I just finished reading a humorous article by Eric Feezell about the oft misused phrase, “begging the question.” I’m told that I may have, at least on occasion, misapplied it myself, although I am prepared to offer my best circular reasoning to the contrary.

In the article, Feezell postulates that the term “begs the question” has essentially been bastardized, whereby laymen (e.g., us) have misconstrued or broadened its meaning, and in the process have pissed off a very small group of anal-retentive, scholarly types (e.g., them). So when you use the phrase, like most other people, you use it to mean something like, “Well, that opens up another can of worms.” For example: Your 16-year-old son gets in a fight with a bouncer at a strip club. Sure, it’s bad enough he’s rumbling with bouncers—and you are probably in need of some parenting books—but you might say the whole situation begs the question: How did he, being underage, get into the strip club in the first place? And did he at least get a lap dance before he was thrown out? (Let’s hope so.)

But that, writes Feezell, would be the incorrect use of “begging the question.” In a nutshell, “begging the question” refers to a certain fallacy in syllogistic argument where the very thing you are trying to prove (your conclusion) is presupposed in the supporting argument (your premises). This is sometimes called “circular reasoning.”

Structurally, it would look something like this:

• x implies y
• Assume x
• Therefore, y

Feezell explains, with tongue in cheek, linear, circular, triangular and other more complex variations of argumentative logic such as inductive argument and, of course, Popeye-Cartesian proof of existence (I think what I think, therefore I yam what I yam.)

I found his explanations entertaining and informative. If you enjoy word play, give the article a read because, as you know, smart people read, people read this blog, so reading this blog makes you smart. Right?

“Green Porno is a series of very short films conceived, written, co-directed by and featuring Isabella Rossellini. Inspired by the amazing and often bizarre sexual practices of insects and other creatures, these eight films are both comical and insightful studies of the curious ways a variety of earth’s tiny critters “make love”. Simple, playful and childlike by design, Green Porno provides a unique and provocative glimpse into an “underground” world of sexual encounters.” …

Or so the official Green Porno website, still under construction, promises. It’s difficult to imagine actress, model and film director Rossellini mounting a giant paper bug, but I’m on the site’s mailing list to get a heads up when it’s completed and the eight short films, designed for viewing on cell phones and small screen devises, are viewable.

So, why did I post about it today, you ask? Well, I thought it would be interesting to see how many people Googling “porno” would find their way to my site. Call it a silly experiment.

Gawker video guru Richard Blakeley mashed-up two of the New York Times’ interactive newsmaps: one showing the deadly path of last Tuesday’s tornadoes, the other showing which Democratic candidates won which states on Super Tuesday.

The results: does God hate Hillary? (And note: Obama won Alabama, but Hillary won each county in that state with a recorded death from last Tuesday’s storms.) [NYT, NYT]

Flying at more than twice the speed of Concorde and five times the speed of sound, this hypersonic airliner is set to be the future of modern air travel. Looking like a supersonic passenger plane from Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds, the revolutionary aircraft with a top speed of 3,400mph aims to fly between London (or Brussels) and Sydney in under five hours. Billed as the “Son of Concorde”, the commercial plane is designed to carry 300 passengers and will reach speeds of Mach 5 – five times the speed of sound.

The ground-breaking aircraft - known as the A2 – is the work of British engineers at Reaction Engines Limited in Oxfordshire. At 433ft long (132m), the A2 is half the length of the Titanic and weighs 400 tons, lighter than a Boeing 747. Yet despite its length, the aircraft will be able to land on current international airport runways. In addition, its hi-tech liquid hydrogen-powered engines will produce few carbon emissions, making air travel much greener.

Is there a downside? Well, apparently there will be no windows, so everyone will have to jocky for aisle seats. More…

Today we recognize the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, and it seems only fitting that we take a few moments to reflect upon his life. I hope you will join me.

It may surprise some of you to learn that Lincoln’s birthday is not a designated Federal holiday, although some states - Illinois, Connecticut and possibly others - observe it as a State holiday. Others, including California, have created a joint holiday to honor both Lincoln and George Washington, sometimes calling it “Presidents Day”. It coincides with the Federal holiday officially designated “Washington’s Birthday”, observed on the third Monday of February. In California, government offices are closed on Lincoln’s birthday but businesses remain open. Some display flags.

