So who is right?

We took a look at a couple speeches and interviews today and discussed the rhetoric in them, particularly looking closely at the idea of logical fallacies.  The interview with William Black was brought to my attention thanks to Mr. Walsh McGuire, financial genius, and Obama's speech was brought to my attention perhaps thanks to the relative ease with which you can pick out logical fallacies.  It also served as somewhat of the opposite viewpoint to Mr. Black's.  So we can start with Obama's:



(my first question isn't important, but what does the bit about "if the neighbor sleep in his bed."  Of course it looks like a mistake, but is there some kind of reference there I am missing?)

I have quite a few other questions, but the places we looked at closely were the first major logical fallacy that people are angry and frustrated because "Wall Street's mistakes have put their tax dollars at risk."  Of course those tax dollars are only at risk because Wall Street is holding the President and all of his advisers hostage so that they will funnel money through various institutions and measures to those very same banks.  They don't have to, but the constantly repeated line is that, if they don't, the world will collapse.  So I would just like it if the speech writers in the future would make sure to connect the dots for us rather than leaving out the rather important and somewhat disgusting middle few dots for us to have to find on our own.  Clearly, that takes too much work!

Mr. Black's interview is not a direct response to Mr. Obama's speech, or anyone else's for that matter, though you can look at his testimony to the congressional panel here.  Note that even the folks there don't want to hear it as they start banging the gavel long before he is done roasting everyone you've ever heard of. I have to admit, perhaps the only reason I like his answer so much is that at no time does he say anything along the lines of "we didn't see this coming" or "I don't know how this happened" or even "we are really, really sorry for all this" all the while sitting on VERY fat wallet.

It should of course be noted that the Real News Network's interviewer at this point is obviously holding hands with Mr. Black.  We contrasted this technique of interviewing with one of the more famous BBC interviews of all time in which the interviewer actually asks the same question ten times or more in a vain attempt to get the interviewee to answer it, check it out here.  (It is worth eight minutes of your time to get the whole set up.)

But on to his interview (I've only included the first part, feel free to watch the rest on your own)



So there are other rhetorical issues with Mr. Black's interview, and we didn't get a chance to work on them today but hopefully will in the future because it is only fair that we pick on everyone, not just the people we think are really good looking or those that don't have incredible facial hair.

Obviously I'd love to hear how people feel about this guy's testimony, lots of people out there know more about what he is talking about than I do, so feel free to tear him apart, you may get yourself referenced in a future lesson if you aren't careful!

But I must add one more comment, if you didn't watch the testimony Mr. Black gives to the oversight committee, you miss one of the greatest lines to come out of this whole crisis.  He is pointing out the fact that central banks have often forced CEOs out of their positions and in particular he is mentioning the way that the Bank of England does it.  Apparently they have a luncheon, and he says:

"The board of directors are invited.  They don't say no."  Then gives a little grin suggesting perhaps that the oversight committee is a bunch of sissies compared to the Bank of England since they deal with refusals to appear and re-schedule with some frequency.  Maybe that is why they start banging the gavel in the middle of his speech.

Self Promotion Take #1

I just found a picture from the race I won a few weeks ago in Mt. Joy PA.  It was my first win on a bicycle as I didn't really count winning the Cat. 5 section of the climb in Shippensburg a couple years ago.  But it was fun to open the season with a little win, especially as it was a win from the front.  I got a little bored (and actually just needed to warm up after sitting on the starting line for fifteen minutes) and took off a mile into the race.  Once it was clear that no one was trying to come along, I just settled in and tried to maintain a pretty good rythm around the course.  Won by 3:43 and felt pretty good.  I just hope I can convince the powers that be that I can move up a category in time for the Killington Stage Race...

Now, if only we could figure out how to get Sugoi to make a few of their fancy jerseys, I could be wearing one instead of  the random skinsuit I picked up on ebay last year.

I fought the car

and I won this time.  I haven't posted in a while, sorry to my loyal readership, but this deserves a little airtime I suppose.
I was traveling down Wynnewood road, having just left the house and going nice and easy.  Perhaps because I haven't taken the time to change my 11-23 cassette out since the race two weekends ago, or perhaps just because it is a long slight downhill that starts to get steep towards the end, I was just turning the pedals over but was likely traveling close to 28-30 mph.  The nice thing about these mornings is that it is starting to get light again around 6AM so it was already starting to lighten up.  Of course I still had my handy lights flashing and was wearing ridiculously flashy clothing.
A car appeared on Belmont Avenue waiting to turn left.  I was less than 75m away, and I saw the car, I am quite sure the driver saw me, so I assumed the driver had a brain and would wait until I passed.

Soon I would find out that perhaps a cross section of this fine man's head would reveal something else. 
As I continued to approach the intersection at a rather rapid clip (for me, of course I was still going 5mph under the speed limit) this fine man decided to start pulling out into the road.  I was dumbfounded.  I was aghast.  I began turning to the left to avoid him, but I didn't have much time.  I felt like we even made eye contact at this point.  But instead of stopping, he continue out into the intersection and began his sweep to the left.
At this point, I had very few options as I was going far to quickly to stop and couldn't really get around the car.  So, as I was braking as hard as I could without going over the front end, I removed my shoe from the clip on my left pedal.
I then placed my foot out in front of me as best I could while I careened towards the car, hoping to help stop myself without going over the front of the bike or using something less able to absorb shock than my leg.
Thankfully, his fender was relatively soft and absorbed a great deal of the shock.  Sadly, it also emerged from the incident with a rather serious scratch and dent combo, who knew SPD-SL's could cause so much damage!  I got a bruise on my right leg from the handlebar swinging around and an out of alignment front wheel that was easily adjusted back so I could continue riding.
To the guy's very small credit, he did take the time to get out of the car and make sure I was ok, pointed out where he lived in case I needed to talk to him about further problems, and expressed some regret at it happening.  To his shame, he did not apologize for making decisions that could lead to a cyclist's serious injury because he was unwilling to wait for one to pass at 6AM on an empty road.
Super.