Future Posts, Future possibilities

Future posts and a continuing presence both sound wonderful to me if somebody cares to keep it up. The site doesn't cost me anything, and it doesn't really cost me any upkeep.

All it requires is people willing to make entries.

If this would interest a few people, but perhaps few enough that you-all would like a larger community, one possibility would be to consolidate a community with the interested students of various classes.

Future Posts??

Can we log on to this blog in future for intellectual interactions such news or amazing stuff happening around the world, etc. ???

Just happened across this. The français says, "This is not a pipe," about as plain as that. What do you think?

It has been a pleasure...

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for an enjoyable and thought provoking class. It has been a pleasure interacting with each and every one of you, to include BC. Classes are designed to give you a better understanding of a topic or subject - this class taught me how to understand the process of gathering that information; to sort through it and determine what is possibly useful and what is "FALLACY". I thought we were in trouble when we spent the first class arguing over the existence or definition of a chair - or for that matter, whether it was a chair at all. I must admit there were days when I left class feeling like my frontal lobe was going to explode. In the end, I think this class has given me better tools to analyze life's information with - and for that I thank BC.
I wish everyone success in their future education and endeavors. Take care, and hopefully I will see some of you in future classes!

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fallacies

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fallacies

In many ads women are told that their bodies are their best assets. The messages told by advertising indicate that bodies can be commodified as products that have a use value. Ads reflect the concepts of the Only the Body trope, namely, that a woman has only her body to offer. the following ads are made more specific as women are told to use their bodies to get what they want.

The Missing Alan Johnston

On June 1, 2007, a Gaza-based Palestinian armed group calling itself "Army of Islam" released a video showing BBC reporter Alan Johnston. He has been missing since his abduction in Gaza City on March 12, 2007. The video has increased fears for Johnston's safety.
At the end of the video, which is not dated, the captors demanded the release of Abu Qatada al-Falastini, a Jordinian Muslim preacher of Palestinian origin who is currently detained in the UK on terrorism charges, and other unnamed prisoners also held in the UK. This shows that Alan Johnston's fate might be relying on the release of these prisoners. The video can be seen on the BBC website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6711047.stm

The Case of Troy Davis

Restrictions on Federal appeals have prevented Troy Anthony Davis from having a hearing in federal court on the reliability of the witness testimony used against him, despite the fact that most of the witnesses have since recanted, many stating they were pressured or coerced by police. Troy Davis remains on Georgia death row, and may be scheduled for execution in the near future.
Troy Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of Police Officer Mark Allen McPhail at a Burger King in Savannah, Georgia, a murder he maintains he did not commit. There was no physical evidence against him and the weapon used in the crime was never found. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony which contained inconsistencies even at the time of the trial. Since then, all but three of the state's non-police witnesses from the trial have recanted their testimony. Many of these witnesses have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis. One of the three witnesses who has not recanted his testimony is Sylvester "Red" Coles – the principle alternative suspect, according to the defense, against whom there is new evidence implicating him as the gunman. Nine individuals have signed affidavits implicating Sylvester Coles.

The Execution of Cathy Henderson

Cathy Henderson was convicted of killing three-and-a-half-month-old Brandon Baugh, for whom she was the mother. Cathy has maintained that the death was an accident, but at her trial in 1995 the court denied her request for funds to conduct a biomechanical investigation to prove her side of the story. The state offered no crime scene evidence at the trial, only the testimony of medical experts who stated that the nature of the injury proved that the death was intentional. The new science of injury biomechanics now places serious doubt on Cathy Henderson's guilt, and warrants a serious reexamination of the evidence used to convict her. Henderson has been on death row in Gatesville, Texas for 12 years and is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, June 13, 2007.

Pamela Anderson Vs. KFC

Pamela Anderson has sent a letter to the Postmaster General, criticizing KFC's request letter to put an image of the founder of the fast-food chain on a stamp. “Honoring a man whose legacy involves breaking animals’ bones and scalding animals to death in defeathering tanks is contrary to the values of most compassionate citizens, and I hope that you’ll deny KFC’s request,” Anderson wrote in a letter to Postmaster General John E. Potter. “How about another Elvis stamp instead?”

IMAGES FOR ABORTION PRESENTATION

Abortion

Here are some more links I found. Its kind of last minute, but it may help for the debate tomorrow.

http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/frontdoor.cfm?issue_type=abortion

http://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-know/cost.html

http://www.coolnurse.com/abortion_legal.htm

Unfree Press

On Wed June 5th an accredited/licensed reporter from Infowars.com was arrested for merely asking a member of the Guliani about the collapsing of tower 7 on September 11th 2001. What happened to the free press? This is a truly alarming state for American freedom as we have known it.

Bill O'Liar

Has anyone ever wondered how much money Bill O' Reily gets from the Republican Party. After all his nightly relinquishing of intellect in the name of pandering to the far political right must be worth at least some extra pocket change.

Pollution

The human rights situation of Indigenous peoples and environmentalists in Ecuador continues to be a serious concern for Amnesty International. For over four decades, Indigenous communities have witnessed multinational oil companies cut through the Ecuadorian Amazon and their ancestral lands in search of the country's vast petroleum resources. Testimonies by members of these communities, verified by independent health studies and reports (including "Amazon Crude" by Judith Kimerling) have described how oil companies have left dead rivers, road-scarred forests, polluted air, and daily discharges of millions of gallons of toxic waste in their wake that are affecting the daily lives of the communities in the area. One anonymous resident stated, "Our health has been damaged seriously by the contamination by Texaco. Many people in our community now have red stains on their skin and others have been vomiting and fainting. Some little children have died because their parents did not know they should not drink the river water."

Rights of Children

On November 20, 1989, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a landmark for human rights. Here for the first time was a treaty that sought to address the particular human rights of children and to set minimum standards for the protection of their rights. It is the only international treaty to guarantee civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely accepted human rights treaty - of all the United Nations member states, only the United States and the collapsed state of Somalia have not ratified it. The United States continues to lead a defensive action against Children's human Rights lobbying against further measures designed to protect children - most recently against efforts to stop the use of child soldiers.
These last 10 years have seen an enormous growth in awareness of children's rights. Activists have learned important lessons in successfully implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of the Convention's key strengths is that it recognizes that rights must be actively promoted if they are going to be enforced - awareness isn't enough. Although children's human rights are still a long way from realization - we have a powerful tool for campaigning for the protection of children's human rights in the almost worldwide acceptance of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Ricky Williams

Ricky Williams, running back of the Miami Dolphins, has tested again for marijuana use after serving his one-year suspension for his continuous offenses of marijuana. Since commissioner Roger Goodell has implemented a hard-nose, he has been tough on players that have legal troubles.

Vatican Influence

When the Pope asked President Bush about the current situation with Russian-Americam Relations, he responded, "ill tell you in a minute" implying he would answer when the media left. Given such a statement, and such a meeting in Rome to begin with, one has to wonder what degree of influence the Vatican has on American foreign policy.

Paris Hilton

After spending 3 days in jail, socialite Paris Hilton has been released for her drunk driving sentence. But in a decision by the judge, he ordered that Paris Hilton finish out her 45 day sentence. The judge citing that nobody is above the law. In essence, I agree with the comments of the judge and that nobody is above the law and that she should finish out her 45 day that can be lowered to 23 days, if she is in good behavior. According to TMZ.com, Hilton has issued a statement saying that the media should focus on better things than herself like the war in Irag and Afghanistan.

Gary Tyler

Gary Tyler, an African-American man, is serving a life sentence without chance of parole in Louisiana. With coerced witness testimony and without any physical evidence, he was convicted by an all-white jury for the 1974 murder of 13-year-old Timothy Weber, a white student who was shot during intense racial clashes in Destrehan, Louisiana. Tyler, who was 16 at the time of the incident, has consistently denied involvement in the crime. He was denied a fair trial and racial prejudice palyed a major part in his prosecution and conviction.
Governor Kathleen Blanco of the state of Louisiana should be contacted to get involved in this case.

Rape by Soldiers

On May 11, 2005, Bitondo Nyumba was raped by three government army soldiers in her home in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After a series of medical interventions, and despite the efforts of local human rights NGOs and Amnesty International to ensure she received proper care, she died of her injuries in late June. To date, no action has been taken by the authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Background Information
Bitondo Nyumba was a 56-year-od woman. She was attacked and raped in her home in the village of Katungulu, Tanganyika collectivité, Fizi territory, South-Kivu province, on 11 May 2005. The rape was committed by soldiers of the Bikeombo (Nundu) Batallion of the 117th FARDC Brigade. Bitondo Nyumba subsequently died of her injuries, apparently because of a lack of adequate medical care in the state hospitals at Nundu and Uvira.

