle English times as a compound of
long and the noun life, plus the suffix -ed. This suffix, though identical in form to the past tense suffix, has a different function: to form adjectives from nouns, as in the words hook-nosed, ruddy-faced, and round-shouldered. (Note that English has no verbs such as “to hook-nose,” and “to ruddy-face,” that would have formed participial adjectives ending in -ed.) In Middle English, the suffix -ed was always pronounced as a full syllable, so long-lifed (as it was then spelled) had three syllables. The f in the middle, by a rule of earlier English phonology, was voiced between the two vowels to (v); eventually, the spelling became long-lived to reflect the pronunciation. (We see the same alternation in life and lives; in Middle English, lives had two syllables just like -lived.) However, this new spelling introduced an ambiguity; it was no longer clear from the spelling that the word came from the noun life, but rather looked as though it came from the verb live. In this way a second pronunciation, (lônglvd), was introduced."
And finally, the #1 really annoying fallacy:
1. JESUS CHRIST WAS WHITE, AND HE WAS THE INVENTOR OF CHRISTIANITY. THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD. Let's clear up his name. His name was Yeshua (יהושע), a shortened form of Yehoshua (יהושע), which is essentially the English name Joshua. The name "Jesus" comes from the Latin Iesus, which derives from the Greek Iesous (Ιησους). Christ is a derivative of the Greek Khristos meaning "messiah," or more literally, "the anointed one," and the appellation was not applied to Yeshua while he was alive. In his time, he was known of Yeshua of Nazareth. Nazareth is an ancient city in the Middle East. HE WAS A FUCKING ILLITERATE CARPENTER. He spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew, although he purported to be an Orthodox Jewish preacher. 70-100 years (that figure could be slightly off) after his crucification due to "revolutionary actions," or as President Bush might say, "terrorism," Saul of Tarsus, or St. Paul, created Christianity, claiming that Yeshua of Nazareth was the Christ. Now, there was a basis for this. In the Torah (Jewish Bible/Old Testament) there is a prophecy regarding a messiah that will save the Jewish people from Babylonian and later Roman persecution. JESUS DIDN'T SAVE THE JEWS. He wasn't the Jewish messiah. YOU CAN'T USE THE BIBLE FOR EVIDENCE OF THIS. The New Testament was written in the 4th century (we're talking 300 CE here) and it was only loosely based on actual history. It got even worse when King James I translated it from the freaky Greek and Latin to English. If you're Christian, you're buying into a load of historically screwed up stuff. Hell, Christmas was put on December 25th to detract attention from a pagan Mithraist holiday, and has no actual link to the life of Yeshua of Nazareth. Similar to this is Valentine's Day, which was created based on a dead guy named Valentine who the Pope made a saint and created a holiday for on the same day as a pagan fertility rite. You've got similar histories for Easter, Michaelmas, and other lesser known Christian holidays. What it all boils down to is: THE CHURCH INVENTED CHRISTIANITY. THE HISTORICAL LIFE OF YESHUA PLAYED NO PART IN IT.
Thanks for reading. Look for a blog entry about the new $20 bill next time.
Andre
Welcome, one and all, to Cynicism Personified.
This is my new blog. I hope it will prove to be more interesting and less weird than the previous attempt. Moveable Type sure is an upgrade over Blogger.
Come back at some point for cynical and sarcastic ranting!