(no subject)

you know something that i am tired of?

i am tired of people trying to defend a horrible practice with the following argument:

"don't you silly rabbits realize that [horrible practice] has been a part of [history] for as long as people have been in existence? [horrible practice] is therefore a fact of life, and you are naive not to expect, (and by extension, wrong to condemn) [horrible practice,] which is somehow excused by our nature."

Here is a clue for you types. Citing history does not win an argument. It is a logical fallacy called "The Appeal to Tradition" with a little bit of the logical fallacy "Appeal to Nature" thrown in. The Appeal to Tradition says (simplified) that something is true "because it has always been done that way." It is a fallacy simply because the traditional may simply be wrong. Natural Law is subject to the same problem (not, in this case, that "Nature" is wrong, but what is called "Natural Law" could be built upon a flawed assumption. ("All the celestial bodies revolve around the earth, therefore it is the center of the universe."))

So the bottom line... torture of humans, is in no way excused by the fact that humans have always tortured other humans. We may be rushing to judgement, the facts may not all be evident, etc... but we are not right to "do what we want because people always have."

link roundup

freaking fascinating i am SO the rich!

another badly named snack product.

apocalypse yesterday: Before and after satellite photos of that train explosion in North Korea.

trying to turn fourteen bucks into a thousand in a year.

don't forget to steal this one too:

open letter to the crackhead that is sawing off the tops of my sparkplugs to make a crackpipe...

YOU ARE A CRACKHEAD. WHY DON'T YOU OWN A CRACKPIPE?

I am an engineer. Do you ever see me shaking down bums in the Loin for a calculator and sliderule? No, you don't. Because engineering is the main thing I do, I went and bought myself a calculator. The main thing you do is crack. How do you get by without a crackpipe? The other crackheads must clown on you non-stop. I mean, the fucking saw you used to saw off my sparkplugs is probably worth five or ten bucks. Why not sell or trade it for a crackpipe? You really haven't put much thought into this, have you?

Please, Crackhead, please don't tell me you sold your crackpipe to buy crack. Even a stupid crackhead such as yourself couldn't possibly be that stupid.