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.

Naive Evian Drinkers

In case the bottom is not entirely legible, it says "74 percent of people who drink an extra litre of evian pure natural mineral water a day notice their skin looking smoother, more hydrated, and as a result visibly younger".

This is another clear example of fallacious advertisement, trying to equate a product with sex-appeal. This is not to say that evian will not hydrate ones body, but so will any other water. Turn the faucet and you can hydrate! We should all realize by now that evian is naive spelled backwards.

Camel Fallacy

This is a classic example of fallacious advertising. This is a false appeal to sexiness. Cigarrette smoke is hardly attractive. Contrary to what Camel would like the consumer to believe, it's cancer-sticks are not a ticket to cool; tey are a prescription to an early death.

2nd Ammendment Misnomer

The massacre at Virginia Tech has spawned a quick alarmist postion from the far political right.
The neo-cons are more prone to protect their interpretation of the second ammendment rather than addressing the atrocity itself. They claim that the secon ammendment cannot be relinquished or changed as it is an integral part of our politcal foundation. They are intellectually disengenious to retort this way. The second ammendment was written to protect the common person from government tyrrany. Does anyone think a tech-9 will stop tyrrany in the modern world?

This ad is taken from http://lurquer.com/cig/cigsmile.jpg. This ad shows a Fallacy of Deduction as they have a valid premise of cigrattes causing mouth diseases and cigratte smoke causing oral cancer, gum diseases and tooth loss but misapplied to the intention of this advertisement of public wanting to buy these cigrattes. As this advertisement shows that cigratte smoking can cause so much harm, then why do these companies still want the public to buy their cigrattes??
Is it because the cigratte manufacturing companies don't care about public health? or they want the public to give more importance to the pleasure derived from smoking cigrattes rather than their own health?

Fallacy

Fallacies of Distraction: "live the dream." I don't think perfume scent can make people dreaming about anything. Also, if people do dream due to the scent, they can't "live" in it. This is so distracting and doesn't make sense.

Illegal Immigration: Good or Bad for the Economy?

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates the 2005 population of illegal aliens at 12 million.
According to the World Bank, 53% close to 24% of Mexico's population live in extreme poverty, which means they live on less than $1 a day. Unemployment in Mexico is estimated at 40%. With these facts one can see why illegal immigration into the United States is a highly desirable option for many. Many vilify immigrants for being here; however, government, businesses and the US economy overall benefit from illegal immigration. Immigrants make important contributions to the American economy. They
help the economy grow by adding to the labor force; they fill in jobs at the
lower end of the skill distribution.

