Interesting Stuff Thread

CerebralCortex

magicbastarder wrote: »

i was kinda hoping they wouldn't find it. would have made things a lot more interesting.

So what now?

Sarky

True, but it's awfully satisfying to confirm something you've been working on for so long. The LHC was a hell of an undertaking, it's pretty awesome that it got results so relatively quickly.

There are still plenty of other problems to solve in physics, no neckbearded men in unnecessary labcoats will be out of a job because of this.

Dades

Sarky - I know it's the wrong area of science - but I think you need to send them your CV.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/4/3136652/cern-scientists-comic-sans-higgs-boson

robindch

Dades wrote: »

Like some numnut in the Irish Times it seems.

magicbastarder

to be fair, it was a physicist who coined the phrase.

Dades

magicbastarder wrote: »

to be fair, it was a physicist who coined the phrase.

According to wiki...

Higgs is an atheist, and is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle",[26] because the term "might offend people who are religious".[27] Usually this inappropriate nickname for the Higgs boson is attributed to Leon Lederman, the author of the book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?, but the name is the result of the insistence of Lederman's publisher: originally, Lederman had intended to refer to it as the "goddamn particle".[28]

There seems to be some dispute as to whether he was joking about that last bit, though.

magicbastarder

that book is a good read, btw. if somewhat out of date now.

Sarky

Dades wrote: »

Sarky - I know it's the wrong area of science - but I think you need to send them your CV.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/4/3136652/cern-scientists-comic-sans-higgs-boson

Comic SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANS!

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joseph brand

Sea weed toothpaste.

Adding enzymes from seaweed microbes to toothpaste and mouthwash could provide better protection against tooth decay, a team of UK scientists have said.

Researchers at Newcastle University had been studying Bacillus licheniformis to see if it could clean ships' hulls.

But the scientists now believe it could protect the areas between teeth where plaque can gather despite brushing.

Their lab tests suggest the microbe's enzyme cuts through plaque, stripping it of bacteria that cause tooth decay.

Dr Nick Jakubovics, of the university's school of dental sciences, said: "Plaque on your teeth is made up of bacteria which join together to colonise an area in a bid to push out any potential competitors".

There's a whole world, right there between your chompers. Turf wars.

Also, there was an article on the net a couple of years ago about a gel which, when applied to a damaged tooth, encouraged the tooth to grow back. "I'd buy THAT for a dollar!"

fitz0

http://io9.com/5923170/stop-calling-it-the-god-particle

Stop calling it “The God Particle!”

 Dr. Dave Goldberg

We've heard the rumors. Tomorrow is likely to bring news that physics nerds have been waiting for: the "official" discovery of the Higgs Boson. But something is gnawing at me like children on my lawn: this whole "God Particle" business.
Don't get me wrong. Science — and physics, in particular — is filled with bad naming conventions: The big bang was neither big nor a bang; the "color" of a quark or a gluon has nothing to do with what they actually look like; even "spin" has staggeringly less to do with a gyroscope than you might have at first guessed. And while the Higgs deserves our respect, "God Particle" is just going too far.

Seriously. What's wrong with you people?

First, a bit of history. The Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman coined the phrase "The God Particle" as the title of his otherwise excellent book as a way of underscoring how essential the Higgs is in our Standard Model of Physics. You can get away with that sort of hype when you're a Nobel prize winner. It also sold roughly 10 gajillion copies. He also got cutesy afterwards, and used to semi-seriously defend the name by saying that the publisher wouldn't let him call it the goddamn particle.

Meanwhile, National Geographic went one step further, comparing it to "The Force," from Star Wars — which did at least make for an awesomely adorable graphic at our sister site Gizmodo — but really kind of misses the bigger picture.

Just to be clear, discovering the Higgs will be a huge deal. It is the last remaining particle of our Standard Model of physics, and in a lot of ways it's very different than any other particle that we've ever seen. It's the first spin-0 particle, which is fairly significant. There's also the whole "creating mass" thing that it's so famous for. We should give credit where credit is due.

But let's not go overboard. I can think of at least three good reasons that referring to the "God Particle" should be a wedgieable offense. Knowing the io9 readership, I expect dozens more in the comments section.

