...And One More Thing

      In some ways, they are more annoying to me than anything I cited in my previous posts as reasons for banishment: a lack of attention to detail and an over-reliance on emotion.

      I am detail-oriented.  It's the reason I have the kind job that I do, and it's why I have held it for the last thirty-five years.  Few things grate on me more than going to look up something asserted as fact and discovering the person  making the assertion didn't bother about the "little things" like verifying the who-what-where-when was correct.  I usually dig in and try to winkle out what's real and what's inaccurate.  Lazy "everybody knows..." claims gnaw at me like summertime fleas.  It's a real time-sink.  I resent having to do your damned homework for you, but I am stuck in a world of slobs.

      Appeal to emotion is even worse -- "You must like (or dislike) So-and-so, to say that thing you said!" Nope, if I don't like 'em, I'll say I don't, and tell you why.  (I don't actually like any of them, when it comes to politicians and most other faces in the headlines.)  But I endeavor to judge public figures based on facts, or as close to facts as can be had.  YMMV, but that's how I roll.  Likewise, asking me to weep over the unborn, or over the women stuck bearing a child to term is pretty futile: all life is a tragedy and we could drown ourselves in tears without changing it, but that's a useless criteria for evaluating our laws.  I feel for 'em (and I'm voting in every election), but I'm not the courts or the legislature.

       Mr. Spock is a fictional character.  Human beings do make up our minds under the influence of emotions -- but there's no rule that says you cannot add as many facts as you can find and there's every reason to ensure those facts are correct, no matter how good or uncomfortable they may feel.  Suspect the comforting ones even more than the ones you dislike: distortions will sneak right in unless you do.

      (And to Mr. Unpublished Commenter, who wrote yesterday, "'it [the 1/6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building] resulted in five deaths" This is false, please correct." what I wrote is, in fact, true, according to press reports and the U.S. government. Go argue with them, not me.  I provided a link, one which leads to many more.  Perhaps you'd like to yell at the families of the dead?)