Word: argumentative
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...argued that celebrity culture had created a universal lust for the camera, and he sees these series as a case in point. "Reality has become the greatest entertainment of all," he says. "It's symptomatic of a larger phenomenon that all of life is entertainment." It's a grand argument, appealing to our now conditioned distrust of the fame machine. But it's an easy one to take too far. In fact, most of us don't want to, in Gabler's words, "get to the other side of the glass," not this way. That's partly why we goggle...
...basic moral intuition about what's right and wrong. What I provide for people is argument and support. I cannot tell you how many women have said my pounding on about how the first priority in their lives ought to be the child has helped them. That pounding was met by some negativity at first, but now people say their lives are just elevated by doing what seems so simple but is counter to what's going on in society...
...summer in New York City. The number-one precaution I could take against getting raped, she said, was to avoid wearing skimpy clothing. I immediately bristled at her comment, for two reasons. The first was a knee-jerk response to the fact that she seemed to be invoking the argument that rape victims somehow "ask for it." But the second--and the one I felt more vehemently about--was the fact that I'm the proud owner of more than a few cute little sundresses, I wasn't going to let safety precautions get in the way of my looking...
...millennial Kulturkampf - I cannot recall the last time I was tempted to violate the rights of a rat by eating it. Still, PETA's case works rather nicely from absurdity (rats?!) to essence (what exactly are the moral claims of life, however odious the lifeform?). You can get an argument going around that. A day or two ago, the Supreme Court decided that students in a public high school may not organize prayers at football games. The house divides bitterly on that one, of course. (Again, it seems to me that principle is getting itself worked up here over small...
...there is another argument against the need to implant computing devices, be they glass or goo. It's a very simple one, so simple that some have difficulty grasping it. It has to do with a certain archaic distinction we still tend to make, a distinction between computing and "the world." Between, if you like, the virtual and the real...