[Speed Gibson,
Wednesday June 14, 2006 at 10:58pm]
B as in B, S as in S
Craig Westover has been featuring a bit of Barbra Streisand lately. He fisked the Mike Hatch web site, noting how it was full of BS and that the GOP should be exposing it as such.
Now he posts on the entire concept of BS as a greater danger to truth than even outright lying. It's a profound point, a Pragerism really in that it makes you rub your chin a little.
He references a small book on the subject that I'm toying with ordering. As it happens, another book on dieting I ordered arrived today, much along the same lines in refuting a lot of the BS about weight loss out there. I think the point is the same. All that BS out there - low-carb for example - is doing a lot of people a lot of harm.
Westover notes as does this book ("Weight Loss That Lasts", J. M. Rippe, M.D. and Weight Watchers) that good BS (myths) have enough snippets of truth in them to get them past the smell test. But otherwise, they are nowhere close to satisfying Blackstone on Evidence, the Scientific Method, or - the blogosphere.
Now he posts on the entire concept of BS as a greater danger to truth than even outright lying. It's a profound point, a Pragerism really in that it makes you rub your chin a little.
He references a small book on the subject that I'm toying with ordering. As it happens, another book on dieting I ordered arrived today, much along the same lines in refuting a lot of the BS about weight loss out there. I think the point is the same. All that BS out there - low-carb for example - is doing a lot of people a lot of harm.
Westover notes as does this book ("Weight Loss That Lasts", J. M. Rippe, M.D. and Weight Watchers) that good BS (myths) have enough snippets of truth in them to get them past the smell test. But otherwise, they are nowhere close to satisfying Blackstone on Evidence, the Scientific Method, or - the blogosphere.