Add Homonym Attacks! #10
Ad Hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Ad Hominem Attack: An argument that focuses on a personal attack as opposed to the subject in question.
Add Homonym Attacks!: The process by which one inserts a homophone and it bites you.
(It also serves as the title to Inside Pulse’s representative column in the world of Critical Thinking, Science and Skepticism.)
More Holiday Gibberish
Oy. I’m not sure if anybody else is catching the current neo-con holiday trend of “defending Christmas,” but I’ll try to explain it in either case.
Imagine a guy getting hit in the crotch with a football over and over again. At first it’s funny, but pretty soon it gets frustrating.
Anyway, it is a bunch of guys complaining that some people are saying “Happy Holidays” in lieu of “Merry Christmas.” Pretty stupid huh?
Some seem particularly upset that they don’t see enough of Santa Claus, Rudolph, and mistle toe, and that Christmas trees are being referred to as “holiday trees.” I know that according to O’Reilly this trend is all part of some vast conspiracy caused by the jews paying off the ACLU to “marginalize” America’s religious folks. Then after all that is done, abortions and euthanasia will be mandatory, and everybody will be forced to marry a homo.
Because, as you know, nothing is more sacred to Christianity than Reindeer, elves, and fir trees. I don’t know about the mistle toe, though. I’m still a little angry that it killed Baldur.
At any rate, I could rant about this thing for page after obscenity-laced page, but I am a lazy lazy man. I link instead, why not?
http://www.nobeliefs.com/letter.htm
That Voodoo that you do
In simple terms, Homeopathy is a version of magic where like is used on like. The most basic and famous example of homeopathic magic is probably the voodoo doll.
You stick a pin in a doll’s head to give head pain to the man that the doll represents. Simple enough right?
And a little silly in this modern world right?
But we also have a thing that is fairly popular in these days called homeopathic medicine. It also incorporates the like for like strategy.
But sadly, it does not involve doing nice things to a voodoo doll.
“If I give this effigy of him a scalp massage, it sure will help out my friend Bob!”
Nor does it involve punching a guy in the stomach so he’ll forget about his cancer.
No, homeopathic “medicine” is a thing slightly more stupid than those things. It says that “like cures like.”
That is to say…
Got insomnia? Take a caffeine pill!
Makes sense right?
No it doesn’t?
Oh…
Well, just wait, it gets DUMBER!
You see, homeopathic remedies require dilution. Ridiculous levels of dilution. Lemme see if I can explain this thing. Dilutions are marked by Roman numerals. If you dilute something to 1 part in 10, it is called X. 2X would be a dillution of 1 part per 100. 3x = 1:1,000, 4X= 1:10,000.
Get it?
Now the strongest homeopathic remedies are of dilution 6X, i.e. the active ingredient makes up 1 part per 1,000,000. But you can often see homeopathic remedies that are 20 even 30 X. 30X would mean that the active ingredient makes up 1 part for every 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Avagadro’s number, if memory serves, is of the order 10 to the 24th power.
That is to say, you would be lucky to get a single MOLECULE of the active ingredient with such a dilution.
Can you say PLACEBO?
In fact James Randi and a bunch of others once pulled a stunt where they tried to OD on homeopathic sleeping pills in front of Congress. Despite taking several times the recommended dosage no ill effects were felt by any of the participants.
Anyway, this stuff GETS EVEN BETTER!
You see, in addition to X there are also dilutions of C. (C= 1:100, 2C= 1:10,000, 3C= 1: 1,000,000)
From here:
Oscillococcinum, a 200C product “for the relief of colds and flu-like symptoms,” involves “dilutions” that are even more far-fetched. Its “active ingredient” is prepared by incubating small amounts of a freshly killed duck’s liver and heart for 40 days. The resultant solution is then filtered, freeze-dried, rehydrated, repeatedly diluted, and impregnated into sugar granules. If a single molecule of the duck’s heart or liver were to survive the dilution, its concentration would be 1 in 100200. This huge number, which has 400 zeroes, is vastly greater than the estimated number of molecules in the universe (about one googol, which is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes). In its February 17, 1997, issue, U.S. News & World Report noted that only one duck per year is needed to manufacture the product, which had total sales of $20 million in 1996. The magazine dubbed that unlucky bird “the $20-million duck.”
Now, some of you might be saying to me, “But Kennedy, we know that like can cure like. I mean isn’t that what vaccines do?”
Yeah. I remember when the polio vaccine cured me of polio. Oh NO WAIT. YOU’RE AN IDIOT! Vaccines are not cures. They are a preventative measure. Weakened or disabled diseases are placed into the body so that the body’s immune system can recognize them.
A somewhat similar process can be used to create antidotes to poison.
Homeopathic “medicine” involves well, a bunch of nothing really.
It’s just nonsense.
-Kennedy.
