roachboy

about post 26 et al....

the second hand smoke story was interesting enough--just out of curiousity, when a conservative person thinks of "the environmental movement" where exactly does the epa fit into the picture?

while the information was presented in response to a critique of crichton's thing, was it presented to make a more general claim as well?
the presentation read as though it was--but there seems no basis for claiming that it is anything but anecdotal--and anecdotes while are often nice (dont you think?), that's all they are....usually, folk like to present their stories as "telling anecdotes", kinds of allegories or as something that indicates or points to matters of broader importance. but that is often little more than an aesthetic matter (your politics might lead you to prefer to think that story is indicative of something systematic so that you dont have to demonstrate anything of the sort--this sort of preference is alot like the question of which kind of coffee you prefer or what colors socks you like)
or vanity (it is your story after all---i of course am not exempt from either of these)....but these are not arguments, they are simply preferences.


the reason i wondered about whether this story was to have some bigger meaning lay in the interpretation given of it---that the epa "cherrypicked" information--which i assume meant little more than the study in question was shaped by an argument, which was no doubt made explicit, both in the overview and in the methodology. any argument entails ways of attributing hierarchy to information, bringing some points forward and pushing others back, yes? that would mean that any argument is necessarily about a selective interpretation of factors, yes? so the fact that there was a selection in the reports that the epa relied upon is no surprise, is it? and if there were problems with the argument that justified those selections, or the methodologies used to translate that argument into a sorting mechanism for data, surely that problem does not lay with the fact of selection/limitation of information per se, but with how that selection was done, yes?

which could be countered with other studies, based on other arguments and procedures that would engender a different limitation/selection of data and would presumably include a demonstration of the claim that this alternate argument was important, more capacious, etc.

so the problem is not the selective interpretation/hierarchization of data, is it?

but you present your argument as though it is--as if there is some alternative of "objectivity" that would--well what?--not have arguments, not be beholden to methodological choices, not involve any hierarchization of data, no inclusions or exclusions? well, if that is true, then even if this objectivity existed, it would be meaningless, little more than a polaroid--not even that.

so what are you saying, really, through the second hand smoke?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite