Yesterday, while conversing with some of my relations, we ended up on subject of The Wizard Of Oz, and one of my cousins put forth the following argument:

Witches can be killed if they are crushed by a house, as seen when Dorothy's house killed the Witch of the East. A human would also be killed if a house were to fall on them. In addition, being shot can kill a human. Therefore, when the Witch of the West appeared, the musket-wielding Munchkins should have shot her and saved everyone a great deal of trouble.

With H representing Houses Falling From The Sky, G representing Guns, W representing Things That Kill Witches and P representing Things That Kill People, his argument look like this:

All H are W

All H are P

All G are P

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All G are W

And once you replace H with Cats, W with Mammals, P with Animals, and G with Lizards, it's clear that the argument is invalid.

I realize this is a bit behind what we are doing in class just now, but I thought it might be notable since it was the first time I had a personal encounter with a fallacy that was formal rather than informal.

A somewhat atrocious piece of writing

I had to read this essay for my writing class. I found it very difficult to get through. The entire thing was basically one long Appeal to Vanity, though in a 'You don't want to be part of [x group],' rather than vice versa. The best example is in the first sentence of paragraph 15: "Now that you have distinguished yourself morally from the people who put their vintage cars ahead of a child's life..."

This got me thinking - is it an Ad Hominem to dismiss someone because they commit obvious logical fallacies, or would this be justified?

More fallacious arguments

This grove of fruit trees grows both oranges and lemons. Therefore, each individual tree grows both oranges and lemons.

You can't prove that the suitcase full of money that I found in the alleyway doesn't belong to me. Therefore, it's mine.