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Mary Rodgers

Mary Rodgers (January 11, 1931 – June 26, 2014) was an American composer, screenwriter, and author. She wrote the novel Freaky Friday, which served as the basis of a 1976 film starring Jodie Foster, for which she wrote the screenplay, as well as three other versions. Her best-known musicals were Once Upon a Mattress and The Mad Show, and she contributed songs to Marlo Thomas' successful children's album Free to Be... You and Me.

Early life
Rodgers was born in New York City. She was a daughter of composer Richard Rodgers and his wife, Dorothy Belle (née Feiner). She had a sister, Mrs. Linda Emory. She attended the Brearley School in Manhattan, and majored in music at Wellesley College.

She began writing music at the age of 16 and her professional career began with writing songs for Little Golden Records, which were albums for children with three-minute songs. One of these recordings, "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves", which was released in 1957, featured performances by Bing Crosby of songs Mary Rodgers wrote with lyricist Sammy Cahn. She also composed music for television, including the jingle for the Prince Spaghetti commercial.

Career
Her first full-length musical, Once Upon a Mattress, which was also her first collaboration with lyricist Marshall Barer (with whom she continued to write songs for nearly a decade), opened Off Broadway in May 1959 and moved to Broadway later in the year. Following the show's initial run of 244 performances, there were a US tour (in 1960), a production in London's West End (also 1960), three televised productions (in 1964, 1972, and 2005), and a Broadway revival (1996). Cast albums were released for the original Broadway production, the original London production, and the Broadway revival. To this day, the show is frequently performed by community and school groups across the United States.

Another significant compositional project for her was The Mad Show, a musical revue based on Mad magazine which opened Off Broadway in January 1966 and ran for a total of 871 performances. An original cast album, produced by Goddard Lieberson, was released on Columbia Masterworks. Although the show also began as a collaboration with Marshall Barer, he quit before the project was completed and the show's remaining songs feature lyrics by Larry Siegel (co-author of the show's book), Steven Vinaver, and Stephen Sondheim, who contributed the lyrics to a parody of "The Girl from Ipanema" called "The Boy From..." under the pseudonym Esteban Ria Nido.

None of her other shows had the same level of success, but she also wrote music for musicals and revues, the first on Broadway being Davy Jones' Locker with Bil Baird's marionettes, which had a two-week run at the Morosco Theatre from March 28 to April 11, 1959. (She also wrote the lyrics.)  Others included From A to Z (1960), Hot Spot (1963), Working (1978), and Phyllis Newman's one-woman show The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979). A revue of Rodgers's music titled Hey, Love, conceived and directed by Richard Maltby Jr. ran in June 1993 at Eighty-Eight's in New York City.

She eventually transitioned into writing children's books, most notably Freaky Friday (1972), which was made into a feature film (released 1976) for which Rodgers wrote the screenplay, and was remade for television in 1995, and again for cinemas in 2003. Rodgers' other children's books include The Rotten Book (1969), A Billion for Boris (1974, later republished under the title ESP TV), and Summer Switch (1982), and she contributed songs to the landmark children's album Free to Be... You and Me. She made a few brief forays back into writing for musical theater, including an adaptation of her book Freaky Friday (featuring music and lyrics by John Forster), which was presented by Theatreworks/USA in 1991, and The Griffin and the Minor Canon, which was produced by Music Theatre Group, but after the latter show she never composed another note of music and never even played the piano again. She later explained, "I had a pleasant talent but not an incredible talent ... I was not my father or my son. And you have to abandon all kinds of things."

Personal life
Her first husband, whom she married in December 1951, was lawyer Julian B. Beaty, Jr.; they had three children. This marriage ended in 1957. She and her second husband, film executive Henry Guettel, had three sons, including Adam, a Tony Award-winning musical theater composer. Henry died in October 2013 at the age of 85.

Mary Rodgers was a director of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization and a board member of ASCAP. She also served for several years as chairman of the Juilliard School.

She died from heart failure at her home in Manhattan on June 26, 2014.

title: Mary Rodgers


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Legend

A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants, may include miracles. Legends may be transformed over time to keep them fresh and vital.

Many legends operate within the realm of uncertainty, never being entirely believed by the participants, but also never being resolutely doubted. Legends are sometimes distinguished from myths in that they concern human beings as the main characters and do not necessarily have supernatural origins, and sometimes in that they have some sort of historical basis whereas myths generally do not. The Brothers Grimm defined legend as "folktale historically grounded". A by-product of the "concern with human beings" is the long list of legendary creatures, leaving no "resolute doubt" that legends are "historically grounded."

A modern folklorist's professional definition of legend was proposed by Timothy R. Tangherlini in 1990: "Legend, typically, is a short (mono-) episodic, traditional, highly ecotypified historicized narrative performed in a conversational mode, reflecting on a psychological level a symbolic representation of folk belief and collective experiences and serving as a reaffirmation of commonly held values of the group to whose tradition it belongs."

Etymology and origin

Legend is a loanword from Old French that entered English usage c. 1340. The Old French noun legende derives from the Medieval Latin legenda. In its early English-language usage, the word indicated a narrative of an event. The word legendary was originally a noun (introduced in the 1510s) meaning a collection or corpus of legends. This word changed to legendry, and legendary became the adjectival form.

By 1613, English-speaking Protestants began to use the word when they wished to imply that an event (especially the story of any saint not acknowledged in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments) was fictitious. Thus, legend gained its modern connotations of "undocumented" and "spurious", which distinguish it from the meaning of chronicle.

In 1866, Jacob Grimm described the fairy tale as "poetic, legend historic." Early scholars such as Friedrich Ranke and Will Erich Peuckert followed Grimm's example in focussing solely on the literary narrative, an approach that was enriched particularly after the 1960s, by addressing questions of performance and the anthropological and psychological insights provided in considering legends' social context. Questions of categorising legends, in hopes of compiling a content-based series of categories on the line of the Aarne–Thompson folktale index, provoked a search for a broader new synthesis. In an early attempt at defining some basic questions operative in examining folk tales, in 1925 characterised the folk legend as "a popular narrative with an objectively untrue imaginary content", a dismissive position that was subsequently largely abandoned.

Compared to the highly structured folktale, legend is comparatively amorphous, Helmut de Boor noted in 1928. The narrative content of legend is in realistic mode, rather than the wry irony of folktale; Wilhelm Heiske remarked on the similarity of motifs in legend and folktale and concluded that, in spite of its realistic mode, legend is not more historical than folktale.

In Einleitung in der Geschichtswissenschaft (1928), Ernst Bernheim asserted that a legend is simply a longstanding rumour. Gordon Allport credited the staying-power of some rumours to the persistent cultural state-of-mind that they embody and capsulise; thus "Urban legends" are a feature of rumour. When Willian Hugh Jansen suggested that legends that disappear quickly were "short-term legends" and the persistent ones be termed "long-term legends", the distinction between legend and rumour was effectively obliterated, Tangherlini concluded.

