Friday Fisking

A weekly feature, often done on Fridays, has long been a staple of blogs.  Who am I to deny the tradition?  Each week, I will provide a detailed analysis of someone missing the point.

Of course, it takes a bit of time to build up a good file of bad arguments.  However, I happen to have one already built up.  Shortly after the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision was released, Larry Fafarman and I started locking horns over the various legal aspects of the case at The Panda’s Thumb.  Eventually, Larry was banned and created his own blog, where he listed his top 20 criticisms of the decision.  I started posted detailed responses, but the format at Larry’s blog is not conducive to in depth analysis: quoting is very clunky, and the narrow fixed width column makes long arguments seem even longer than they really are.  I’ve never fully abandoned the idea, and this blog gives me the forum to do it.

So for the next half year, I will be deconstructing Larry’s criticisms, point by point.  This will give me time to develop a file of other, more diverse victims subjects, while freeing me to write about current issues as they arise.  Don’t be surprised, however, if I intersperse other topics from time to time.

This post written on Jan 12, 2008 and backdated to Jan 3, 2008