The "Spotlight" Fallacy

I hadn't heard this term before, but it might be because it's similar to or just a variation on the "hasty generalization." If you think that all homosexual men are screaming drag queens and all lesbians are leather dykes on bikes because you've seen one Gay Pride parade on TV, you're falling victim to the "Spotlight" fallacy.

I see people falling into this fallacy all the time, most recently, stereotyping all Muslims as violent because of a few bad apples who are in the media spotlight.

More discussion on the fallacy here:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/spotlight.html

One more for my "obesity propaganda" tags

This is one of Sandy Szwarc's older articles, but a good one. I think there's a growing awareness that judging someone's health risks based on BMI is flawed, but even many who are aware that BMI is an imperfect measure will argue that the only reason being at a slightly-higher BMI than is "ideal" isn't necessarily unhealthy is that people with higher BMIs might have more muscle, which weighs more than fat. In other words, it's OK to be a little heavy if it's from muscle and not from body fat. But many studies don't bear that out; having some extra fat, even up into BMIs in the mid-30s seems to be perfectly healthy, especially for women.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=080403E

x-posted to haes

Abortion is a blessing

Since abortion has been a topic on my friends list off and on the last few days, I thought I'd provide a link to "Abortion is a Blessing" by Anne Nicol Gaylor for the interested. It's out of print now, but you can read the entire book on-line here:

http://ffrf.org/books/AIAB/

It's really interesting from a historical perspective, and also pretty sad how far we've backslid after brave women like Gaylor worked so hard to make abortions legal.