Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.
I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.
The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember --
this is my property, not yours.
They’ll love you for making them think, you know. People always do.
Well… I’m actually copping out on this personally. I’ve tried to explain it to two people now, and came away frustrated. I’m hoping YOU’LL be the one that makes ’em think. 🙂
I’ll try embedding this one here:
This is one of the reasons people continue to think the number three is magic!
While I’ll admit Schoolhouse Rock is awesome, I have to take issue with their examples of “magical threes” — specifically “heart, mind and body” — the first two are subsets of the third! And “man and woman and baby” — what about extra kids? Or if the baby has a problem or is stillborn? Where’s the magic in that? And the mention of the “trinity” while only in passing obviously refers to the “Holy Trinity”, or is at least a throwback.
The triangle thing is a good point, being it’s the geometric 2-D shape you can create with the least number of lines that has an actual volume.
Also, the only rule of three that works, to my mind, is in repeating a joke. Jokes are only funny if you say them once, or repeat them three times during the course of a given speech/stand-up routine/episode. If you do it just twice, the second one falls flat. Unless it’s a variation on the theme, of course. So that’s not even a proper “rule”.
Bah! A pox on magical thinking altogether.
Hey, is this you? http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/06/i_get_email_37.php
Sure is, Pod. You were just ahead of the game. And it’s actually fortunate Akismet thought your comment was spam. 😀