Women's Rights

Many states fail to adequately protect incarcerated women from sexual misconduct at the hands of corrections staff and allow the dangerous practice of shackling inmates during the third trimester of pregnancy -- including during labor and delivery. The following report examines the current laws, policies and practices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons regarding custodial sexual misconduct (CSM) and the shackling of inmates who are pregnant or giving birth.
The link to the report of all such cases in California is http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/custody/states/california.pdf

The CEDAW

The Treaty for the Rights of Women is the most complete international agreement on basic rights for women. The Treaty is officially known as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The United States played an important role in drafting the Treaty, which185 nations have ratified as of March 1, 2007. Ironically, the United States is now one of only eight countries that have yet to ratify CEDAW, alongside Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, Iran, Nauru, Palau and Tonga.

The Treaty for the Rights of Women addresses basic human rights of women and can be useful to reduce violenece against women, ensure access to education and health care, and provide legal recourse against violations of women's human rights.

"Night Commuters"

In an attempt to escape the risk of abduction from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and a general climate of insecurity, an estimated 30,000 children in northern Uganda commute to sleep in urban areas or into the middle of larger camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Most of the “night-commuter” children, as they are known, commute without the protection of adult family members and face the risk of harassment, physical abuse, sexual exploitation and gender-based violence, including rape. However, the “night commuter” phenomenon is symptomatic of the broader issues relating to the protection of civilians in northern Uganda and illustrates how these can impact on family and community life. A UNICEF assessment in Gulu indicates that “as many as 25 percent of child “night commuters” were leaving their homes nightly due to family issues, rather than the specific fear of LRA abduction. Working on this issue is a way of generating awareness of the broader human rights concerns in northern Uganda.
After almost two decades of conflict in northern Uganda, the human rights of children are violated on a daily basis. Children have suffered disproportionately in the conflict. As many as 25,000 children have been abducted by the LRA since the conflict began, for use as soldiers, sex slaves and porters. 7,500 are girls with 1,000 having conceived children during captivity. An unknown number have been killed, while over 15,000 have escaped or been rescued by government soldiers – the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Force (UPDF) – since the armed conflict began in 1986.

Media and advertising

Here I go with Adbusters again but it's a great magazine. A college professor writes about her Critical Media Studies classroom and how she tries to get the point across of advertising and it's effects on our society. She finds a lot of resistance from what she calls her generation y-ers. Those born between 1977-1997. The way we grew up is impacting our view of advertising and media. She brings about an interesting perspective. Generation y is not phased by advertising and approaches it as unimportant because they feel it has no effect on society. They are what she calls the "me generation". I quote her "It's three years into their own Vietnman, and they aren't exactly flooding the streets with protestors. Often students tell me that they find politics to be boring and irrelevant to their own experiences." Why aren't their demonstrations in mass like they used to be? Are we really THAT generation, because to me it feels like it's getting worse. I look at kids today and wonder what is really important to them. What are we teaching them as a society? Naomi Rockers-Gladen's class said they felt the media has no effect on society and each person should be taught values by their parents. But it seems that society is only being shaped more and more by the media. It is shaping our youth, not in a good way. This article left me mad and almost feeling helpless about where we are headed and what the future looks like. Can we change? Is it too late? Will CNN for generation y'ers look like "Lindsay Lohan finally takes rehab seriously. We mean it this time" or "Britney Spears launches her 8th comeback tour" I can only say, I hope not!

Celebrity

Ad Busters

This magazine is out of Canada and is apparently not censored. It's pretty interesting and comes out every couple of months. It ran a story about elementary schools that send home weight report cards along with the childs regular report cards. It graded the childs body mass index and recorded whether it was good or bad. Some parents felt thankful for the help, others were afraid it would traumatize their child or that is was way too invasive. I am torn. I have the thougth that the school system sees these kids 8 hours a day 5 days a week and should be upfront with their parents. On the other hand, shouldn't the parents be upfront with their kids? They raise them and see them everyday. I don't have kids so I am not familiar with the fight of how to get a kid to eat healthy or how to deal with a kid that is considered "obese"...I guess I'm not the right person to lend any advice. I just know how I feel on this end.

fallacy

I read an article in time magazine on the pregidous that comes when people marry out of their looks. It discussed how when a man marries a woman considerably more attractive than him it is because he has money or is a rock star but when a woman does it he must be gay. More than a little disturbing for me.

The Paris Distraction

As coverage of the Paris Hilton case continues to invade our newscreens, one has to question who benefits from such distractions from real news that effects us all (i.e, the economy, health care, unemployment rates, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the genocide in Darfur).

ASL Questions

These questions are only tangentially related to class, and won't be interesting to everyone. But those who are fluent in a second language, have some experience with the American Sign Language used primarily by the deaf, or have a particular interest in the forms that language takes might find something here to respond to.

I recently read William C. Stokoe's Sign Language Structure. Revised. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok, 1978. I was left with questions, in part because I have very little exposure to ASL itself.

I would like to better understand what Stokoe refers to as "sign modulation," (66). I find this related to inflection in speech, and the moreso to what Emily Dickinson somewhere referred to as "inflections of the pen." I suspect that this will help me understand why the same written piece that works well in print does not work well online and vice versa. The following questions seem related.

1. Stokoe notes Epee's judgment that articles as they exist in French or English "lack a natural sign" for the deaf (6). [Article adjectives include the, a and a in English.] English speakers also say that East-Asian languages "lack" articles, but of course this constitutes no genuine lack because the functionality of articles is handled otherwise.

a) How do East Asian languages handle the functions of articles?
b) How do ASL signers handle these functions?

Since language use is too automatic for native speakers to answer grammatical questions intuitively, the following paragraph, which I use to teach English articles, might make for simple examples.

Mrs. Jones bought Johnny a milkshake. Johnny took the shake into the car, but he spilled it, so there was milkshake all over the back seat.

It's a milkshake at first because the speaker refers to a single discrete, contained beverage. It's the shake afterwards because it has been previously referred to. Readers conclude that this is indeed the same milkshake that Mrs. J just purchased. No article is used in the last because the milkshake, having escaped from its container, is referred to as a material; that is, milkshake is no longer a "count noun." Note that the differences here have little to do with any change in the nature of what is purchased, consumed, or spilled, but has lots to do with speakers' and listeners' relationships to milkshake as it exists in the narrative.

That said, how would the same contextualizations be rendered?

2) In ASL, what other forms "lacked a natural sign" in Épeé's sense? (I would suggest that prepositions, like of, or about might be candidates.)

3) Is there some tendency to handle adverbs modally. For instance, might a sign for "walk quickly" be a sign for "walk," made quickly or with some affectation of rushing? Or might saunter or lollygag constitute differences more naturally performed than distinguished by discrete changes of vocabulary?

4) The notation Stokoe uses for signs resembles Egyptian hieratics of the Middle and Later Kingdoms. How effective is the notation itself for native signers? Do they read it extensively? Do they find it rich, as do readers of English or French or German or Russian?

5) Stokoe mentions what he calls a "0 tab." "Tab" comes from the Latin tabula; he refers to a location of the entire sign relative to the signer's body or to an understood or otherwise signalled locus of conversation. 0 Tab is apparently a comfortable position central to the signer or to the dialog.

a) Does a return to 0 Tab function in any way like punctuation? That is, does a return to comfortable center or such a gesture signal the end of a phrase, sentence, or something like a paragraph?

b) How are such differences distinguished?

c) What relation does this seem to have to other significant patterns, like the return to a base chord at the end of a musical phrase, passage, pr sonota; or the repetition in an essay's conclusion of keywords from a thesis statement.

6) How do the deaf sign poetry? How much and in what ways does that resemble dance?

7) What about what Stokoe calls "sign modulation" -- that is, the sign means something different, even becomes syntactically different because it's signed somewhat differently? Can this (and how can it) be distinguished from non-syntactic gestures and attitudes that may add meaning to a sign (such as someone's being visibly emphatic, angry, loving, entreating, or whatever; this is page 66 in Stokoe, BTW).

Kobe Bryant

After the Los Angeles Lakers' mediocre season, Kobe Bryant, the captain of the team, was shot down by a Laker front office insider for the sole reason for Shaquille O'Neal for trading him after the end of the 2004 season. In an article written by LA Times journalist Bill Plascke, he points out that Bryant ran Shaq out of town. In fact, it was owner Dr. Jerry Buss who spoke to Bryant about keeping an old Shaquille and promising to build a championship caliber team. The last three years the Lakers have not won a playoff series, while Shaquille's HEAT won a championship. At this point, it seems that the Lakers want to rebuild around 19 year-old center Andrew Bynum instead of the NBA's best player, Kobe Bryant. Which poses the question what direction are the Lakers going?

