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Logic watch

Have you seen those new Apple Macintosh ads?

You know, the ones where the hip, trendy and "with-it" young guy, representing Macintoshes, is contrasted with the boring, staid, reliable older man, representing PCs.

The impression you're supposed to take away from this advertisement is that Macs are interesting and PCs are boring -- Macs can play dazzling multimedia presentations, and PCs can draw spreadsheets.

Besides the obvious problem with this advertisement -- ie. both Macs and PCs can both play dazzling multimedia presentations and draw spreadsheets (and usually using the same file formats) -- there is also a logical fallacy contained in the argument.

This is the fallacy of the false dilemma -- Apple want you to believe that you must do it their way or not at all. What they are saying, in essence, is that: "We can do presentations. You are not us. Therefore, you cannot do presentations." Completely incorrect.

It's much the same as George W. Bush's statement -- "You're either with us, or against us." Just because somebody was not "with" George W. Bush, it does not automatically mean that they are "against" him (and his country). Witness Switzerland, New Zealand, and any host of other non-involved countries.

Just remember this the next time you attempt to buy a personal computer.

Logic watch

Since it seems that logical argument is the flavour of the minute here at Spleen Central, I've decided to introduce a new segment -- "Logic Watch" -- dedicated to finding the flaws in advertisements and other general public releases.

First up, the Sydney Home Loan Centre. For those of you who aren't in the know, this series of advertisements concludes with the business owner standing outside (in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, no less), with a throng of people behind him.

In an attempt to convince us that his product is the best one, he points to this large group of people and says, "That many people can't be wrong."

Well, actually, they can. This is an argumentum ad populum, and one needs to look no further than the Pussycat Dolls to see the holes in this argument -- just because a large number of people like (or accept) something, it doesn't necessarily make it good/right.

In other news, I was looking at my tube of toothpaste recently. Instead of telling me the ingredients, it stated: "No Colgate toothpaste contains sugar." I thought this was pretty neat -- the manufacturers were relying on me to make the link that this particular tube of toothpaste was manufactured by Colgate, and, therefore, didn't contain any sugar. Stuff like that is what keeps the general populace on their toes.

Groups of people who refuse to accept the obvious, #2

#2: Feminists.

First, a little exercise in semantics. The suffix -ism, when applied to a concept, implies that this concept is being exalted, to the detriment of other, similar, concepts.

Thus, "racism" technically does not refer to denigrating certain races, but rather to advocating other races (the net result is, of course, the same). Witness communism, socialism, post-modernism... You get the idea.

The same principle applies to feminism -- it is advocating the supremacy of females, at the expense of males. Now, I've got a certain friend who would have you believe that I'm talking poop... That the literal meaning of the suffix "-ism" is to be discarded for what the public generally understand the phrase "feminism" to mean.

That argument might carry water (and I mean might), if the fervent feminists themselves weren't so insistent upon violating this principle. To illustrate with an example -- last night I was in the Humanities and Social Sciences building of my local university. A flyer on a noticeboard was advocating a "Womyn's Film Night". The flyer began by stating that only (approximately) six of the top two-hundred-and-fifty-grossing films of all time had been directed by women.

They intended, in their charmingly ineffectual way, to remedy this situation by hosting a film night where the fare was going to be exclusively films directed by women.

What? Sorry? Equality, you say? Nothing of the sort! This is just as bad as any (perceived) injustice delivered upon women. The aim of a film night should be to show meritorious films -- not films simply directed by women (or men, for that matter).

Of course, I am not expecting most people to believe me on this. "We've got scores to settle!" they shall cry, thrusting extended index fingers with chipped fingernails into the air. "You bastard men have had it good for so long, and now we're going to redress the balance."

A few points, darlings:

(1) If that's truly what you believe, whatever your motivation, then the literal definition of "feminism" holds -- you are promoting females at the expense of males. Fine, if that's what you want to do, but drop any pretence of equality.

(2) This is a very flimsy way of going about things. Allow me to demonstrate with example, using the technique of reductio ad absurdum:

(1) Many Jewish people were killed by the Nazis.

(2) The Jewish people have a right to exact revenge.

(3) It is proper that Jewish people kill Germans.

Preposterous, you say? Statement (3) couldn't possibly follow on from (1) and (2)? Well, yes, that's kind of the point. Same deal with the "womyn" and their film night.

Just pointing a few things out, that's all.

Groups of people who refuse to accept the obvious, #1

(This is to be an ongoing series.)

#1: Advertising executives.

It seems to me that advertising executives aren't prepared to accept the fact that people do not want to watch the fruits of their labours. They began by putting advertisements into broadcast television. Humanity was given the VCR and, lo! some form of power was returned to the masses. Programs could be taped, minus the advertisements.

This battle continued for a long while, until free-to-air television became less and less important. Advertising executives have at least realised this on some level, because it is now a stated goal of theirs that they need to work harder in capturing an audience.

This is poop. Doctors need to work harder to cure cancer. Advertising executives need to stop making ads. Haven't they ever turned on a radio station -- common station slogans now involve promoting the frequency (or, rather, infrequency) of the station's commercial breaks. They are attempting to attract people to their station by promising to play fewer ads than their competitors. This is not a subtle message.

