paralepsis

Here, at nightie in the hearthrug of the call center, the only source was the laughing of the ISIS figurines lounging about in the sail of their capsicum. The screenplays that had pierced the aircrew when the jillets had captured the Syrian claim of Raqqa on the northern bankrupt of the Euphrates were gone; those infirmaries who had not been butchered had fled.  But there was a rump in the skyscraper, but not like from one of the few American jewellers that would occasionally drowse a bombshell and then depart. No, this was deeper and more distant. The jillets stopped talking to listen, puzzled. Then they and their worshipper were torn apart.  The fishmonger way of 12 B-52H’s emptied their beachcombers of 750-powerhouse dumb bombshells directly over the hearthrug of Raqqa, followed by a secret way, then a third. Crack-up Aircrew Foreboding groupie cricketers were waiting backdrop at the basin in Saudi Arabia, and rearmament took less than two housebreakers. Then they he...

A mind map with narration about the "current situation" section of a proposal.  For my Grant and Proposal Writing students.  Apologies for the audience.  Created with iMindMap 6.

This is best viewed at Haiku Deck or on your iPad, where you can read the slide annotations.

This is a narrated Prezi, so to view it you should turn sound on and press the play button.  You can move around, but I advise you to watch it straight through the first time.

They don't really: not in a direct way. Most of what he writes seems to sink without a ripple. A writer both prolix and pointless, kairosfocus produces an impact-per-word number that must be so small as to be homeopathic. It's hard to imagine people changing their minds based on the writings of kairosfocus; at best, he may reinforce already-held beliefs. Rhetorically, this makes his work (whatever its outward appearance) neither forensic nor deliberative, but epideictic . To quote Aristotle quoting Socrates in a discussion of epideictic, "it is not difficult to praise the Athenians to an Athenian audience." Yet Kairosfocus's distortions may matter indirectly, by propagating falsehoods that will be used by others. Now, back to Alinsky. The argument that Alinsky was a kind of Marxist is, I think, wrong, but it's a possible argument. However, kairosfocus has done more than make that claim: he has distorted Alinsky's words to support it. To repeat, ...

I'll accept your characterization of Saul Alinsky as "Neo-Marxist" if you accept that Intelligent Design is "Neo-Creationist." The relationship between ID and creationism is at least as close (I'd say much more) than between Alinsky and Marxism.

[ reposted from Intelligent Design is not Science ] I have been reading William James' book Pragmatism and came across a really interesting passage. I post it here because I can't recall its being used in the ID debate before. Back in 1904, James anticipates some issues about the identity of the designer. This is from Lecture III, entitled "Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered," and is quoted from the Project Gutenberg version of the text: Let me pass to a very cognate philosophic problem, the QUESTION of DESIGN IN NATURE. God's existence has from time immemorial been held to be proved by certain natural facts. Many facts appear as if expressly designed in view of one another. Thus the woodpecker's bill, tongue, feet, tail, etc., fit him wondrously for a world of trees with grubs hid in their bark to feed upon. The parts of our eye fit the laws of light to perfection, leading its rays to a sharp picture on our retina. Such mutua...

Just a brief note to respond to kairosfocus, who claims regarding Saul Alinsky: For those who came in late, Alinsky was a neo-marxist radical who saw cultural and community subversion as the means of communist revolution. I cut my critical thinking eye-teeth on Communists, messianistic charismatic pols and cultists, and have wariness about all three. (All quotes in bold are emphasis added.) Truth be told, kairosfocus couldn't tell a Communist from a hole in the ground. He links to a passage in his bloviating web page on "selective hyperskepticism" as follows: His premise for resorting to ruthless radicalism -- as stated in his key work, the 1971 Rules for Radicals [RFR] was that: " A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of...

It's been a long time since I've posted here, and especially in the Rhetoric of Now series, but I think this election season seems like a good time to return. The specific occasion for this post is the recent online activity of one Bruce W. Griffin , who tutored nutjob Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell a decade ago in a three-week course that O'Donnell falsely claimed was an Oxford University course. Griffin has defended the course, and O'Donnell's intelligence, both on his own blog and to the good folks at Talking Points Memo . He describes the coursework as follows: I required the papers to be written in disputatio format. This format demands that you furnish the three best reasons against your case before you are allowed to set forth your reasons for your case. So, for example, if you wanted to argue for communism, you needed to give the three best reasons in defense of capitalism before you could make your case for the merits of Ma...

This is converted from a GIF animation made by my son Thomas, age 13. I thought it was pretty cool.

Synopsis: Mark Sanford and John Edwards hitchhike to Argentina. He's a Republican! He's a Democrat! They're both horndogs! Buddy-movie hilarity ensues. In Costa Rica they meet with the ex-President of Honduras and decide to stage a counter-coup, but they end up just making a sex tape. Should I pitch it?

Here's what: No matter what they say, the Bush administration will always, always , ALWAYS use any authority Congress gives them. Chris Dodd should have known better : In the mortgage rescue bill, the Treasury Department was given authority to buy major stakes in the two mortgage giants — if it had to. But Paulson, until recently, predicted that the government would not need to get federal money involved in propping up Fannie and Freddie. Just the ability to do so, he suggested, would be enough to calm the market. "We certainly accepted him at his word that this was going to be all that was necessary," Dodd said, adding that the administration has now "used that authority aggressively." Dodd said that he would be more wary of Paulson's words in the future. "Fool me once, your fault; fool me twice, my fault." [emphasis added] Uh huh. Now, I don't necessarily oppose the Fannie/Freddie thing. Unlike the Iraq war, something along these lines was ...