Christian legenda
In a narrow Christian sense, legenda ("things to be read [on a certain day, in church]") were hagiographical accounts, often collected in a legendary. Because saints' lives are often included in many miracle stories, legend, in a wider sense, came to refer to any story that is set in a historical context, but that contains supernatural, divine or fantastic elements.

Oral tradition
History preserved orally through many generations often takes on a more narrative-based or mythological form over time, an example being the oral traditions of the African Great Lakes.

Related concepts

Hippolyte Delehaye distinguished legend from myth: "The legend, on the other hand, has, of necessity, some historical or topographical connection. It refers imaginary events to some real personage, or it localizes romantic stories in some definite spot."

From the moment a legend is retold as fiction, its authentic legendary qualities begin to fade and recede: in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving transformed a local Hudson River Valley legend into a literary anecdote with "Gothic" overtones, which actually tended to diminish its character as genuine legend.

Stories that exceed the boundaries of "realism" are called "fables". For example, the talking animal formula of Aesop identifies his brief stories as fables, not legends. The parable of the Prodigal Son would be a legend if it were told as having actually happened to a specific son of a historical father. If it included a donkey that gave sage advice to the Prodigal Son it would be a fable.

Legend may be transmitted orally, passed on person-to-person, or, in the original sense, through written text. Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea or "The Golden Legend" comprises a series of vitae or instructive biographical narratives, tied to the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. They are presented as lives of the saints, but the profusion of miraculous happenings and above all their uncritical context are characteristics of hagiography. The Legenda was intended to inspire extemporized homilies and sermons appropriate to the saint of the day.

Urban legend
Urban legends are a modern genre of folklore that is rooted in local popular culture, usually comprising fictional stories that are often presented as true, with macabre or humorous elements. These legends can be used for entertainment purposes, as well as semi-serious explanations for seemingly-mysterious events, such as disappearances and strange objects.

The term "urban legend," as generally used by folklorists, has appeared in print since at least 1968. Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of English at the University of Utah, introduced the term to the general public in a series of popular books published beginning in 1981. Brunvand used his collection of legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings (1981) to make two points: first, that legends and folklore do not occur exclusively in so-called primitive or traditional societies, and second, that one could learn much about urban and modern culture by studying such tales.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Legend


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Frederick Loewe

Frederick Loewe (, originally German Friedrich (Fritz) Löwe ; June 10, 1901 – February 14, 1988 ) was an American composer. He collaborated with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on a series of Broadway musicals, including Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot, all of which were made into films, as well as the original film musical Gigi (1958), which was first transferred to the stage in 1973.

Biography
Loewe was born in Berlin (Charlottenburg), Germany, to Viennese parents Edmund and Rosa Loewe. His father was a noted Jewish operetta star who performed throughout Europe and in North and South America; he starred as Count Danilo in the 1906 Berlin production of The Merry Widow.

Loewe grew up in Berlin and attended a Prussian cadet school from the age of five until he was thirteen. At an early age Loewe learned to play piano by ear and helped his father rehearse, and he began composing songs at age seven. He eventually attended the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, one year behind virtuoso Claudio Arrau, and studied with Ferruccio Busoni and Eugene d'Albert. He won the coveted Hollander Medal awarded by the school and gave performances as a concert pianist while still in Germany. At 13, he was the youngest piano soloist ever to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic.

In 1924, his father received an offer to appear in New York City, and Loewe traveled there with him, determined to write for Broadway. This proved to be difficult, and he took other odd jobs, including cattle punching, gold mining and prize fighting. He eventually found work playing piano in German clubs in Yorkville and in movie theaters as the accompanist for silent films. In 1931, he married Ernestine Zerline. Childless, they divorced in 1957.

Loewe began to visit the Lambs Club, a hangout for theater performers, producers, managers and directors. He credited The Lambs for keeping him working until his career expanded, and left a share of his royalties of Brigadoon to The Lambs Foundation. He met Alan Jay Lerner there in 1942. Their first collaboration was a musical adaptation of Barry Connor's farce The Patsy, called Life of the Party, for a Detroit stock company. It enjoyed a nine-week run and encouraged the duo to join forces with Arthur Pierson for What's Up?, which opened on Broadway in 1943. It ran for 63 performances and was followed by The Day Before Spring, which ran on Broadway from November 1945 to April 1946.

Their first hit was Brigadoon, a romantic fantasy set in a mystical Scottish village, directed by Robert Lewis with choreography by Agnes de Mille. The musical ran on Broadway from March 1947 to July 1948 and won the 1947 New York Drama Critics' Circle award as Best Musical. It spawned the songs "Almost Like Being in Love" and "The Heather on the Hill", both of which became standards. It was followed in 1951 by the less successful Gold Rush story Paint Your Wagon, which despite its lukewarm critical reception included several songs which went on to become popular, including "Wand'rin' Star" and "They Call the Wind Maria".

In 1956, Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady was produced on Broadway. Their adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, with the leads, Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, being played originally by Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, was a huge hit on Broadway and in London. The musical won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer took notice and commissioned them to write the film musical Gigi (1958), which won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Their next Broadway musical was Camelot in 1960. The production starred Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. According to Playbill, "The show achieved an unprecedented advance sale of three and a half million dollars, propelled in part by a preview on the Ed Sullivan Show that featured its stars, Richard Burton and Julie Andrews." Camelot ran for 873 performances.

Loewe then decided to retire to Palm Springs, California, where he bought a home in 1960. For many years he did not write anything until he was approached by Lerner to augment the Gigi film score with additional tunes for a 1973 stage adaptation, which won him his second Tony, this time for Best Original Score.

In 1974, they collaborated on a musical film version of The Little Prince, based on the classic children's tale by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. This film was a critical failure, but the soundtrack recording and the film itself are in print on CD and DVD. Loewe and Lerner were nominated for the 1974 Academy Award for Best Song and Best Adapted or Original Song Score (with Angela Morley and Douglas Gamley).

Loewe was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972. Seven years later, in 1979, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Loewe remained in Palm Springs until his death at 86. The cause of death was cardiac arrest, according to John F. Morris, an artist and longtime friend. He had a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated to him in 1995. He was buried in the Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.

title: Frederick Loewe


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Moss Hart

Moss Hart (October 24, 1904 – December 20, 1961) was an American playwright, librettist, and theater director.

Early years
Hart was born in New York City, the son of Lillian (Solomon) and Barnett Hart, a cigar maker. He had a younger brother, Bernard. He grew up in relative poverty with his English-born Jewish immigrant parents in the Bronx and in Sea Gate, Brooklyn.

In his youth, he had a strong relationship with his Aunt Kate, with whom he later was to lose contact due to a falling out between her and his parents, and Kate's weakening mental state. She piqued his interest in the theater, taking him to see performances often. Hart even went so far as to create an "alternate ending" to her life in his book Act One. He writes that she died while he was working on out-of-town tryouts for The Beloved Bandit. In later life, Kate had become eccentric and then disturbed, vandalizing Hart's home, writing threatening letters and setting fires backstage during rehearsals for Jubilee, yet his relationship with her had been formative. He learned that the theater made possible "the art of being somebody else … not a scrawny boy with bad teeth, a funny name … and a mother who was a distant drudge."