I thought it appropriate that today we remember the man before and during his presidency. Much has been written about Lincoln and whole sections of libraries are devoted to works about him. A cursory search of the Internet yields even more. Following is a very brief biography extracted from our government’s web site:

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”

Believing secession to be illegal, Lincoln was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party’s nomination for President, he sketched his life:

“I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families—second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks…. My father … removed from Kentucky to … Indiana, in my eighth year…. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up…. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher … but that was all.”

Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.”

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg. In his address, he said: “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…. “

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln’s death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

Lincoln was a great president. It is fitting that we remember him this day.

The colorful internet group known as “Anonymous” donned masks and descended on Scientology centers in major cities throughout the world yesterday to protest the Church’s questionable ethics, devious practices, free speech violations, and their requirement that believers pay tens of thousands of dollars to participate in their “religion.”

Rob Sheridan attended the Los Angeles rally and snapped these photos of some of the hundreds of diverse and passionate anons, many wearing Guy Fawkes masks, as they flooded Sunset Boulevard in front of the Church Of Scientology.

Apparently aimed at indulgent parents with money to burn, Bergtoys offers the Ferrari FXX Racer pedal car. Priced at $725 (€499), the basic version of the Ferrari-inspired, uh, toy comes equipped with a seven-speed transmission, an on-board processor, disc brakes and semi-slick tires. But parents for whom only the best will do for Junior will likely opt for the $2175 (€1,499) supped up “Exclusive” model equipped with a first-class fast bucket seat with four-point harness, a leather steering wheel, larger alloy wheels and an aero body kit.

I’m sorry, but is this not insane?

Here are a few of the things that slipped through the proverbial cracks this week but are still worth mentioning:

If you’re afraid of being in a bank during a bank robbery, don’t go to the bank on Friday mornings between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. …

TIVO Patent Upheld, Dish May Have to Disable DVR. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a ruling by a lower court that Dish Network DVRs infringe upon TiVO’s patent on a ‘multimedia time warping system’. According to some analysts, this could not only make Dish liable for damages, it could force them to shut down their DVR service, harming their customers. The patent in question has already been reexamined once and the ruling on appeal (PDF) was unanimous.”…

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans. The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage…

One out of four children involved in a divorce and custody litigation undergoes the so-called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), consisting of the manipulation of children by the custodial parent, who incessantly tries to turn them against the other parent by arousing in them feelings of hatred and contempt for the target parent…

Capturing images of fleeting events — a horse’s gallop, a bullet’s impact, an electron’s escape — is easy if you have the right equipment. Faster camera shutters used to be enough, but recently lasers have let physicists break the femto- and attosecond barriers, compressing the temporal resolution of images down to the time it takes light to cross a hydrogen atom…

When people bitched about the iPhone’s 3G sansness, one counter was that it didn’t matter, since AT&T’s 3G network was far from ubiquitous anyway. AT&T is stepping up on their end this year, planning on smothering another 80 cities in sticky, delicious 3Goodness for a total of 350 markets, and all of the top 100 cities. Topping it off, the whole thing will be HSUPA by mid-year, for snappier uploads in the 500-800 Kbps range (vs. HSDPA only, D standing for downlink). Next piece of the perfect mobile internet device puzzle: an iPhone that can use it…

And finally…

A survey claims that having an office romance actually improves your quality of work. Researchers found the thrill of a fling “raised energy levels and led to better professional capacity.” One in five people quizzed by Italian sexologist Serenella Salomoni admitted to an affair at work. “We discovered that people who had an office romance said they were happier, more energetic and more productive.” Nearly twice as many women as men admitted to having a fling in the workplace, Dr Salomoni added. One in three owned up to having a relationship with a superior to enhance their career.

Mike sent this collection of 22 origami using U.S. currency. A fascinating and increasingly popular art form that’s also a creative way to save money! Our friend, Dave, does this for a hobby.

Click on a thumbnail below to view all 22.

Got this from James…

This road sign in Newberry, South Carolina, points the way to nearby towns Clinton and Prosperity. I think there’s a message here, folks. For those of you who need a sign, this may be it.

Another comical skit from The Vacationeers…

I’m one of those people that hates to read instructions. I’d much rather either figure it out myself or, better yet, watch it being done before tackling it myself. So this new service seems right up my alley…

A New York City startup called Howcast launched yesterday and wants to be the “YouTube of instructional videos.” In fact, the three founders—Jason Liebman, Daniel Blackman and Sanjay Raman—are ex-Google employees who worked on Google Video and YouTube before leaving eight months ago. They’re apparently going for a little more polished look than YouTube, trying to bring some production values to the world of Web video.

