Word: argument
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...team’s 28 games, and maintain the continuity of going through preseason activities. “I’ve been receiving a lot of flak for choosing the first semester,” Cusworth says. “I know the argument is ‘Why wouldn’t you want to stay for the Ivy League schedule?’ Ultimately I would only be able to come in a couple practices before that first game [after the break]—I would not be allowed to practice legally with the team...
...argument in favor of the Patriot Act’s surveillance provisions is that not subjecting private records to scrutiny creates a safe haven for ne’er-do-wells and that those who are doing nothing wrong have nothing to fear. But it strikes me as absurd, and even somewhat insulting to the investigative talents of FBI agents, to suggest that the government needs to compromise civil rights in order to catch the terrorists in our midst...
Public understanding of autism research suffers from two perennial complications: correlational studies and press releases. The report cited in your story is the latest example of both these foibles. The correlational style of argument is as apt to establish that, say, ice-cream sales cause homicides, since both peak at the same time of year. The long list of supposed causes of autism touted in the press has given parents false hope or, worse, false guilt, while damaging autism science and the public's trust...
...argument that more troops should have been sent doesn't reckon with the difficulties the U.S. military has faced in sustaining even the current deployment. The strain on U.S. military resources would have precluded sustaining the deployment of "several hundred thousand" troops in Iraq for more than a few months. And it's hopelessly na?ve to imagine that this would somehow have created a window for the emergence of a new democratic Wal-Mart nation that would have prevented the emergence of the darker impulses on view today...
...More troops in Iraq would have made a quantitative difference, but not a qualitative one. And there is some merit to the argument that increasing the size of the U.S. footprint could just as easily have widened the hostility to their presence. The Iraqi insurgency has been impressively adaptive, and would very likely have found a way of expressing its nasty politics even with twice as many American boots on the ground. And the sectarian rivalries that are fueling the civil war are as much present in the democratic political institutions as they are on the violent streets...