Exception that proves the fool

I found out about this panel from this widget blog. The author Lawrence isn’t too harsh on Michael Arrington, but that’s just because Lawrence is too nice. Here is Michael Arrogant Arrington going off:

Mike’s opening comment: ” User Generated Content is something that I used to think was great.”

Mike: The videos watched on YouTube are copyrighted, not user generated. YouTube is little more than a way for people to watch professionally generated content.

Mike: I will challenge you (the panelists) to convince me that I am wrong. Revver is my primary target, as they have no copyrighted content.

Micki: Every video on Revver reviewed by people to check for copyrights and hate speak.

Diet Coke and Mentos video case study. 3 weeks the video made $35K from advertising. Then Mentos reached out, video up to $80K. Total revenue brought on by Revver? Not telling.

Mike: Exception that proves the rule. If you look at MySpace, they are now being sued by Universal. UGC is a red herring, it’s really about copyrighted content. What does the rest of the panel think?

I’ve heard that statement used incorrectly so many times & it’s one of the few grammar/logic/whatever things that bugs me when it’s abused. Somebody from Yahoo Answers sums it up best.

The phrase is simply a fallacious cliche. Exceptions disprove rules.

The fallacy is usually used by those who have previously committed the fallacy of “sweeping generalisation”. Someone points out an exception that disproves the generalisation and the original arguer then uses this empty cliche to dismiss the objection.

Example:

A: Exercise is good for you.
B: What about my friend John who went out jogging and got run over by a bus?
A: That’s the exception that proves the rule.

There, she proved you’re wrong Mr. TechCrunch. I don’t totally disagree in his premise - youtube really is only popular because of it’s copyrighted content, but his statement on UGC is off. He’s good at creating sensationary headlines & statements, but everything isn’t black & white.

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The deceased chain letter and email forward has been reincarnated to blog tagging. This round seems to have picked up some steam. I got tagged from Trose. He may call himself a D list blogger, but that means I’m totally off the grid. Much like the rest of Seattle the last couple days.

So here are my 5 fun facts:

1. My grandpa could have run a front for the Iowa mafia, but turned them down
Who would have even guessed there would be such a thing as the Iowa mafia…let alone that they would need a front. Still. It would have been sweet if I was a card-carrying member of the mafiosa. I wish I could have gotten the full story from him before he was sleeping with the fishes.

2. like Todd, i also was a waiter for many years.
That all came to a crashing halt when a customer at chili’s found a handle from the mashed potato machine sticking out of his side and loudly and intensely complained. I laughed, he got madder, I realized my subservient days had to be over.

3. I was a pipsqueak when I was young.
I had to sit on phonebooks to take my driver test because i was so small (no, i didn’t pass it the first time. let the hazing begin). Until i turned 21, my license had me at 105lbs 5′4″ - which at the time was even a lie to make me seem bigger

4. Most interesting brush w/ fame was when Prince’s car ran out of gas at my bus stop in 4th grade.
It was a white convertible with a purple top. He was just getting home - 7am-ish - and asked us to use one of our parents’ phones. i didn’t know who he was at the time, but I think he may have been the only person at the busstop who was smaller than me.

5. I proposed to my wife through a website (noraanddarren.com)

Since I don’t even have 5 regular readers, let alone 5 that have blogs, it’s going to be tough to tag 5 people.
1. Chase
2. Marshal
3. Jeff
4. John
5. my most frequent visitor: random dude from torrence, ca that shows up in logs