A prize for the most non-connected comment on a Blogpost

My frivolous post concerning the potential for confusion between porn star Teresa May and Conservative minister Theresa May has attracted a comment from blogger Vic that simply reads http://falseproofs.blogspot.com/2006/06/e-e-escultura.html.

It was a fascinating article, I understood very small parts of it but the link?!?!?

A common logical flaw

There is a letter in this week's Spectator that contains a common logical flaw that supporters of the BBC like to use as proof  that the BBC is not biased. Here's the two key sentences:

'On the touchstone issue of the Middle East for example, both the supporters of the Israelis and the Palestinians claim that the BBC favours their enemies. This would seem to suggest that its attempt to chart a middle course through some notoriously difficult territory is at least partially succesful'

Several thoughts come to mind, here's one: there is not necessarily a middle ground between good and evil, would Jon Stubbings have agreed with the BBC charting a middle course between Nazism and freedom during the Second World War? Would the BBC have been biased had it not seen the Nazi regime's point of view? Just because the BBC is criticised by both sides of an argument does not mean they are steering a middle course. Israel's position is that the Palestinians deserve a state but a state that lives in peace alongside Israel, Hams and Fatah's positions is that the end game is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish entity and in
Hamas's case also the killing of all Jews. Between those two extremes maybe the BBC does 'chart a middle course' but are the two sides' positions equally valid?

Jon Subbings' letter concludes with another logical flaw:

'Given a choice between the BBC with all its faults, and a broadcast media dominated by the Murdochs or a Silvio Berlusconi figure, I know which I would prefer'

Quite possibly you do, but at present I am forced to pay for the BBC's output and not for Sky and so I should be able to expect an unbiased BBC.

A logical flaw?

The Metro (free London newspaper) had a small piece about Harrow council using number plate recognition technology to identify fly-tippers. The logical flaw came in this sentence:

"Cameras will log the registrations of vehicles that make more than two visits a day to the site..."

I doubt the above is true. First the cameras log nothing, the logging will be done by the equipment that the cameras are attached to. Second, to track what vehicles have visited the site more than twice in a day, surely they will have to log all of the vehicles that visit the site.

"If you care about people you must be a socialist"

A fellow right wing libertarian blogger, "don't set fire to your jacket" has a rather nice piece that I think you may want to read. Take a look here.

The key paragraph being ""If you care about people you must be a socialist"

This gives you two options, grasp one horn and declare that you care about people and are therefore a socialist or go for the other and state that you disagree with socialism and therefore do not care about people. It is of course bollocks because of the excluded middle, it is not only possible to care about people and not be a socialist, it is entirely possible not to be a socialist because you care about people."

Thanks dsftyj.