Fabulous queer dating tip #23: If it's 1:15, you must be back together.

After that drama-filled breakup, do not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage, against the very situation into which you've chosen to put yourself. After having done everything in your power to alienate him, beg him to take you back; if nothing else, your mutual friends can use the entertainment. If you and he used to be one of the power couples in your community, try to get him to appear with you at public functions. You need to maintain your appearance as the god-emperor of the hypocrites a responsible member of the community.

Quote of the week

Arnold Schwarzenegger explains the secret to success: "I say, number one, come to America. Number two, work your butt off. And number three, marry a Kennedy."

Today's vocabulary term: appeal to ridicule

appeal to ridicule, n. phr. a logical fallacy that consists of ridiculing an opposing argument rather than explaining what is wrong with it; pretty much The Washington Post's entire business model.

Today's vocabulary word: self-loathing

self-loathing, n. or adj. disagreement/disagreeing with the party line in any respect; used here.

Why some people don't think rationally

In the wake of birtherism, people are talking about the anti-rationalism of the right (since we all know that everyone else is completely immune). I have seen a variety of reasons for anti-rationalism, from intellectual laziness to the effects of religion to an emotional need to believe nonsense. While some people either cannot or will not think rationally about their pet issues no matter what, I believe that many other people do not pursue rational inquiry about such issues simply because no one has told them that it is an option.

For example, in the public schools that I attended, we studied formal logic for all of one grading period, and even then only in the context of geometry. No one pointed out any wider applicability, least of all the history teacher whose answer to every challenge was to restate his original assertion more loudly.

Later, when I did volunteer work in HIV education, I sometimes had to step callers through the process of understanding relative risks. I quickly realized that I was the first person to explain to them how to do so, and I could almost hear the light bulbs going on over their heads when they got it.

Religious right or P.C. left? Quotes 19 and 20

In this series of blog posts, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read each quote and guess, before doing a Web search, whether someone in the religious right or the politically correct left said it.

19.

And how often does it not happen that the proud and conceited judgement of an expert is put in its proper place by a layman! Numerous inventors built 'impossible' machines. Lawyers show again and again that an expert does not know what he is talking about. Scientists, especially physicians, frequently come to different results so that it is up to the relatives of the sick person (or the inhabitants of a certain area) to decide by vote about the procedure to be adopted. How often is science improved, and turned into new directions by non-scientific influences! it is up to us, it is up to the citizens of a free society to either accept the chauvinism of science without contradiction or to overcome it by the counterforce of public action.

20.

The argument is not about science or about facts—ultimately, the argument is about how you interpret the facts—and this depends upon your belief about history. The real difference is that we have different “histories” (accounts about what happened in the past), which we use to interpret the science and facts of the present.

Quote of the week

'People of this bent don't proceed from facts to a conclusion. They prefer to reach a conclusion and then scrounge for any facts—or "facts"—that support it.' — Steve Chapman, Reason.com, talking about the birthers