LATEST POSTS:
- ‘Why the AfD Wins’
- Reading the Right & Left
- The Paper (S3)
- Eleven Minutes
- Me First vs Team First
- Mutar Lach
- Carolyn Yeager’s Career in National Socialism
- The TANSTAAFL Story
- The Christopher Caldwell Career
- Faculty Fashion Since The 1960s
- The Bliss
- Yale YT Course: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) (RLST 145) with Christine Hayes
- Jason Arday – Serial Fabulist, Plagiarist & Dissertation Supervisor
- LAT: ‘Payouts in L.A. County’s $4-billion sex abuse settlement delayed to two largest law firms’
- The Comparator Test: Does Penn Apply the Same Standard?
- PragerU Salaries & Bonuses
- The David Pinsof Story
- Added Context to the Dennis Prager-Cedars Sinai Lawsuit
- The Criticism Was Right and It Did Nothing: Andrew Gelman, Seth Roberts, and the Limits of Being Correct
- What Andrew Gelman Doesn’t Write About
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Rhetoric
The Principle Of Charity
I just discovered this principle and it is awesome. According to Wikipedia: “In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker’s statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any … Continue reading
Posted in Rhetoric
Comments Off on The Principle Of Charity
A Field Guide to Thoughtstoppers
John Michael Greer writes: A thoughtstopper is exactly what the term suggests: a word, phrase, or short sentence that keeps people from thinking. A good thoughtstopper is brief, crisp, memorable, and packed with strong emotion. It’s also either absurd, self-contradictory, … Continue reading
Posted in Rhetoric
Comments Off on A Field Guide to Thoughtstoppers
Steve Sailer: Two Modes of Intellectual Discourse: Taking Everything Personally v. Debate as Sport
Steve Sailer writes in 2012: Much of the intellectual progress the world has made over the millennia is due to men managing to turn argument into sport rather than either a test of popularity or of physical strength. …the superiority … Continue reading
When ‘obsessed’ is used as a put-down, I know the accuser doesn’t have honor and doesn’t have an argument
I notice that in online wars, one of the first put-downs used is “obsessed.” If somebody writes frequently about one topic, the person is “obsessed” if you don’t like what he writes, be it on Jews, blacks, WASPs, Chinese, Republicans, … Continue reading
Posted in Rhetoric
Comments Off on When ‘obsessed’ is used as a put-down, I know the accuser doesn’t have honor and doesn’t have an argument