1) It makes us sound like those mutants in Beneath the Planet of the Apes who worshiped a nuclear bomb.

Even if discovering the Higgs answered all of the fundamental questions in physics and gave us a Theory of Everything (it doesn't), the particle itself is just a particle, like any other. It interacts with other particles, and those interactions take the form of changes in energy.

Seriously, just dial it back a bit.

There have even been contests to rename the damn thing to something a bit less grandiose. The Guardian newspaper apparently came up with, "the champagne bottle boson." To my mind, though, this is both a bit silly and very unnecessary. The Higgs already has a name: the Higgs. We don't insist on calling the electron "ol' current-carrier" (though perhaps we should).

In fact, the Higgs has LOTS of names. While Peter Higgs came up with his version of the mechanism in 1964, about half a dozen other scientists came up with similar solutions at around the same time. This is going to cause the Nobel committee a giant headache when they try to figure out who to award the Prize to. Virtually every combination of names has been used as a descriptor for the particle, so if you want to call it something else, might I suggest the "Englert-Brout-Higgs-Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble Boson"?

2) It's not the only thing that can make mass.

The Higgs mechanism was developed to address a very specific problem. It was well-known at the time that assuming what are known as "local gauge symmetries" (PROTIP: work that phrase into conversation as often as possible) would give rise almost immediately to various mediator particles. For electromagnetism, we expect 1, the photon. For the weak force, we expect 3, the W^+, W^-, and Z^0.

But there's a problem — the theory also predicts that all of these mediators should be massless, and the W and Z particles are huge. The W particles are both about 86 times the mass of a proton, and the Z boson is about 97 times as massive as the proton.

Energy and mass are equivalent to one another. Remember, E=mc^2. But this reaction holds in reverse: m=E/c^2. Pour enough energy into a system and you create mass!

The basic idea (after glossing over LOTS of details of symmetry-breaking and the like) is that there is a Higgs field out there, and the interaction between the Higgs field and the W and Z fields creates energy, and we measure this as mass.

But this isn't just true of the Higgs, but of every energy of interaction. Just to give you an idea, you are made of protons and neutron, and your protons and neutrons are made of quarks. But the whole is much more than the sum of the parts. The total mass of quarks in a proton is only about 2% the mass of the proton, itself. The rest –- virtually all of your mass -– is made up of the interaction energies between the quarks.

Put another way, even if the mass of the quarks comes from the Higgs somehow — and even if the Higgs exists, we don't know exactly how it relates to other particles besides the W's and Z — almost none of your mass comes from the Higgs.

3) There's still a hell of a lot that remains unanswered.

The biggest problem with all of this "God Particle" nonsense is that it's a rather short-sighted way of announcing to the world that the particle physics community doesn't need any more money, thanks.

Besides greed, there's the simple fact that while discovering the Higgs means that we're on the right track with this whole Standard Model, it is absolutely not the end of the story. What doesn't the Higgs tell us?

It doesn't explain how gravity works.
For that matter, it doesn't really tell us much about how the strong force relates to the electroweak force — the combination of electromagnetism and the weak force for which the Higgs is so useful.
It doesn't tell us what dark matter is — roughly 23% of the energy of the universe.
It doesn't tell us what dark energy is — another 72% of the universe.
It doesn't tell us why the electric charge is what it is, or an electron mass is what it is, or really, much at all about a huge number of physical constant.
It doesn't explain why we have certain symmetries in our universe and not others.

I guess what I'm saying is: more money, please.

Formatted. Apologies for the text wall.

Sarky

Oh yeah, a lot of marine bacteria do that biofilm thing, creating sticky compounds to bind them together so they don't get washed away too easily by currents. Sometimes it's made up of different species, competing for space. Some bacteria would release chemicals that break up certain biofilms, allowing them to colonise the places original taken by other species. I'm assuming it's one of those molecules they're talking about there. Could have something to do with quorum sensing, I did some brief work on that.

Marine microbiology is seriously awesome.

robindch

Sarky wrote: »

Marine microbiology [...]

Party pooper!

