Any quick survey of American editorial pages — or, heck, American news broadcasts — will show that familiarity with and understanding of logical fallacies is not part of the standard curriculum anymore.

I'd be curious how many conservatives who support these bills would also consider requiring tobacco companies to put pictures of lung tumors on cigarette packages or fast food companies to post the calorie counts of their menu items to be grotesque examples of government overreaching.

I understand the subjectivity of reviewing and the importance of the context in which the individual episode is experienced and the preeminence of the review itself over the grade. But I just wanted to clarify this:

Of course, even season reviews ultimately suffer the same problems, especially as series run to more and more seasons. Consider the arguments in the Seinfeld or Simpsons comments. Is a no-longer-the-golden-age season of a classic show like those deserving of a low grade, indicating that's not as good as it was at its…

On your last point, that depends on how you define the letter-grade system (which is also something that varies from reviewer to reviewer). If a C really is supposed to indicate an "average" episode of The Wire, then there really ought to be a lot more C grades (I may be misremembering, but I think Tasha in particular…

I do think the line "We grade a show its own standards" is a bit disingenuous, because it's pretty patently untrue. I believe that AVC critics do try to judge how successful a show is in relation to the kinds of success the series has achieved, but there is still an element to the grade of how good the show is in…

Of course, you raise an interesting question in itself: do you judge a Doctor by the quality of his stories, or by the overall take on the character? I always assumed that if one is ranking Doctors, one is ranking personalities/catchphrases/costumes, etc. Companions may figure into that calculation, as well, since the…

Yeah, I think one of the things that unsettles me about a lot of the rhetoric that's come in with the new generation of digital effects (both for games and for movies and television) is this kind of plausible marketing idea that "We're gonna give you something better than what your imagination could come up with."…

So, the last paragraph of this review strikes me as quite disturbing. 'Mass Effect 3 is what it feels like to be your own biggest fan" — is that supposed to be a good thing? Is it supposed to be an improvement that kids play a game like this rather than creating worlds for their action figures?

Frankly, I think the much more ridiculous costuming choice is that it appears the Lone Ranger is wearing a rubber mask. What the hell?

@avclub-230e46d19fe78a6c8dc715659a7188d7:disqus — It especially bothers me when cops on TV use the threat of prison rape to intimidate suspects (it seems like the Law & Order: SVU characters love to say things like "A good-looking fellow like yourself will have lots of admirers in prison!"). It seems like in a just…

It is criminal that Soderbergh's "Kafka" is not available on Region 1 DVD. What is up with that? Is there some legal thing holding it up? I know it wouldn't be a huge seller, but there are much more obscure films by far lesser directors profitably in print on DVD. I'm betting it's some byzantine bureaucratic…

Yeah, I also liked how Metcalf's argument would basically also rule out Slate itself as a medium for disseminating ideas. Because how could any worthwhile idea be presented in a relatively short magazine article? Or in a ten-minute podcast segment? Clearly, people producing content in such limited-scope venues are…

So, this week seemed to be a particular low for Slate's Culture Gabfest, where they each had a chance to demonstrate how little they actually knew about the topics they presumed to be pundits on. The fact that none of the hosts had more than a passing familiarity with TED talks didn't stop them from making grand…

Just to keep your expectations straight, you should know that Born Standing Up is not a particularly funny book. It's largely a straight memoir of how Martin got into performing and how he developed his act. It contains some of the routines and a few humorous descriptions, but for the most part it's an analysis of…

I've found this to be true of root beer, too, which is great. Fill a glass with Diet Coke, add a 1 or 2 second shot of root beer, and you get a passable simulacrum of a full glass of root beer.

I'll be very curious to see how "RIddles in the Dark" works with Weta's Gollum. He's great for Smeagol in LotR, but in The Hobbit, his primary motivation in the riddle contest is to win so that he can EAT Bilbo. I think you need a more monstrous Gollum for that to really seem credible — and the Rankin-Bass Gollum is a…

The one very music-geeky problem I have with the soundtrack is the use of "Sitting on Top of the World." That's a song written by the Mississippi Sheiks in the 1930s. It is not a traditional folk song. It certainly is not a song from the 1860s (or earlier). Dropping it into the movie there just smacks of "eh, it's…

"Who wants to come with Coach McGuirk to identify a body? Anyone?"

The other thing that screwed over American Gothic is that the network ran the episodes out of order, and since the show actually did have an overarching plotline, that really screwed up the viewing experience.