[AuPhalanx]

Warning! You will be going to a transcript of the Rush Limbaugh Show...

On his show today, Rush was talking about iCal, VersionTracker, and a few other Mac things. I post it here just for general fun and interest.

Have fun... Tony.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

it's funny

[CharlesS]

Wow. Nice straw man argument. Because it would have been very difficult for people to rig every machine in every state, that proves that no machines could have been rigged in any state.

Hell, as close as this election was, just one reasonably large state would have made quite the difference...

[Ghoser777]

I feel to see how that is a strawman. Wouldn't a strawman be when you build a character up just to tear them down? This seems more like an error in deductive reasoning, going from a generalty to a specifc:

Most asians have black hair => Johnny has black hair because he's Asian.

Although I could be wrong - long time since my logic class.

Actually, now that I think about it... was a strawman where you build up a general case (which isn't necessarially true) to attack a specific case? Hmmm... then maybe your use of strawman is correct...

[d4nth3m4n]

sidekick? (mac version of a blackberry)

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
I feel to see how that is a strawman. Wouldn't a strawman be when you build a character up just to tear them down? This seems more like an error in deductive reasoning, going from a generalty to a specifc:

Most asians have black hair => Johnny has black hair because he's Asian.

Although I could be wrong - long time since my logic class.

Actually, now that I think about it... was a strawman where you build up a general case (which isn't necessarially true) to attack a specific case? Hmmm... then maybe your use of strawman is correct...

A quick google search yields:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

Description of Straw Man

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

The quote by Rush:

RUSH: Well, it takes them weeks and months. I can't imagine -- I'm trying to buttress your point -- I can't imagine the amount of time it would take state by state, precinct by precinct, to rig every machine. Are these things...? Tell me something.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm?

RUSH: Are all these voting machines connected? Are they networked? Are they connected by Ethernet or modem? Do they go one central place to report their data? In other words, could you, from a single computer, if you had a computer somewhere, could you hack into every voting machine and change what its instructions are?

So you see, Rush is countering the claim that some of the machines could have been rigged by saying that it would be too difficult to rig every machine in every precinct in every state. Straw man argument.

[spacefreak]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
So you see, Rush is countering the claim that some of the machines could have been rigged by saying that it would be too difficult to rig every machine in every precinct in every state. Straw man argument.

Actually, the discussion was a lot longer than just the snippet you posted. The caller in this case was the actual expert. Rush was just asking him questions to better understand how these machines are setup.

In essence, you are the one using a straw man argument, and you're using carefully selected quotes of your choosing in your misportrayal of the discussion.

[AuPhalanx]

Wow!

I just posted the link because I thought it was kind of cool to hear iCal and VersionTracker mentioned on the radio lilke that.

Have fun... Tony.

[Xeo]

If he's a mac user, why doesn't he get a device that's iSync friendly? It's not like he can't afford it.