Paris Hilton - Released from jail 42 days early

Paris Hilton was realesed from jail after serving 3 days of her 45 day sentence. She was arrested for driving under the influence in September of 2006, at that time she was given three years probation and her license was suspended. In January she was pulled over and cited for driving on a suspended license. In February she was pulled over again because she was speeding at night without her headlights on and was again driving on a suspended license. This time her probation was revoked and she was sentenced to 45 days in jail as was outlined in her probation. She reported to jail Sunday June 3 after coming from the MTV Awards. She was released on June 6 and the reason is not entirely clear. I was watching larry King live where it was being discussed and debated and there were a couple of reasons given: overcrowded jails, health concerns, mental concerns. The reasons being mentioned most were medical and mental. It was being said that she was becoming depressed and that she refused to eat. Have you seen her lately? She looks like she hardly eats even when not in jail. As for the depression, I think most people in jail are depressed. Jail is not meant to be a social party, it is meant to be a deterrent and serve as punishmnet in hopes of deterring future criminal activity. Then someone mentioned that she had committed a non-violent crime and had not hurt anyone - further stating that she should not have been in jail in the first place. Drunk driving is one of the leading killers in our nation. According to the website http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/drving.htm 16,885 people died in traffic accidents involving drunk drivers and this number represents 39% of all traffic accident related deaths. Driving your car into another car or into an innocent pedestrian is a violent and traumatic act. The purpose for laws is to prevent people from committing crimes against themselves or other people. Additionally, laws are designed to prevent accidents and fatalities. Although Paris did not kill anyone at the time she was pulled over and arrested, it was an accident waiting to happen. The only way some people learn is to have something traumatic happen to them. Serving time in jail is less traumatic than killing someone as a result of drinking and driving. I hope the judge orders her back to jail - I think 45 days is more than reasonable if it impacts future decisions and perhaps saves someone's life.

Debatees

I realize the implications of what I am about to state are conspiratorial to say the least. But, CNN, the sponsor of the Democratic Party's debate claims that the stage positioning of the potential nominees were placed absolutely at random. Still, two of the most compelling debaters, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were front and center, side by side no less. Coincidental?

Sean John Fallacy

This ad is taken from the Sean John's perfume advertising website. The fine print in the ad says, "Life without passion is Unforgivable."
The ad shows Sean John with two other females half naked. This is an example of a sexist advertisement.
There is an appeal to popularity as the ad portrays Sean John, the famous rapper.
There is also a Fallacy of Distraction as the advertiser presumes that partial nakedness of Sean John and the two other women can be used to sell their perfume successfully.
The statement in the ad says, "Life without Passion is Unforgivable." The statement is vague and absurd as it is difficult to understand what it means.
Does it mean that a Life without Passion is his perfume? If this statement is true then there is a Fallacy of Deduction as they are advertising for the sale of a perfume, but who would really want to buy a perfume which will lead to a life without passion.
OR Does it mean that a Life without Passion is truly unforgivable? If this statement is true then there is a Fallacy of False Dilemma as the advertiser presumes that a life without passion is nothing else but unforgivable. "Unforgivable" is a verb which is used in context of a sin or a crime committed. "Unforgivable" has nothing to do with a life without passion.

Eternity Ad

This ad is a fallacy because it creates an Appeal to Motives.
It wants the reader to believe that if you use Eternity then you too can
find eternal love. It pictures this loving typical American couple embraced and in a
dreamlike angelic state. This is true love- it is eternal. Do you want true love? If so
wear Eternity- and certainly you will find it!

Bacardi Ad

This ad is a False Deduction fallacy because it attempts to deduce that this boring inspector
by day becomes a fun, attractive “chic magnet” at night just because he drinks Bacardi. It wants the reader to believe that no matter how dull and boring your life or day job may be you can have a fun, sexy, exciting, joy filled night if you drink Bacardi.

uZap Ad

This ad is a Fallacy of Deduction. It wants the reader to believe that
if you use “uZap” then you will be thin like Fiona Xie- yet it ignores the
fact that Fiona Xie has never had a weight problem. So using
uZap did not make her thin. However, some may not know this so it would seem
logical to make the assumption the ad wants the viewer to make. “Uzap makes you thin”

Kool Ad

This “Kool” ad is a fallacy because it appeals to motives.
The brand itself uses prejudicial language. It leads the viewer
To believe that if you smoke “Kool” then you will be cool. Taking a step further this ad places a young man on a “kool” surfboard riding what must be a “kool” wave on a beautiful beach on a perfect day. It wants the viewer to believe that this is “kool” and why? It’s obvious- he smokes Kool.

Hitman Blood Money Fallacy

This ad is an extract from the Hitman Blood Money website, www.hitmanbloodmoney.com
The ad portrays a woman laying on a silk bed dressed lasciviously. She is shot dead in the head. The words on top of the ad says, "Beautifully executed." Does it mean that every beautiful woman needs to be executed or shooting a woman in the head is beautiful? or it means that in the Hitman Blood Money video game series, one can not just execute, one has to execute in style, beautifully?
This is an advertisement made for the sale of Playstation 2(XBOX). The consumers of playstations are mainly children from the age of 8 to 16. The designer seems to have taken the game's concept a little bit too far. There were fantasy based executions taking place in such video games, but now real-life human aspect of execution is extreme.
There is a fallacy of Argument from Ignorance as the designer of this advertisement suspects that such a voluptuous portrayal of a dead woman lying on the bed is appropriate for young children to watch.
There is also a fallacy of Style over Substance as the designer of this ad thinks that the partial nakedness displayed in the ad will encourage people to buy their video games whereas parents do not want to buy such hedonic video games for their children.
There is also An Appeal to Prejudicial Language as the advertisement states , "Beautifully Executed" as "beautiful" is an adjective subjected to women only and here the ad is talking about the execution of women in particular.

Diamond Ad

This ad is a fallacy because it attempts to create a False dilemma.
It aims to force the reader to feel that in order to show her that he cares he must buy her diamonds. This is an attempt to make this man feel like he has no choice but to the buy the jewels, otherwise she will never know he cares. It makes the assumption that a woman loves a man because of material things they receive, without them they may forget that he loves her. Certainly the man doesn’t want to feel that his woman has forgotten that he loves her- so what does this ad pose as the one and only solution? You think it would be “ tell her you love her by writing a love letter, take her to a romantic dinner, have an open heart to heart, or a slow dance- no way- the ad says get diamonds- that’s true love!

Diet Pepsi Ad

This ad is an Inductive fallacy because it wants the viewer to believe that
if he or she drinks Diet Pepsi they too can be a “soulful, smooth cat” with sexy arm candy. It disregard’s the fact that there can only be one Ray Charles, and Ray would look cool and have beautiful ladies hanging around no matter what he was drinking. Yet the ad wants you to believe the full "coolness" of Diet Pepsi. Ray Charles is cool cause he drinks diet pepsi- Diet Pepsi is cool because Ray Charles drinks it, and what's most important you too can be "cool" if you drink it too!

Tide Ad

This ad is a fallacy because it makes a Hasty Generalization.
It concludes that Tide will leave your laundry clean and that doing laundry will be easier for you because of it. However, this may not be true. It is possible that Tide may not clean everyone’s clothes. It makes the generalization that no matter how dirty your clothes are Tide will leave them clean and looking new.

Living Ad

This ad is an Appeal to Authority fallacy because Martha Stewart is seen an expert in “living”. People look to her for advice on how to decorate and entertain.
This ad wants the reader to believe that in order to truly “live” you must live like Martha.

Newport Ad

This ad creates a fallacy of Cause and Effect.
This ad wants the viewer to think that when you smoke Newport then you will look fit and trim and have great pleasures. It gives the viewer a directive “Fire It Up”. So the viewer is supposed to believe that by lighting a Newport they will have fun laughing and surfing with a “babe” at your side.

Skyy Vodka Ad

This ad is a cause and effect fallacy because it attempts to make the viewer believe that if you drink Skyy then you too will look beautiful, have men waiting on you hand and foot and that the camera will want and love you.

It's Mario Again....

This is an advertisement taken from the internet that advertises Kraft’s Macaroni and Cheese. As one can see, characters of the popular game, Super Mario Brothers, hop out of the box energetically. The background is clean white in contrast with the bright orange of the product and the colorfulness of the characters.

There is a fallacy of false analogy in the advertisement. In black print, it says, “An adventure in every bowl,” yet the word adventure does not technically relate to a bowl of macaroni and cheese. Here, the advertisers compare a game character’s image of having an adventure in his game with a bowl of macaroni and cheese. The two has nothing to do with each other, since foods don’t have adventurous journeys like Mario. Having the game characters running around in a game consol and having character-shaped macaronis in a bowl is two completely different issues. The consumer will not have the same “adventure” by eating the product as playing the game.

