Thursday, November 12, 2015

Noelle Noelle

This article was about attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and the controversies behind the disorder. I really like the title because it really makes readers question what it is about, also it kind of follows in the line of ADHD. The hook is good but I would like to know what ADHD stands for earlier in the introduction rather than having to find in later in the article. Also it was kind of confusing what “founder of ADHD” meant, maybe you could talk about how he founded it later in the article and important discover, etc. The introduction was good in general and provided good context on the issue. The listing of topics helps the reader follow the article better and keeps the article more organized. I like how the first paragraph added the authors own personal story to the paper, and allows the reader to relate to the author better. However, I think the first body paragraph could be elaborated on. For example, you can emphasize more how easy it was to get a prescription. I like how the next paragraph makes it seem like it is hard to get a prescription but the author subtlety makes it seem easy. The body paragraphs have good transitions between them. The body also is very strong on narrative and goo. There are prickles in the body but I think that there could be more. I think it may be hard to find more so this is not a big deal; also, the nature of this article does not call for a lot of prickles. The end of the body has a few short paragraphs that seem to be a little repetitive and could use some elaboration. It is only the draft so the author could still be finishing. The conclusion bring a good end to the article by bringing in everything. I really like the second to last paragraph because it makes me connect more to the author. 

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Minh analysis

This research article was about transgender people, specifically people who feel their sex and gender are opposed. The authors introduction is good, and it provides good background information to provide context on what a transgender person is and the issue behind them (that they face extreme discrimination and internal strife). The introduction does not really have any interesting fact or story that draws in the reader’s attention, but I think that the title does a good job of that. So maybe if you add something into the introduction it would be even better. The paper is organized very well, and I like how every paragraph is clearly distinguishable for another one. The transitions between paragraphs are also pretty solid. I like how in the paper you do a very good job putting a human touch on what you are saying. You make it easier to understand the point of view of the transgender without using an actual quote or personal experience. The paper is also effective in that it does have prickles, such as the number of LGBT Americans. I would say that there could be more prickles but the nature of the paper isn’t based off facts and numbers. I like how the different topics have a specific case that elaborates on the topic. It helps the readers understand the issue at hand while also putting a human touch on it. The audience of this piece is also very wide. As pointed out in the paper, this is an issue that all of America faces so anyone can read this article and learn how to be more accepting of different people. The conclusion was very good at bringing the paper to a close and summarizing what the author felt. I like how the authors stand on the issue wasn’t apparent until it was specifically said. All in all I like the paper a lot and think it is almost ready to be finished. 

Zswoope

The topic was interesting but the introduction needs more background context to draw in more of an audience. There are not really any attention grabbers, such as an interesting fact or a story. Also the title could be more of an attention grabber because the title makes the article sound like an informational. The topics are introduced as a questions, which is good for organization and helping people follow the article. I like how the author added the questions because it opened my eyes on genetically modified organisms and all the different aspects of them. The transitions could be smoothed out better so that the relationships between the different topics are shown. It is effective that the topics are clearly outlined and described in each paragraph. However, the topic can be further expanded on to lengthen the article and provide a human touch to the paper. I like how there are questions that are used to introduce the next topics because it lets the readers know what the authors thought process is. I would like to hear more information about the human organ growing, that is a very interesting topic. It can also be used to expand on. The draft also needs a conclusion, but it is only a draft so it not a problem. The conclusion can be used to summarize your personal opinion about genetically modified feed or animals. Also I would have liked to see some more of the other side of the argument, such as cases of when a genetically modified organism went wrong. All in all I like the article, it is interesting and informative. The article could use some polishing but this is only the draft so it is fine. 

