Water freezes at 32F, this is true. That means that the ice can be no hotter than 32F but it can certainly be colder, much colder in fact.
Haj
I’ve heard that advertisers are starting to court gay consumers, but isn’t this going just a little too far?
This commercial bothers the hell out of me (another Brink’s one).
Not for logical reasons, but for it’s somewhat accurate depiction of the feminized American male.
The alarm goes off. There’s a burglar in the house. The wife is called and told the police will be coming. The man does nothing but sit there and panic.
Finally, the Real Men (in this case, police) show up and tell the Neutered Man that the threat is gone. The neutered man then says something like “It’s okay honey, we’re safe now.”
Rereading what I just wrote, it doesn’t sound very aggrivating at all. I guess you’d have to be annoyed at the sentiment expressed in the scenario to see what I’m getting at.
Basically, it’s accepted for the feminized, neutered male figure to do absolutely nothing in his own defense or that of his wife, and the proper course of action is to wait for the Authorities to do something, or the Real Men - depending on context.
Then again, it’s a security company, and the idea of defenseless people that need to rely on their system is something they’d like to portray.
Sure they will. You’ll just be so shloshed that you won’t realise that the gorgeous babe is actually a 5 dollar crack-whore.
But Cecil (and others) focus on the accuracy of the survey, and the accuracy of the survey is not a logical issue, but an empirical issue. The logical issue concerns an invalid inference: from the fact that dentists tend to recommend sugarless gum over gum containing sugar, it does not follow that any dentist at all recommends Trident gum over any other sugarless gum (which is what the commercial implicitly concludes, and wants you to conclude). Even if the surveyÑthe premiseÑis true, it does not follow directly that the conclusion is true. The conclusion may or may not be true, but its truth is not guaranteed by the premise.
In the context of discussing strictly logical errors in commericals, the issue of the empirical accuracy of the survey is a bit of a red herring.
There’s an even worse one where the kids are outside, the father opens the garage, and all these toaster pastries fall out. The garage is full of them. Why does this family only open the garage once a year?
Even worse, Annie. The father doesn’t open the garage. The kid does, because like all average American teens, he carries the automatic door opener around in his pocket when he’s going to school.
True, it does have to be one or the other, but that’s why the commercial says “or,” not “and.”
“Save up to 15% or more.” is a logically valid statement. “Save up to 15% and more.” is not. There is nothing wrong with the validity of the statement. It may not be accurate, but it is valid.
I gotta cast another vote for the Brinks commercials. The one with the woman and her kids huddling in the bedroom bothers me the most. I mean, Brinks calls her on THE PHONE THAT IS IN THE SAME ROOM WITH HER!!! So, she is passively waiting for Brinks to call her and tell her they’ll call someone, when she could have just picked up that phone and dialled 911 herself?? WTF? But I also hate the one with hubby and wife in bed, cowering like babes in the woods til Brinks sends “The Knights In Shining Badges” to save them! I guess if you’re as passive as the folks in these commercials, you’d better have a service like Brinks!
The other types of commercials that fall far short on the logic meter is the “if it worked for me, it’ll work for you” type of commercial. These people have no idea who “I” am, how the hell can they know what will work for me? Give me testimonials, fine, but don’t tell me I’ll get the same results as you did. This is one of the mose ludicrous things you could possibly say!
The family trying to finish dinner in a hurry so they can go watch their favorite TV program. Why not just have the TV and the food in the same room?
The song was “Fortunate Son.” And yeah, that gets me too. The ad (Tommy Hilfiger?) plays that ass-kicking guitar intro, then the first line of the song, “Some folks are born, made to wave the flag… Oooh, that red, white, and blue!”
They quickly cut back to the intro, skipping the next line: “But when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief,’ ooh they point the cannon at you!” A vicious song about institutional hypocrisy, made to seem like flag-waving patriotism. Wonder why CCR let them use it?
My favorite is one that ran about a year ago for Dr. Pepper. It had Garth Brooks sitting on the porch with a racially diverse group of his best buddies, playing music. Remember? He was singing, “There’s a light in your soul that says you’re one of a kind…”
Well, he’s sitting there strumming the guitar and others have a fiddle, a washbucket, and I forget what-all; but he is clearly playing the guitar. But if you listen to the song, there’s no damn guitar music in it. Used to drive me crazy.
When CCR was cranking out all their great hits, they had a notoriously bad record contract that resulted in the rights to all their songs belonging to the record company rather than the band or songwriter. So, I doubt whether John Fogerty or any of the other CCR guys had any say in how the song was used.
What about that Enterprise rent-a-car commercial that shows the car driving along all wrapped up in brown paper? There is a rope around the car, like it was a package to be mailed or something.
(Aside: why on earth does wrapping a car make it seem like a better rental? I totally miss the whole point of that.)
Anyway, when the car roll up in the driveway, there is no rope on the car. It just disappeared! What happened to the rope? Did it just blow off in the breeze? I think not, as it was wrapped and knotted tightly.
But the guy gets out of the car all smiles. And I’m thinking, “Yeah buddy, just see how easy it would be to get out of that car with the doors lashed down with that big ol’ rope.”
Plus, isn’t it dangerous to drive a car with all the windows blocked by brown paper?
4- Where are the roaches? I’ve been in school buildings. You can’t drop a three-week-old wad of chewed gum on the floor without seeing it swarming with roaches seconds later.
They deliver the car to you.
There is a commercial for some sort of detergent. The woman puts a basket full of wet laundry on the top of her car, tiesit down with a rope, and proceeds to drive through the country. Ok,not so stupid.Except she’s driving so fast that dirt from the dirt road she is on is being kicked up. I mean, by the time she gets to the magic field where she can hang her clothes (that’s probably full of cowpies) the clothes should have dirt, dead bugs, and possible bird shit on them.
I hate that commercial.
The problem is not that it’s invalid. The problem is that it’s meaningless. “Save up to 1% or more” or “save up to 80% or more” would both be equally valid, and equally accurate. The illogic of the situation is that they’re implying that “save up 15% or more” means “save around 15%” when it doesn’t.
There use to be a Vick’s 44 commercial that drove me batty. Done in some mall, they have people come up and look at two bottles of cough syrup, and just by looks alone choose which they thought would work better. They would look at the bottle with the thick syrup (the Vick’s) and say something like, “This would coat better!” What do hell does thickness have to do with how well the cough syrup works!
I have trouble keeping knives away from my throat when i see the spot for a big, fuel-guzzling SUV that is supposedly so quiet that it can pull up in a forest next to some deer without scaring them away.
first some cutsey suburban thirty-somethings drive into some idyllic wood amonst the pretty forest-dwellers. then the goofball yuppie chick inside coos to her macho/cool companion: “aren’t they beautiful?”
we then hear a deep, rumbling noise that scares away all the deer-- someone pulls up in a competitor’s noisy SUV–
turns out it’s a big goofy fat guy driving the “loud” SUV-- he pulls up then whispers to the yupster babe, “what are you looking at?”
– the prosperous, smug couple look aghast… completely disgusted by the hog-like man driving the wasteful, polluting, really LOUD sports utility vehicle that scared away the deer.
“some people just get it.” the announcer tells us. (or something like that)
who, WHO? who gets it? I don’t.
are we supposed to think that Brand X SUV can pull up quietly on some deer while Brand Z is just too loud?
utter nonsense.