The Cat Thread, with possibilities of hunting stories involving cats

[DeathTöngue]

Originally Posted by GeraldTheMouse

Simply: There are approximately 424,000 emperor penguins living in the world. There are 221 nations (depending on whose list you look at) in the world. Ergo, statistically speaking, there are approximately 1918.5 emperor penguins living in every nation on earth. Behold the power of statistics.

Not to be nit-picky, but that isn't a statistic - it's a conclusion drawn from a statistic. The population count of Emperor penguins is a statistic; so is the number of nations in the world, because these are things that are counted and tabulated. But dividing up the number of penguins by the number of nations is not - it's simply an uncorroborated conclusion based on two different and irrelevant data sets.

Education was wasted on me.

[GeraldTheMouse]

Truly, the emperor penguins have no clothes.

[Deranged]

Neither do the Seals in Canada.

[GeraldTheMouse]

Originally Posted by DeathTöngue

Not to be nit-picky, but that isn't a statistic - it's a conclusion drawn from a statistic. The population count of Emperor penguins is a statistic; so is the number of nations in the world, because these are things that are counted and tabulated. But dividing up the number of penguins by the number of nations is not - it's simply an uncorroborated conclusion based on two different and irrelevant data sets.

Education was wasted on me.

It's possible that was the point.

[Chaos Fire]

education on ME was wasted, at least in terms of what i've had. Still young and loving it

[Not Now John]

Simon,

If Gerald hasn't yet cleared up what I was getting at, let me give it a swing. All of group A does Action B. Therefore anyone who does action B must belong to group A.

That basically was what you were saying in your original statement--or implying, as I know that you didn't say it.

But isn't it possible that some of the people who do action B are not included in group A?


Still not getting it? Let me use this example:
All birds have two legs.
People have two legs.
Therefore people are birds.

Sounds silly don't it.

Back to the point, just cause I beat a groundhog to death with a pole iron when I was a child doesn't make me a serial killer, etc.

[Chaos Fire]

yes, but it IS a little disturbing......

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Not Now John

Back to the point, just cause I beat a groundhog to death with a pole iron when I was a child doesn't make me a serial killer, etc.

Where did I claim that you will turn into one because you beat an animal to death as a kid?

I just said that lots of serial killers have consistent history of cruelty to animals - so psychologists suggest that there might be a link between the two incidents.

Yes, breathing and eating parsley are also common traits, but if you are trying to build a profile - including these two commonalities would make the target group simply too large.

There are also serial killers with little to no history of animal abuse.

The point I was trying to make was that it's just something that's a little out of the ordinary and thus merits a closer look.

I'm not, again, claiming that you beat a cat you're going to turn into a viscious killer. Neither are the psychologists.

[GeraldTheMouse]

Originally Posted by Simon

Yes, breathing and eating parsley are also common traits, but if you are trying to build a profile - including these two commonalities would make the target group simply too large.

This is what we're talking about. We have (still) not seen any statistics on the commonality of children exhibiting 'cruelty' to animals (which has yet to be defined, I might add), so I don't see how you can draw such a distinction between cruelty to animals and eating parsley. It is the idea of 'trying to build a profile' based on purely inductive reasoning that is unnerving, no matter how much you couch your terms.

[stchrissie]

My Dad ran over my cat 4 times when I was a kid.... It was pratically made out of plastic it had that many false limbs... He used to say it would of been cheaper to buy a race horse.

[darksideofoz]

That poor cat!

[Madcap Diamond]

was your dad Billy Joel?