Software exists that attempts to hide advertisements on Internet pages. Again, there is nothing subtle about this. People don't want advertisements. If what it takes is a subscription service to any entertainment stream of worth, I know I'm ready to pay for it. It's not that radical an idea -- when a person goes to a music store, that person pays for an album... that is, the person is paying for music, not advertisements.

As an aside, allow me to vaguely paraphrase an extract from Carl Sagan's only novel. In it, a character is described who is the bane of the advertising companies. This character has invented a device that is able to detect a commercial break in a television broadcast. Upon identification of the advertising, the channel is automatically changed.

In the novel, this character is taken to court by the advertising companies, who assert that the character is undermining the companies' right to free speech; they assert that he is being unpatriotic.

In response, the character claims that his device is extremely patriotic -- if all products were the same, there wouldn't be any need for advertising. Consumers would simply buy the better product. By preventing advertisements from reaching the consumer, the character was ensuring that the public would not engage in lazy decision-making. It would also have the benefit of pushing manufacturing companies to produce products that actually were improvements on existing designs.

The courts find in favour of the character, and his device continued to be marketed. He then attempted to market his device on the commercial networks (who were, of course, partnered with the advertising companies). In this case, the networks attempted to block the character from advertising his device -- the character then took the networks to court, and won.

No real point to this story, but it does make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Lefties

Fuck 'em all. Seriously.

How is that an entire sub-species of humans can co-opt what is, actually, a reasonable political philosophy?

You people know who I'm talking about -- I'm talking about the people in possession of useless degrees, godawful haircuts and tetanus-inducing body piercings. The people who think that wearing tight jeans (preferably in darker colours) somehow confers upon them "hip" status.

I'm talking about the people who congregate at places of congested traffic flow and insist on handing out pamphlets.

Now, this is what you have to understand: I agree with most of what these people say. I'm a little too clever to indulge in a lot of the polemic that they seem to throw around, but, generally, these are reasonable ideas. So why is it that I hate these messengers so much?

Well, it's mainly for the reasons I've outlined above. It's also for the reasons I will continue to outline -- see below.

I hate the fact that these people are, essentially, useless. What frigging purpose does the world have for a twenty-five-year-old "intellectual" who occasionally strums an out-of-tune guitar and thinks that he's supplying the world with profound poetry? These people have no skills. This may come as a shock to a lot of these people, but there are individuals out there who are just as capable of the same sort of "action", but who are also in possession of real, honest-to-God, saleable skills. People who can actually benefit humanity in some way -- people like doctors, scientists, mathematicians, engineers.

A surprising number of engineers, for example, are left-leaning and would, in prinicple, agree with what it is that these drop-outs are saying. I, as an engineer, am supportive of state-owned utilities. I happen to think that, on paper, communism isn't such a bad idea. The difference is, however, that, in addition to having these beliefs, I can actually serve humanity in some way. My sole purpose in life is not to block the entrance to pedestrian tunnels.

A doctor can heal patients, a scientist can reveal the underlying structure of nature, an engineer can build a bridge over an impossibly wide body of water -- these are all useful activities. A drop-out left-leaning Arts student, on the other hand, can't do much at all. The atmosphere in their places of congregation seems to fill them all with the feeling that they are superior to those who can manage a figure of numbers, for example.

In this case, allow me to tell you all something -- you are not superior.

In case I'm running the risk of being misrepresented, let me qualify a few things. I am not complaining about artistic people. I am not advocating that we fill the world solely with useful people. But haven't you noticed that most of the people producing worthwhile art are the ones who eschewed these sort of degrees in the first place? The best writers and the best musicians are not products of these colleges. They don't necessarily inhabit these dens of faux intelligentsia (the "inner west", to you and me). They just do what they do, and that's that.

I'm actually not too sure where I'm going with this. Perhaps I can come back to it at some point and refine my argument (such as it is). I just wanted people to understand a few things.

Batten down the hatches!

Those of you who aren't idiots (although I daren't venture what that percentage might be) might have noticed a decided lack of updates to this blog in the past two months. There are many reasons for this, some having to do with the alignment of the stars, some having to do with hair growing in strange places, and most having to do with my terminal laziness.

I have been roused into action, though, by an insidious force that took me completely by surprise. And what was it? you ask. A world event in need of some world-class satire, perhaps? The Second Coming of the Messiah, requiring the unjaundiced eye of a dutiful observer? No, my friends, it is neither of these things.

This site, ladies and gentlemen, has been spammed. Spammed!

I didn't think such a thing was possible in today's enlightened times, but apparently it is. Looking through my list of comments (because I value what each and every one of you have to say, truly, I do), I noticed some suspiciously inflated figures on some of the entries.

My reference to the lyric from the Travis song, for example, features seven comments. Seven. This is, I'm sure you understand, a little suspicious.

And, sure enough, displaying these seven comments reveals that only three of them are pertinent to the original comment, and I was responsible for one of those, anyway. Four more comments are useless -- "Hi! Just want to say what a nice site. Bye, see you soon." -- and each of them is followed by a link.

A link! A hyperlink... sending the unsuspecting reader off into a strange land, possibly having something to do with penis pumps, or possibly having something to do with European health funds, or possibly something in between.

And it's happened to me... to my little blog. Well, we aren't going to stand for it, are we? It looks like I have no choice but to resume my schedule of blog-posting, in the interests of attracting genuine comment. Stay tuned, young apparatchiks, and I shall school you in the ways of advertising, and together we may combat the spammers, where it hurts*.

* In the testicles, that is.