We met this straw man on Monday (October 19) in the back acres of Mainescape in Blue Hill. He was quarrelsome and refused to tell us his name, so we baptized him Stanley. He kept arguing with us by stating a fallacy and then easily refuting it.
For example, when we doubted that he could survive heavy rainstorms, Stanley retorted: “Everyone says it rains heavily every day here, but the official records show that’s untrue.” We told him that form of false response has been called a “straw man argument” or “toppling a man of straw argument” since at least 1620. He replied that we were not alive in 1620 to hear that. (Brooklin, Maine)