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Example argument: all the people that I have seen selling pirate DVDs in pubs are Chinese, all pirate DVD vendors are Chinese.

Problem: you can’t possibly have been offered a badly cropped, squawky, camcorder, copy of Jennifer Anniston’s latest grief-com by every DVD salesmen in the land, nay the world. You can’t be in every pub at once, besides, you’re banned from some of them. You poor daft racist, the Chinese aren’t the only people that enter this country hiding in the back of a lorry behind a pallet of Spanish tomatoes who can operate a camcorder and a DVD burner in an East London warehouse.

Example argument: every morning I watch the sun rise, so I know it is true that the sun rises every morning.

These are both examples of a converse fallacy of accident, arguing from a special case to a general rule. Even when you talk about something as reliable as a sunrise you can only have observed a subset of all the sunrises, just like the Chinese DVD salesmen, you can not have observed all of the sun rises and you certainly have not observed tomorrow’s, so you can’t possibly know that just because the sun rose this morning that it will rise again tomorrow. Other examples of this fallacy are: every swan I have seen is white, so it must be true that all swans are white. They aren’t. Or every beautiful woman I have seen in a magazine is skinny, so all beautiful women must be skinny (they aren’t).

What I’m getting at here is that you may have beliefs which you hold up to be true from what you have observed that are, on closer examination, just a subset of reality. If you have observed that every time you make love to a woman they wretch, and after scrub their skin raw with scalding hot water, and you think this is how all women make love, think again. I’m glad I did.

False Dichotomy: a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options.

Example argument: A woman can have either a family or a career.

Problem: There are numerous examples of women that manage to have both a career and a family. Unfeasible though it might sound this is not an either or option. For example you can employ your children in the same sweat shop that you manage during the day and combine child care with your professional life, simple. Allow me to illustrate with an example from my own life:

Example argument: the judge told me I could pay a fine or serve a prison sentence.

Problem: Mr Judge didn’t count on hope, hope can set you free, hope and my tiny geologist's pick axe, the one I wore down to the nub burrowing through the prison wall over a period of decades. You either get busy living, or you get busy dying, or you can do either of them in a fairly relaxed manner, up to you really.

Why do actors always get a mention on the news when they die, don’t they get enough adoration in life? I was wondering what it might be like if normal people got a mention:

Lilly, one of Britain’s best loved receptionists has died today aged just sixty five. Lilly, who will be best remembered for her depiction of a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery in the late eighties and early nineties, is also fondly remembered for roles in the house as a wife and later a mother and grandmother; she died in the early hours of this morning after a long battle with throat cancer. Lilly reached the pinnacle of her lengthy career as a receptionist in 1996 when her retirement collection exceeded one hundred and forty pounds and she was awarded the Sorry Your Leaving Card including a weekend at a spa retreat. Lilly was repeatedly overlooked by the academy, not receiving a single Oscar nomination throughout her long and distinguished career. In 1986 when asked whether or not she felt she had done enough to deserve an Oscar she said “What’s an Oscar dear, is it something the nurse does?” Lilly – 1944 to 2009.

This blog has become phenomenally unpopular. So few people read my musings that I’d imagine a notice nailed to a fence post somewhere in the wilds of Dartmoor would attract more attention from occasional passers by. No matter, I shall continue this saltatory rant for a good while longer, so if any disorientated virtual rambler does stumble upon this backwater, at least they’ll have plenty to read. Of course, unlike a stranded hiker, they’ll also have the option of looking at the entire internet instead, including porn, so I don’t expect them to stick around and read much, just take a look at this picture of an arse with a tap on it and fuck off to your images of stuffed orifices and self loathing you onanists.

This week I’ve been wondering about the Fort Hood shooter (BBC News). I remember that on the 3rd of November five British soldiers were killed by a rogue Afghan policeman in Southern Afghanistan(BBC News). In a statement in response to the killings Hamid Karzai’s Presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said it was an isolated attack:

"These are incidents that can happen anywhere. The crazy man who has done this has also attacked the Afghan police," he told the AP. "You can't use this isolated incident to say that there is a problem with the police force of Afghanistan. In the U.S., people shoot up people in a shopping mall. There are crazy people everywhere."