Hart's first glimpse of Broadway came in 1919 when he was 14 years old. He later recounted exiting the subway at Times Square and standing agog at the urban tableau before him: "A swirling mob of shouting happy people... confetti and paper streamers... soldiers and sailors climbed happily onto the tops of taxis, grabbing girls up to dance with them. My first thought was 'Of course, that's just the way I thought it would be.'" Unbeknownst to Hart, his arrival had coincided with the signing of the armistice that ended World War One.

Career
After working several years as a director of amateur theatrical groups and an entertainment director at summer resorts, he scored his first Broadway hit with Once in a Lifetime (1930), a farce about the arrival of the sound era in Hollywood. The play was written in collaboration with Broadway veteran George S. Kaufman, who regularly wrote with others, notably Marc Connelly and Edna Ferber. (Kaufman also performed in the play's original Broadway cast in the role of a frustrated playwright hired by Hollywood) and produced by Sam Harris. Hart's agent at this time was Frieda Fishbein, who brought a lawsuit against Hart, contending she was entitled to a percentage of the royalties from plays produced by Harris. The matter was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

During the next decade, Kaufman and Hart teamed on a string of successes, including You Can't Take It with You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). Though Kaufman had hits with others, Hart is generally conceded to be his most important collaborator.

You Can't Take It With You, the story of an eccentric family and how they live during the Depression, won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for drama. It is Hart's most-revived play. When director Frank Capra and writer Robert Riskin adapted it for the screen in 1938, the film won the Best Picture Oscar and Capra won for Best Director.

The Man Who Came To Dinner is about the caustic Sheridan Whiteside who, after injuring himself slipping on ice, must stay in a Midwestern family's house. The character was based on Kaufman and Hart's friend, critic Alexander Woollcott. Other characters in the play are based on Noël Coward, Harpo Marx and Gertrude Lawrence.

Throughout the 1930s, Hart worked both with and without Kaufman on several musicals and revues, including Face the Music (1932); As Thousands Cheer (1933), with songs by Irving Berlin; Jubilee (musical) (1935), with songs by Cole Porter; and I'd Rather Be Right (1937), with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. (Lorenz Hart and Moss Hart were not related.) After George Washington Slept Here (1940), Kaufman and Hart called it quits. Hart continued to write plays after parting with Kaufman, such as Christopher Blake (1946) and Light Up the Sky (1948), as well as the book for the musical Lady In The Dark (1941), with songs by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin. However, he became best known during this period as a director. Among the Broadway hits he staged were Junior Miss (1941), Dear Ruth (1944) and Anniversary Waltz (1954). By far his biggest hit was the musical My Fair Lady (1956), adapted from George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The show ran over six years and won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Hart picked up the Tony for Best Director. Hart also wrote some screenplays, including Gentleman's Agreement (1947) – for which he received an Oscar nomination – Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and A Star Is Born (1954). He wrote a memoir, Act One: An Autobiography by Moss Hart, which was released in 1959. It was adapted to film in 1963, with George Hamilton portraying Hart. The last show Hart directed was the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot (1960). During a troubled out-of-town tryout, Hart had a heart attack. The show opened before he fully recovered, but he and Lerner reworked it after the opening. That, along with huge pre-sales and a cast performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, helped ensure the expensive production was a hit.

In 1950 Hart was host of the game show Answer Yes or No on NBC television.

Guild presidency
Hart was the tenth president of the Dramatists Guild of America, from 1947 until 1956, when Oscar Hammerstein II became his successor.

Personal life
Hart married Kitty Carlisle on August 10, 1946; they had two children.

Death
Moss Hart died of a heart attack at the age of 57 on December 20, 1961, at his winter home in Palm Springs, California. He was entombed in a crypt at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Legacy
In 1972, 11 years after his death, Moss Hart was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, one of 23 people to be selected into the Hall of Fame's first induction class that year. Alan Jay Lerner paid tribute to Hart in his memoir, The Street Where I Live.

Moss Hart Awards
The New England Theatre Conference offers the Moss Hart Memorial Award at their annual convention to theater groups in New England that put forth imaginative productions of exemplary scripts. These awards are designed to honor Moss Hart as well as the award recipients. Past winners include Wellesley Repertory Theatre, Staples Players, and Suffield Academy.

Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle Hart New Play Initiative
Developed as an offshoot of the very successful New Play Initiative of Burbank, California's Grove Theater Center, the Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle Hart New Play Initiative (Hart NPI) expands the program to one of the few programs of its kind where a playwright will be guaranteed a production of his/her play in Los Angeles (Burbank), as well as an Off-Broadway Premiere at 59E59 Theaters in New York City. The GTC New Play Initiative is the brainchild of producers Charles Johanson and Kevin Cochran (founders of Grove Theater Center) and its expansion to a truly bi-coastal program with the focus on the author and their vision for their work. The Hart NPI is under the leadership of Moss Hart's son Christopher Hart (artistic director), Kevin Cochran (producing artistic director) and Charles Johanson (executive director). In the first Hart NPI play cycle (2017-2018) there were 1,243 submissions from 44 states and 6 countries!. The Hart NPI will select 16-21 semifinalists, which will then be narrowed down to eight finalists and the eight will be narrowed down to the winners: Four Bronze Hart NPI winners will have a reading of their play at 59E59 Theaters, two Silver Hart NPI winners will have a production of their play in Los Angeles (Burbank), CA at the GTC Burbank and the Gold Hart NPI winner will have an Off-Broadway premiere at 59E59 Theaters. Dr. Catherine Hart (Moss and Kitty's daughter, who also serves on the board of trustees of the Hart NPI) said that "Having a program like this in Moss & Kitty's name would have made them proud."

Work

 * Plays
 * 1930 Once In A Lifetime (Kaufman and Hart)
 * 1934 Merrily We Roll Along (Kaufman and Hart)
 * 1936 You Can't Take It with You (Kaufman and Hart; Pulitzer Prize winner)
 * 1937 I'd Rather Be Right (Kaufman and Hart)
 * 1938 The Fabulous Invalid (Kaufman and Hart)
 * 1939 The American Way (Kaufman and Hart)
 * 1939 The Man Who Came to Dinner (Kaufman and Hart)
 * 1940 George Washington Slept Here (Kaufman and Hart)
 * 1941 Lady in the Dark, with Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin
 * 1943 Winged Victory
 * 1948 Light Up the Sky

 * Screenplays
 * 1944 Winged Victory
 * 1947 Gentleman's Agreement
 * 1952 Hans Christian Andersen
 * 1954 A Star Is Born

 * Director
 * 1941 Lady in the Dark
 * 1941 Junior Miss
 * 1943 Winged Victory
 * 1944 Dear Ruth
 * 1945 The Secret Room
 * 1946 Christopher Blake
 * 1948 Light Up the Sky
 * 1949 Miss Liberty
 * 1952 The Climate of Eden
 * 1954 Anniversary Waltz
 * 1956 My Fair Lady
 * 1960 Camelot

 * Autobiography
 * 1959 (1989)

title: Moss Hart


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I'd Rather Be Right

I'd Rather Be Right is a 1937 musical with a book by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and music by Richard Rodgers. The story is a Depression-era political satire set in New York City about Washington politics and political figures such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The plot centers on Peggy Jones (Joy Hodges) and her boyfriend Phil (Austin Marshall), who needs a raise in order for them to get married. The President steps in and solves their dilemma.

