Syllogistic reasoning

I was searching for some information on syllogistic reasoning and came across a couple examples of syllogistic reasoning, which I found amusing. Just to let you know, these two examples are examples of incorrect syllogistic reasoning, or at least unreasonable ones.

Statement 1: All men are animals

Statement 2: Some animals are aggressive

Conclusion: Some men are aggressive

Statement 1: All men are animals

Statement 2: Some animals are female

Conclusion: Some men are female

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/types_reasoning/syllogistic_reasoning.htm

Technology talk today

Warren Olney's daily show, To the Point (KCRW 89.9 FM noon, available as a podcast) featured a fascinating conversation today called The Internet and the Human Brain.  Differing opinions and points of view -- really good.  A couple of books mentioned that would be good for a nonfiction book review project.  Check it out!

Check It Out!

My Blog and my first post. Comment; tell me what you think. Argue, Agree, Follow. (Read the NOTE.)

iamspeaking.blogspot.com

song with allusion to Brave New World

hi...i'm not sure if this is that relevant, but i found an interesting song that references Brave New World, or rather says "its a brave new world"....

Oxymorons

A literary term, illustrated.  Some of these are not really oxymoronic, but they are still (mostly) amusing.

Writing Tips

This was posted on a blog I follow...thought you might be interested in check these writing tips out.
Here's another good site called Advice to Writers.
Hey, whaddaya know?  Ran across another one:  Top 10 Tips for Better Writing

The Weekend Prompt, November 6-7

Carefully read the following letter from Charles Lamb to the English romantic poet William Wordsworth.  Then, paying particular attention to the tone of Lamb's letter, write an essay in which you analyze the techniques Lamb uses to decline Wordsworth's invitation.
Letter to William Wordsworth Letter LXXXV Charles Lamb 30th January 1801 I ought before this to have replied to your very kind invitation into Cumberland. With you and your sister I could gang anywhere; but I am afraid whether I shall ever be able to afford so desperate a journey. Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life. I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead Nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street; the innumerable trades, tradesmen, and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses; all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden; the very women of the Town; the watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles; life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night; the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street; the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, the old bookstalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomimes - London itself a pantomime and a masquerade - all these things work themselves into my mind, and feed me, without a power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights impels me into night-walks about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life. All these emotions must be strange to you; so are your rural emotions to me.  But consider, what must I have been doing all my life, not to have lent great portions of my heart with usury to such scenes?   My attachments are all local, purely local. I have no passion (or have had none since I was in love, and then it was the spurious engendering of poetry and books) for groves and valleys. The rooms where I was born, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book-case which has followed me about like a faithful dog (only exceeding him in knowledge), wherever I have moved myself, old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where I have sunned myself, my old school - these are my mistresses. Have I not enough, without your mountains? I do not envy you. I should pity you, did I not know that the mind will make friends of anything. Your sun, and moon, and skies, and hills, and lakes, affect me no more, or scarcely come to me in more venerable characters, than as a gilded room with tapestry and tapers, where I might live with handsome visible objects.