The site provides professionally produced instructional videos on everything from “How to Groom Your Cat” (see below) to “How to Hang a Picture” and “How to Paint a Room”. There’s a familiar formula for each one: The Howcast graphic, an intro explaining what you’ll need for the task at a hand, and step-by-step instructions explained in a voiceover. The site’s video player lets you jump to different chapters, or steps, zoom in for a better look, and provides the transcript as well. Viewers can add comments in the form of tips, warnings and facts to each video. And the Flash-based site lets you browse the video directory on the left hand side while you are watching a video without interrupting it or going to another page. More…

Although a few similar sites already exist, I’m looking forward to trying some of these as Howcast’s library broadens. Lord knows there are a lot of things I need to learn how to do!

I got this photo from James. It’s purportedly of poll worker Sabrina Castanon in Union City, N.J., where voting appears to be “self service”.

Once a year, the Light Station at Pigeon Point near San Francisco, California, is lit as it was over 100 years ago, its light generated by five kerosene lamps pouring through 24 rotating Fresnel lenses. Tyler Westcott captured this stunning image November 17, 2007, when light emanating from the Pigeon Point Lighthouse was particularly picturesque because of a thin fog that also blurred the distant Moon. Still active, the light house now uses a more efficient flashing aerobeacon.

An interesting side note, during the latter 1970s, the lighthouse was guarded by an 800 pound pig named Lester. I’ve tried to find a photo of Lester “on duty” but have so far been unsuccessful. If you have or find one, I hope you’ll share it here.

I watched Katie Couric’s coverage of “Super Tuesday” last night for as long as I could bear before switching off the tube and cracking open a good book. But I couldn’t help notice the way the talking heads were already declaring the Republican candidates that are trailing McCain all but dead, and floating the question, “Why don’t they just bow out?” It remains clear, at least to me, that having McCain become the Republican Party nominee would please dems no end by assuring a liberal in the White House.

What’s that? You say McCain isn’t a liberal, he’s a Republican? Well, yes and no. He’s actually a mixed bag. Conservatives don’t like his stance on illegal immigration (he sided with Kennedy, you’ll recall, in trying to push though the dems’ plan to eliminate the illegal immigration problem by simply granting illegal immigrants legal status), and he was on the wrong side on tax cuts and campaign finance reform. Still, he brings some good things to the table, so it will be interesting to see how things unfold in the coming weeks.

The race between Clinton and Obama is far more complicated. I can’t say I wasn’t surprised to see Clinton win in New York and California, both big delegate states. But the Democratic party has some convoluted rules designed, I think, to keep anyone from knowing who’s actually winning until much farther down the road. Candidates don’t, in most cases, win all the delegates in a given state; they’re instead parsed out between the candidates using a formula I don’t claim to understand. So at this point, even the talking heads have to acknowledge that Obama is still neck and neck with Clinton although, to many, she would appear to be way ahead. That race may not be decided until the very end.

So where does this leave us after “Super Tuesday?” Here’s what we know (or think we know) so far according to Reuters:

• Economic worries — plunging housing values, rising energy and food prices, jittery financial markets and new data showing a big contraction in the service sector — eclipsed the Iraq war as voters’ top concern in both parties, exit polls showed.

• “Polls of Democratic voters on Tuesday made it clear that the politics of identity — race, gender, class — was driving the contest between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the Republican contests, the far-right fringe is trying to maul their party’s front-runner, Senator John McCain,” said the New York Times in an editorial.

• Obama scored victories in Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah and his home state of Illinois.

• Clinton won Arizona, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee and her home state of New York. She went into Super Tuesday battling a wave of momentum for Obama, who had surged in national polls on his message of change. New Mexico was still too close to call, media said.

• Obama maintained his strong showing among black voters but also expanded support among whites, winning 40 percent in Georgia, exit polls said. Clinton won heavy support from women and Hispanics, exit polls showed.

• McCain won in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Oklahoma.

• Huckabee, a Baptist preacher, won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia.

• Romney won in Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and Massachusetts, where he served as governor, and Utah, which has a heavy concentration of Mormons. Romney would be the first Mormon president.

• Huckabee’s wins were fueled by strong support from evangelical Christians, and he split votes with Romney among conservatives unhappy with McCain.

So there you have it. Can we declare a winner? Nope, just the momentary front runners. Was “Super Tuesday” exciting? No, more like watching grass grow. What’s next? Just more of the same, and maybe a couple surprises although the msm will be working hard to convince us it’s already a done deal.