Have You Ever Noticed How Dumb Slate Is?

I sure have. Sometimes it is simple ignorance that gets the best of them, as in this piece about the Catholic theological idea of Limbo.

Though the Vatican has effectively done an about-face, it won't directly state that limbo never existed. Instead, it says that official church dogma never included the concept and that limbo remains a "possible theological hypothesis." Why the hemming and hawing? The church can't admit to going against hundreds of years of theological interpretation. Such a reversal would be a sign of error. And since the Roman Catholic Church is imbued with the Holy Spirit, it can never be wrong.

Of course much would be settled if the writer of this had any idea what it means for something to be Catholic dogma as opposed to theological opinion. As can clearly be seen in this article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, there has been a long tradition of Catholic opinion in favor of limbo, but it never been announced as a dogmatic principle of faith. Therefore, there is no "hemming and hawing" here. This is simply the annunciation of another venerable theological opinion dating back to the theology of St. Augustine. Slate seems to assume that what is or isn't actual dogma is incidental to the discussion.

That's really, really dumb.

And the crack about the Holy Spirit is so dim-witted and ill-informed it's not worth fisking.

Another consistently dumb thing has been the daily "forecast" of the possible departure of Alberto Gonzalez. It has gone up as high as 95%, but there he remains. And this has been going on for weeks.

Let's think about the numbers here. Were you to flip a coin once a day for three weeks and the first time it came up tails you would have to quit your job, do you know what the chances are that you wouldn't have had to quit? 1 in 2,097,152.

So at an average of 85% chance of leaving per day, what is the chance that Alberto would still be around after three weeks? Roughly 1 in 30,072,865,982,171,749.

This is incredibly dumb, because anyone who has watched Bush at all over the last 6 years knows he will hold onto dead weight the way a cat holds onto a dead bird.

UPDATE:

Oops! I double checked my numbers and the chance on Gonzalez should not have been 1 in 30,072,865,982,171,749. It should have been 1 in 200,485,773,214,478,329.

My humble apologies. Although I'm sure you all caught the error without my pointing it out. "What an idiot! He used (1/.15)^20 instead of (1/.15)^21!"