Opponents of illegal immigration may argue that undocumented immigrants are exploiting the United States' economy. The widespread belief is that illegal aliens cost more in government services than they contribute to the economy. This belief is undeniably false. Many studies have shown undocumented people contribute by paying taxes, by their investments and consumption of goods and services; by filling millions of essential labor positions, and their substantial contributions to Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance programs. Each year undocumented immigrants add billions of dollars in sales, excise, property, income and payroll taxes. Yet undocumented immigrants are barred from almost all government benefits, including food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, federal housing programs, Supplemental Security Income, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, Medicare, and the earned income tax credit (EITC). Contrary to what the opposition may say, the only benefits federally required for undocumented immigrants are emergency medical care, subject to financial and category eligibility, and elementary and secondary public education. The truth is that many undocumented immigrants will not even use these services for fear of government officials and deportation. The con team may argue many of these points. They may say that Illegal aliens generally pay no taxes, and typically send a significant amount of their earnings back to their families in their country of origin. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact is that a stunning two-thirds of illegal immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes. The Immigration Reform and Control Act, did little to deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants. But for Social Security's finances, it was a great piece of legislation. Immigrant workers arrive in the United States in the prime of their working lives and they pay into the system for decades. However, since undocumented workers have only fake numbers, they'll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers which the Social Security administration puts in the “earnings suspense file”, added up to 10% of the Social Security surplus. The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year. The New York Times states that "for illegal immigrants, Social Security numbers are simply a tool needed to work on this side of the border. Retirement does not enter the picture”.
In 1996 the Internal Revenue Service began issuing identification numbers to enable illegal immigrants who don't have Social Security numbers to file taxes. Close to 8 million of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country today file personal income taxes using these numbers, contributing billions to federal and state government.
It is true that some money is sent back to the countries of origin, however one can not disallow the money that American businesses make from providing services to immigrants. Companies like Western Union who took in $1.1 billion last year from such money transfers. Then there is the money that is kept and spent here. Immigrants have tremendous buying power. Twelve million people who contribute to the economy everyday. It may be against the law for the illegal immigrants to be in the U.S. or for an employer to hire them, but there's nothing illegal about selling products or services to them. Many businesses are targeting this untapped community. They have come to realize that these families open bank accounts, purchase vehicles, pay utilities, rent or purchase homes, they need cell phone service, buy groceries, buy clothes and they want to be the ones to provide it. Experts agree that the undocumented people, a majority of whom are Hispanic, are one of the nation's largest sources of population growth. They add 700,000 new consumers to the economy every year. 84% of illegal immigrants are 18 to 44-year-olds, in their prime spending years. Many smaller companies are building their entire business around undocumented immigrants.
The opposition may also argue that Americans cannot find jobs because illegal immigrants are taking all of the jobs. Immigrants have skill sets that complement those of Americans, and they do not compete for the same jobs as most Americans. Immigrants tend to go to segments of the labor market where there is the most demand and less supply. Lower-skilled immigrants who come into the United States are typically taking jobs that most Americans are not interested in. According to the Department of Labor, at least half of the nearly 2,000,000 crop workers in the United States are illegal aliens. The cheap labor they provide is crucial to the $30-billion U.S. farm industry. Illegal immigrants now comprise fully half of all farm laborers. In the landscaping industry, there is a heavy reliance on an immigrant labor force. California's licensed landscape contractors employ more than 86,500 workers and contribute an estimated more than $5.5 billion to the state's economy. In many cases, the business could not survive without them. Removing immigrant workers would mean invading workplaces across America and disrupting business on an unprecedented scale.
Labor economists say the flow of immigrants provides the U.S. economy with a more flexible labor force that keeps industries growing while delivering lower prices to American consumers.

In 1997, the National Research Council published a seminal study on the influence of immigration on the overall economy. The Council found that immigration has a net positive benefit to the United States economy of about $10-billion a year.

Lost...

I'm a little lost regarding analyzing fallacies. I found several advertisements online that I know that present some fallacies in each ad, but I don't know how to categorize them. I hope Professor Crandall will clear this up a bit in class. I'm still don't fully understand each category of fallacies and how we can find them in ads.

Abortion

Here are some links I found on the internet about abortion.

http://www.abortionfacts.com/

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/birth-control-pregnancy/abortion-4260.htm

http://www.teenbreaks.com/abortion/abortionhome.cfm

Fallacy Assignments

I will make several entries here today and perhaps tomorrow to clarify fallacy assignments.

The first announcement I will make is that students WILL receive FULL CREDIT towards their 10 fallacies as well as their blog entries for comments on fallacies that other students post. To receive full credit, the student must analyse the fallacy thoroughly.

Names

Just a gentle reminder -- try to remember to use the blog names on the blog, so we're not blowing anyone's cover. Thanks.

Gun Control Research Information

Here are some more sites for research:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/weapons.htm
http://www.youdebate.com/gun_control.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15386044/

Question on Fallacies...

If we respond to the fallacies on the blog posted by the professor, would it be counted towards the ten fallacies that need to be submitted by the end of the semester???

Ladybug

There seems to be no time in class to chat! What if we exchange emails next Sunday? Just a thot.