(Quote from AP)

The next day a crazy person decided to shoot up an American army base in Texas. I wonder if Nidal Malik Hasan had read the words of Mr Hamidzada before he set out to kill those 13 people. I’m not for a moment suggesting that it was his motivation. I wouldn’t like to speculate; just that it is a coincidence.

If this was a conspiracy theorist blog then, firstly, I would probably get more hits, from mental people. Secondly I would speculate that it was the CIA – of course - they could easily have brainwashed Hasan during his training as a psychiatrist. They usually brainwash people during ‘sleep experiments’ they run as fronts for evil brainwashing schemes. Then of course it was just a formality to have Hamidzada say what he did. Karzai’s brother swapped his notes, we all know Karzai’s brother is a CIA lackey after all. Then . . .

Well as I said this isn’t a conspiracy theorist blog, so ignore all that.

In 2005 a 35-mile rift opened up in the desert in Ethiopia in a matter of days. This was caused by the rifting of the African and Arabian plates. The African and Arabian plates have been moving apart at 1 inch per year for the last 30 million years. 30 million inches is 500 miles. 500 miles is the distance the Proclaimers would walk to fall down at your door, but as the Proclaimers will tell you, they’re willing to walk an additional 500 miles just to be the man who walked 1000 miles to fall down at your door. Well the boastful Proclaimers might be nippy when compared to plate tectonics, but they shouldn’t get complacent, because in another 30 million years, that’s half the time between now and the dinosaurs, the African and Arabian plates will have caught their long dead, fallen down, asses up and will have rifted 1,000 miles just to form a new ocean. Eat on that you speccy Scottish singing gits.

Check it out.

Have you been following the news about the government’s chief drug advisor Professor Nutts? I’ll just give you a quick run down to get you up to speed:

Nutts was stiffing for his government bread-wren giving dem the view from the street on drugs, but when he served it up theyz all, this shit is whack. Nutt was like, that is diss, these kids are asking for a beatdown. So Nutt starts frontin saying the government are swag, but Johnson, the Secretary of the House, shanked Nutt up – oh my days – saying Nuttz shouldn’t be frontin and should stay in the laboratory with his drugs an get mashed up and leave the politics to the proper gangsta mother fuckers. Now Nuttz has no job (like my baby father) and cos he’s all into drugs and shit he’s properly well fucked up.

I find it rather absurd that they hired this guy to provide them with an opinion then fired him for expressing his opinion, but I suppose that’s the rule of the street and that’s not really what I’m interested in. What I like in a news story about cannabis is the library footage that the BBC news uses. Is it just me, or do they have rather a lot of it. Man skinning up a fat one, man sparking up a joint, man taking a long drag on big spliff, arty shot of wispy smoke. The BBC’s footage of cannabis use isn’t like other crime footage – grainy CCTV of hoodies being anti social (rejecting party invites) or hooligans throwing plastic chairs – it’s much clearer, like they’ve arranged to have someone take cannabis for the purpose of filming them, which surely makes them complicit.

I’d like to know how they go about arranging these shoots, do they have a go-to man that they ring up and meet at the Esso garage, but instead of buying drugs, they pay him to get stoned while they film him. Does he get royalties? Is there some ex-dealer out there who gets a cheque in the post every time there is a story in the papers about cannabis? I hope there is, and I hope he spends the money on drugs every time. It would be particularly ironic if he was trying to go clean but he can’t because he keeps getting paid to get stoned again and again. If only the controversy about cannabis would end, it’s destroying lives.

Of course it could just be that there are a couple of technicians in the BBC film library with blood shot eyes eating take away pizza and giggling hysterically while they watch themselves get high on the six O’clock news.