Dades

fitz0 wrote: »

http://io9.com/5923170/stop-calling-it-the-god-particle

Gregor Samsa

My brother just sent me this text:

A woman at work, in reference to the day's Higgsness, just said "I see they proved that God exists!". And she wasn't joking.

Delirium

Scientists create artificial vascular networks using sugar

For a great number of people, the idea of being able to use a patient’s own cells to create lab-grown replacement organs is very appealing. Already, researchers have had success growing urethras (which are essentially hollow tubes), and miniature human livers. Before large, solid, three-dimensional organs can be grown, however, scientists must figure out a reliable way of incorporating blood vessels into them – if the lab-grown organs simply take the form of a block of cells, the cells on the inside won’t be able to receive any nutrients, and will die. Now, a team from the University of Pennsylvania and MIT has devised a way of building such vessels, using sugar.

The scientists use a relatively inexpensive open-source RepRap 3D printer, which extrudes molten sugar – a mixture of sucrose, glucose and dextran is used, as that formulation offers strength (once the sugar hardens), plus biocompatibility with a wide range of cell types. That sugar is used to create a three-dimensional solid-sided mold that has a network of thin filaments of sugar running back and forth within it, from one side of its interior to the other. Those filaments are coated with a thin layer of a corn-derived polymer.

Sarky

F*CK YEAH 3D PRINTERS

Nodin

Sarky wrote: »

F*CK YEAH 3D PRINTERS

I know what you're thinking....you dirty man....

ShooterSF

2042:

"Mr. ShooterSF,

I have bad news. You see your excessive intake of alcohol and fatty foods has left your heart and liver in a rapidly increasing state of failure which is why you're in so much pain and I'm sorry but you're going to, *dramatic pause*, have to wait 20 minutes while Steve nips down for some more toner for the printer and we get your new ones printed."

Go science!

CerebralCortex

Is there a biological limit to longevity?

recedite

Lobsters live forever.

Dave!

Bill Gates is a big fan of Steven Pinker's latest tome, 'The Better Angels of Our Nature', describing it as "one of the most important books I’ve read – not just this year, but ever."

Gbear

Saying that people come to believe religious ideas because they engage more intuitive reasoning over logical reasoning isn't particularly surprising but I read about an interesting experiment discussed in Scientific American (July 2012, p8).

In another experiment, the investigators used an even more subtle way of activating analytic thinking: by having participants fill out a survey measuring their religious beliefs that was printed either in a clear font or in one that was difficult to read.
Prior research has shown that a difficult-to-read font promotes analytic thinking by forcing volunteers to slow down and deliberate more carefully about the meaning of what they are reading.
The researchers found that participants who completed a survey that was printed in an unclear font expressed less belief as compared with those who filled out the same survey in the clear font.

So, with some people; maybe those who are a bit on the line of being religious, if they're primed beforehand by forcing them to think analytically they'll be less likely to say they're religious.

Gbear

Dave! wrote: »

Bill Gates is a big fan of Steven Pinker's latest tome, 'The Better Angels of Our Nature', describing it as "one of the most important books I’ve read – not just this year, but ever."

I've still only read about half of it but it's very good.
It's more or less an argument that despite the 2 world wars and a perception of increasing violence in society, we're becoming far less violent.

One interesting thing he looks at is the adjusted death toll as a percentage of world populations.

The idea is that it's misleading to only look at absolute numbers in comparing wars. WW2 shouldn't be seen as the most deadly war because if there are so many more people in the world then it's easier to kill lots of them.

I think the adjusted figure for the Mongol invasions would be something like 400m deaths if they were to occur on the same scale today.

Dave!

Plus the weapons technology has come on quite a bit since swords and bow and arrows!

The Mad Hatter

Pinker's Ted Talk on the same subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk

Delirium

Studies refute arsenic bug claim

The discovery of a bacterium that could substitute arsenic for phosphorus to survive is refuted by new research.

Six elements are considered essential for life - oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur - so the announcement in 2010 implied one of biology's golden rules had been broken.

The findings provoked an immediate backlash and now two new scientific papers suggest the bacterium needs phosphorus to grow after all.

The studies appear in Science journal.

Delirium

Giant ice telescope hunts for secrets

Scientists are using the world's biggest telescope, buried deep under the South Pole, to try to unravel the mysteries of tiny particles known as neutrinos, hoping to shed light on how the universe was made.

