Nonsense Handily Diagrammed in a Variety of Languages

This is one of those things that every skeptic should have handy at all times. Happily, there are t-shirts (use the drop-down for a variety of styles, including women’s. Yay different styles and colors!).

Anyway, here’s the diagram:

Shamelessly filched from the Reason Stick.
Shamelessly filched from the Reason Stick.

 

 Visit the link, and you’ll find one in Croatian, one in Italian, one in Spanish, and another that includes conspiracy theories. I bloody love this thing! I’ve gone ahead and ordered one on a snazzy shirt. I’ll post a picture of me strutting round in it when I get it. Should I wear it to one of the local fundie churches and bring my Skeptic’s Annotated Bible? Or would that be too obvious?

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Nonsense Handily Diagrammed in a Variety of Languages
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9 thoughts on “Nonsense Handily Diagrammed in a Variety of Languages

  1. 3

    Well, I’ll take that one up; in a long-term sense, yes, it would be preferable to move away from using body-parts, which are themselves morality-neutral, as a judgement word to say something bad about people/ideas.

    It follows from the same thinking that says calling someone a cunt, or a pussy, or a dick, doesn’t just demean the person being labelled, but also the thing being used to label them.

    Personally, I don’t call people by these kinds of name because I like cunts and pussies and dicks and bollockses, and I don’t think there’s anything negative about them to make it sensible to use them as insults.

    I don’t necessarily expect anyone will agree, which is fine; I’m willing to take the long view on it. But since you mentioned it, yes, there are people who view this usage as unnecessarily demeaning of our beautiful human bodies. :)

  2. 4

    I agree with you, CatieCat. The use of gender-specific insults doesn’t particularly offend me but I can understand why how it can offend others, so I don’t do it (apart from phrases such as ‘the dog’s bollocks’, which of course means ‘brilliant’. And I’ve no idea how it came to mean that!).

    Back to the Venn; I think I’d move ‘Anti-Vaccination’ to the ‘pseudoscience/quackery/religious section, since there are certain religious sects that eschew anything but faith when it comes to medical matters.

  3. 5

    Acolyte – the tough one for me is not using “asshole” against people. A very useful thing, the asshole, but also one of my long-time go-to insults, and I’ve really struggled with dropping it. “Idiot” is another one, I’m having a really tough time not using that one. It’s not an easy thing to do, changing one’s long-habituated usages, but I think (for me) it’s worth it. :)

    Anyway, yes, i could see anti-vax being in the also-religious section. I don’t know as I’d wear it as a shirt, though, because I tend to be little favouring confrontation personally, and I think there are few places one could go where it wouldn’t annoy someone. :)

    Might hang it as a poster in a private room, though. :D

  4. 6

    Oh, homeopathy – my worst encounter with this was as an undergrad, when i had a house-share with a nurse and a medical student, the latter of whom was working to add an MD to her homeopathic “doctorate”, so that she could legally hang out a shingle as a doctor, while actually peddling distilled water “homeopathic medicine”.

    So, the owner of the house had this fellow in to paint, and one day he showed up having terrible difficulty, and it was readily apparent even to this linguist that his hand was broken in more than one place, and swollen so it was hardly recognizable, as well as intensely painful. Turned out that he’d had a fight with his girlfriend while drunk, and had punched a wall rather than her (had to applaud the choice in general, if not the alternative he chose).

    The nurse and I urged him to take his badly-injured hand to the emergency department of our fine university hospital.

    The “doctor” of homeopathy said “Wait here! I’ve got a salve that’ll be perfect for this!”

    I’m guessing it was something into which some homeopathic remedy had been worked, probably powdered bone and excess lymph, if it followed their usual thinking.

    While she was upstairs, we took the guy out to my car and drove him to the A&E / ER. She was very upset with us later, but we had some wine and laughed about it after she huffily stomped off to bed.

    He came back the next day with a huge cast, lots of pain meds, and an x-ray showing his hand and fingers with a good dozen small and a couple of major breaks.

    Fucking SALVES.

  5. rq
    8

    There was a conspiracy flow-chart floating around a while ago, but this beats it. Impressive stuff, this – but a lot of fine print for a t-shirt. ;)
    Anyway, I’m still looking at it, trying to see if I’ve read all the words in all the categories.

  6. 9

    CaitieCat (spelt it right this time), re. asshole & idiot; I tend to use the all-encompassing ‘twonk’, ‘spoon’ or ‘spanner’ rather than ‘idiot’ (I don’t know why but all three seem to convey just the right amount of insult).
    Asshole (or more accurately ‘arsehole’ on this side of the Atlantic) is just about right for anybody who passes nought but shit and hot air.

    Back to the Venn; am I going blind or have they forgotten ‘astral travel’, ‘doppelgangers’, and ‘tulpas’.
    You know, I was always aware that the world is full of irrational bollocks, but seeing it all in one place like this makes one realise just what a twonkish species we can be.

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