Seriously, kids, I’ve seen it all, and it just ain’t impressing me no more.
Why, oh why do so many debates transmogrify from simple ideas into specialized vernacular built around debate? Can’t anyone debate an idea without going into code?
I don’t know what a voir dire is, nor a straw man, nor a squicktastic felchini (granted, it’s probably pretty bad).
Simply put (as is the point), if you can’t argue a point in plain english, you’re using the lingo as a crutch.
That is all. Have a nice thanksgiving, you dirty, rotten, piece of shit, fuckmonkey, ballsniffing, dingleberry farming, maggot loving, cranial-rectal-inverted bastards.
Maybe it’s easier to use the term than go into a lengthy spiel … er, textual, long, drawn-out explanation (;)) every time you want to say it? Not unlike how pi used to be expressed.
Why not just pop in and say “Hey, y’all, my name is C and can you explain what in the bejeezus this floozewhistle thing is that you’ve been talking about? You go from Carpenter ants to floozewhistle with nary an explanation of what the heck the thing is.”?
In the spirit of helpfulness that Lib has inspired, I can say with confidence that voir dire is not, in fact, the same as a dire wolf (although you may prefer to be faced with the latter over the former if you do not enjoy pain).
This page has one of the better discussions on the dissection of logical arguments. It’s taken from a part of the alt.atheism Usenet FAQ, and as such, it does have an underlying agenda, but apart from that it’s quite thorough.
Of course, it should be noted that in many cases, dense, difficult jargon is used specifically as an obscuritant measure, in order to make an argument harder to critique, or to imply that it’s a product of high intelligence. For instance, if you don’t understand what “obscuritant” means, you’re likely to just assume that my previous statement makes sense to those who understand it. It’s quite okay to call bullshit if you think that’s what’s happening.
Well thank you, Mr. Helper. That’s a capital idea! I shall scurry away to the library post-hate in order to rectumfy my shoddy appearance in your oh-so wizened eyes. In the meantime, your statement is a fatherjohn, tempered from serlinism only by liberal doses of monty. And you are a giblet.
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can discover the meaning of ordinary words without leaving the comfort of your own home! Even if you don’t own a dictionary! That device right in front of you holds the key. You might want to try these sites to start out. http://www.google.com/
MrC, I don’t think Ms chula understands the rimmifications that her statement being tempered from serlinism, is, (although saved somewhat by liberal doses of Monty) is probably not going to be somewhat, if not totally, and maybe in a smaller scale something that could probably be partially understood, to the point she, or anybody else for that matter, could tell heads from oranges from it.
Why it’s not