The ad is trying to claim that Mario and his friends have a fun adventure in their game, so that means that they are going to have to same adventure as foods. However, that is not a valid statement because characters moving around inside a screen and character-shaped macaronis are two different, unrelated things.

Cereal Ad

This is an advertisement that is taken from the internet. It is an ad for a new type of cereal called the “Nintendo Cereal System” that contains two different flavor in one box. In this particular ad, the marketers decided to use game characters to represent their new brand of cereals. In bold, white letters, it says, “Introducing a winning combination for breakfast.” They compared the box of cereal with two flavors with the combination of having two popular game characters. This is an example of false analogy. The cereal and game has nothing to do with each other, and the ad is comparing two very unlike things by using the key word “combination,” yet the meaning of the word is different when used to define the characters and the cereal.

The character on to the right side, Link, says, “We rescued breakfast,” which is a fallacy, because breakfast is not something that can be “rescued” by unreal, two-dimensional characters. Link says it in a way as if breakfast was something that needed to be rescued, like a princess in a game.

The words on the bottom in white says, “If you can’t beat’em, eat’em,” which is interesting because food, cereal in this case, is not a game-like object that one must beat. The statement is also an example of a false dilemma because it only gives the consumer two extreme choices to decide on, which is to beat or eat the product. The statement ignores the option of not eating the product at all.

This ad also contains appeal to popularity because of the usage of two popular game characters. Just because Mario and Link represent the brand of cereal, it does not mean that eating the cereal will make the consumer a hero like the two characters.

fallacy

This is an advertisement for milk that was found on the internet. In white print, it says, “Power up! Want to grow? The calcium in milk helps your bones grow. Momma Mia!” The ad shows Mario, a very famous game character of Nintendo who is well-known amongst young kids. He is supposedly enlarged, breaking out of the television as he his holding onto a bottle of milk. The room is dark and messy, depicting that it may belong to a boy who loves to play games rather than clean his room. This advertisement contains few fallacies.

First of all, Milk and Nintendo games do no have any connection with each other. Growth of Mario is not related in any way with the product, yet the ad seems to claim that Mario grows bigger, and milk can help one grow, thus kids should drink milk to grow like Mario. This is a false analogy. The ad is comparing and making two different types of growth to be similar. Mario is a game character, and his growth is most likely caused by some sort of magic that only exists within the game. However, the ad claims that their product, or milk, will help kids grow and make their bones stronger like Mario

Another fallacy that can be found in the ad is appeal to popularity. The advertisement uses a popular game character that is familiarized amongst young kids in order to make drinking milk part of their habit. Just because a famous icon like Mario is representing a product, that doesn’t mean that the milk will help a child grow like him.

Informal Logic-A Fallacy

This ad is taken from a Vodka advertising campaign. Under the title "Just Add Vodka", it features a bottle of Vodka pouring its contents on a sleepy hamlet. The atmosphere is gloaming as it is dark, lack of activity, and the isolated lights at the border of the image suggest a dreary city where there is nothing to do. This inactivity is further highlighted by a sharp contrast between a dreary hamlet and an agitated city that has sprung up where the Vodka splashes to the ground.

There is a fallacy of False Analogy as bottles of Vodka are not so absurdly large, and do not pour their contents on sleepy villages.

The message from the advertisement can be paraphrased as a claim, "If you add Vodka to your life, your sleepy life can be transformed into a life of cosmopolitan excitement."

There is also a Fallacy of Deduction where a premise," If you add Vodka to your life, your sleepy life can be transformed into a life of cosmopolitan excitement." is incorrectly applied to the conclusion of purchasing Vodka.

A life of cosmopolitan excitement is desirable, but can not attainted by drinking Vodka.

Homogenized Democracy

Given the recent Democratic position in Congress illustrated by its virtual support of continuing the war in Iraq, one must begin to question the two-party system as a whole. Seemingly, both parities have become increasingly homogenized in their expression of policy. Such myopia in government hardly seems like Democracy to me.

RCTV

Is RCTV being shut down because Hugo Chavez is an absolute dictator who wants to impose his tyrannical upon the people by silencing one of its integral voices or is RCTV an instrument of the West, with links to the U.S.? If the former is true, perhaps the shutting down of RCTV a precursor of things to come as the lines of division continue to be drawn throughout the globe.

Yet Another Question for BC

BC - How will we know if our fallacies meet your requirements? I would like to ensure that I have everything done before our next class but I am not sure what to count and what not to count towards the completion of the assignments. I am pretty sure I have the blogs covered but not sure about the fallacies assignment.
Thank you :)

Cold War 2.0

According to various sources, including CNN, Russia is accusing the U.S. of starting a new arms race. Is is just me or is there an increasing division between the east and the west. Are we headed for a war larger than anyone can imagine. After all Russia provides military resources to Iran, and Iran is part of the so called "axis of evil". How concerned should we be?

Posted by so626 at 4:23 PM 0 comm

Celebrity Right to Privacy / Paparazzi

Can anyone tell me if there were any changes that I should know about regarding debates?
I read on the blog that they are not due til the 10th. That is great!
But I want to make sure I still have an intact team for the "Paparazzi"/ "Right to Privacy" debate.
If you are on this debate team please post a comment... so I know that you are still on board.
I know the pro side (pro celebrity right to privacy) is on board.
Just want to make sure that the con side is still on.
I know we started with 5 people.
On 5/20 we lost 2 people on the con side... but then we got a new person on board.
So that brought us to four. 2 con and 2 pro.
I didn't attend on 05/27 neither did the other person on pro.
Did the 2 con people go to class on 05/27? If so please advise of any changes I should be aware of. ... or simply add a comment so I know we still have all 4 people on board. :)

I also want to ensure we agree on the claim.
I was thinking...

"Do celebrity's have a right to privacy?"

Let me know what you think.
Since debates are not due til the 10th we can have discussion next week to organize.

The world as we know it...

As I read a lot of these blog entries I see many good points being made about the state of the world as a whole. Cultures that kill people on a whim or over different beliefs, skin color, religion, jealousy, or perhaps even boredom. Animals being tortured before they are slaughtered -or- hunted down for their ivory tusks and after their tusks are removed, left to die. We steer clear of strangers as they walk by out of fear for what they might do to us . We worry about ourselves and ignore people we see that are less fortunate than us and that could use our help. How did we get here? How did music that promotes sexist acts, murder, drugs, and promiscuous sex become so popular? How did partial nudity, cursing, murder, and adultery become so popular in mainstream television? Who decided that war was the best way to resolve conflict? Why do we spend billions of dollars on weapons research instead of putting more money towards finding cures and solutions to diseases and things that cause horrible deaths? Why do we wait to act until it is almost too late?

Eat all of your food, people in China are starving!

My mom used to tell me this all of the time. The claim was that people in China were starving and if I wasted food I was in fact throwing away something that someone in China could have eaten. As a result of me throwing the food away, versus sending it to China, I was contributing to the starvation problem. This is of course a non-sequitur logical fallacy. Whatever I do with my food here, on my plate has nothing directly to do with anyone in China starving. I think it also might qualify as a "argument from adverse consequences" fallacy because it was being implied that if I did not eat all of my food I was throwing away something that someone in China could have eaten, therefore, causing further famine. The people starving in China have nothing to do with whether or not I finish all of the food on my plate.

"So easy a caveman could do it..."

Geico's ad campaign slogan is "so easy even a caveman could do it." This is a anthrocentric (human-centered) fallacy. The claim is that checking into or switching auto insurance over to Geico insuarnce via computer is so easy that a caveman would be able to do it. The underlying message is that switching to Geico insurance is very simple. At issue is that a caveman would have to drive a car therefore needing auto insurance and that the caveman would have to know how to use a computer. In addition, the caveman would have to have the ability to reason or compare in order to understand Geico's comparison if he did drive a car and did know how to use a computer. There are many factors of auto insurance comparison, such as coverage levels, types of coverage, etc. that make auto insurance difficult for many modern humans to understand.

World of No Mercy......

