Best Laid Plans
I was going to post something about the blog link becoming the new footnote and how, like footnotes, those that go unexamined can help prop up faulty assumptions. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost track of one of my examples. My other is a post by James D. MacDonald over at makinglight. In it, MacDonald asserts that 8000 servicepeoples from the Army, AF, and Navy have gone walkies in the three years since the start of the war. He didn't link this statistic in the original text of the post, but put it in the comments after someone asked for it. And, well, after examining it I saw why: the article does make that claim, but also points out that this number is way down from Fiscal Year 2001 (ending Sept. 30, 2001), in which a comparable number deserted. 8000 in a year vs. 8000 in three years doesn't really bolster his argument much. Neither does the next article he links, which has something to say about low morale... in December of 2004. The blog I can't find suggested that infrastructure in Iraq continued to be a huge problem, and backed up that statement with an article from October of 2004. I could swear, but I'm not exactly certain, that in this same blog the author compared Bush's urging the Iraqi parliament to form a government with demanding that sea monkeys build a castle, a rather ugly comparison that seems to have made it to the front page of Fark.com.
If you're going to disagree with the war, that's fine. Go to town. Put together your rationale and defend the crap out of it. Just... try to be a little more rigorous in your use of evidence, okay? Make sure it supports your point and all that.
But, and this is crucial, in part because I can't find that other blog, and more because these are the only two examples I've seen recently, I'm not going to make some sort of comment about some kind of disingenuous trend. Just going to try to leave it at the friendly advice stage.
And now, for the last ten songs my iPod played on Sooper-Shuffle (all 4300 songs played at random):
Slowburn - Peter Gabriel
Down the Dolce Vita - Peter Gabriel
Going Home - Sara Groves
The Battle of Endor II - London Symphony Orchestra
Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car - U2
A Girl In Trouble - Romeo Void
Eldorado - The Tragically Hip
In My Ear - Toad The Wet Sprocket
Better - hHead
Against the Wind - Bob Seger
How Pete ends up back-to-back, from the same album, I'll never know.
If you're going to disagree with the war, that's fine. Go to town. Put together your rationale and defend the crap out of it. Just... try to be a little more rigorous in your use of evidence, okay? Make sure it supports your point and all that.
But, and this is crucial, in part because I can't find that other blog, and more because these are the only two examples I've seen recently, I'm not going to make some sort of comment about some kind of disingenuous trend. Just going to try to leave it at the friendly advice stage.
And now, for the last ten songs my iPod played on Sooper-Shuffle (all 4300 songs played at random):
Slowburn - Peter Gabriel
Down the Dolce Vita - Peter Gabriel
Going Home - Sara Groves
The Battle of Endor II - London Symphony Orchestra
Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car - U2
A Girl In Trouble - Romeo Void
Eldorado - The Tragically Hip
In My Ear - Toad The Wet Sprocket
Better - hHead
Against the Wind - Bob Seger
How Pete ends up back-to-back, from the same album, I'll never know.