Thursday, October 29, 2015

600 words and 3 hours later

Most people believe that honeybees are just bugs that fly flower to flower, stinging whomever happens to walk into their path to the nearest flower. Bees actually place one of the most vital roles in modern day society. They account for 80% of all the pollination done in agriculture (backyard). If you are still not convinced, picture sitting at the dinner table and one third of all the food on the table disappeared. Bees do their part in the agricultural process by spreading pollen between flowers as they are blooming in the spring. Pollen is the male reproductive cell that all flower plants produce. As they fly from flower to flower, the pollen sticks to the bees and then steals a ride to whichever flower the honeybee goes to next. The pollen, which is one of the most nutritious substances in nature, is then used as a fuel source for the hive. However, since 2006 the beekeepers have noticed a sharp decline in their bee populations. This is a major problem because the estimated $40 billion agriculture business depends on these bees so that they can start growing crops again (Hagopian). Their sudden die off is causing a major buzz in the science community because they cannot determine a concrete cause for this issue. There are many different factors that can cause this die off, and there is now extensive effort to solve this problem because of their importance.
One of the major factors that scientists are looking at is the disease called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Colony Collapse Disorder is describe as the sudden disappearance of worker bees from the hive, even though there are babies to tend to, a queen, and ample honey supplies for them to feed on (Stankus). In the winter of 2006 to spring 2007, farmers noticed a loss of more than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies, which was attributed to CCD (pbs). Considering that in the winter months a honeybee colony has anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 worker bees plus the queen, that means that there was a decline of tens of billions of individuals (backyard). These staggering numbers have caused an increase number of studies dedicated to the subject over the recent years. In the five years from 2008-2013, there was an increased amount of scholarly journals on the subject coming from different subjects of science. For example, 21% of the 140 references found in the study by Tony Stankus come from multiscience journal, an increase from 5% of the 192 articles used in his 1917 to 2007 study. Previously two-thirds of the references came from entomology journals, whereas in the new study the number is now down to 36%. The increased diversity of sciences studying this issue highlights the present danger. As the amount of information on CCD increases, the factors that cause this disease are slowly being narrowed down. Even though there are no pin-pointed causes, the scientific community has come to a general consensus that no single factor can be determined the sole cause, but a combination of many factors.

            The recent studies reflect the general belief for the main factors that all attribute to CCD. These journals focus on; viruses and how they affect the bees, low nutrition diets, toxins in the environment, and the dreaded Varroa mite. The most extensively studied virus is called Isreali Acute Paralytic Virus (IAPV). Symptoms of this virus are paralysis of bees, lower populations per hive, and premature dark coloring, all of which can indicate hive decline. Scientists have found IAPV present in bee populations from all over the world including China, Jordan, and Spain. It was found that when compared to IAPV-free bees, the bees that were infected had “significantly lower rates of homing”, which is the ability for the insect to find its way back to the hive. The infected population also showed a tendency to settle for food sources that contained lower concentrations of sugar. This behavior was not seen in healthy bees, in fact the healthy bees would not consume the diluted solutions at all, but they would continue to search for sugar-rich sources (Stankus). This behavior supports the hypothesis that the infected individuals are less efficient in hunting for food, or just desperate due to the ratio of energy spent to energy gained. The continued consumption of low amounts of food may lead to the eventual demise of the bee. Another virus that is rampant in bees is the Deformed wing virus (DWV). DWV causes bee larvae to have underdeveloped wings as adults and therefore cannot fly, which effects their ability to do their function as bees. Scientists have found evidence that honeybees have inherently weak immune systems that have “no measureable immunological response” to the presence of Acute Bee Paralyic Virus (ABPV), a genetically similar virus to IAPV.  This makes honeybees more susceptible to pathogens such as the IAPV and DFV viruses. 

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Three Long Intros

            Most people believe that honeybees are just bugs that fly flower to flower, stinging whomever happens to walk into their path to the nearest flower. Bees actually place one of the most vital roles in modern day society. They account for 80% of all the pollination done in agriculture. If you are still not convinced, picture sitting at the dinner table and one third of all the food on the table disappeared. Bees do their part in the agricultural process by spreading pollen between flowers as they are blooming in the spring. Pollen is the male reproductive cell that all flower plants produce. As they fly from flower to flower, the pollen sticks to the bees and then steals a ride to whichever flower the honeybee goes to next. The pollen, which is one of the most nutritious substances in nature, is then used as a fuel source for the hive. However, since 2006 the beekeepers have noticed a sharp decline in their bee populations. This is a major problem because the estimated $40 billion agriculture business depends on these bees so that they can start growing crops again. Their sudden die off is causing a major buzz in the science community because they cannot determine a concrete cause for this issue. There are many different factors that can cause this die off, and there is now extensive effort to solve this problem because of their importance.

            I now see bees everywhere I look. No I’m not going crazy. One day, after struggling for almost an hour, my mom gave me the sudden idea to do my research article on honeybees. She got her ideas from a friend who is a supporter of local beekeepers. Most people would immediately ignore this topic, but I remember how interesting an article called “New studies find that bees actually want to eat the pesticides that hurt them.”  This article described how honeybees were attracted to flowers that had a pesticide whose main component was nicotine. This sparked my interest and caused me to research the topic more. I found that bee populations have been declining as much as 70% in Iowa over winter. This is an important topic because bee populations everywhere around the world are declining at a sharp rate. These bees are used by farmers across the countries to pollinate the food that we eat, or the food that we use to feed our livestock. Due to the complexity of bees, they have a delicate balance that can be upset by the littlest imbalance. When they experience an environmental stress such as pesticides they may begin to start behaving abnormally and then eventually die off. The death of large numbers of bees would be detrimental because then our food could not be grown as efficiently as needed. Not only are they needed to feed the growing seven billion people population in the world, but they also produce local honey that many people eat to increase their resistances to local allergies since their honey contains the pollen from all type of local plants.