I saw something that deeply disturbed me today. If anybody wants to take a look at it, heres the link to the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja9_-NtdSOQ . I saw a video of cows being slaughtered in a slaughter house. Throats were cut and they bled to death. Such a disgusting sight makes me feel ashamed to be a human, to know that it is because of human greed that these animals suffer both in life and death. There are also videos where cows and pigs are stunned several times, their throats are sliced open and not dead yet, screaming in pain. Stunning merely paralyzes the animal, but they are still conscious and their minds are very much aware of the pain. Sometimes the cut is not deep enough to break major vessels, which then means when the animal is put in scalding hot water to peel their skin off, they end up burning and drowning to death. Doesn't sound so humane to me!!!!
So why are animals being murdered this way??
Is it because these merciless acts take place behind closed doors and the world has adopted a mentality of Out of Sight, Out of Mind? OR Is it because people just don't care about these animals and ignore the reality by burying their heads in the sand?
The world is talking about people getting killed in Iraq and other countries, why is nobody talking about these animals getting killed?
World in general says animals are not intelligent. But it does not take intelligence to feel fear, to smell blood or to sense death.
I don't mean to be offensive here, but this is reality and it is happening.

Fallacy

This ad is taken from the website, http://www.helpinganimals.com. In case the letters are not legible, they say, " Million of campanion animals are condemned to a sad life of loneliness-isolated in a crate or pen or kept on a chain with no exercise or attention. Your animal campanions need and deserve lots of playtime, love , and care-they are part of your family. Be your animals' guardian angel-they depend on you."
There is a fallacy of Appeal to Pity because the advertiser here is preying upon the audience's sympathy to solicit a favorable response of buying the animals by mentioning words such as "animals are condemned to a sad life of loneliness" and "Be your animals' guardian angel-they depend on you."
There is also a Fallacy of Distraction as the attractiveness of the model portrayed in the ad excessively distracts the audience from the fact of buying an animal.
There is also an Appeal to Popularity because they have used the famous Famke Janssen, a former fashion model and an actress in Goldeneye and X-Men series to persuade people to buy animals from PETA(People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

This ad is taken from a Versace advertising campaign. In most clothing ads, there is atleast a suggestion of cloth. There is a word mentioned under Versace, "COUTURE" means the business of designing, making, and selling highly fashionable, usually custom-made clothing for women. But in the above displayed clothing ad, there are no custom-made clothing marketed for the customers to buy.
There is a Fallacy of Distraction, as there is a misuse of a naked model incorrectly related to a highly fashionable and designer brand of clothing where no valid conclusions can be drawn from the ad.
There is also a Fallacy of Style over Substance, as the nakedness of the women does not give an evidence of the Versace clothing being exceptionally good or better than the others in the market.
The advertiser here has also changed the subject by an invalid use of a naked woman playing billiards advertising for a clothing company.
This is a prime example of a sexist advertisement.

gun control

Another website... www.stategunlaws.org

Thai Cigarette Packs

In class today, simplyjessie07, AdderEmcee and I were searching online for examples of advertisement with fallacies. That's when we came across this one blog in which they talked about the cigarette packs from Thai. According to the site, each cigarrete packs now must have 50% of the package covered with graphic warnings. This was very shocking and interesting to me. I think that this will definitely prevent young people from becoming smokers. I don't know if it'll help people quit smoking, but I seriously believe that there won't be that many people who would start smoking after seeing these disturbing images. For more images of the packs, you can go to the link below.

http://www.thai-blogs.com/cigarettes.php

Stop Child Executions

Please visit this new website, created to campaign for ending the use of death penalty against children in Iran. Iran is at present the only country in the world that still officially executes minors who are under 18 years old when the crime they are sentenced for was committed. It is time to put an end to this deplorable practice. The website http://www.stopchildexecutions.com presents background information and info on how people around the world can help end this.

Injustice in Iran

Nazanin (Mahabad) Fatehi is a 19-year-old Iranian girl who was sentenced to death for stabbing a man who tried to rape her and her 15 year old niece (Nazanin was 17 at the time). Nazanin and her 15 year old niece (Sumayeh) were in a park in Karaj, west of Tehran when three men started harassing them. The men pushed Nazanin and her niece down on the ground and tried to rape them, and to protect herself, she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand. According to Nazanin, the girls tried to escape, but the men overtook them, and at this point Nazanin stabbed one of the other men in the chest, which eventually killed him.
On January 3, 2006, she was sentenced to death for murder by a criminal court of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the end of May, the Iranian head of Judiciary overturned her death sentence, and sent the case back to a lower court. Nazanin's re-trial ended on Jan 10, 2007.
In this new trial, Nazanin was exonerated on the charge of murder, but sentenced to pay blood money. Nazanin's lawyers appealed this sentence, but paid bail (collected by donations) so Nazanin could be released from prison. Thankfully, Nazanin was released from prison and reunited with her family Wednesday, January 31, 2007.

Prisoner-Assisted Homicide

Aside from being on the U.S. death row, Elijah Page,Robert Comer, and Christopher Newton have something in common. They assisted their government in its efforts to kill them. They have given up their appeals and are "volunteering" for execution. Robert Comer is scheduled for execution in Arizona on 22 May 2007, Christopher Newton in Ohio on 23 May, and in the week of 9 July Elijah Page is due to become the first person to be put to death in South Dakota since 1947. In addition, on 4 May 2007, the Tennessee Attorney General requested an execution date for Daryl Holton, a former soldier with a history of depression, , who has effectively waived his appeals and has been found competent to do so.
Today, because of an increase of psychological issues, more and more people are asking and willingly lettin the government to execute them. A United States Supreme Court Justice of 1990 states, "When a capital defendant seeks to circumvent procedures necessary to ensure the propriety of his conviction and sentence, he does not ask the State to permit him to take his own life. Rather, he invites the State to violate two of the most basic norms of a civilized society -- that the State's penal authority be invoked only where necessary to serve the ends of justice, not the ends of a particular individual, and that punishment be imposed only where the State has adequate assurance that the punishment is justified."

Jailed For Posting Information on the Internet

World Press Freedom Day is took place on May 3. Many activists took this day to protest agains the jailing of Shi Tao. Journalist, poet, and essayist Shi Tao was imprisoned for writing an e-mail about media restrictions in the run-up to the 15th anniversay of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
China currently has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world. As of July 2006, Amnesty International had documented at least 54 Chinese Internet users believed to be imprisoned for such acts as signing petitions, calling for an end to corruption, disseminating health information, or planning to establish pro-democracy groups. Shia Tao was arrested in November 2004 after sending the email through his Yahoo account to a U.S.-based pro-democrazy website in April 2004. A court sentenced him to 10 years in prison. The Chinese Constitution provides for freedom of speech and press for all citizens. However, China's vaguely-worded legal definition of what constitutes a "state secret" gives authorities broad discretion to detain people who peacefully exercise their right to freedom of expression.
I am currently getting as much signatures as I on a petition to send later to the Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China. Shi Tao is an innocent prisoner who should be released.

Blood Diamonds

Blood diamonds are being used to fund wars in Africa. A blood diamond is "a diamond mined in a war zone and sold, usually clandestinely, in order to finance an insurgent, invading army's war efforts or for warlord-like activity," according to Wikipedia. Blood diamonds have lead to the deaths of more than 4 million people and displaced many millions more by fueling wars across Africa. The United Nations highlighted that $23 million in blood dimaonds, or conflict diamonds, from the Ivory Coast are being smuggled into diamond markets around the world, and diamonds continue to cause instability and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Government controls in the US and in other countries are not strong enough or enforced effectively enough to stop rebel groups from exploiting diamonds to fuel war. Also, the diamond industry has not taken sufficient steps to fight the trade in blood diamonds.
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/site/c.goJTI0OvElH/b.2270757/k.CA70/Put_a_Stop_to_Blood_Diamonds.htm

Violence against Indigenous Women

Sexual violence against Native American and Alaska Native women is widespread in the USA. Native American and Alaska Native women are estimated to be more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than any other women in the USA. The violence has been concluded by the federal government to be in partial blame for tribal government authority and its chronic under-funding of those law enforcement agencies which should protect Indigenous women from sexual abuse. When some women from this group were interviewed, they all stated that they didn't know any woman in their community who hadn't received sexual violence.

Amnesty International is calling on the US government to "work in collaboration with American Indian and Alaska Native women to obtain a clear and accurate understanding about the prevalence and nature of sexual violence against Indigenous women, ensure that American Indian and Alaska Native women have access to adequate and timely sexual assault forensic examinations without charge to the survivor, and provide resources to Indian tribes for additional criminal justice and victim services to respond to crimes of sexual violence against Native American and Alaska Native women."

Darfur

There is currently a genocide going on in Darfur, a region in western Sudan.
Background:
One side of the armed conflict is mainly composed of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited by the camel-herding nomads of Arab descent. The other side is composed of rebel groups, such as the Sudan Liberation Movement. The conflict begain in February 2003. The Sudanese government publicly denies that it supports the Janjaweed but has provided money to the group. The government has also participated in attacks targeting the tribes from which the Darfuri rebels draw support. The Janjaweed calls their attacks upon non-Baggara villages and citizens as "ethnic cleansing." However, the UN has labeled as genocide when they stated the figure for the number of deaths- 450, 000.

