In this futuristic dystopia, one man seeks out and hunts down errors in the internet, a man called the Blade Runner Editing Detective. These are his futuristic cyber-tales.
On About.com, an informative web-zone with many articles, one stands out as being riddled with errors. What error is this, one might ask? Octopi. In an article about mollusks, the mollusk in question is improperly pluralized. Although octopus is indeed a foreign word, it is not a Latin word. 'Octopi' is incorrect because it applies Latin pluralization conventions to a Greek word. Properly, it ought to be either octopodes, which applies Greek naming conventions, or more simply, octopuses. Ironically enough, 'octopodes' is unrecognized by the spell-checker, while "octopi" is recognized. Despite this, it must be fought. Fought by the EDITING DETECTIVE.
The editing detective lives in a world with many enemies. One such enemy, far greater than his other enemy, grammatical error, is the vile factual error. In his quest to hunt down and terminate factual errors, the Editing detective goes to Fox News, a wretched hive of scum and villainy in which many a factual error is to be found. He found something worse. The worst argumentative fallacy. A hulking monstrosity known as Argumentum ad Hitlerum. In a Fox News opinion piece, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is compared to Hitler, and Obama (for this is Fox News) is called a "Holocaust enabler" if he does not take a tough stance on Iran's nuclear program. It is awful to use such hyperbole. In fact, in the futuristic cyber-world of the internet, bringing up Hitler in argumentation, if the argument is not explicitly about Hitler or Nazis, is viewed as an automatic argument-loser. It's ridiculous to compare Iran having a nuclear program to the Holocaust. Iran is no-where near as powerful as Germany was, and any nuclear attack on Israel by Iran would be tantamount to national suicide.
Picture made by me using Blade Runner promotional poster.
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