Ed Yong's Posterous, the aptly named Posterous account of Ed Yong

Say I said to you that bowls weren't ice-cream. You'd look at me strangely, wouldn't you? You'd probably point out that ice-cream is a thing you put in bowls and bowls are things that contain other things, including ice-cream, and that, as such, comparing bowls and ice-cream is ludicrous. You'd probably point out that while ice-cream can be served in cones or on a stick, you could put it in whatever the hell you like and it'd still be ice-cream.

Say I then suggested that it's important to state that bowls don't contain ice-cream because some people are arguing that anything in a bowl counts as ice-cream and that's clearly not true. Again, your growing sneer of derision would fall even more heavily upon me as you point out that no one in their right mind thinks that anything in a bowl counts as ice-cream, and that this is a straw-man position that doesn't exist. You might suggest that in rebutting this non-existent position, I was being a bit like a drunk person shouting at a wall. You might point out that in failing to realise that some things in bowls can patently be ice cream, I have just failed Logic 101.

Say I then told you that I had been having this debate about bowls and ice-cream for years now with no resolution in sight. You'd probably think that I was completely mental for devoting so much energy to such a non-question.

All this sounds obvious.

And yet I am constantly forced to read retrograde bollocks like this.