This is a World Leader?

Does anyone else find it absolutely horrifying that Bush can go to a black-tie affair and publicly JOKE about the fact that we have not found any weapons of mass destruction in a country we invaded for that reason?

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/03252004_nw_bushbroadcasters.html

I've only seen clips of him giving this slideshow presentation, but it seemed to me that the man acted like a bad standup comic more than he did the President of the United States.

Intellectual Elitism

I'm starting to think that all lawyers, judges, and legislators should be required to be english majors as well.

I was just watching The People's Court, and the judge used the phrase "what it costed you". It bothers me that someone who makes their living from the literal interpretation of the written word of the law just used the term "costed".

I'm reminded of a news item I saw a while ago about a portion of law phrased in a way that literally had no meaning in the english language, but I can't seem to find it again...

Geekery

You know that geek social fallacy list that was going around a while ago? I think I found one more to add to it:

Geek Social Fallacy #[N+1]: Logical refutation of a fallacious argument is the best way to convince others to change their views.

Because of this fallacy, a geek will continue to pound opponents on an issue as long as he can find flaws in their arguments, and finds the concept of agreeing to disagree in situations where there is a logical refutation of either side's argument utterly inconceivable. Agreeing to disagree, when translated into the mindset of someone suffering from this social fallacy, means agreeing to allow one side of the argument to continue to publicly express incorrect views (in other forums or in the future if not in the thread the debate started in) without logical refutations offered by the opposing side.

This social fallacy can also have a strong backlash against the person suffering from it, since that person will find it difficult (indeed, in many cases impossible) to hold views which seem logically inconsistent or which the geek cannot, at this time, offer detailed logical support for. This may cause the geek to do increasing logical gymnastics trying to justify a view that stems more from strong internal feelings than logical reasoning, with the frequent result that the geek's ever-weakening logic chain will carry him away from the core points he feels strongly about in order to argue unrelated positions that his logic has backed him into and that he may not even emotionally support.

The key to moving past this fallacy seems to rest in the realization that there is a point in human communication beyond which belaboring the point, even if done with infallible logic, does more to dissuade others from agreeing with you than it does to convince anyone that they should share your views. Once this realization is reached it seems to become progressively easier for the person suffering from the social fallacy to understand, relate to, and even hold views which are not based solely in logical reasoning. Which is, of course, a key part of both human social interaction and having a mature world-view as a member of a species which inherently possesses emotion and intuition as well as the ability to reason logically.

Of course, since this is myself I'm describing and I'm not entirely over it (though working on that and apparently making progress) this entry may be incomplete at this time.