Production
I'd Rather Be Right premiered on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on November 2, 1937, produced by Sam H. Harris. It transferred to the Music Box Theatre, and ran for 290 performances. It starred George M. Cohan as Franklin D. Roosevelt. In such pieces as "Off the Record", Cohan, as FDR, danced—not possible in real life for the President.

Reception
H. G. Wells wrote enthusiastically about the musical, and Cohan's performance as Roosevelt, in an article "The Fall in America 1937", published in Collier's on January 28, 1938, and reprinted in his World Brain (1938).

Cultural references
The musical is prominently featured in the 1942 Cohan biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which it serves as a narrative bookend. James Cagney, playing Cohan, after meeting FDR in the Oval Office, performs a joyous tap dance as he walks back down the stairs of the White House. In the film, we also see Cagney as Cohan performing "Off the Record" during the show's run. Because the film was made during World War II, the film also anachronistically added some morale-boosting lyrics at the end of the song.

Act I

 * "A Homogeneous Cabinet"—Cabinet Members
 * "Have You Met Miss Jones?"—Peggy Jones and Phil Barker
 * "Take and Take and Take"—The Judge's Girl and Ensemble
 * "Spring in Vienna"—Tony
 * "A Little Bit of Constitutional Fun"—The Judge's Girl and Ensemble
 * "Sweet Sixty-Five"—Peggy Jones and Phil Barker
 * "We're Going to Balance the Budget"—The President of the United States and Company

Act II

 * "American Couple"—Ensemble
 * "Labor Is the Thing"—James B. Maxwell and Ensemble
 * "I'd Rather Be Right"—Peggy Jones, Phil Barker, The Judge's Girl, The President of the United States and Ensemble
 * "Off the Record"—The President of the United States
 * "A Baby Bond"—The Secretary of the Treasury

title: I'd Rather Be Right


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Euchromatin

Euchromatin (also called "open chromatin") is a lightly packed form of chromatin (DNA, RNA, and protein) that is enriched in genes, and is often (but not always) under active transcription. Euchromatin stands in contrast to heterochromatin, which is tightly packed and less accessible for transcription. 92% of the human genome is euchromatic.

In eukaryotes, euchromatin comprises the most active portion of the genome within the cell nucleus. In prokaryotes, euchromatin is the only form of chromatin present; this indicates that the heterochromatin structure evolved later along with the nucleus, possibly as a mechanism to handle increasing genome size.

Structure
Euchromatin is composed of repeating subunits known as nucleosomes, reminiscent of an unfolded set of beads on a string, that are approximately 11 nm in diameter. At the core of these nucleosomes are a set of four histone protein pairs: H3, H4, H2A, and H2B. Each core histone protein possesses a 'tail' structure, which can vary in several ways; it is thought that these variations act as "master control switches" through different methylation and acetylation states, which determine the overall arrangement of the chromatin. Approximately 147 base pairs of DNA are wound around the histone octamers, or a little less than 2 turns of the helix. Nucleosomes along the strand are linked together via the histone, H1, and a short space of open linker DNA, ranging from around 0-80 base pairs. The key distinction between the structure of euchromatin and heterochromatin is that the nucleosomes in euchromatin are much more widely spaced, which allows for easier access of different protein complexes to the DNA strand and thus increased gene transcription.

Appearance
Euchromatin resembles a set of beads on a string at large magnifications. From farther away, it can resemble a ball of tangled thread, such as in some electron microscope visualizations. In both optical and electron microscopic visualizations, euchromatin appears lighter in color than heterochromatin - which is also present in the nucleus and appears darkly - due to its less compact structure. When visualizing chromosomes, such as in a karyogram, cytogenetic banding is used to stain the chromosomes. Cytogenetic banding allows us to see which parts of the chromosome are made up of euchromatin or heterochromatin in order to differentiate chromosomal subsections, irregularities or rearrangements. One such example is G banding, otherwise known as Giemsa staining where euchromatin appears lighter than heterochromatin.

Transcription
Euchromatin participates in the active transcription of DNA to mRNA products. The unfolded structure allows gene regulatory proteins and RNA polymerase complexes to bind to the DNA sequence, which can then initiate the transcription process. While not all euchromatin is necessarily transcribed, as the euchromatin is divided into transcriptionally active and inactive domains, euchromatin is still generally associated with active gene transcription. There is therefore a direct link to how actively productive a cell is and the amount of euchromatin that can be found in its nucleus.

It is thought that the cell uses transformation from euchromatin into heterochromatin as a method of controlling gene expression and replication, since such processes behave differently on densely compacted chromatin. This is known as the 'accessibility hypothesis'. One example of constitutive euchromatin that is 'always turned on' is housekeeping genes, which code for the proteins needed for basic functions of cell survival.

Epigenetics
Epigenetics involves changes in the phenotype that can be inherited without changing the DNA sequence. This can occur through many types of environmental interactions. Regarding euchromatin, post-translational modifications of the histones can alter the structure of chromatin, resulting in altered gene expression without changing the DNA. Additionally, a loss of heterochromatin and increase in euchromatin has been shown to correlate with an accelerated aging process, especially in diseases known to resemble premature aging. Research has shown epigenetic markers on histones for a number of additional diseases.

Regulation
Euchromatin is primarily regulated by post-translational modifications to its nucleosomes' histones, conducted by many histone-modifying enzymes. These modifications occur on the histones' N-terminal tails that protrude from the nucleosome structure, and are thought of to recruit enzymes to either keep the chromatin in its open form, as euchromatin, or in its closed form, as heterochromatin. Histone acetylation, for instance, is typically associated with euchromatin structure, whereas histone methylation promotes heterochromatin remodeling. Acetylation makes the histone group more negatively charged, which in turn disrupts its interactions with the DNA strand, essentially "opening" the strand for easier access. Acetylation can occur on multiple lysine residues of a histone's N-terminal tail and in different histones of the same nucleosome, which is thought to further increase DNA accessibility for transcription factors.

