Today the only existing copy of a book which is the foundation stone of my dissertation dissertation (due next Thursday) got sent back to a library, literally at the other end of the country. I probably should have taken more rigorous notes, but come on, the book was always there, and I could always refer to it, why would I do that? So tonight I got home from university, did some quaaludes, drank half a bottle of vodka, ate an entire cheesecake, and tried to do something that would take my mind off things.

After rage quitting three straight games of Age of Empires 3 (single player, calm down) I decided the only thing which could bring me actual enjoyment, given my recent academic fuck up, is to laugh at actual academics. It's been a shit day, so I picked an easy target; the illustrious, totally-not-days-a-way-from-fighting-a-swan-while-naked, logical man, Richard Dawkins (and his followers)

I found this tweet from the logical man himself.

Words, to some sociologists, aren't allowed to mean what they say. They have to have an additional polarity of "oppression" & "privilege".

Well, what do i have to say to this?

Friends, Redditors, SJWs, lend me your ears;
I come to bury the sociology, not to praise it.
The fallacies that disciplines do live after them;
The logic is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with sociology. The logical Dawkins
Hath told you sociology is fallacious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath sociology answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Dawkins and the rest–
For Dawkins is a logical man;
So are they all, all logical men–
Come I to speak at sociology's funeral.
It was my discipline, rigorous and explanatory to me:
But Dawkins says it was fallacious;
And Dawkins is a logical man.
Sociology hath taken many disciplines away from STEM
Whose impact rating did the general knowledge increase:
Did this in the social sciences seem fallacious?

Not really though. I'm jut going to call Dawkins a logical man a lot, and I wanted to make sure everyone got the joke.

Now that my half-drunk attempt at passably entertaining writing has ended I can start talking about the actual problems of the Dawk-dawgz (Double-D to those of us who are in the loop, so to speak) tweet¹

So I'm going to ignore the bad linguistics that we 'allow' words their meaning, or the implication of the first sentence that words have fixed, pre-determined meanings, or even the silly assumption that words have explicit, but not implicit meaning. If I was going to try and point out all of the disciplines the logical man Dawk-dawgz is ignorant about I would be here all day, so I have to focus!

I want to a talk about the difference between a term in common usage, and a technical term. I am resting on the assumption that what the logical man Dawk-dawgz is referring to the use of racism in some aspects of social science as referring to "a host of practices, beliefs, social relations and phenomena that work to reproduce a racial hierarchy and social structure that yields superiority and privilege for some"² as opposed to racism being used to refer to "someone who claims behaviors and ideas of a specific ethnic group are a consequence of that ethnic group" or even more simply "someone who dislikes people due to their race."

So here's the thing, just because there is an academic term which has a differing meaning to the common usage term, does not mean that the common usage term is invalidated. For example, just because the word 'charm' has been used in physics to define a type of quark does not mean that we cannot use the word charm to refer to "the power or quality of delighting, attracting, or fascinating others" or "a small ornament worn on a necklace or bracelet." It just means that within the academic discipline of phsyics charm takes on a specific, technical meaning. Likewise, in sociology, 'racism' takes on a specific, technical meaning. It can still mean the same things it has always meant in common usage (although the common usage can certainly be problematic), however, if you are writing an academic paper for a sociology journal you should make sure your use if the term racism is compatible with the disciplines general use of the term.

It's like when creationists refer to evolution as 'just a theory' and not realizing that theory has a different meaning in science and common usage. But of course, the logical man, Dick-Dawg, would never make an error similar to religious people. Religious people believe the completely absurd idea that man was born with original sin, and that through the study of God we can overcome this, however it is difficult because the Devil will try to corrupt us back to sin. While Dick-Dawg believes knows the completely logical idea that humans are born ignorant, and that through the study of Science we can overcome this, however it is difficult because religion will always try and corrupt us back to ignorance. Obviously his intellect is superior and he could never step down to their fallacious level.

This was a very long post for not saying very much. I was originally intending to look into some of the comments on the post, but Barabajagal just arrived to help me finish my vodka so I kind of have to leave. I may add to this tomorrow, if I don't wake up tomorrow super embarrased that I posted a very drunk criticism of Dick-Dawg on /r/badsocialscience

1. I was originally going to use the word quote here. But quote is a politicized term, which elevates the statement described as a quote to a level of importance which I don't think the inane, banal, borderline reactionary, musings of logical man Dawk-Dawg deserve

2.http://sociology.about.com/od/R_Index/fl/Racism.htm