Steve Bennett wrote:
On 5/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)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