Phosphorylation of histones is another method by which euchromatin is regulated. This tends to occur on the N-terminal tails of the histones, however some sites are present in the core. Phosphorylation is controlled by kinases and phosphatases, which add and remove the phosphate groups respectively. This can occur at serine, threonine, or tyrosine residues present in euchromatin. Since the phosphate groups added to the structure will incorporate a negative charge, it will promote the more relaxed "open" form, similar to acetylation. In regards to functionality, histone phosphorylation is involved with gene expression, DNA damage repair, and chromatin remodeling.

Another method of regulation that incorporates a negative charge, thereby favoring the "open" form, is ADP ribosylation. This process adds one or more ADP-ribose units to the histone, and is involved in the DNA damage response pathway.

title: Euchromatin


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Heterochromatin

Heterochromatin is a tightly packed form of DNA or condensed DNA, which comes in multiple varieties. These varieties lie on a continuum between the two extremes of constitutive heterochromatin and facultative heterochromatin. Both play a role in the expression of genes. Because it is tightly packed, it was thought to be inaccessible to polymerases and therefore not transcribed; however, according to Volpe et al. (2002), and many other papers since, much of this DNA is in fact transcribed, but it is continuously turned over via RNA-induced transcriptional silencing (RITS). Recent studies with electron microscopy and OsO4 staining reveal that the dense packing is not due to the chromatin.

Constitutive heterochromatin can affect the genes near itself (e.g. position-effect variegation). It is usually repetitive and forms structural functions such as centromeres or telomeres, in addition to acting as an attractor for other gene-expression or repression signals.

Facultative heterochromatin is the result of genes that are silenced through a mechanism such as histone deacetylation or Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) through RNAi. It is not repetitive and shares the compact structure of constitutive heterochromatin. However, under specific developmental or environmental signaling cues, it can lose its condensed structure and become transcriptionally active.

Heterochromatin has been associated with the di- and tri -methylation of H3K9 in certain portions of the human genome. H3K9me3-related methyltransferases appear to have a pivotal role in modifying heterochromatin during lineage commitment at the onset of organogenesis and in maintaining lineage fidelity.

Structure

Chromatin is found in two varieties: euchromatin and heterochromatin. Originally, the two forms were distinguished cytologically by how intensely they get stained – the euchromatin is less intense, while heterochromatin stains intensely, indicating tighter packing. Heterochromatin was given its name for this reason by botanist Emil Heitz who discovered that heterochromatin remained darkly stained throughout the entire cell cycle, unlike euchromatin whose stain disappeared during interphase. Heterochromatin is usually localized to the periphery of the nucleus. Despite this early dichotomy, recent evidence in both animals and plants has suggested that there are more than two distinct heterochromatin states, and it may in fact exist in four or five 'states', each marked by different combinations of epigenetic marks.

Heterochromatin mainly consists of genetically inactive satellite sequences, and many genes are repressed to various extents, although some cannot be expressed in euchromatin at all. Both centromeres and telomeres are heterochromatic, as is the Barr body of the second, inactivated X-chromosome in a female.

Function
Heterochromatin has been associated with several functions, from gene regulation to the protection of chromosome integrity; some of these roles can be attributed to the dense packing of DNA, which makes it less accessible to protein factors that usually bind DNA or its associated factors. For example, naked double-stranded DNA ends would usually be interpreted by the cell as damaged or viral DNA, triggering cell cycle arrest, DNA repair or destruction of the fragment, such as by endonucleases in bacteria.

Some regions of chromatin are very densely packed with fibers that display a condition comparable to that of the chromosome at mitosis. Heterochromatin is generally clonally inherited; when a cell divides, the two daughter cells typically contain heterochromatin within the same regions of DNA, resulting in epigenetic inheritance. Variations cause heterochromatin to encroach on adjacent genes or recede from genes at the extremes of domains. Transcribable material may be repressed by being positioned (in cis) at these boundary domains. This gives rise to expression levels that vary from cell to cell, which may be demonstrated by position-effect variegation. Insulator sequences may act as a barrier in rare cases where constitutive heterochromatin and highly active genes are juxtaposed (e.g. the 5'HS4 insulator upstream of the chicken β-globin locus, and loci in two Saccharomyces spp. ).

Constitutive heterochromatin
All cells of a given species package the same regions of DNA in constitutive heterochromatin, and thus in all cells, any genes contained within the constitutive heterochromatin will be poorly expressed. For example, all human chromosomes 1, 9, 16, and the Y-chromosome contain large regions of constitutive heterochromatin. In most organisms, constitutive heterochromatin occurs around the chromosome centromere and near telomeres.

Facultative heterochromatin
The regions of DNA packaged in facultative heterochromatin will not be consistent between the cell types within a species, and thus a sequence in one cell that is packaged in facultative heterochromatin (and the genes within are poorly expressed) may be packaged in euchromatin in another cell (and the genes within are no longer silenced). However, the formation of facultative heterochromatin is regulated, and is often associated with morphogenesis or differentiation. An example of facultative heterochromatin is X chromosome inactivation in female mammals: one X chromosome is packaged as facultative heterochromatin and silenced, while the other X chromosome is packaged as euchromatin and expressed.

Among the molecular components that appear to regulate the spreading of heterochromatin are the Polycomb-group proteins and non-coding genes such as Xist. The mechanism for such spreading is still a matter of controversy. The polycomb repressive complexes PRC1 and PRC2 regulate chromatin compaction and gene expression and have a fundamental role in developmental processes. PRC-mediated epigenetic aberrations are linked to genome instability and malignancy and play a role in the DNA damage response, DNA repair and in the fidelity of replication.

Yeast heterochromatin
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or budding yeast, is a model eukaryote and its heterochromatin has been defined thoroughly. Although most of its genome can be characterized as euchromatin, S. cerevisiae has regions of DNA that are transcribed very poorly. These loci are the so-called silent mating type loci (HML and HMR), the rDNA (encoding ribosomal RNA), and the sub-telomeric regions. Fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) uses another mechanism for heterochromatin formation at its centromeres. Gene silencing at this location depends on components of the RNAi pathway. Double-stranded RNA is believed to result in silencing of the region through a series of steps.

In the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, two RNAi complexes, the RITS complex and the RNA-directed RNA polymerase complex (RDRC), are part of an RNAi machinery involved in the initiation, propagation and maintenance of heterochromatin assembly. These two complexes localize in a siRNA-dependent manner on chromosomes, at the site of heterochromatin assembly. RNA polymerase II synthesizes a transcript that serves as a platform to recruit RITS, RDRC and possibly other complexes required for heterochromatin assembly. Both RNAi and an exosome-dependent RNA degradation process contribute to heterochromatic gene silencing. These mechanisms of Schizosaccharomyces pombe may occur in other eukaryotes. A large RNA structure called RevCen has also been implicated in the production of siRNAs to mediate heterochromatin formation in some fission yeast.

title: Heterochromatin


text:
Talk:Asterism

Untitled
The Big Dipper is also part of an existing constellation, Ursa Major. Why can't Orion's Belt be considered a separate asterism? Bryan Derksen

 * The Orion's belt is just part of Orion -he has a belt, a sword, a bow, couple of arms. The Big Dipper is a reinterpretation of the star pattern in Ursa Major - a dipper is not part of a bear.  --rmhermen

B00P 05:58, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
 * In the constellations, Orion is pictured has having a belt around his waist, but the Bear is not pictured as having a dipper in its rump. Similarly, Aquarius does have an urn, but Sagittarius doesn't have a teapot.

title: Talk:Asterism


text:
Fallacy

A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian De Sophisticis Elenchis.