To see what you can do to help, visit http://www.amnestyusa.org/Our_Issues/Darfur/page.do?id=1041028&n1=3&n2=52

Habeas Corpus

On June 26th, 2007, activists all over the country will be visiting the district offices of their elected officials or coming to Washington, D.C. to tell Congress to restore the centuries-old writ of habeas corpus. Your elected official's vote is critical to the success of this initiative. Your voice is needed in support of due-process and the rule of law.When Congress passed the Military Commissions Act last fall, a section was included that prohibited any non-citizen in U.S. custody that the President designated an "enemy combatant" from going to court and exercising the most basic human right – the right to go before a court and ask the government to show that they have a basis for their detention. This prohibition restricted people who have been in US custody for more than five years continue to be held with no meaningful judicial review.

This is the story behind the act:
Over 750 men from more than 40 countries have been held at Guantanamo since the first transfer of detainees in January, 2002. Some have been in custody for more than five years, and none have ever been convicted of committing any crime. In June, 2004, The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Rasul v. Bush that detainees in Guantanamo did have access to federal courts. Thus, hundreds of detainees filed writs of habeas corpus, challenging the conditions and basis of their detentions.
Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in the Rasul case, the Bush administration has been working to keep any of these habeas cases from going forward. In December of 2005, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA). The DTA stripped Guantanamo detainees of the right to file habeas cases in federal court. In June of 2006, in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court held that the DTA was not retroactive and therefore did not affect the hundreds of habeas cases in federal court. Finally, in October of 2006, the President signed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) into law, a bill that stripped Guantanamo detainees and others of fundamental human rights, including the right to habeas.
In order to reverse the damage done by the MCA, Senators Arlen Specter andPatrick Leahy introduced the “Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007” (S. 185), and Congressman Jerrold Nadler and Congresswoman Jane Harman introduced the House version of the bill (HR 1416). These bills restore the right to habeas corpus for foreign nationals detained in Guantanamo and those living within the US who have been declared “unlawful enemy combatants.” It is extremely important that Congress pass the reforms enumerated in the “Habeas Corpus Restoration Act,” as it would be a significant first step in restoring US leadership on human rights.

Democratic Complicity

Why are the Democrats in Congress cracking in the face of Executive pressure to set a timeline for troop withdrawl from Iraq? Might some Dems be complicit with the Neo-Con Agenda?

Nervous Freedom

Has anyone heard of NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51? This seems to allow for complete dictatorial powers given to the President in the event of a "national emergency", which-of course-is determined as such b the President himself. It was signed on the 9th of May. How concerned should we be? Is Democracy collapsing before us? Is America still the beacon of freedom its advertised to be?

Occupation USA

We should stop calling the situation in the Iraq a war, we should start identifying it with what it actually is: a foreign occupation that the indigenious people simply, clearly, any overtly want absolutely no part of.

Fallacy

Porsche

This ad is displayed by The Body Shop. If the words are not legible, they say." There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels and only 8 do. It counteracts the hegemonic image of attractiveness and emaciated thinness portrayed by the media and men today. Media has a fixed image of thin and sexy women being displayed on every magazine cover page and in every commercial to get their point accross. An ideal image of a woman to a man is a slender body with a perfect figure.
This ad has an appeal to popularity as they have used a barbie doll to convey the above mentioned message about slender women and their importance to the society.
There is a false analogy as there are no fat barbie dolls existing in the market at present.
There is also an inductive fallacy here as he makes a generalization from his experience about 3 billion women not looking like supermodels and only 8 who do. There are no accurate statistics mentioned here neither there is any statistics about 3 billion women in the world.
It is mainly advertiser's exaggeration and his personal opinion in the ad and no concrete facts or details mentioned.

Oxymoronic Act

How can we identify the Patriot Act as "patriotic". What a joke. Isn't our country founded on the beacon of hope platformed upon freedom and liberty? In the name of fighting terror, however and by whomever that's defined, we are relinquishing, or rather having been stripped of our basic American virtures. Scary.

hmm...

Just a thought, why does the U.S. Military Industrial Complex so conveniently choose its battles? There is injustice, conflict, and tyrrany all over the world. Yet the current territory of interest, Iraq, happens to have one of the largest oil reserves on the planet.

Corporate Cares

I was listening to Bill Handel today, whose remarks are often far more obscene, racist, and offensive than were Don Imus' on his fateful day of reference to a group of female collegiate athletes. This begs the question "why are some shock jocks able to spew their 'comedic' rhetoric and not others." I think in the end its all about the money. Corporate America doesn't care if it offends; sadly, it only cares if it loses Adversitement funding.

fallacy

The new ad for seat belt enforcement.

They claim that cops write tickets to save lives.

I know for a fact that they write tickets because its in their job discription. Plus I was told they have a monthly "quota", especially if assigned to traffic. I worked with law enforcement for awhile and I'll tell you some of these cops use their power inappropiately, they'll go on what I'd call hunting sprees to catch anybody they can to get their brownie points.
With that said, I personally always wear a seat belt and I can see the benifits of enforcing it, but don't lie and tell me if I don't do it the ticket will safe my life.

I see appeal to authority: we all know a seat belt has the potential to save a life, but now cops say writing a ticket will.
appeal to force: the whole click it or ticket phrase
Theres some kind of cause, maybe complex cause: the fact a cop writes a ticket is life saving
fallacy of deduction: seat belts save lives, if you're not wearing one they ticket you, and that act also saves lives.
fallacy of distraction: this is similar to the above. If you want to save your life, you could either wear a seat belt or get a ticket for not wearing one.
I'm also sensing an unrepresentative sample: I can see how indirectly getting a ticket could save that persons life and others, for example, it might slow down a speeder who could've lost control and rammed into someone. But I can't see how writing a parking ticket would save a life.

I know I must have gotten something correct here.

Question for BC

BC did you receive my Shakespeare rewrite?

Casino Fallacy

The Casino "Fantasy Springs" uses "where winners play" as their motto. This is an "appeal to popularity" logical fallacy. It is designed to make people think that if they go to this casino they are a "winner" or that other people will think that they are a winner. I have never left there with any of the money I brought, let alone their money. I am pretty sure that this would qualify me as a "loser" and not a "winner"; hence, a place where loser's also play.
1. Find a statement or presentation that strikes you as mistaken or misleading. "Where winners play"
2. Figure out what it says, implies, or otherwise means. This amounts to doing something like a Toulmin analysis.
a) What's the real claim? Winners go to this casino to gamble.
i)What visual or auditory clues does it have? None that I can see.
ii) What's stated? Where winners play
iii) What's implied? If you want to be a winner you should play here, or - if you consider yourself a winner you play here.
iv) How are these qualified? Not qualified
b) What are the reasons? None stated. This slogan is also a play on words - the casino using the term "winner" gives a person hope that they might win if they play at this particular casino.
For instance, at some level, every ad says "Buy our product." But what will become interesting is why one supposedly should buy. Sometimes the reasoning is faulty.
c) The reasons should be supported by some kind of grounding. Sometimes the grounding is incorrect. I am not sure how "grounding" would apply to this particular fallacy.
d) The grounding needs to properly warrant the reasons that support the claim. If the logic between them does not work, that's a problem. Again, I don't understand the grounding concept.
3. Decide what part of the media-object's argument you object to. That in order to be a winner you need to play at this casino.
4. Figure out why you object. How is the argument badly formed. A lot of people lose money at casinos, yet they still go here to play. This casino is a place winners and losers both go to play.
5. Explain your objection and why the object is malformed. I think I did that in the thought above.

Fallacy Examples

Scroll down and check out the fallacy examples and the comments, when you get a chance. So far all the ones I've looked at are good examples, and the students seem to be well under way to explaining the fallacies. But I'd say they're not yet quite done.

In the comments to the examples, I have gone ahead and been critical. I'm hoping that all students will read some of these to get a closer idea how I'm evaluating the fallacy assignments.

Also, those who have posted are welcome to amend their explanations or add to them, of course.

Fallacy of False Analogy

This ad is taken from http://media.marketwire.com. In case if the letters are not legible, the words are. "Super. That's how milk makes you feel. The calcium helps bones grow strong, so even if you're not from Krypton, you can have bones of steel. got milk? "
In this ad, there is an appeal to populartiy as it pictures Brandon Routh (Superman in Superman Returns). A statement in the ad says, "That's how milk makes you feel." Drinking milk makes an individual feel like a superman is a false analogy. Steel, a strong alloy mainly comprised of iron and carbon is incorrectly compared to delicate human bones. Thus, it is also a false analogy.