            A world without honeybees would be one whose plate and fields would be significantly more dull than the one we have today. Even today our fields are beginning to have less wild flowers and other wild plants. The honeybees are responsible for the colorful plates that we have today. The managed populations of bees in America account for 80% of pollination in agriculture including, but defiantly not limited to, apples, avocados, blueberries, melons, and the clover that cows feed on. Since 2006 six, we have begun to see what this type of world may look like. In the winter of that year alone, over a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million beehives, which is tens of billions of bees, were lost to one disease called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Colony Collapse Disorder is describe as the sudden disappearance of worker bees from the hive, even though there are babies, a queen, and ample honey supplies for them to feed on. This phenomena has biologist baffled because of its quick impact and mysterious nature. This disease highlights the larger issue, that the bee populations can be so negatively affected by just one factor. A combination of many different factors including colony collapse disorder, global warming, monoculture, and pesticides have cause the national bee populations to decline by 30% over the last 5 years. The rate at which this is happening is increasing every year, last year being a 42% increase from the year before. The major problem of declining bee populations should alarm everyone because everyone has a stake in this issue. 

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

America, Home of the....Homeless

In the excerpt “America’s Wandering Families” by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel, the growing concern of starvation and homelessness in America is highlighted through not only statistics, but also real life accounts and the author’s interpretations. As stated in the introduction, many Americans believes that “nobody starves” in the United States. Schwartz-Nobel uses this excerpt to blatantly bring forth the issues of poverty and hunger to the middle-class/ upper-class citizens of America. That is her audience because she wants the people of America, who have the ability to help change some statistics behind these issues. I found her excerpt to be very effective in getting her point across. To build her ethos, Schwartz-Nobel uses a multitude of facts and statistics in the beginning of the article. She loads the beginning of her paper with facts because a majority her paper is narrative, but throughout the narrative she also includes prickles to help the people in the audience who look for hard facts to support claims. However, the most effective part of her excerpt is the use of pathos and narrative to connect the readers to people suffering from these situations. Schwartz-Nobel tells her story of visiting many homeless shelters in San Diego and describes her journey in a way that allows the audience to emotionally step into her shoes. Also during her visits, she uses three stories from three totally different people to show the issue of poverty of from all different perspectives. The story of her time with John, the Volunteer Director at the St. Vincent de Paul Village, tells his perspective of the homeless shelter. John provides a hopeful outlook on the issue, which causes the audience to believe that they can help. The story of Tina, a young new mom who recently entered this situation, illustrates to the readers that almost anyone can be thrown into this situation and it is not as easy as it appears to be to climb out of that hole. Her final testimony is from a single mother named Melissa, who is experienced living this life and struggles to feed her teenage son. Melissa was put into this story to demonstrate the illogical sense of the welfare/institutional system. More importantly, Melissa tells the hard truths of living the impoverished life. She talks about having to steal food in order to provide enough food for her and her son to survive. I like how she ends the excerpt with this testimony because the sometimes hard to digest information is what the audience reacts to most. In all, I found Schwartz-Nobel’s excerpt to be very effective is putting her point across due to her strong use of pathos and universal themes. 

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Research practice

For my researched article, I chose to read “Caffeine makes for busy bees, not productive ones” by Ed Yong. This article is short but I found it to be interesting and it used enough research strategies to help me learn about this genre. I chose this article because it is from national geographic, and that magazine has built up its ethos as one that is good about the research it does and is not misleading. The title of the article also works to draw me in because the points out a connection between two things that I would not typically see together, caffeine and bumblebees. I like this article too because has the aspects of a research paper in it that would be useful to me. The beginning starts with a little background information describing the effect on caffeine on bees so that the readers can know exactly what the author means to talk about in this article. Yong also uses narrative during his paper during his paper to connect to the reader more. He talks about how he is drinking an early cup of coffee while he was writing this, and that makes the readers connect to him as a person more. It also serves a purpose to reflect how caffeine is important to humans too and it adds an aspect of caffeine that readers can compare to when deciding how caffeine effects bees rather than humans. Most importantly, Yong uses information from studies that other credible people such as scientists have taken. He uses question and answers during his essay to introduce how his resources apply to the topic of how caffeine effects honeybees, which makes the reader think more too. He ends the paper with commentary of what he has learned throughout his research, using skills such a drawing conclusions on how the bees are effected and using hard statistics to demonstrate the effect to people who need concrete results. In all I found his essay to be helpful but I think he should have put more prickles into his stories to make it longer and to help the audience understand the subject of bees more, it requires previous knowledge of bees to understand everything.  