Fallacies may be committed intentionally to manipulate or persuade by deception, unintentionally because of human limitations such as carelessness, cognitive or social biases and ignorance, or potentially due to the limitations of language and understanding of language. These delineations include not only the ignorance of the right reasoning standard but also the ignorance of relevant properties of the context. For instance, the soundness of legal arguments depends on the context in which they are made.

Fallacies are commonly divided into "formal" and "informal". A formal fallacy is a flaw in the structure of a deductive argument that renders the argument invalid, while an informal fallacy originates in an error in reasoning other than an improper logical form. Arguments containing informal fallacies may be formally valid, but still fallacious.

A special case is a mathematical fallacy, an intentionally invalid mathematical proof with a concealed, or subtle, error. Mathematical fallacies are typically crafted and exhibited for educational purposes, usually taking the form of false proofs of obvious contradictions.

Overview
Fallacies are types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound. According to The New Handbook of Cognitive Therapy Techniques, they include "unsubstantiated assertions that are often delivered with a conviction that makes them sound as though they are proven facts." Informal fallacies, in particular, are frequently found in mass media such as television and newspapers. Understanding fallacies may allow one to recognize them in either one's own or others' writing. Avoiding fallacies may help improve one's ability to produce sound arguments.

It can be difficult to evaluate whether an argument is fallacious, as arguments exist along a continuum of soundness and an argument that has several stages or parts might have some sound sections and some fallacious ones. Moreover, whether a specific argument is fallacious often depends on the content rather than the form of the argument. An example is a probabilistically valid instance of the formally invalid argument form of denying the antecedent or affirming the consequent. Thus, "fallacious arguments usually have the deceptive appearance of being good arguments, because for most fallacious instances of an argument form, a similar but non-fallacious instance can be found." Evaluating an instance of an argument as fallacious is therefore often a matter of evaluating the context of the argument.

Recognizing fallacies in everyday arguments may be difficult since arguments are often embedded in rhetorical patterns that obscure the logical connections between statements. Informal fallacies may also exploit the emotional, intellectual, or psychological weaknesses of the audience. Recognizing fallacies can develop reasoning skills to expose the weaker links between premises and conclusions to better discern between what appears to be true and what is true.

Argumentation theory provides a different approach to understanding and classifying fallacies. In the pragma-dialectical theory, for instance, an argument is regarded as an interactive protocol between individuals who attempt to resolve their disagreement on the merits of a case. The protocol consists of normative rules of interaction, and violations of these rules are considered fallacies because they frustrate the attempt at resolving the disagreement.

Fallacies are used in place of valid reasoning to communicate a point with the intention to persuade. Examples in the mass media today include but are not limited to propaganda, advertisements, politics, newspaper editorials, and opinion-based news shows.

Systems of classification
Fallacies are generally classified strictly by either their structure or their content, such as by classifying them as formal fallacies or informal fallacies, respectively. The classification of informal fallacies may be subdivided into categories such as linguistic, relevance through omission, relevance through intrusion, and relevance through presumption. Alternatively, fallacies may be classified by the process by which they occur, such as material fallacies (content), verbal fallacies (linguistic), and formal fallacies (error in inference). In turn, material fallacies may be placed into the more general category of informal fallacies. Verbal fallacies may be placed in either formal or informal classifications: Compare equivocation, which is a word- or phrase-based ambiguity, to the fallacy of composition, which is premise- and inference-based ambiguity.

Greek logic
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) was the first to systematize logical errors into a list to make it easier to refute an opponent's thesis and thus win an argument. Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations identifies thirteen fallacies. He divided them up into two major types: linguistic fallacies and non-linguistic fallacies, some of which depend on language and others that do not. These fallacies are called verbal fallacies and material fallacies, respectively. A material fallacy is an error in what the arguer is talking about, while a verbal fallacy is an error in how the arguer is talking. Verbal fallacies are those in which a conclusion is obtained by improper or ambiguous use of words. An example of a language dependent fallacy is given as a debate as to who in humanity are learners: the wise or the ignorant. A language-independent fallacy is, for example:
 * 1) "Coriscus is different from Socrates."
 * 2) "Socrates is a man."
 * 3) "Therefore, Coriscus is different from a man."

Indian logic
Indian logicians took great pains to identify fallacies in arguments. An influential collection of texts on logic and reason, the Nyāya Sūtras, attributed to Aksapada Gautama, variously estimated to have been composed between the 6th century BCE and the 2nd century CE, lists in its theory of inference five such reasons used in an argument that was further developed by later logicians.

 * 1) Asiddha: It is the unproved reason that results in this fallacy. [Paksadharmata]
 * 2) Savyabhichara: This is the fallacy of irregular reason.
 * 3) Satpratipaksa: Here the reason is contradicted by another reason. If both have equal force, then nothing follows. 'Sound is eternal, because it is audible', and 'Sound is non-eternal, because it is produced'. Here 'audible' is counterbalanced by 'produced' and both are of equal force.
 * 4) Badhita: When another proof (as by perception) definitely contradicts and disproves the middle term (reason). 'Fire is cold because it is a substance'.
 * 5) Viruddha: Instead of proving something it is proving the opposite. 'Sound is eternal because it is produced'.

Whately's grouping
English scholar and theologian Richard Whately (1787–1863) defines a fallacy broadly as, "any argument, or apparent argument, which professes to be decisive of the matter at hand, while in reality it is not".

Whately divided fallacies into two groups: logical and material. According to Whately, logical fallacies are arguments where the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Material fallacies are not logical errors because the conclusion follows from the premises. He then divided the logical group into two groups: purely logical and semi-logical. The semi-logical group included all of Aristotle's sophisms except ignoratio elenchi, petitio principii, and non causa pro causa, which are in the material group.

Other systems of classification
Other famous methods of classifying fallacies are those of Francis Bacon and J. S. Mill. Bacon (Novum Organum, Aph. 33, 38 sqq.) divided fallacies into four Idola (Idols, i.e. False Appearances), which summarize the various kinds of mistakes to which the human intellect is prone. J. S. Mill discussed the subject in book five of his Logic, and Jeremy Bentham's Book of Fallacies (1824) contains valuable remarks.

Formal fallacy
A formal fallacy, deductive fallacy, logical fallacy or non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow") is a flaw in the structure of a deductive argument that renders the argument invalid. The flaw can be expressed in the standard system of logic. Such an argument is always considered to be wrong. The presence of the formal fallacy does not imply anything about the argument's premises or its conclusion. Both may actually be true or may even be more probable as a result of the argument, but the deductive argument is still invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises in the manner described.

