Kenneth Pike I am prejudiced. I admit it. It's a weakness... I'm going to a support group, I'm reading a self-help book, and I even have a "litany against prejudice" of my own composition that I recite whenever I feel the need to judge too hastily. But no matter how hard I try, I can't stop hating stupid people. The fact that you're reading this -- heck, the fact that you read anything at all over fifty words in length! -- says that I'm not talking about you. I don't mean people who don't have genius IQs. I don't even mean people who come across as a little slow at times. I mean the ones who just... don't... get it. Case in point: "the shootings". I don't care which one you choose to recall, I'm sure you caught at least one of them in the papers recently. But a relative of mine was complaining quite loudly that "it's no wonder they're killers, what with the video games they play..." I'm going to make an extremely controversial statement now. Duck and cover, everybody... Association is not causation. High school students are often taught about fallacious logic, and neat little latin names are applied to each fallacious statement. One of my favorites was always "post hoc ergo propter hoc" which roughly comes to "after this, therefore because of this." Case in point number two: the infamous Twinkie defense. Anyone unfamiliar with this statement will fail to recall the man in California who literally got away with murder because he was eating Twinkies and then murdered someone... since it was after he ate the Twinkies, it was because he ate the Twinkies. I read a report recently that attributed the majority of today's "problems" to media, particularly among Junior High and High School children. The study behind the report showed that students lacking parental supervision of media were more prone to get into trouble. Those teens that were not allowed to watch R-rated movies or read violent comic books were more likely to stay out of trouble. Everybody now. Association is not causation! I noted no query into the blindingly obvious fact that parents who supervise their children's movie watching are going to be supervising a lot more than just that. But someone drew conclusions and proceeded to find data that roughly matched their assumptions. To be cliche... they banged a square peg into a round hole. Now I'm not saying media does not contribute greatly to our outlook... quite the opposite, in fact, I would assert that media plays too great a role in raising our children these days. But to say that playing Doom was the "primary cause" or even a "major contributor" to a schoolyard massacre is ludicrous. We're just looking for something to blame. And sadly, the people who get to place the blame just... don't... get it. Ask an economist... they know. Association is not causation. Ask an english teacher... they know. "After this" is definitely not "because of this". Ask a scientist... they know. Conclusions must come after the data is gathered. Life is a series of choices. But in our human drive to control everything around us, we have forgotten that the one thing we can never truly control is one another. So we look for the error, the glitch, the sand in the gears that is keeping us from total mastery of our existence. We quickly become impatient, and in our impatience we forget our logic and we discard our common sense. At which point we just "don't get it" anymore. So next time you start to draw a conclusion, stop and ask yourself: "Is this a conclusion I've come to, or one I've brought to me? Have I avoided fallacious logic? Have I overlooked causes in favor of associations?" Because I hate stupid people. And if everyone stops being stupid, I won't need this bloody self-help book, and I could get my money back.