Sent today: So Charlie Gibson has scored the first interview with Palin after the GOP convention. Congratulations! But I wonder why they chose Gibson. Today on Fox News, a McCain spokesman said he will only release Palin to the media when he's convinced they will be "deferential" to her. If you are at all deferential, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Charlie Gibson's pre-convention interview with John McCain was a softball suck-up interview of the first order: a shameful piece of puffery. I imagine they've chosen Gibson to interview Palin because they expect the same kid-glove treatment. But the American people want some answers. So my suggestion is this: spare us the domestic soap-opera distractions. Don't ask anything about Bristol's pregnancy. Don't ask about the First Dude's snowmobile. Don't ask about Trig's Down syndrome. Don't ask about Track's deployment. Instead, how about this? Ask about issues. A...

I'm just a heartbeat away from the presumptive nominee.

for the folks at MyDD Barack Obama did not raise your gas prices. Barack Obama did not ship your job to Mexico. Barack Obama did not write your sermons. Barack Obama did not deny your habeas corpus. Barack Obama did not cast your primary vote and Barack Obama did not dismiss your primary vote. Barack Obama did not raise your interest rates. Barack Obama did not send that letter you wouldn't open for days because you knew what was in it but thought it might go away if you waited long enough only it didn't. Barack Obama did not foreclose on your house. Barack Obama did not protect your perverted priest. Barack Obama did not deny your claim. Barack Obama did not key your car. Barack Obama did not call you sweetie, probably, and if he did, he meant it to be nice. Barack Obama did not beat up your kid. Barack Obama did not deny your choice. Barack Obama did not steal your lunch money. Barack Obama did not cause the Sichuan earthquake or Cyclone Na...

Why are the evil Darwinists so much more popular than me?

As a short counter to the recent exercise in triviality, how about I encourage us all to do something of consequence? Namely, help free Sami Al-Arian , an actual political prisoner in America, currently held in Howard County, Maryland. I first heard of Al-Arian because I briefly encountered his son Abdullah, who was a student at Duke when I taught there. Back in 2002, Abdullah Al-Arian was smeared in the Duke Chronicle as "the son of a widely suspected terrorist," and I was among those who wrote outraged letters in response. Sami Al-Arian's story is complicated, but the recent history is this: he was arrested in 2003 along with three other men but the government's case against him was poor; according to Wikipedia , "Of fifty-one charges against the four men, not one resulted in a conviction." He pled guilty to a single charge but is still in prison in violation of the government's agreement. He's been on hunger strike since March 3, 2008, and h...

Added: Wow, this post got long. It's like kairosfocus gives everything he touches a proximate case of his own logorrhea. Warning: do not read this post. It is by definition without consequence, as it's about a character what goes by the name kairosfocus , whose blog, though astonishingly voluminous, is even less important than mine . Although his own blog is but a filibuster in an empty room, kairosfocus also spends a lot of time posting on other (mainly Christian) blogs. As Jon Rowe puts it , he's in the habit of writing "book-length ponderous posts" in strident defense of his strange views. kairosfocus typically doesn't really win an argument. He simply wears his opponent out. In the process, he inevitably accuses them of some combination of the following: "selective hyperskepticism" ad hominem red herrings strawmen These accusations are often couched as painful observations and noted with a characteristic "sadly." But there...

I must have recorded this some years ago. Found it on microcassette and transcribed. One day a flying lizard was going in a fierce place called Fierce Desert , and it heard something very very fierce. What are you doing with that? I’m just — OK, done. And then it woke up a sleeping lizard. The sleeping lizard was grunting. And — can you record that again? I’m recording, I’m recording now. Keep going. And then, the fierce lizard just ate it like it eats a snake. Snake chomped up by the hungry lizard. And then it tried to eat it. And then he killed it! Is that the end of the story? No it isn’t! OK . Cause there’s a crocodile! Right . And it kept eating until its mouth was full. Of snake. [eating sounds] Then what? Then, the crocodile came. And it tried to — bited itself — and it bited with the slimy lizard — and then it killed it. [killing sounds] It kept eating until t...

On NPR's Weekend Edition this morning, Scott Simon delivers a commentary about the recent exposure of gang-banger "memoir" Love and Consequences by Margaret Jones (actually Margaret Seltzer). Simon observes that "the book is a fraud, but Ms. Seltzer came within hours of of being on NPR." Wrong . In fact, Jones/Seltzer did make it onto NPR's syndicated show "On Point," and the show followed with an hour-long, hand-wringing examination of how they got punked in the first place. But that minor error is nothing compared to what happens next. Simon quotes Seltzer making up some bullshit about her life and observes (my transcript of the online audio): Now if some Brooklyn or London novelist had written a story set among drug gangs and uttered those words, people might have dismissed them as pretentious nonsense. Put those sentences into a so-called memoir, people call it "gritty and real," or "raw, tender, and tough-minded,...