Those little things that annoy us on a daily basis

Here are two of mine, both of which came to mind this morning on my way to work.

1. When someone says “I could care less.” If only people would think when they speak. To say that you could care less does not communicate a complete lack of caring, which is clearly what you’re attempting to do. In fact, what you’re saying is that you do care… at least somewhat… since it’s possible that you could care less. What you mean to say is that you couldn’t care less; in other words, you care as little as humanly possible. Until you learn how to use the phrase properly, try replacing it with “I don’t give a fuck.”

2. When someone says “… which begs the question…” I don’t know who first picked this up and started using it incorrectly, but it needs to stop. Journalists use it all the time: “You said yesterday that you had no knowledge of your teammates using steroids, which begs the question, how could you have been around them every day and not have known?” “Begs the question” does not mean that something someone says clearly invites another question. It is the name of a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed in one of the premises. In other words, it’s a circular argument. Little kids do this all the time. You might hear one say, “You’re a doo-doo head,” to which you reply, “Why?” And the kid comes back with, “Because you’re a doo-doo head.” While this is a very rudimentary example, it illustrates the fallacy. Logically, you cannot use your conclusion to prove your conclusion— like if President Bush were to say, “We need to go to war, because war is the only answer.” He is rephrasing the conclusion and using it as an argument for his conclusion. He does this all the time, because he’s an idiot. He’s probably one of the people who uses the phrase “…which begs the question…” and thinks he sounds really intelligent.

People will argue with me by saying that people have been using it like this for a long time now, and it’s widely accepted as a part of the English language… to which I will reply, “People have been stupid for a long time now, and stupidity is widely accepted as a part of life… but that doesn’t mean they aren’t stupid.”