Gun Control

I am in the Gun Control group (pro) and found this website -

http://www.justfacts.com/issues.guncontrol.asp

I will be looking for more, in the meantime if you see any please post :)

Debates topics decided on Mothers day

Zoo's -should animals be kept in zoos
Gun Control- "Out of Control?"
Private Lives of celebrities
Abortion-----------------------------my group so I dont forget

Fallacy

Fallacy

Fallacy

Fallacy

Fallacy

Fallacy

Fallacy

Fallacy

Fallacy

Capital Punishment

In the case of Tookie Williams, I believed that capital punisment was injust due to the fact that he repented on the heinous crimes he committed during his early manhood. In my eyes, prison is suppose to change a person. In William's case, he changed from being a hardcore thug to a children's author, therefore the committee should have further reviewed his further actions and let him live his life in prison. In his case, Williams should have lived.

Debate

I was wondering how the debate is going to be organized if its two against one. One of the team member dropped the class, and I'm the only one on the pro side now. Maybe you guys discussed this last week, but I wasn't in class that time. I'd appreciate it if anyone can tell me if you know. Thanks.

Illegal Immigration Team

For our group I think we sohuld post our topics of argument so we can form our questions by friday. Pro Team and Con Team; we should try to make sure we are not addressing the same issues from speaker A and B of the same side. If you dont have anyones email address post them here if it will help to gain contanct.
Mine is thirdeyelife@hotmail.com
I will be posting my questions before or on friday in this blog so the battle can begin.
Thanks-
Brian

global warming team

One of the sites we were looking up, about the swindle, and we noticed it had a video, well I found it to watch online. Its a google video, and its under The Glolbal Warming Swindle. I'm assuming its the one the prof. was talking about. I think maybe it lasted an hour. There was some conflicting info in it, and alot of repeated info we've seen, but may be worth your time.

I haven't found anything the prof was talking about in regards to methodology and the deeper stuff. Have you had any luck?

Peter, are you still on the team or are you going with the essay?

Need Updates on Illegal Immigration

Hey guys...I missed the last class on Sunday so if possible please give me updates on the Illegal Immigration Debate. Do we have any time on Sunday before we present our debate? How is this going to work?

Taxes and Illegal Immigration

immigrationonline.org/commentary.asp?opedid=1314

for Illegal Immigration Group

http://www.uscis.gov

Cause and Effect

Ok, maybe I'm crazy but milk is white, right? Everyone who looks at it sees it as white. I understand that our eyes see what the light reflects but even if you don't see it in the dark doesn't mean its not white just because we don't see it. A blind person may not physically see the milk he is drinking, but that doesn't mean it's not what it is. Its like the whole "If a tree falls in the forest" thing. Just because a person is not physically present doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's physics. If a tree falls and we see it we know it makes a sound. How arrogant are we to believe that just because we aren't there it doesn't happen. Yes, I'm a geek but I'm trying to get more blogs in. :)

Fallcy Ads

Fake is for last night? Ok Tab you couldnt possibly be talking about sex, could you? Dont buy fake handbags just fake it in the sack. Of course real moments of intamcy dont campare to the fine sewn fabrics of the newest designer handbag. You couldnt have materials used to make up your purse or bag not be genuine, the purse/bag couldnt function properly. All sarcasm aside this ad couldnt say less about there product if they blured out the tab logo from the can in the bottom of the ad. This ad is trying to appeal to wealth or popularity/status. I could imagine some hoighty toighty rich snoot getting a chucke from this ad. Apparently I missed the message that being fabulous came from a can. Though it may be deliciously pink(whatever that means) there is no information about the product or facts to back up how women are somehow in need of a differnt enery than a man. Two thumbs down tab.

Ad1.
Ad.2
Ad.1. According to this Calvin Clein ad you need to be living the dream. I'm forced to imagine that their version of the dream will be supplied by them once you buy Euphoria. I'm thinking that by calling this fragrance Euphoria they are really saying that happiness and confidance are just dreams and not something that a person can really acheive. So spray this on and be disilliusioned, perhaps language is not the most important thing for a company to focus on when deciding the name's and slogans for a product. It seems counterintuitive to label something with a definition that doesnt run parrallel to its slogan. Euphoria being great happiness and than reffering to living that way as a dream. More than likely I'm way to literal but this ad wouldnt sell me.

