The Sound of...Less Loudness.

[foxglovehp.livejournal.com]

My audiologist posted something recently about a new law being signed to limit the volume of television commercials.  I wear hearing aids, so I am not interested in debating with anyone here whether or not TV commercials are too loud.  I have to turn my HAs down whenever commercials come on, so I know they are.  Everyone knows they are too loud.  Mad Magazine even knew they were too loud in the '70's when I used to read it as a kid.  I know this because they made jokes about it even back then.

Titled CALM (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation), the law requires the FCC to tell broadcasters to turn the fraking volume down on commercials.  Really?  no shit?  Couldn't someone in the Federal government, which controls the Federal Communications Commission just tell them to do it?  Did we really need congressional action for this?  It offends my delicate libertarian sensibilities to know that this was really required.  Also, is this the best acronym our tax dollars can buy?

The Worst Arguments We're All Guilty of Making

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

A little end of the year reflection, I suppose -- but reading the recent spate of religious controversy inspired posts, got me thinking about the trials and tribulations of web community-based discussion groups. Namely, the ways in which almost all of us, to some degree or another, engage in terrible discursive techniques. I don't mean the much cited list of logical fallacies. Be honest -- almost none of us ever bother to craft perfectly logical steel trap arguments that would pass peer review by the world's leading logicians -- not matter how convinced we are that we have. For that matter, very few of us bother with actually fleshing out an argument so readers know WHY evidence supports specific claims versus others.

And we don't really need to. This isn't an academic journal. It isn't a formal debate society. We're here to shoot the shit with each other, right? To try out ideas, find out what others are thinking, wax poetic about things that matter to us, gloat and pontificate.

What I'm thinking about are the little tools of the trade in internet (or interpersonal discourse) that we use to either one up each other or to substitute for thinking. And I do mean that we're probably all guilty of them to various degrees -- I don't have my own sins documented but I'm sure I've been an ass in these ways on more than one occasion.

( For your consideration -- The Five Worst Argument Techniques We're All Guilty Of )

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Since this is T_P I will first give my opinion as to this and why I ask this: I have noticed an interesting double-standard that applies to rape in the real world. It's one of the only cases these double standards favor women (about 99% of the rest of the time it varies from bad to GRRSNARLIDJITS). This double-standard is that where rape, as it is defined as forcible penetation, legally does not exist or is recognized where women rape men. To me it makes no sense to react with horror to a male teacher getting Hot For Student and having kids by that person and say, making a celebrity out of Mary Kay LeTourneau or some other such person with the genders reversed.

Now, my simple question is this: should rape of men by women and female pedophiles be punished equally as stringently and ruthlessely as when the genders are reversed? If Yes, why? If no or "http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeIsOkWhenItIsFemaleOnMale" do explain precisely the convoluted thinking that goes into making one acceptable and the other not.