 Yong, Ed. "Caffeine Makes For Busy Bees, Not Productive Ones." Phenomena Caffeine Makes For Busy Bees Not Productive Ones Comments. 15 Oct. 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015. 

Junk homework

In Lee Ann Fisher Baron’s “The Influence of “Junk Science” and the Role of Science Education”, she argues that America needs to reform its education curriculums so that students are better taught in the hard sciences and math. This article starts out like the other one I report, with a beginning excerpt that establishes the author ethos through her qualifications and accolades. Her article is split into sections in so that her readers can easily understand her points. The first two sections of the article talk about the differences between real science and “junk science”. Baron does not like “junk science” because it falsely convinces consumers of a scientific breakthrough that has no scientific evidence supporting it, such as the herbal supplements that many people claim to improve health. The author uses prickles to provide context about what real science really is and how it differs from junk science, which is effective in helping readers understand the differences. Her audience for this paper would be parents and adults in the educational system that have influence on what students learn. Her final section of her paper blatantly describes her greater purpose in writing this article, which is that schools need to “revive real standards” in schools across the country with regards to sciences and math’s. she does this by using goo and pathos so create a connection with the readers. The readers can feel how passionate Baron is about this discussion and it helps her be more effective in reaching people. Her call to action asks people to be better thinkers so that they can distinguish between good and false science. I like how the article is so short because it keeps my concentration and it gets to the point quick. I enjoyed both of these article because they are shorter and interesting. 

One thing

In Natalie Angier’s magazine article “One Thing They Aren’t: Maternal”, she presents information about how even though humans have a nurturing connotation of the word mother, it is not always the example we find in the wild. She is writing this article for The New York Times because it is approaching mother’s day and this offers another aspect of motherhood. Since it is a scientific piece, Angier uses the first part of her paper to establish her ethos as a renowned author and research scientist. I found that to be effective in me believing in what she said. She has only a small excerpt in the beginning in order to mirror how insignificant that “moms are great” is to this article. After her small introduction to being a mother, the author spends the rest of the article talking about how mothers from all kingdoms of the animal world are “coldhearted.” In order to do this she uses a vast amount of prickles and very little goo. I did like all the prickles she uses because they keep readers interested on the topic by presenting new, cool facts. Her lack of goo has little consequence in this case because the target audience is the more sophisticated readers on the NY Times who would want to read an intellectual piece. Angier’s goal is to present the information she wants to, so that her readers can realize how special our mothers are before their special day. In addition, her lack of commentary lowers the levels of emotion the readers have because the presents it in a way that makes it seem like what is happening is only natural. The goal is to demonstrate how mothers in the wild do what they need to so that at least some of their offspring survive. I do not like how the article ended so abruptly without any tying together of loose ends. I wish she provided more commentary then. 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

iSurprised

                The informative essay iWeb by Nicholas Carr, as you can infer from the title, is a reference to the futuristic movie iRobot. This movie is about a population of robots that humans create with artificial intelligence to do all sorts of tasks for humans, but their minds eventually cause them to try to take over the world. This article is not quite as extreme as iRobot, but it does talk about how the internet and World Wide Web are constantly adapting to the human mind in order to make processes easier for humans. As the author points out many times throughout his paper, by use of many questions, the audience can see that many people believe the internet has already started to become similar to an artificial intelligence. With the case of google, the search engine contains a “page-rank algorithm” that ranks every website based on the amount of times the website has been linked to, the greater the amount of links to a site the better. Google practically thinks for you using this program, where the internet thinks which page would help you find what you are looking for best based on the general popularity of the webpage. Carr does a good job of using prickles, such as specific examples of the internet evolving ( the Mechanical Turk) and many quotes from industry professionals, to prove the points he makes about the internet. The only time I found his strategy of overloading with facts to be ineffective was near the beginning when the facts seemed to all be saying the same thing and near the end when the amount of knowledge being presented to you was just too much to handle. However, this technique does work well with his target audience, who are the tech wizards and internet enthusiasts who think that the internet is amazing. The internet is amazing but his audience needs to see the hard prickles of his argument to believe what the author is saying. I enjoyed this article for the most part because I found the topic easy to relate to but I thought the prickles could have been balanced out more by goo.  