CAPTAIN'S LOG STARDATE 05202007

Hello, folks. This is a very long blog entry. Those who attended class on 5/20/2007 will find it mostly repeats what we stated in class. However, it does deal with specific assignments that some of you have found unclear, and some of it deals in depth with the issue of fallacies because I think that may be part of the unclarity in the fallacy assignment.

I thought some would like these concepts written, so here they are:

Fallacy | Fallacy Assignments | Blogging

The entry begins as follows:

A few of you missed a fairly eventful class today. We were gassed and had to leave. More precisely, building maintainance made me dismiss class just after 10 because an apparent natural gas leak in the building had created a hazard.

I hope we got some clarity about assignments and times before we left. (Please tell me if we did not!) But I want to go over things here to make sure.

VA DAY WEEKEND 5/27

Next week is Veterans' Day Weekend. However, the MtSAC holiday is on Monday. We will meet on Sunday, 5/27. Anyone with special considerations may contact me about attendance issues, but since our debate team session got gassed out today, next week will be crucial for many debate teams, and I hope everyone can attend.

ASSIGNMENTS

Blogging -- The blogging assignment involves about 25-30 entries over the course of the semester. This number should not be taken as an exact requirement, but as a general guideline. The following apply:

1) Entries may be about anything that may have anything to do with anything whatsoever that the class is about, has been about, should be about or could be about.

The class is about thinking, so if you're thinking about it, it's relevant; if you're wondering whether it's relevant, it is. A few weeks ago I might have said that anything's relevant except gossip about Anna Nicole Smith or Michael Jackson or Britney Spears, but since the paparazzi issue has now become a debate topic, gossip is obviously relevant. Who would have known?

2) Long, involved entries and entries that show a lot of thought may count for effort. The instructor is the judge, however.

3) Confused entries are better than no entries. Confused entries in which the confusion is thoroughly articulated DO show a lot of thought and effort and will receive credit for that. There is no requirement that blog entries be finished work. Blog entries may contradict debate positions or essays without causing any problem whatsoever. The main thing to bear in mind about blog entries is DO IT. Don't wait until you feel you know exactly what's going on. The instructor does NOT expect finished work on the blog.

4) Fallacies posted to the blog DO count as blog entries.

5) Comments other fallacies that other people post DO count as blog entries, as do any other comments. (Of course, the instructor will grade analysis of fallacies of fallacies for the fallacy assignment differently than entries that just count for the blog, as I will explain later in this entry. Further information may be gotten from the discussion of fallacy itself, below.)

6) Drafts or draft-excerpts of work you are preparing for other assignments in this class or for other classes can count as entries if posted to the blog.

Debate Assignments

The second round of debates will take place the last week before finals. Anyone who does not know his or her debate assignment or what alternative assignment he or she is doing should contact me.

Something unforeseen has happened with the debate topics, and I want to let everyone know about it as soon as possible. As you know, I have insisted that each debate topic at least start with 4 people to be considered viable. I do this to assure that debaters will actually have opponents. At the same time, I have also said that anyone prefers to complete an alternative assignment instead can do so, no questions asked. I did not see until today that these rules could give rise to an inconsistency.

What happened was that a student working on an alternative assignment spoke with a student signed up for another debate, and both decided to work on the alternate assignment, or at least decided that they would prefer to do so. Before speaking with me, the student leaving a debate team checked with teamates and verified that four active people remained in the debate. Of course, under the rules as I laid them out, both are completely entitled to do so.

But then, since they had two people that wanted to do an alternate assignment on the same topic, they agreed that the assignment they really wanted to do was a debate. Now, I cannot very well criticize an alternative assignment that resembles the original assignment more than the standard alternative does.

I went ahead and approved the project because it does seem like the best way for these students to proceed. But I am uncomfortable because I know that many of you did not get your first debate choices because I insisted that there be 4 people to a debate, and if I take that rule away, many students will not have a debate partner to work with during class sessions. To make matters worse, I know people have started researching debate topics, the groups had no time to meet today because of the gas, and it seems quite likely that some students may not show up next week (something that often happens when there's a long weekend).

I have to think about how to amend the rules, but at this point, all I want to do is get people placed on their work in as clear, just, and rewarding a way as I can.

Therefore, if anyone wants a change, please email me as soon as possible. Please also bear in mind that I cannot let people abandon teams if the teams will no longer have enough debaters to debate and to discuss issues. If I do, I'll be forcing students to lose or waste the research that they have spent hours accumulating and organizing. I won't do that.


Fallacy Assignments

The requirements for the fallacy assignments are these:

1) Include 10 fallacies.

2) Explain in each case how the fallacy works, that is, how the media object constitutes a fallacy. If it's useful to classify the fallacy to do that, that's fine; classify it. If it's not useful to classify the fallacy, it's not absolutely necessary as long as you show how it is indeed a fallacy.
3) The presence of the blog itself has made a difference in the requirements of the fallacy assignment because if I give students credit for commenting on fallacies that other students upload to the blog, students are not doing all the work they have in the past. On the other hand, if I insist that each student find his or her own ten fallacies and not use any from the blog, everyone has to make sure they do not find the same fallacy. That causes unacceptable problems and useless hardship. Therefore, this is my FINAL DECISION:

STUDENTS WILL GET FULL CREDIT FOR COMMENTING ON FALLACIES ON THE BLOG, REGARDLESS OF WHO POSTS THE ORIGINAL FALLACY.

The only thing that matters is that the analysis be good and thorough.

I believe that most of the other difficulties with the fallacy assignment have to do with the nature of fallacy itself. I'm going to write out how to handle the fallacy assignment, but the explanation will include an explanation of fallacy itself, just like I might write for a textbook.

So draw a deep breath and be fresh if you can before you keep reading.

Fallacy Assignments and Fallacy

Here's a step-by-step method for completing the assignment.

1. Find a statement or presentation that strikes you as mistaken or misleading.

2. Figure out what it says, implies, or otherwise means. This amounts to doing something like a Toulmin analysis.

a) What's the real claim?

i)What visual or auditory clues does it have?
ii) What's stated?
iii) What's implied?
iv) How are these qualified?

b) What are the reasons? For instance, at some level, every ad says "Buy our product." But what will become interesting is why one supposedly should buy. Sometimes the reasoning is faulty.

c) The reasons should be supported by some kind of grounding. Sometimes the grounding is incorrect.

d) The grounding needs to properly warrant the reasons that support the claim. If the logic between them does not work, that's a problem.

3. Decide what part of the media-object's argument you object to.

4. Figure out why you object. How is the argument badly formed.

5. Explain your objection and why the object is malformed.

6. Turn in ten such explanations with their examples.

In class discussion, several students mentioned concern that live fallacy examples do not seem to cleanly fit the fallacy categories we have discussed in class. That is to be expected: the categories are a kind of shorthand. They are usefully descriptive, but they are not discretely definitive. That is, they "overlap." For instance, I can describe the animal in front of me as a dog, I may also describe it as tall, skinny, furry, brown, or friendly, and no one will be surprised that it is also a dog. However, if I definitely state that it is a dog, I cannot reasonably say that it is also a cat. Despite their misleading grammatical form, the categories for logical fallacies work better as descriptors like "large" or "furry" than they do like categories like "dog" or "cat."

There's another potential difficulty in categorization. Since a thought invariably consists of connections between various other thoughts, each of those thoughts and each connection itself may involve distinct fallacious operations.

BECAUSE OF THESE PROBLEMS, STUDENTS WILL NOT BE MARKED DOWN FOR CLASSIFYING ANY GIVEN FALLACY DIFFERENTLY THAN THE INSTRUCTOR. Also, they WILL be required to explain how the fallacy works even if they do classify the fallacy in a way that the instructor finds meaningful and useful.

Now, since students have asked persistently about categories, I conclude that many are dealing with fallacies primarily as a question of matching statements to fallacy-category, possibly without first attempting to rigorously analyze their examples. This is a mistake in method, but it also appears to indicate a misconception about what logic and fallacy are.

The Nature of Logic

Many people think of logical as just meaning reasonable or sensible or even common-sense. But that's not what the word means to philosophers or logicians, exactly. Different philosophers have described it very differently, but I'll take logic to refer to certain thought-actions that humans make in trying to use our finite brains to understand a world that's ultimately far beyond our scope. These operations are generally classified as either deduction or induction, two other categories which we will find break down somewhat on examination as well. I will describe each, first quickly, then in more detail, to show some of the underlying resemblances and processes.

Deduction

Deductions use 2 statements, or premises, to determine a third. That third may then become one of the premises for a future deduction. Here's a simple example:

Premise #1: All students are under 25 years old.
Premise #2: Joe is a student.
Conclusion: Joe is under 25 years old.

