To refuse to take note of data - of what happened - because it might affect one's views is the very definition of intellectual dishonesty and paralysis. I can respect those who are tentative in drawing conclusions from a single data set, but to say that data means nothing is nonsense. Obviously this isn't a black/white sort of thing: it is a matter of sussing out the "degree"of encouragement properly to be drawn. In such venues as this, we are subjected to such crude and childish and false dichotomies as force us to declare ourselves, for example, as either Mac haters or Mac lovers. This is silly, forming a fine basis for pissing contests, but not for sober thought. To assert either that we must change our views utterly because of one game, or that we must assert - as a way of cherishing yesterday's erroneous thinking - that the facts mean nothing is just different forms of the same silliness. Mac played a good game. That means something. As for those who have been foolish enough to deny that such a performance was possible, that's their problem. They were wrong, the facts tell us, so we ought not be surprised, I suppose, when they choose not to take note of those facts..