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

peer review research paper

Min:


Like Carlie said, I think you did a great job with the goo of the story. I found it very easy to follow what you were doing and your thought processes. You did include a good amount of prickles and I do not think you need more, but I think it could use a little more in depth analysis of the prickles. For example, you could go into more depth about why taking breaks helps the mind remember the information better. In addition, I like how you had a strong plan of what you were going to do for the experiment beforehand. I like how the three options were separated in an easy to understand manner. I also think the question is relevant to a lot of people so that it’s easy to relate to. I actually was forced to take a break while analyzing this draft due to the fireworks and it helped me formulate my thoughts better (even though the break was forced because I could not concentrate). There were some grammatical errors but those are minor and can be fixed easily. I really enjoyed your experiment and think the draft is a strong base, the only significant thing I would do is expand more on the prickles or use more prickles to analyze your questions more scientifically.

Carli: 

I found your essay to be very interesting. This is mainly due to the fact a good majority of the things you said, I was one of those people you were talking about (do not worry it did not hurt my feelings). I think you did a great job of telling your story, but I think it could have had more in depth analysis of your feelings. Personally I know sometimes when I am bored, alone with nothing to do I cannot help but to pull out my phone. I forget I checked the same social media one minutes ago. In addition, you could talk about how often you find yourself in situations where you are uncomfortable or feel like you should pull out your phone because everyone else is. You had a good amount of prickles to expand on your narrative but I think it could use more, for example you could talk about the science of addiction to the “high” you get from your phone. You could have prickles about disorders where people think their phone is going off at all times and it is not. Finally I think you could be more specific on the things you used your phone for such as only calls or important texts. All in all I think it’s a well written essay. 

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Draft section

Nail biting, also known as Onychophagia, is the severe habit of biting someone’s nail. Now almost everyone has does this before, in fact “about half of all children between the ages 10 and 18 bite their nails at one time or another”, according to WebMD. Nail biting becomes a problem when an individual continues the habit into their later ages and causes significant nail and psychiatric damage. The psychiatric damage is not the typically definition people would think of, but more similar to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Many scientist today believe that nail biting is a spectrum of OCD in that its caused by an unnaturally strong urge to groom oneself. OCD is characterized by “persistent, intrusive, and distressing obsessions (persistent thoughts, impulses, or images) or compulsions (repetitive, excessive behaviors or mental acts)”, which basically means that a person with this disorder has strong compulsions to do whatever task makes them tick. OCD is believe to be caused by “alterations in the serotonin and dopamine signaling.” Serotonin and dopamine are both neurotransmitters found in the brain that have to do with the mood of an individual. Low levels of Serotonin has been linked to depression and dopamine is release when “something good happens unexpectedly”, such as the familiar sight of the free edge (cite what that is).

 Even though there has been no scientific evidence to back up the theory that Onychophagia is a spectrum of OCD, I find this to be the most accurate explanation of why someone, or me in this case, bites their nails. After biting my nails for a majority of my life, I have found that the sight of bitable nail causes me to have the greatest urge to just get rid of it. As my nails get longer I find myself constantly inspecting them for any excuse to bite off the free. Also the urge to masticate increases exponentially the longer my nails grow. I am not used to them being long and one day after about a week I couldn’t stop the urge to bite one nail, just one nail. The satisfaction  of biting the nail granted me a feeling of euphoria, but more importantly it got rid of my urges. However this example shows me that it will be harder than I thought to stop this habit cold turkey. 

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

The Power of (In)Equality

The article “Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Divisions?” by Danah Boyd is about the development of social media and how these websites have developed into everyday segregation. When the internet, and social media, started to become popular, most people in society believed that it would be the “end of social divisions.” She uses a lot stories from students in order to prove to the optimist who think that the internet is going to solve the cultural problems. By directly speaking to the main demographic that uses social media, the young high schoolers, Boyd is showing directly how there are social rifts being formed that even the users themselves don t realize. The author provides information on the topic using personal fieldwork, or information that she researched. She used a multitude of footnotes in order to establish her ethos in that she had a good understanding of the topic. After every topic, she has a self-reflection on what the problem at hand means, and how it relates to social issues present in the teenagers lives already. Instead of relying on interviews from students who use social media, Boyd also refers to aspects of everyday lives such as the iPhone software Siri. By demonstrating how everyday technology shows a bias towards race, she connects to a broader range of audience who might otherwise think that racism online is just a hoax. Her attempts to grapple with the complexity of this issue offer in depth analysis of the issue from all points of view. She uses a majority of her work to describe how the internet subtly promotes biasness, but concedes at the end of the story that in internet it also extremely beneficial to students. She adds to the complexity of the issue by stating how the connections that people build between each other through networking online is extremely valuable in helping you find opportunities later in life. The article reminded me a lot of the loneliness of the interconnected, but I found it more interesting because of the primary research she put into the work. However I didn’t like how her analysis were so complex that I found myself getting lost in her paper and many of the points seemed to overlap to me. 