The mega-detector, called IceCube, took 10 years to build 2 400m below the Antarctic ice. At 1km³, it is bigger than the Empire State building, the Chicago Sears Tower - now known as Willis Tower - and Shanghai's World Financial Centre combined.

seamus

This is about as close as I can get to an "off topic" thread, though it might be interesting to some around here.

Most of my estate has no front gardens and very little grass. In front of most of the houses and in other areas where you'd expect there to be grass is this crappy shrubbery stuff, like little 12 inch high bushes which don't flower.

When it rains as it does in Ireland, snails and slugs come slurping out of the shrubs in their hundreds of thousands (might be an estimate). I don't know where they think they're going. Since they come sliming across footpaths, they get squashed. Most days there are a series of dead snails across the footpaths. Not that many mind, I assume most people make an effort to avoid them.

One section of footpath for various reasons is quite poorly lit. A combination of the placement of the street lamps, parked cars and the slope of the road mean that for about 40m you can't really see the footpath at night, just the vague outline of it.
I noticed when I first moved in four years ago, that on this section of footpath there were a curious little snail that I didn't see anywhere else in the estate. A pure yellow shell or yellow with black stripes. They were also much smaller than the usual greyish-brownish monsters. There were only a few though, scattered around, the majority were still your common or garden snail. But they only existed on this section of path.

They all disappear over winter, but the following year I noticed that there were more of the little yellow guys and less of the big guys on this section of path. No change elsewhere in the estate. And the same again the next year. This year it's virtually all little yellow guys on this section and very few garden snails.

The only conculsion I can come to is that the yellow guys with their brighter shells, stand less chance of being stood on than their dark-shelled cousins. If it was a matter of being better foragers or something, then they would spread out across the estate. But they don't. So the only conclusion I can come to is that the dark guys get killed more prolificly than the yellow guys, resulting in less dark guys each year and more yellow guys.
A microhabitat, with natural selection in active, observable action.

If I was more driven, I would be inclined to start taking samples and see if there's any noticeable change in the actual yellow guys - are their shells getting brighter as the years go by, or perhaps the colours get more complex. Maybe they're getting slightly smaller because smaller snails stand less chance of being stood on...

Genghiz Cohen

In a similar vein. (I.E. personal scienceness)

Walking back from the water cooler in work and I was just struck by how much more enjoyable a cool drink of water is from a warm one.
Everything we do is based on some evolutionary advantage (IMO), why is liking cool water and advantage over warm water?

Thinking about it it seems to me that water fresh from a spring will be cool and have a very low chance of being infected with bad things, compared to ponds and such.
So how likely is it that one of our ancestors broke away from the pack (who were dying from all sorts of nastyness) and found he liked cool spring water far more than the abundant pond/lake water? He lives longer and passes the liking of cool water onto his children and so on.

Thoughts?

Girlfriend thinks it could be an advertising thing, we are conditioned to see cool drinks as a luxury and ice used to be very hard to obtain and a very standout item of power and wealth. I think it's the other way around, it became a luxury because it's the best.

kylith

I think it's cos we tend to drink cool drinks when we're hot, so we associate the coolness of the drink with the pleasurable feeling of relief from heat. Maybe if you only gave a child warm drinks they'd hate cold ones.

I like drinks at room temperature.

Opinicus

Deleted User wrote: »

I like drinks at room temperature.

ewwww

Opinicus

Opinicus wrote: »

ewwww

I could understand the reaction if I'd said body temperature.

robindch

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Girlfriend thinks it could be an advertising thing, we are conditioned to see cool drinks as a luxury and ice used to be very hard to obtain and a very standout item of power and wealth.

No offense, but I'd go with your gf -- lots of things are acquired and consumed for no other reason than they demonstrate power and wealth. And at the risk of getting myself clobbered, I should point out that in my experience, women tend to be better at noticing that than men. Research also suggests that women tend to approve of men and ideas which the same women know or believe are approved of by other women...