Notice how this works. Now, you all know students over 25 years old, so you know the statement is incorrect. Pointing out a 26-year-old student refutes the statement, but it does not by itself explain the fallacy as required by the fallacies assigment.

Here the ultimate claim, the conclusion, is that John is under 25 years old. Now, there's some good logic here. How can we say that the deduction is good even though the conclusion is bad? Because the definitions of the words and the ways they relate do not allow us to conceive of a single universe in which #1 and #2 are true while the conclusion is false.If John were a student and all students were under 25, then John would be under 25. The statement is false because premise #1 is itself false, but we'll attend to that later; meanwhile, there's more to say about terms.

Notice that the logic here seemed pretty airtight. That may be partly because the words seem simple, and we think of them as meaning one thing. This is misleading. The complex things we do in response to a single word have blown by us so fast that we weren't aware of what we were doing. Looking at a more complex word may be simpler.

A recent NY Times article referred to the "fractious" leaders of Iraq. Now, if I look the word up in WordWeb, I get "Stubbornly resistant to authority or control" or "Easily irritated or annoyed" or "Unpredictably difficult in operation; likely to be troublesom." So I think part of what the Times' reporter wanted to imply was that these Iraqis were unreasonably resistant to US command. However, when I ask a classroom full of intelligent, educated readers what fractious means, I immediately get notions of fractions, fragments, and so forth. Now, this isn't altogether strange or altogether incorrect. One might notice that people who are chronically unable to get along may also be called "divisive," and the relation between division and fractions is obvious. So the Times' article states that the Iraqi leaders are uncompliant, but suggests as well that they're divided and divisive, that they cause what could be whole to be fragmented. Let's look a little farther about how this impression comes about.

Many of the words we use each day are difficult to define. That's because we don't really use them the way they exist in a dictionary. A dictionary does not create words; the writers of a dictionary just attempt to describe them. I'd call that a noble effort, but when we use the words, we're really referring to an extensive and varied network of personal experiences and thoughts that relate to other times we have heard or read the word used.

These associations may be summoned more or less directly, strongly, or consciously. Hopefully a visual metaphor will help to explain this. If you look at an object more or less straight ahead, you can tell me many things about how it looks. If I ask you about soemthing that takes place at the very edge of your perpherial vision, you will probably turn and fix both eyes on it to answer. We are only partly aware of our periphery; that is, we focus less processing on it; or, again: we don't pay much attention to it.

When we hear a word and its associations are summoned, we don't know which aspects of the association the speaker intends until the sentence completes and locks in which meanings are intended, that is, which associations seem consistent with the rest of the sentence. To some extent, we may revise this judgment with future paragraphs and future sentences and so forth.

Now, here's what all this has to do with deductive logic. The process involves repeatedly checking characteristics and insisting on consistency. That is, what's implied by the associations with one term cannot exclude the all the possibilities determined by the other. There must be some range of mutual possibility, or we call the statement a contradiction: it does not "make sense."

So, these are the judgments we bring to bear at each step of a "deductive" process. We compare the immediate implications of each statement; then, we judge whether any of the implications that seem definitively a part of these statements must be considered as mutually exclusive. Also, generally, we examine the case in the reverse: given the implications of the two statements, can one be untrue at the same time taht the other is true? By breaking the rapid, global, often untraceable judgments of intuition to the test of these more obvious connections between concepts, we put our theories and hypotheses to one kind of test: If we believe two things that are contradictory, we can conclude as surely as anything in our human perception that one is wrong.

However, language and concepts are tricky, and things can appear logical that really are not so. Here's another example.

White is pure and clean.
Joe is white.
Therefore, Joe is pure and clean.

Not only is this not necessarily correct about Joe, similar reasoning has been used, ridiculous as it is, to support all manner of prejudice. Leaving the social issues aside, let's look at the mechanics of the fallacy.

We probably call Joe white because he's caucasion, not because he's albino. The word white does not refer to the visual aspect of snow, as it seems to in the first premise. Also, pure and clean does not mean the same thing with reference to colors, snow, or color symbology that it does if we're talking about Joe. As if that weren't enough, even the word is changes. Joe is white by category; white is pure and clean by description, albeit a somewhat metaphorical description. The relationship described by the word is, then, is different in each case.

So deductive fallacies can happen when there's some shift of meanings in the terms themselves, if there's some misuse or shift of use in the operators, the words that determine relationships between the premises (and, or, and not are common).

Deductive conclusions also tend to be false when the original premises or assumptions are false. I'll repeat my stock example and add another that a student supplied today:

All students are under 25
Joe is a student
Therefore, Joe is under 25.

All doctors are men.
My mother's a doctor.
My mother is a man.

In either case, an apparently logical process yields results that clearly do not describe the world we live in. What happened?

Well, clearly, each case has an inaccurate premise. That premise may have come from an earlier bad deduction. It may just be there because the speaker is deliberately lying or thoughtlessly repeating something he or she heard somewhere. But it may also be there because the speaker has made an inductive error, a bad generalization from experience. These also are fallacies.

Induction refers to a complex and not-wholly-understood process by which people take in and assemble sensory impressions, creating categories and expectations of that. Let's assume that in the above example, a speaker has only met male doctors. Before 1970 or so, or in certain parts of the world today, it would have been quite possible to meet a fair number of doctors and, through some coincidence, to have met no female doctors. So, although it may seem a little far-fetched to contemporary californians, the speaker may have generalized from experience. If the person has only heard the word doctor refer to male people, that person may conceive of male or masculine as part of the charactistics implied by or associated with the word doctor.

While studying for a doctorate, I got a library card from UCI to use the big university libraries near my home. Shortly afterward, a pollster from UCI called, and when I had answered her questions, she said she would send something out to reward me for my time. I gave her the address, and she asked why I used the library, I said I was studying for a doctorate. Soon a package of stickers arrived; they each read "William Crandall M.D.", with a cute little anteater on each.

Clearly, she reasoned something like this:

Doctor's are physicians.
Bill Crandall will be a doctor.
Bill Crandall will be a physician.

When I saw the stickers, another deduction came to mind:

People who lead other people to believe they are doctors are criminals.
I somehow led her to believe I am a doctor.
Oops.

Most inductive fallacies occur because the test population differs from the population to which one applies the conclusions, but a few happen because one neglects similarities that do exist. In either case, the critic should look for manipulation of the test population. Some evidence may be neglected, or the population may be signficantly different, or someone may use a few examples of a broad and varied class to conclude about many many different examples of that class.

In all these cases, students should notice that multiple categories of deductive fallacy might be used to classify the same mistake. For instance, someone who thinks that no female doctors exist appears to have little experience with doctors. So we might call that an insufficient sample and say that the person has rushed to judgment or jumped to a conclusion or used a hasty generalization. On the other hand, given the plentiful instances of contradictory information in this case, if the speaker is over 5, one might strongly suspect that this is a case of exclusion: that is, the test population concludes no female doctors because the speaker refuses to believe that any of the women he has met are "real" doctors somehow; therefore, the plentiful counterexamples go ignored. Of course, any population that has been pruned by such exclusion cannot possibly truly represent the general population described by one or another word.

Now, let's look at some of the complexities that induction may hide.

We've been talking about a "population," applying that word to groups or sets of things or actions or people or even abstract qualities. What determines what of all we see and feel falls into one "population" or another? Clearly, this is a question of our personal and internal organization of concepts. To some extent, this organization becomes public by our shared use of a more or less common language: by words. So if I define the word doctor as being a physician, I can apparently work at UCI amidst quite a few "Doctors of Philosophy" and not come across any counterexamples: A "doctor of literature" isn't a doctor any more than a "greenhouse" need be painted green.

Now, at first these considerations may appear trivial. We all know we use words differently at different moments in different contexts. But remember what we said about words themselves earlier on. A word, as we use it, is not that clean amputee, the dictionary-defined term. It is a trace-work of more and less occulted associations focused and brought forward or hidden by context. But context is ever-shifting. And it's hard to define. Where does the context of a word stop? Does it stop at the end of the sentence? Partly, but only partly. We can use a pronoun instead of a noun in one sentence, and if the noun is in the previous sentence, everyone will likely know what the pronoun refers to. Does it end at the end of a paragraph? If it did, essay structure would not mean much. Does it end at the end of a book? Not when one book refers to another. And where does the context end if the word is on the Internet, where part of the context onscreen at a single moment may be coming from Africa, and another part from Taiwan? And then, how does the context of what's onscreen change when I comment on it verbally in class?

Along with all the other categories these difficulties apply to, they apply to categorizations of logical fallacies. So, ultimately, you will not be graded on the categorization you choose for a given fallacy. You will be graded on the consistency and appropriateness of your description of the mal-formation of the statement you choose to examine.