Ad.2. "Pump up the volume," "yeah she rocks," a young woman might think associating the word volume with music comming from the headphones the model in the ad is wearing. The words are purposly misleading. The advertisement says this is a volumizing lipstick that pulls moisture in. If I'm suggested to accept that volume is the power behind this ads punch, I might be just as inclined to think it could make the woman talk louder when assosiated with the headphones and that definition of volume. Word assosiation is the only connection between the picture and the product.







This outdoor ad trying to capitolize of the rise or accpetacne in divorce says a little by showing alot. The fallcy is false image. There are two attractive bodies calling to the consumers eyes,"you can have us just get a divorce." Getting a divorce to trade up is the message giving a false sense of whats important to the passerby checking out the sign.






False information or simply lack of any. This dyson ad is saying other vacums will clog up and not work. Somehow there brand is impecable to any type of clogging or mishap. Its astrong stance to take but there is no evidence supported in the ad to validate this false claim.






A horrible ad alltogether. This watch ad was pulled from the internet and I hope it is not an actual ad but was worth commenting on. Placed in front of a thomas kinkade painting these watches are put up in comparision when these popular selling modern works of art. Knowing off hand that these paintings are not cheap I am to assume that these watches are also not cheap and are intentionally being marketed to the same audience of people. All most to say if you appreciate Kinkades artwork then you must also appreciate these fine watches.






A different approach for mabeline. Alltough interesting this advertisement appeals to novelty. Goth boys and girls arent running out to buy mabeline based on this ad. Its humeruos and will stick in someones mind for that reason alone. Women concerned with this type of make up product are not being persuaded by the beauty(or lack) of Marilyn Manson. Since when did Mabeline become a product for men anyways.






I dont speak spanish but its not hard to see that there is some type of drink being sold in the ad. Or is it? At second look there's someting else "butt"ing into the spotlight. This ad is really selling that butt, but putting a soda next it to assosiate their product with it. Obcious but effective in this day and age.






What stikes me odd about this ad is the false dilema. What appears to be a ciggertte ad trying to bring you to where the flavor is actually is an ad for candy. Its a parody of a common marlboro man style ad but as you can see the buldge in the mans cheek is where the flavor lies.






This could seem like medication to lift your spirtis, help with anxiety or maybe help with your cooridnation. All though its none of that. Its for erection medication. The mans happiness is suppose to be comming from the fact that all his worries and problems dissapeared when he was able to achieve and erection. Thanks levitra, if only a confident erection could help everyone. Sadly these types of advertisements make attempt to show that if your not as happy as the man in the ad then your porobolly not having a good sex life. Sex sells and its where happiness comes from. Not really but I guess thats what I'm suppose to belive while seeing that ad.

Assignments Due Questions

Questions about assignments due should refer to the class outline. If it's not immediately available, go to this blog, go to LABELS at the right-hand side of the screen, find the label Administrative, click on it, and scroll down to the class outline.

If you still have a question, fire away.

Illegal Immigration Group

Hey Guys. I was just wondering where were at as a group. What information is needed for us to get this ball rollin. I'll later come back to this blog and try to post various facts. I just wanted to see if we could begin to become more cohesive as a group.
Thanks.

Mind over matter

Has anyone experienced this? To believe in something so much that it becomes true... people's predictions, superstitions, etc. I have seen it happen on more than one occasion and I'm wondering if you have any stories to share about yourself or another person you know? Just curious cuz I think it's fascinating.

Heart health findings

This site is unrelated to fallacies; however, it is a very interesting article about new findings pertaining to heart attacks, oxygen depletion, and death. If you are interested in the health field, medical break-throughs, or just like to read things that may affect your life, I recommend this relatively short article. I can see where further research may change the way emergency response personnel (EMT's and Paramedics) treat heart attack patients - according to the information provided in the article, they may be unknowingly starting the chain of events that lead to a quicker and irreversable death.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368186/site/newsweek/