On a separate topic, here in Siberia, cold things are associated with acquiring coughs, so in the interests of public safety, 19th-century style, it's surprisingly tricky to lay one's lips on a really ice-cold beer, a chilly fruit-juice, or even just a glass of water with ice without at least one set of raised eyebrows.

Genghiz Cohen

robindch wrote: »

No offense, but I'd go with your gf -- lots of things are acquired and consumed for no other reason than they demonstrate power and wealth. And at the risk of getting myself clobbered, I should point out that in my experience, women tend to be better at noticing that than men. Research also suggests that women tend to approve of men and ideas which the same women know or believe are approved of by other women...

Well I'm very offended that someone would have a differing opinion to myself!
WITHDRAW!

Hotblack Desiato

robindch wrote: »

lots of things are acquired and consumed for no other reason than they demonstrate power and wealth

They don't even need to be consumed - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_(behavior)

Sinking of champagne is the act of pouring out champagne in the sink. Sinking probably started in Sweden as "a reaction to the ban on spraying champagne in many bars" and the sinking is usually done by a person ordering two bottles of champagne and asking the bartender to pour out (sink) one of them. The term "sinking" is a translation of the Swedish "vaskning," derived from "vask," which means "sink."

muppeteer

ninja900 wrote: »

They don't even need to be consumed - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_(behavior)

Tut Tut, what about all the kids in Africa with no champaign!!!

joseph brand

http://www.sci-news.com/biology/article00458.html. Evolution in action. New flower found in Scotland.

joseph brand

Melinda Gates pledges $560 million for contraception.

LONDON (Reuters) - Melinda Gates has pledged $560 million as part of a campaign to expand access to contraception for women in some of the poorest countries in the world.

The funding commitment was unveiled on Wednesday at the London Summit on Family Planning alongside pledges totaling $4.3 billion from the British government and leaders from African nations wrestling with the health and social problems brought on by high rates of unplanned pregnancy.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sns-rt-us-contraception-gates-melindabre86a1du-20120711,0,2461524.story

Hotblack Desiato

I wish Bill Gates had pledged himself to contraception before it was too late.

cavedave

Who objects to painful tests on animals?

more information for theist/atheist and even pro choice/pro life debates

swampgas

A recent xkcd cartoon lead me to google "stopped clock illusion". This has a pretty cool name - chronostasis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis

Now I'll have to turn off the second hand on my clock widget, as I can't stop looking at it ...

ShooterSF

swampgas wrote: »

A recent xkcd cartoon lead me to google "stopped clock illusion". This has a pretty cool name - chronostasis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis

Now I'll have to turn off the second hand on my clock widget, as I can't stop looking at it ...

Wow. For years i always wondered if clocks were actually sentient and only bothered when they were looked at cool to know im not the only one that experiences it

shizz

Aye, I've often experienced this but never really thought anything of it.

Mickeroo

Started a thread in Zoology already but thought it might interest some here too. There's been a genus of fish named after Richard Dawkins in Sri Lanka: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/sri-lanka-names-new-fish-for-uks-dawkins/story-e6frf7k6-1226427511980

Dave!

Hopefully this doesn't make anyone's head explode... From the Irish Times today

Scientists not giving human life its meaning

JOE HUMPHREYS

Tue, Jul 17, 2012

WHEN IT comes to science I’m with Bob Geldof. The DNA discoverer Prof James Watson told a Dublin audience last week that scientists could find a cure for cancer within 10 years and my first thought was: So what, if we are only going to live our crummy lives the same way? And for every you or I who gets an extra few cancer-free years, so will a Kim Jong-un or a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Incidentally, I’m also with Geldof in knowing “absolutely f***-all” about science (his words, naturally, not mine). I still remember the withering look my father, an engineer by training, gave me when I tried to convince him I could create a perpetual motion machine out of a sequence of large and small cogs.

At least I’m scientific enough to know these first two points may be related. I studied humanities and feel more at home in that camp and am therefore prone to downplaying the achievements of science.

Yes, technology lets me download excellent Philosopher Zone podcasts from Australian national radio ( tinyurl.com/ 829lpkc) but it has also lumbered me with the life-draining experience of maintaining four email accounts while also monitoring Facebook, Yammer and Twitter.

