Logic you gotta love it.

My oh my... Somehow my alarm clock was turned off. I never turn off my alarm clock during the week. So, without hearing it make noise this morning it was up to my internal clock to wake me. If you have ever woke up and immediately realized you are late. That is what happened to me this morning as I looked to my alarm clock letting me know I was two and a half hours late. OOPS! So I called work. I came in for just a few minutes and then I had to go to Pullman for class. The professor always has some topics to discuss, some more politically charged than others. Today was about getting plastic surgery and making sure you know about the doctor's past. Many people have died getting plastic surgery. Well, I am not going to beat a dead horse by commenting on that, but something was brought up in class that I thought was awesome.

We were talking about inductive and deductive logic. Deductive logic is something like the following.
All cats are cute.
Fluffy is a cat.
Therefore, Fluffy is cute.

Inductive logic is a bit different. That is where a whole bunch of little pieces of information are strung together to come up with a conclusion. For example.
- There is a broken window in your house.
- There is a baseball on the floor near the broken glass.
- The baseball was not there this morning.
- There is an empty lot next door where kids play baseball.
- There were kids playing baseball there today.
- They are not there now.
With all these pieces of information we can say that one of the kids playing baseball caused the broken window. That is were the awesome part comes in. A comment was made that one of the kids playing baseball "broke the window."

Dissecting this situation a little farther I have some questions.
The baseball flew through the window breaking it.
The bat made the baseball fly.
The kid swung the bat hitting the baseball.
So who or what broke the window? Was it the kid who broke the window? Was it the bat that broke the window? Was it the ball that broke the window? One might argue the ball broke the window but it was the kid who caused it to happen by hitting the ball with the bat.

Think about how you would answer that question, and honestly look at this next situation.
A bullet hits a person cause the death of the person.
A gun fired the bullet that causes the death.
Someone pulled the trigger of the gun which caused the bullet to be fired.
Who killed the person? How often do you hear someone say "that person was killed by a gun"? Do you believe it was the bullet, the gun, or the person pulling the trigger that caused the death of the person?

Relate what you say on this one to the baseball example. I bet you did not saw the bat broke the window. But did you say the gun killed the person? Being consistent either you said the ball broke the window which means you should have said the bullet killed the person. Otherwise you probably said the kid broke the window, therefore you should have said that someone killed the person.

Gun arguments often bring in emotions where the ball breaking a window would not draw the emotions. You can use logic on the ball/window situation where the bullet/dead person brings out emotions. Emotions and logic don't mix.

Why was that awesome? Well it was cool. Trust me on that one. I was sitting in class and I heard the professor said "one of the kids playing baseball broke the window." I then immediately thought about who someone would have said if it had been a shooting. The professor no doubt would have said that a gun killed the person.

Moving along after class I met up with George to talk about my paper that I am working on for English. I am writing about network security at WSU.

I went to the health department in Pullman and dealt with a computer issue. They just got DSL and thought it was running slow. I showed that it was quickly running. I fixed their e-mail so they all get e-mail now.

I came back to my office and working on C# and ASP.Net some more. At six-thirty I met up with Pete and Patti for our coroners meeting. We talked about a couple of the recent cases, including the homicide in Pullman. We did a table top exercise.

I went to Colfax fire and watched CSI with Carl. We talked during the commercials. Then I headed home. I went to bed a little after eleven pm, hoping that I would get a good night sleep.