Critical Thinking

Critical thinking skills are often noticably absent in politics, but as a college democrat organization, I'd like to think that we value and encourage it. This silly piece from the LA Times is an excellent example in lending credence to the incredulous. Graphology is the "study" of how psychological traits are expressed through handwriting. It's not substantively different than palm reading and astrology, however.

That LA Times piece is just a bunch of astrologers graphologists interpreting the signatures of Obama, McCain, and Hillary. Their expert opinions? Obama is a great communicator, McCain is short-tempered, and Hillary is cold, but "smart and tough and stays until the last dog dies." Wow, how amazing that the graphologists came to exactly the same conclusions as clichè conventional wisdom! How could they have known if not through graphology...

I won't excerpt portions of the article for particular ridicule because it's all so equally silly. All that I'll add is that if you learn nothing else during college, at least learn to think critically.

posted by John @ Tuesday, May 13, 2008