Thursday, September 24, 2015

I love Lobster

“Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace is another self-reflection article about his trip to the Maine Lobster Festival. He begins the article by providing good background information on why the festival is so important to the midcoast region of Maine. Wallace does a good job of portraying the positive and negative aspects of the festival in order to get a full picture of the experience. One of the things I dislike about Wallace is his sometimes meticulous attention to detail. He spends a lot of time using these details, such as the “four-mile, 50-minute” cab ride from the airport, for the audience to feel the experience as he does. This does a great job at answering the questions he poses, but sometimes I consider to be too many details. The author spends a majority of this article talking about the morality of eating lobsters. He starts by telling about the member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) assimilate themselves into the Maine Lobster Festival (MLF) in order to pass around anti-lobster brochures. They argue against the live killing of lobsters by boiling then in the largest lobster-cooking tank in the world. He continues to spend the rest of the article to describe whether or not lobsters can feel pain. The tone he uses implies that he believes that lobster can feel pain and is a little unethical, but he doesn’t this that the right to celebrate at the festival outweighs the negatives. Wallace uses a humorous and interested tone to describe the MLF, which I do enjoy. He also does a great job at establishing his ethos in this article. He provides a vast amount of background knowledge to demonstrate his knowledge on the subject and he spend an even larger time speaking of the scientific aspects of pain and how lobsters feel pain. Wallace uses all of these techniques in order to build a strong relationship with his audience, so that they can relate to his experiences. I enjoyed this article better than his last one because it was more scientifically based and was more than just eating lobsters and how he felt eating them.  

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Shipping out for good

“Shipping out” by David Foster Wallace is a very, very long article written about his travels aboard a luxury cruise liner. The first thing I noticed about this article was the length and amount of descriptive words he uses to describe his experiences. I had trouble trying to pick out significant points in this article because of the sheer amount of words and feelings he uses to describe each individual experience along the trip. Wallace also tends to exaggerate on some cases, which can be a writing effect, similar to the way the brochure only told the beautiful side of the cruise, to manipulate the audience to believe what he is trying to say. In addition, it is hard to recount many of the specific events because it is not user friendly going through the PDF file. However even though I personally did not like the length of this piece, he does do a great job of psychoanalyzing each individual experience from all points of view. For example, the cabin cleaning lady, Petra, is so good and meticulous at her job that it causes him to develop a “paranoia.” Most people would be overjoyed to have someone come in behind you and clean your room perfectly, while leaving you a fresh basket of fruit and a mint. Wallace, however, personally is freaked out by the fact that she only cleans when he goes out for 30 minutes or longer. The point of his article was to demonstrate how luxury cruises ae too perfect in the sense that they cause individuals to forget the little things in life a real responsibility. He does point out though that the cruise population is composed of almost entirely rich older folks, or their kin who benefits from their money, Mona. Personally, I did not enjoy this article very much because I found myself getting lost in all the words and I tended to begin to skim. I can see how people enjoy his writing though because it’s relatable due to his in depth analysis of his feelings and what is going on around him, I personally just hate reading.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

field work

I am a chronic nail biter. I could not tell you when I first began to bite my nails, but now it has turned into something of a comforting action. In fact, according to WebMD, “about half of all children between the ages 10 and 18 bite their nails at one time or another.” The goal of my experiment is to attempt to go as long as possible without biting my nails. I am attempting to do this with the hopes of ending my bad habit and to prove to other people that it is possible to do it. The issue of nail biting is not actually the biting itself, but apparent lack of self-control. Scientist call nail biting one of the top nervous habits, which includes hair pulling and nose picking. It is a controllable habit but to many people like me you find yourself biting without even knowing. It seems to be more of a comforting thing to me, especially during Virginia Tech football games but that is most a stress relieving habit. In all honesty, I doubt that I will be able to make it the duration of this experiment without biting my nails. I mean in two weeks your nails grow to a length where they need to be trimmed anyways. Even if I fail thought, I think that this will give me the confidence to know I can last more than one day. I have attempted this before but failed horrible, I gave up after the first couple of days. Just the sight of my nails growing out gives me the urge to bite. Maybe after these two weeks then I will be able to stop and I will not looks so much like a child without self-control. 