Even non-deductive arguments can be said to be fallacious: for example, an inductive argument that incorrectly applies principles of probability or causality. But "since deductive arguments depend on formal properties and inductive arguments don't, formal fallacies apply only to deductive arguments."

A logical form such as "A and B" is independent of any particular conjunction of meaningful propositions. Logical form alone can guarantee that, given true premises, a true conclusion must follow. However, formal logic makes no such guarantee if any premise is false; the conclusion can be either true or false. Any formal error or logical fallacy similarly invalidates the deductive guarantee. Both the argument and all its premises must be true for a conclusion to be true.

The term logical fallacy is in a sense self-contradictory because logic refers to valid reasoning, whereas a fallacy is the use of poor reasoning. Therefore, the term formal fallacy is preferred. In informal discourse, however, logical fallacy is used to mean an argument that is problematic for any reason.

The term non sequitur denotes a general formal fallacy, often meaning one that does not belong to any named subclass of formal fallacies, like affirming the consequent.

Ecological fallacy
An ecological fallacy is committed when one draws an inference from data based on the premise that qualities observed for groups necessarily hold for individuals; for example, "if countries with more Protestants tend to have higher suicide rates, then Protestants must be more likely to commit suicide."

Fallacy fork
Maarten Boudry and others have argued that formal, deductive fallacies rarely occur in real life and that arguments that would be fallacious in formally deductive terms are not necessarily so when context and prior probabilities are taken into account, thus making the argument defeasible and/or inductive. Boudry coined the term fallacy fork. For a given fallacy, one must either characterize it by means of a deductive argumentation scheme, which rarely applies (the first prong of the fork), or one must relax definitions and add nuance to take the actual intent and context of the argument into account (the other prong of the fork). To argue, for example, that one became nauseated after eating a mushroom because the mushroom was poisonous could be an example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Informal fallacy
In contrast to a formal fallacy, an informal fallacy originates from a reasoning error other than a flaw in the logical form of the argument. A deductive argument containing an informal fallacy may be formally valid, but still remain rationally unpersuasive. Nevertheless, informal fallacies apply to both deductive and non-deductive arguments.

Though the form of the argument may be relevant, fallacies of this type are "types of mistakes in reasoning that arise from the mishandling of the content of the propositions constituting the argument".

Faulty generalization
A special subclass of the informal fallacies is the set of faulty generalizations, also known as inductive fallacies. Here, the most important issue concerns inductive strength or methodology (for example, statistical inference). In the absence of sufficient evidence, drawing conclusions based on induction is unwarranted and fallacious. With the backing of sufficient amounts of the right type of empirical evidence, however, the conclusions may become warranted and convincing (at which point the arguments are no longer considered fallacious).

Hasty generalization
Hasty generalization is described as making assumptions about a whole group or range of cases based on a sample that is inadequate (usually because it is atypical or just too small). Stereotypes about people ("frat boys are drunkards", "grad students are nerdy", "women don't enjoy sports", etc.) are common examples of the principle.

Hasty generalization often follows a pattern such as:

 * X is true for A.
 * X is true for B.
 * Therefore, X is true for C, D, etc.

While never a valid logical deduction, if such an inference can be made on statistical grounds, it may nonetheless be convincing. This is because with enough empirical evidence, the generalization is no longer a hasty one.

Relevance fallacy
The fallacies of relevance are a broad class of informal fallacies, generically represented by missing the point: presenting an argument that may be sound but fails to address the issue in question.

Argument from silence
An argument from silence is a faulty conclusion that is drawn based on the absence of evidence rather than on the presence of evidence.

Post hoc (false cause)
The post hoc fallacy assumes that because B comes after A, A caused B. It gets its name from the Latin phrase "post hoc, ergo propter hoc", which translates as "after this, therefore because of this".

Sometimes one event really does cause another one that comes later—for example, if one registers for a class and their name later appears on the roll, it's true that the first event caused the one that came later. But sometimes two events that seem related in time are not really related as cause and event. That is, temporal correlation does not necessarily entail causation. For example, if one eats a sandwich and then gets food poisoning, that does not necessarily mean the sandwich caused the food poisoning. Something else eaten earlier might have caused the food poisoning.

Slippery slope
For an argument to be a slippery slope type of argument, it must meet the requirements of that argumentation scheme. A slippery slope argument originates from a conversation or debate in which two actors take turns. It usually originates from one actor giving advice on a decision or act. Along the way, the actor must make additional choices on similar matters through which the actor enters the ‘grey area’ of the slippery slope. At this point, the actor potentially loses control over the direction of the arguments, thus leading to a ‘fatal’ outcome.

Such an argument is built up according to the following argumentation scheme: initial premise, sequential premise, indeterminacy premise, control premise, loss of control premise, catastrophic outcome premise, and conclusion. Slippery slope arguments may be defeated by asking critical questions or giving counterarguments.

There are several reasons for a slippery slope to be fallacious: for example, the argument is going too far into the future, it is a too complex argument whose structure is hard to identify, or the argument makes emotional appeals.

It may be that a slippery slope is not necessarily fallacious if context is taken into account and there is an effort to assess plausibility.

False analogy
Informally known as the "apples and oranges" fallacy, a false analogy uses unsound comparisons.

Straw man fallacy
The straw man fallacy refers to the refutation of a standpoint in an argument that was never proposed. The fallacy usually occurs in the presentation of an opponent's standpoint as more extreme, distorted, or simplistic than it actually is. Compared to criticizing the opponent's actual standpoint, this allows the arguer to offer a seeming refutation of what is, however, not the actual standpoint. Such an argument involves two arguers, with one criticizing the other's perspective. The reason for the straw man argument to be fallacious originates from the problem of how to deal with natural discourse. The opponent's argument is not reflected by the arguments that are proposed by the speaker.

Measurement fallacy
Some of the fallacies described above may be committed in the context of measurement. Where mathematical fallacies are subtle mistakes in reasoning leading to invalid mathematical proofs, measurement fallacies are unwarranted inferential leaps involved in the extrapolation of raw data to a measurement-based value claim. The ancient Greek Sophist Protagoras was one of the first thinkers to propose that humans can generate reliable measurements through his "human-measure" principle and the practice of dissoi logoi (arguing multiple sides of an issue). This history helps explain why measurement fallacies are informed by informal logic and argumentation theory.

Knowledge value measurement fallacy
The increasing availability and circulation of big data are driving a proliferation of new metrics for scholarly authority, and there is lively discussion regarding the relative usefulness of such metrics for measuring the value of knowledge production in the context of an "information tsunami."

