Steve Bennett wrote:
On 5/31/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Huh???? What's nasty about it?
I really take exception to the phrase "straw man".
I suppose you're entitled to draw your own inferences from [[Straw man]]. Nastiness is in the eye of the beholder.
Why should it seem nasty to point out an apparent error in logic? There was absolutely nothing personal in that.
It did strike me that your example was designed to show exactly the opposite of what you now claim. This would certainly seem the effect of citing that there are so many Ngs in the Melbourne phone book.
Original request:
I would be interested to see how a phonebook would be used as a source.
My reply:
The surname "Ng" is one of the most common in Melbourne, spanning 47 pages of the 2006 phone book...
What "I now claim":
I was asked for an example of a phone book being a reliable source for a claim.
???
Whether something is a source for a claim probably requires that a claim be there in the first place, and it would then seem that your claim is nothing more than "There are a lot of Ngs in Melbourne." The long listing in the directory proves this; therefore, the phone book is useful.
The other possible interpretation is that there are so many Ngs in the phone book that it becomes useless for finding anybody.
Ec