Some of us who have studied a tiny bit of logic and philosophy will have heard of the concept known as “Occam’s Razor.” It seems Dan Rather does not know much about this, nor do those who want to continue to try to suggest the Guard Documents presented by Rather could be genuine and not hoaxes.
By way of Jay Currie, read what this computer scientist has to say about the documents. Note, he is not a Bush fan either. Just a fan of making sure hoaxes become what they should, urban legends:
“William of Occam (or Ockham), a 13th century philosopher, summed it up in what is now paraphrased as “given a choice between two explanations, choose the simpler explanation” (or as he said it, “entities are not to be multiplied without necessity”). You cannot assemble a set of assertions about what MIGHT have been possible using a variety of unrelated technologies that existed in 1972, and somehow magically combine them into a single technology that could have existed in the offices of the Texas Air National Guard, used for casual memos, and produced the memos in question that are VIRTUALLY PIXEL-LEVEL IDENTICAL TO THOSE PRODUCED BY MICROSOFT WORD.”
Check out Dr. Newcomer’s article and experiments.
There’s really not much left to be said on this. Dan Rather is:
a. Is being pimped by the Democrats
b. Really stupid
c. Is an outright liar
d. Is too ashamed he did not do his due diligence
For sake of any lawsuits against me, I guess I’ll take b. But that’s just my opinion today. I might change it tomorrow, to any of the four choices above. You decide yourself 🙂