Hopefully, Mr. Adams will be more careful with his usage in the future; that is, I hope he will see the light.
Come on, now you are just being willfully ignorant. Which, of course, just begs the question: why?
What field?
Math
Okay, that makes more sense. Because in the humanities you’d definitely be corrected. Especially in philosophy, but also in literature, since when it’s being used it’s referring to a specific fallacy. Or, what Frylock said.
(bolding mine)
Well, yes, but that’s jargon , right? (That is “the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group”)
Well, we like to think of ourselves as being true to its original meaning. 
I guess it’s become jargon at this point, but only because the rest of you are stoopit. 
When the issue come up (not often), I use “invites the question”, or if I feel that’s not emphatic enough, “demands the question”.
You know what cheesed me off? I watched all of “the Incredibles,” and at no point in the story was their propensity for truth and veracity called into question!
Hey, I like that. We could have different levels, depending on how important we think the question is.
invites the question
demands the question
threatens the question
bullies the question into giving up its lunch money
waterboards the question under CIA supervision
subjects the question to the Spanish Inquisition
Sorry, I’m drugged up on Nyquil right now.
The level of outrage is not directly proportional to the amount of misuse. I haven’t heard a lot of people misuse this term in general conversation - few people are discussing this kind of issue. The problem seems to be with writers, who should be expected to lead by using proper usage, not improper.
Far more people misuse apostrophes and less and fewer - should we give up these also? It may be elitist of me, but in these questions illiterates shouldn’t get an equal vote.
I write a column for an engineering journal, and I hope that my editor would correct this if I were to do it. (Our editors are English majors.)
Are you sure the last two are in the correct order? I think the CIA might trump Spanish Inquisition.
It’s obvious you’re not a Catholic. 
Actually, Cecil seemed to have a good reason for using it - unless he was just making up something to justify it. When you are writing dialog, or humor, I think it is okay to stretch the language just a bit to make a point. Cecil, since he knows all and sees all, knows the difference, but a lot of people using it don’t. My biggest problem is with those who justify being incorrect with the “everyone else does it” defense.
We parents know this as the jumping off the cliff crowd.
What I meant was that people like you didn’t complain about the new use of “begs the question” until that new use was widely accepted, as it is now. You probably didn’t complain when it was only a few people, since you probably wouldn’t have noticed it. The OP only made the complaint because the use was already widespread! Remember that I was responding to your characterization of the descriptivist view as “five people are misusing a word. Give up and put it in the dictionary”
As for less vs. fewer, pull your head out of your ass and read Kendall Jackson’s last post. I see no need to repeat it just because you can’t be bothered to read the thread you post in.
You might want to look up hyperbole while you’re at it. 
I’m quite aware of the reasons for the descriptivist position, having read quite a lot about the Mirriam Webster dictionary controversy. There is obviously no scientifically provable answer, and even prescriptivists give up after a while.
The examples in the OP were from professionally edited pieces, in part. I am not disputing its spread - just its correctness.
I’m less than impressed with the “King Alfred did it” argument. First of all, we have more words today than he did. Even during Shakespeare’s day, spelling was catch as catch can. Is that justification for throwing away our spelling books?
Plus, some of the justification for less in the piece was not very convincing. “Six items or less amount of shopping?” Give me a break. “I have less shopping to do than you” is fine, but “I have less items on my list” isn’t. Doesn’t that just sound wrong to you, if nothing else?
There are some place where the difference is arguable. The tables showed less far more popular than fewer in cases of time, and I actually agree. Even though hours may be countable, time fundamentally isn’t (until you get to Planck time, that is) so I can see why people would use less in this context.
Now, if one uses less rather than fewer because it has one fewer letter, okay. Headline writers are allowed to distort the language for reasons of space. Again, there are often good reasons for this kind of thing, but thoughtlessness isn’t one of them.
Wait, who’s being thoughtless and what are they failing to think?
Also, I was wondering above whether you object to the use of frankly and thankfully as sentence adjectives?
-FrL-
It was “six items or less than that amount,” which sounds wordy but perfectly grammatical.
It sounds both wrong and irrelevant. “I have less items” is not the same usage as “Six items or less.” The former sounds odd, the latter does not.
-FrL-
Sorry for a third post.
So it seems you’re allowing that the less/fewer distinction you’re talking about is an innovation, and you’re arguing that it’s a good innovation. It looks like you’re saying it’s a good innovation because it allows us to make distinctions we couldn’t make otherwise.
Is that right?
If so, then can you make it clear what distinction I can make with these words on your proposed innovation, that I couldn’t have easily made otherwise?
-FrL-