Anyone who knows a bit of history, moreover, will be wary of scientists’ claims that they are making the world a better place. Simply knowing more than the next man does not give you the higher moral ground.

Ludwig Wittgenstein put it best: “Wisdom is all cold and . . . you can no more use it for setting your life to rights than you can forge iron when it is cold.”

I had practical experience of this last week when I watched a BBC documentary showing Michael Mosley swallow a tiny camera to stream images of his digestive system from top to bottom. It was interesting but it didn’t make me a better person.

This may all seem self-evident. In fact, I hope it is self-evident, but it needs repeating because

of the way we are being love- bombed by science through the likes of Euroscience Open Forum 2012, the conference at which both Watson and Geldof spoke.

To its credit, Esof 2012 contained a diverse programme and the one event I got to – a mesmerising reading of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen by Rough Magic Theatre Company – explored this very issue of the interplay between science and morality. However, the overarching narrative of Esof 2012 was that science is a marginalised and under- appreciated activity, which could not be further from the truth.

The scientific community has enormous influence, in some cases is extraordinarily well funded and it is capable of “capturing” the world economy and global politics in the same way international finance does – and with the same lack of accountability.

Just think of the power wielded, for example, by some of the world’s largest technology and pharmaceutical firms.

The main cause of unease last week, though, was the way Ireland Inc was so keen to genuflect before the men in lab coats. They might hold the key to economic recovery but there is another type of recovery – a recovery in values and convictions – which they may, inadvertently, help to undermine.

I mean, what is it we really need in this country at the moment? Progress in broadband or in moral standards?

The science fraternity will cry “false dichotomy” but what it tends to overlook is the impact its work has on long-cherished value systems. I’m not talking about religion only. All belief systems – including belief in human rights and the dignity of the individual – face a real threat from scientific discovery or, perhaps more accurately, exaggerated claims on its behalf.

Take advances in genetics, for example. Rightly or wrongly, they have encouraged us to see things in a deterministic fashion. Now more than ever we tend to view our moral transgressions, not as matters of personal responsibility but rather as the inevitable product of traits we inherited from our parents.

In this environment, relativism has also become a more attractive proposition. We have less and less faith in our ability to adjudicate between competing value claims. Above all, however, science’s inexorable march towards atomising everything lends weight to the idea that life has no meaning – beyond perhaps the survival of the species.

This isn’t to say scientists should stop discovering stuff. That would be plainly ridiculous. However we urgently need a debate around what values we are capable of holding on to, if not upholding, in a more scientifically literate world.

Wittgenstein’s maxim “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” is commonly invoked by scientists who wish to shut the door to any discussion of morality or ethics.

Wittgenstein’s formulation was published when he was in his early 30s,though, and he spent the rest of his life disavowing it, acknowledging that you could not be human without engaging in fuzzy, unscientific, value-laden talk. In later life, when people came to him for advice, he would reply: “Just improve yourself; that is all you can do to improve the world.”

Maybe I am being a bit unreasonable, but the human part of me – the part that sees people as ends in themselves and not just means to an end, that sees value in friendship and love and that knows good and evil are facts and not just perceptions – says good riddance to Esof 2012 and longs instead for a week-long conference on the meaning of life.

Compared to that, the nature of life is, well, interesting.

© 2012 The Irish Times

Sarky

What, is he just wallowing in self pity over his choices in life and trying to pass the blame on to science? None of that makes much sense. All of it hurts to read.

Opinicus

I'm honestly tempted to just transcribe this video word for word and send it in as a reply to that.

"Rambling incoherent" sums it up perfectly.

fitz0

Dave! wrote: »

Hopefully this doesn't make anyone's head explode... From the Irish Times today

When he admitted to knowing 'f*ck all about science' he should probably have stopped writing an article on science.

It's a fairly moronic piece.

Turtwig

Ahh God cover up, cover up, cover up!!!

I love it how people think they can write stuff based on their own uninformed drivel and think they're somehow making a worthy article or contribution to some from of debate. But seriously if we do ever invent a time machine I'm sending all these idiots back to the time of there illusion where we humans somehow had better values and morals than we have today to see how they actually fear.
Appeal to tradition is single handedly becoming the fallacy that irritates me the most.