A collection of well-reasoned objections and patient, constructive criticisms
A typical scene in an American McDojo: a man in fighting pajamas stands in a deep front stance and stares stoically ahead. His arms are chambered down near his waist to ensure that they won't get in the way of anyone attempting to hit his face. Suddenly, he emits a sharp barking sound, lunges forward, and strikes the air in front of him with lightning speed and questionable hand positioning. To the untrained eye, it looks like he has perhaps executed some sort of hugely impractical block or strike. To the learned observer, he has in fact ripped out his opponent's throat, shattered his knee, and smashed him into the pavement. This interpretive exercise is known as "bunkai", which can be remembered as being derived from the root word "bunk".
On October 23, 2000, the incomprehensibly evil trolls at CRC press successfully obtained a court order shutting down Mathworld, an encyclopedic compendium of mathematics containing over 9000 entries complete with cross-references and further readings. Mathworld was an invaluable tool for students and researchers alike. It was also free, unlike a derivative work (The Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics) sold to CRC some years earlier. Never mind that Mathworld had evolved due to thoughtful (and pro bono) contributions from thousands of interested readers. Forget the fact that sophisticated controls were developed to prevent users from making private copies of large portions of the site. Mathworld was stealing CRC's reader base! CRC did some soul-searching and, upon confirming that they didn't have one, sent their demonic lawyer horde off to file a heapin' mess o' lawsuits. It wasn't an easy task - many man-hours were devoted to each ethics-free court memorandum - but in the end corporate rapacity was saved from the terrifying forces of intellectual freedom.
I agree with the folks who believe that Bible-tales should get the same amount of airtime as empirically-based, falsifiable theories. Who's to say that one explanation should be presented to the exclusion of the other? Shouldn't we let the students come to their own conclusions? This is why I think that schools should teach a third creation theory: me-ism. The theory states that I personally created all life on earth about an hour ago. As tests of faith, I also planted the fossil record, created the cosmic background radiation, and red-shifted the emission spectra of stellar objects in proportion to their distance from the earth.
Ginkgo baloba, ginseng, and so forth. While there is a long history of plant-derived medicines healing various ailments, barring conclusive empirical evidence to the contrary it's ridiculous to suggest that a particular herb is going to somehow promote general good health. Of course, the lack of evidence doesn't stop misguided new-agers from diving into the latest nonsensical trend. I remember reading an article a few years back that recommended drinking green tea because the oldest man in the world (who, as I recall, lived in rural China) claimed to drink it every day. If all you have to do to live a long life is drink some tea, why not? It worked for that one old dude, right?
If I live an unusually long time, and if someone interviews me in my winter years about what I attribute my long life to, I know exactly what I'll say. "Daily enemas, my boy, and ice-cold at that. I'm talking every day. After awhile you hardly even feel it, and I guarantee you'll live forever."
It's difficult to figure out where to begin.
What is a bicyclist to do if there is no bike lane? Riding on the sidewalk is out of the question, as is planning an alternate bike route. The only recourse is to sit in the right lane and force all the cars behind you to travel at 15 mph. After all, are those drivers as environmentally conscious as you are? Do they take the same pride in their health? Of course not. Screw 'em. A seasoned bicyclist will stay close to the curb - while this still doesn't allow the cars stuck behind them to pass, it can create a tantalizing illusion to the contrary.
What can be done about this menace? I recommend the following:
Those arrogant engineers and physical scientists, who do they think they are to deny that sociology is a rigorous field? Sure, the extreme impracticality of controlled, repeatable experimentation makes it difficult to actually test ideas, but that doesn't mean that the ideas are any less valid. If you don't believe me, I'm willing to create obtuse jargon to make the intellectual soundness more apparent. In fact, I'm even willing to check math books out of the library and copy words and symbols from them.
Yes, it's embarassing to have a grade-A moron in the highest public office in our nation, particularly if one assumes that an individual is most likely to vote for the candidate (s)he most identifies with. But: look at the raw vote totals, assume that the cheating done by both sides more or less evens out, and realistically assess the statistical error in any tallying scheme. It's pretty clear that, as a whole, the country didn't really prefer one major-party candidate over the other. Hence the actual person selected as president may as well have been decided by a coin flip or a game of cards, rather than a corrupt Supreme Court. Self-righteously decrying the "stolen" election is tedious and misses the point.