1.)
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=DIRECT+TV+COMMERCIALS&mid=19A4C3E21D60A06FF5C819A4C3E21D60A06FF5C8&view=detail&FORM=VIRE2
2.)
TUESDAY, April 10 (HealthDay News) -- The
upcoming income tax filing deadline might be taxing in more ways than one for
Americans: A new study suggests that fatal crashes jump on Tax Day, possibly as
a result of last-minute filers carelessly rushing to the post office to mail
their returns.
The study's lead author said the research
indicates that "stressful deadlines lead to driver distraction and human
error."
"Almost all of these crashes could have
been totally avoided by a small change in driver behavior. An awareness of this
risk could lead to better road safety," said Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier, a
professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
But others who study traffic said it's
hard to understand what the findings mean since other possibilities, such as
more cars on the road, rather than lots of people too revved up to pay
attention, could drive up crash statistics on Uncle Sam's big pay day.
"The problem with announcing that any one
day has a greater-than-normal number of traffic crashes is that often, when
adjusted for the higher number of travelers, the crash rate isn't actually
higher than a typical weekend day," said Tom Vanderbilt, author of the book
"Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)."
For the new study, published in the April
11 issue of the Journal
of the American Medical Association, Redelmeier and a colleague examined a
database of fatal U.S. traffic accidents from 1980 to 2009. They looked
specifically at crashes on the date taxes were due and the same day the week
before and the week after.
While the federal government's typical
filing deadline is April 15, it falls on Tuesday, April 17, this year.
Although the risk of dying on Tax Day is
extremely small, it's a bit higher than on the other days. The researchers found
an average of 226 fatal accidents on annual tax-due days compared to 213 on the
other days. The increased risk is about 6 percent.
Increased risk was greatest for people
younger than 65, the researchers said.
Redelmeier, who has investigated traffic
fatality rates on other special days, said Tax Day is about as risky on the
roads as Super Bowl Sunday. In 2008, he also reported that fatal crashes are
more likely during polling hours on presidential election days, compared to
other Tuesdays around the same time.
He said he thinks stress is the
accelerator here. "It doesn't just hold on Tax Day but might also hold to other
distinctly stressful times, such as when you're going through a divorce or
something is wrong with your child or you've just lost your job," he said.
Chandra Bhat, a professor of
transportation engineering at University of Texas at Austin, raised questions
about the study. For one thing, he said, the study finds that people under the
age of 18 are involved in more fatal crashes on Tax Day. It's not clear if
they're passengers or drivers, he said, adding that if they're drivers, it's
unlikely the crash increase is related to the tax deadline.
"Traffic accidents are such relatively
rare events that a one-day period of observation may be inadequate to make
conclusive observations," Bhat cautioned. "While I appreciate that the analysis
design followed by the authors is quite good and that the authors have
considered several years in their analysis, I still would be somewhat cautious
in drawing conclusions."
Since the study didn't account for factors
such as sleep deprivation, the authors recommend additional research that would
ultimately beef up efforts aimed at prevention.
For now, they said, drivers should be
reminded to wear seat belts, drive the posted speed limit and avoid alcohol on
April 17.
200 WORDS
Fallacies are all over the place. They are on
the TV, radio, and in our newspaper ads.
I have found three fallacies on the internet. The first fallacy I seen while I was lying in
bed watching TV. And a Direct TV
commercial came on and lead us to believe that if we did not purchase Direct TV
a chain of events would happen and it would end very badly. It wanted to you
think, as long as you had Direct TV this would not happen to you. I took this
as an example of the Post hoc fallacy. Weather or not we have Direct TV, has nothing
to do with bad things happening to us.
The
next Fallacy is an example of Appeal
to authority; it wants us to think that if a doctor is smoking a certain
brand of cigarettes then that brand must
not be bad for you. When they are. It does not matter what brand of cigarette it
is, they will kill you!
The
last Fallacy is also an example of the Post
hoc fallacy; it is a story of how tax day causes more fatal accident
then the average day. It talks about
since taxes are due to get out in the mail, more people are rushing around and
not paying attention and getting in fatal wrecks that day. I do not see how one
thing has to do with the other. I would
think, since post offices are usually located inside the city limits, the speed
of a car would not get high enough to just kill anyone who has a fender bender.
Word Count 270
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