For example, anchoring fallacies can occur when unwarranted weight is given to data generated by metrics that the arguers themselves acknowledge are flawed. For example, the limitations of the journal impact factor (JIF) are well documented, and even JIF pioneer Eugene Garfield notes that, "while citation data create new tools for analyses of research performance, it should be stressed that they supplement rather than replace other quantitative and qualitative indicators." To the extent that arguers jettison the acknowledged limitations of JIF-generated data in evaluative judgments or leave behind Garfield's "supplement rather than replace" caveat, they commit anchoring fallacies.

A naturalistic fallacy can occur, for example, in the case of sheer quantity metrics based on the premise "more is better" or, in the case of developmental assessment in the field of psychology, "higher is better".

A false analogy occurs when claims are supported by unsound comparisons between data points. For example, the Scopus and Web of Science bibliographic databases have difficulty distinguishing between citations of scholarly work that are arms-length endorsements, ceremonial citations, or negative citations (indicating the citing author withholds endorsement of the cited work). Hence, measurement-based value claims premised on the uniform quality of all citations may be questioned on false analogy grounds.

As another example, consider the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index of Academic Analytics. This tool purports to measure overall faculty productivity, yet it does not capture data based on citations in books. This creates a possibility that low productivity measurements using the tool commit argument from silence fallacies, to the extent that such measurements are supported by the absence of book citation data.

Ecological fallacies can be committed when one measures the scholarly productivity of a sub-group of individuals (e.g. "Puerto Rican" faculty) via reference to aggregate data about a larger and different group (e.g., "Hispanic" faculty).

Intentional fallacy
Sometimes a speaker or writer uses a fallacy intentionally. In any context, including academic debate, a conversation among friends, political discourse, advertising, or comedic purposes, the arguer may use fallacious reasoning to try to persuade the listener or reader, by means other than offering relevant evidence, that the conclusion is true.

Examples of this include the speaker or writer:

 * 1) Diverting the argument to unrelated issues with a red herring (Ignoratio elenchi)
 * 2) Insulting someone's character (argumentum ad hominem)
 * 3) Assuming the conclusion of an argument, a kind of circular reasoning, also called "begging the question" (petitio principii)
 * 4) Making jumps in logic (non sequitur)
 * 5) Identifying a false cause and effect (post hoc ergo propter hoc)
 * 6) Asserting that everyone agrees (argumentum ad populum, bandwagoning)
 * 7) Creating a false dilemma (either-or fallacy) in which the situation is oversimplified, also called false dichotomy
 * 8) Selectively using facts (card stacking)
 * 9) Making false or misleading comparisons (false equivalence or false analogy)
 * 10) Generalizing quickly and sloppily (hasty generalization) (secundum quid)
 * 11) Using an argument's connections to other concepts or people to support or refute it, also called "guilt by association" (association fallacy)
 * 12) Claiming that a lack of proof counts as proof (appeal to ignorance)

In humor, errors of reasoning are used for comical purposes. Groucho Marx used fallacies of amphiboly, for instance, to make ironic statements; Gary Larson and Scott Adams employed fallacious reasoning in many of their cartoons. Wes Boyer and Samuel Stoddard have written a humorous essay teaching students how to be persuasive by means of a whole host of informal and formal fallacies.

When someone uses logical fallacies intentionally to mislead in academic, political, or other high-stakes contexts, the breach of trust calls into question the authority and intellectual integrity of that person.

Assessment: pragmatic theory
According to the pragmatic theory, a fallacy can be either a heuristic error or a ploy used intentionally to unfairly win an argument. There are always two parties to an argument containing a fallacy: the perpetrator and the intended victim.

The dialogue framework required to support the pragmatic theory of fallacy is built on the presumption that argumentative dialogue has both an adversarial component and a collaborative component. A dialogue has individual goals for each participant as well as shared goals that apply to all participants. A fallacy of the second kind is seen as more than simply a violation of the rule of reasonable dialogue. It is also a deceptive tactic of argumentation based on sleight-of-hand. Aristotle explicitly compared contentious reasoning to unfair fighting in athletic contests. But the roots of the pragmatic theory go back even further in history, to the Sophists. The pragmatic theory finds its roots in the Aristotelian conception of a fallacy as a sophistical refutation but also supports the view that many of the types of arguments traditionally labeled as fallacies are in fact reasonable techniques of argumentation that can be used, in many cases, to support legitimate goals of dialogue. Hence, under the pragmatic approach, each case needs to be analyzed individually to determine whether the argument is fallacious or reasonable.

Historical texts

 * Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, De Sophistici Elenchi. library.adelaide.edu.au
 * William of Ockham, Summa of Logic (c. 1323) Part III.4.
 * John Buridan, Summulae de dialectica Book VII.
 * Francis Bacon, the doctrine of the idols in Novum Organum Scientiarum, Aphorisms concerning The Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man, xxiii ff . fly.hiwaay.net
 * Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy | Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten – The Art Of Controversy (bilingual), (also known as "Schopenhauers 38 stratagems"). gutenberg.org
 * John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic – Raciocinative and Inductive. Book 5, Chapter 7, Fallacies of Confusion. la.utexas.edu

title: Fallacy


text:
Cornales

The Cornales are an order of flowering plants, early diverging among the asterids, containing about 600 species. Plants within the Cornales usually have four-parted flowers, drupaceous fruits, and inferior to half-inferior gynoecia topped with disc-shaped nectaries.

Taxonomy
In the classification system of Dahlgren the Cornales were in the superorder Corniflorae (also called Cornanae). Under the APG IV system, the Cornales order includes these families:

 * Cornaceae (the dogwood family)
 * Curtisiaceae (cape lancewood)
 * Grubbiaceae (the sillyberry family)
 * Hydrangeaceae (the hydrangea family)
 * Hydrostachyaceae
 * Loasaceae (the stickleaf family)
 * Nyssaceae, (the tupelos)

The oldest fossils assigned with confidence to the order are Hironoia fusiformis, described from Coniacian age Japanese coalified fruits, and Suciacarpa starrii described from American permineralized fruits of Campanian age.

Phylogeny
The Cornales order is sister to the remainder of the large and diverse asterid clade. The Cornales are highly geographically disjunct and morphologically diverse, which has led to considerable confusion regarding the proper circumscription of the groups within the order and the relationships between them. Under the Cronquist system, the order comprised the families Cornaceae, Nyssaceae, Garryaceae, and Alangiaceae, and was placed among the Rosidae, but this interpretation is no longer followed. Many families and genera previously associated with the Cornales have been removed, including Garryaceae, Griselinia, Corokia, and Kaliphora, among others.

Likely cladogram for Cornales:

Molecular data suggest four clades are within the Cornales: Cornus-Alangium, nyssoids-mastixioids, Hydrangeaceae-Loasaceae, and Grubbia-Curtisia, with the Hydrostachyaceae in an uncertain position, possibly basal. However, the relationship between these clades is unclear, and as a result of many historical taxonomic interpretations and differing opinions regarding the significance of morphological variations, rankings of taxa within the order are inconsistent. These difficulties in interpreting the systematics of Cornales may represent an early and rapid diversification of the groups within the order.

title: Cornales