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Unitasking By Jacobs

Today’s piece by A.J. Jacobs was another weird article, which I guess is part of the way he has made a name of himself as a writer. The subject matter of this article was the art of multi-tasking, or making it appear that you are multi-tasking. He starts the article with a personal account of how multi-tasking can be bad for our health, in the most literal way, by being a distraction and potentially causing us to drive into oncoming traffic. He relates to the other article we read by him, in that technology has aided in societies obsession with multi-tasking. It adds a personal aspect to the writing because even as I read this I found myself distracted by many things such as my phone, food and the internet. Additionally he uses a personal tone, as if he is speaking directly to the audience, in many of his example of how easily he gets distracted during everyday things. Jacobs also uses real life facts and experts to demonstrate how multitasking is harmful to our lives. He references a recent UCLA study in that multitasking essentially “rots your skull” by causing tit to constantly switch tasks. However, he also reveals to the audience that no matter how much training and focus he uses, multitasking is inevitable. While attending a meditation class to improve his mental strength, he recalls how during one meditation exercise on of his fellow students breathed like “Darth Vader. With asthma. During heavy foreplay”, which really caught my attention. He reinforces his belief by ended the article how he began, he started by being a distracted driver and ends the story with him going off on a tangent about his son want to play mini golf, which he began during a story about his first experience driving in two years. The structure of his article drives in his point of “uni-tasking” by being separated into sections. I assume the sections made it easier for him to sort his information and reflects how it can be helpful, it made it easier for me to read the long article. 

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Overly Document Life analysis

In A.J. Jacobs article “The Overly Documented Life”, he explains to us how the human body is virtually unreliable in the sense of remembering things and how technology can be a possible solution to that. He presents the issue of using technology to document every hour of our lives with a combination of both the dinner table model and Aldous Huxley’s three directions model. He argues that the constant filming of everything done can be extremely beneficial, in the case of trying to find your lost wallet or using it to settle a dispute, but at the same time causes people to be less “real” because they don’t want whatever is about to be done to be filmed. He continues to follow many aspects of the dinner table with stories of how the documentation of his life has caused him to have fights with his wife and how it has helped him with the important things such as proving that he has seen a multitude of celebrities in person. He also always circles back to the fact that each new piece of technology that he uses initially appears to be helpful, but has some sort of hidden catch to it. While trying to find his lost wallet, Jacobs has the ingenious idea to use his Looxcie, a wearable camera that films everyday life, to try to find it. His long and tedious search proved was futile, but his wife succeeded within minutes by personally searching his nightstand.  However, I think he uses more of Huxley’s three-direction model. Since the author is documenting his experiences with these technologies, he offers a lot of personal insight into how effective they really are. He provides information on the subject such as the high costs of these technologies and how they require many other technologies to operate these programs. For example, his Looxcie cost $150, but to store the 186 GB of video he has on it he needs to buy an external hard drive which can cost anywhere from $120-$700. He also applies universal aspects that anyone can relate to such as wanting to remember a conversation to win an argument, being able to stay more healthy, and finding tose lost keys. 

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Reference 2

William Ellson. Facebook. Facebook, 26 August 2015. Web. 3 September 2015.
Summary: Will’s purpose in creating this Facebook post was to call to action the people who are friends with him to try harder to prevent these types of tragedies from happening. He doesn’t use fact of evidence but his own ethos to gain people’s attention and respect for what he says. He also links an article that highlights the wonderful lives of the two reports killed in the recent Roanoke shooting, which exemplifies why we need to try harder to prevent shootings.
Critical reflections: Will’s audience is obviously his Facebook friends since they are the only ones able to see his post. This plays a large role is his ability to make his tone less formal and more personal. He is known by everyone as a respectable and educated young man, which allows him to have influence over his peers already without having too many rhetorical devices. Also since he has a small audience of his peers and friends, it allows him to put more emphasis on other appeals such as pathos. He brings connections to the fact that this tragedy was so close to VT and that it’s our job as a community around VT to protect and help the people around us. Compared to the other sources, Will is a lot more formal and less effective to the general public. Since his audience is just his Facebook friends it allow him to write in such a way. Like the other source, he appeals heavily to people’s emotions but doesn’t establish his ethos as much through fact and numbers because it already has been established.
Quotes: “I am a gun owner and responsible shooter myself, but something must be done to prevent these tragedies for occurring.”  

