From the chorus of "Human", the third single on The Killers' Day & Age:are we human or are we dancer?
Derisive comments about banality aside, I think Mr. Flowers should get up off his knees and realize the obvious solution to this seemingly intractable philosophical problem.
my sign is vital, my hands are cold
and I'm on my knees
looking for the answer
are we human or are we dancer?
Also, forcing a subject-object disagreement in order to rhyme "dancer" with "answer"???
Showing posts with label bullshit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bullshit. Show all posts
09 December 2008
From the department of false dualisms
31 March 2008
Bullshit watch: Richard Florida
Go here, scroll down to the bottom, and click on the fourth map, "Personality Maps". You won't regret it.
18 November 2007
Numbers numbers numbers...
I've been following the polling for the Democratic race for the presidential nomination ever since this absurdly long campaign got kicked off. Now, I know next to nothing about American politics, but that doesn't seem to stop anybody else from gassing off about it, so here's my best shot, in brief.
First of all, many of the polls continue to include Al Gore in the results. This strikes me as somewhat confusing. Numbers are available excluding Al Gore as well, and those numbers by my calculation are not simply a matter of dumping every respondent who chooses him; rather, when they knock him out of the numbers they must be distributing his supporters' second choices. I don't think it makes sense for pollsters to keep including Gore as an option, except as a normative choice to keep voters thinking about global warming (which, unfortunately, I don't think is the primary motivation here).
Judging by a lot of recent polls, even pooling Obama and Edwards' supporters together doesn't top Clinton, though I presume it puts them within the margin of error. On that note, the N for most of the polls seems pretty small, so the margins of error are substantial (for example, the most recent Gallup poll has a margin of +/-5%). All this to say: Obama'd better hope that some of the other candidates throw in the towel and jump on his bandwagon before too many primaries are decided. As for Edwards, if I were facing these numbers I'd start shopping around for a VP deal.
On the plus side, maybe, for Obama (and Edwards), the latest polls show undecideds at 9, 10, 12, 14, and so on. In general, these numbers are for Democrats/Democratic leaners. Which brings up a final interesting point: I hope somebody is watching the numbers for all likely Democratic primary voters in the states that allow Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries.
14 November 2007
Best in the World!
Normally, I'm not particularly sympathetic to Canadian regional resentment of any kind, but when I see articles like this, I get it. The actual content: the City of Toronto will announce a plan to refurbish Union Station, which will be good for commuters but which is not as elaborate as a previous proposal by architect Jack Diamond. But no, we can't just say that. Diamond advises us that "we could have probably the best interconnected, intermodal transit terminal in the world, in the centre of Toronto". City councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby is a bit more modest, proposing only that "Union Station should be recognized as the premier multi-modal transportation hub in North America".
This fits Harry Frankfurt's definition of bullshit in the strictest sense. Unlike the liar, who knows and consciously disregards the truth, the bullshitter has no regard for truth or falsity at all. None of these people actually thinks that it's important or likely that Union Station be a "better interconnected, intermodal transit terminal" than the newly refurbished St. Pancras, or the Gare de Lyon or Shinjuku Station. Nobody is going to actually assess whether Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station are only North America's "secondary multi-modal transportation hubs". The point is not to assert anything meaningful at all, but merely to express the feeling that Toronto is better than you. You only have to read the Toronto Star or listen to our city council for five minutes before you'll hear an utterance of this kind. No wonder the rest of the country is sick of us.
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