“It is not just the responsibility of one individual, it is an issue that we must all address, as a community, as a country”

Reference 1

Perez-Pena, Richard. "Problems Plague System to Check Gun Buyers." The New York Times.        The New York Times, 27 July 2015. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.                                                                      <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/us/problems-riddle-system-to-check-buyers                         of-guns.html?ref=topics&_r=0>.
Summary: The author of this article aims to show people that the background check system to purchase guns is a very flawed system. He believes that the system should be fixed before any other legislation considering gun laws is created. He uses a multitude of information and data to put his point across to all types of people. For example he points out that if the system wasn’t so flawed then the SC church shooting and the LA Theater shooting could have been prevented. It was proven that both those men did not fit the guidelines to purchase a gun, but through inadequate record keeping they obtained weapons. Also he uses hard figures to demonstrate that something can be done, stating that after the VT massacre federally prohibited buyers tripled from 2006-2014. The author wrote the article in an effort to make citizens push for better gun buyer screenings, as a sure fire way to prevent some people from getting their hands on guns.
Critical Reflection: I believe the author’s audience is as many citizens across the nation as possible. He is writing for the New York Times, which is a very well read newspaper, so he must try to appeal to as many people as possible. Since he is trying to appeal to as many people as possible that causes him to support his claim from all different perspectives. He adds in information from prominent gun rights activist the NRA and anti-gun supporters like the Brady campaign to show that many sides believe that this is a good start to the solution. Also this writer works with the editors of the NY Times, so it’s safe to assume that the article was revised so that many people could relate to it and that the article is written well. This article is much unbiased compared to other resources that may be trying to argue one side of the story, such as the Progressive Cynic’s article.
Quotes: “if Mr. Houser had been involuntarily commited in his state, he could not have passed a background check” (11)
“From 2006 to 2014, the total number of prohibited buyers in the federal database tripled, to 12.9 million” (17)

“Mr. Roof, who was captured after the Charlestown shooting, was able to buy a gun because of sloppy record-keeping, officials say” (23)

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Rhetorical Analysis Project beginning

The subject that I chose to discuss is the issue on gun control, which now seems to be a very apparent issue. I aim to show both sides of the argument, whether gun laws should remain how they are or should they be more restrictive, through the use of formal and informal references. I chose this discussion because it is a hot topic in politics at the current moment and has been for many recent years. Also it’s a personal issue because I look to be a future gun owner and come from a family where hunting was a popular past time, my father owns more than 5 firearms himself ranging from .22 caliber pistols to .50 caliber muzzle loaders. People who argue for stricter gun laws aim for laws that either restrict the American people from owning guns, or make it increasingly difficult for them to purchase guns. People against stricter guns laws argue that the right bear arms is a constitutional right and should not be hindered. This topic has a large range of discourse due to its wide range of arguments and reasons. In John. R. Lott’s 2013 book “More Guns, Less Crime”, he tells how even throughout the years gun ownerships still continues to rise throughout all groups of people in the US. I chose this book because in order for his book to be creditable and published, all the information and facts that he provides must be proven and unbiased so that he may reach out to a bigger audience. The less subjective and more factual his book is, the better reviews and better sales for the author. Also there is an article in the New York Times about the problems in the background check system. This is one of the major proposed ways to begin gun control rather than strict gun laws, and being in the New York Times it would be viewed by potentially over 1 million people. The Progressive Cynic, which can be considered an extremist political page, demonstrates the argument that many people have for why guns should be control and why people who argue against gun-control are misinformed. For my final reference bring up my good friend Will. Amidst the tragedy that happened in Roanoke last week, he made a Facebook post which showed the beliefs of many Americans on this issue. Many of the citizens are not psychotic, but responsible gun owner with good intentions and no matter how hard this issue may be to solve, it is our responsibility as a country and community to do something to protect the people around us.            

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Why women aren't welcome on the Internet.

In Amanda Hess’s “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet”, she uses strong language and personal experience to demonstrate that the issue of sexism and harassment against women on the internet is not just a boy having fun but a very serious issue. She attempts to show the men in society, who compose a large majority of the law enforcement and internet companies, that the messages that he and other female internet users receive are not just “juvenile pranksters” but real life people who can possibly be harmful towards them. The author appeals to our ethos and logos through her own personal account with a cyber-stalker.  This lead to her calling the local law enforcement who ended up not even filing a report. Hess was forced to pay a private investigator into order to get a court case, and eventually a one year protection order. Her personally account exemplifies the extreme amount of time, money, and personal effort that women must put forth in order to avoid this harassment. The author also brings this problem to light so that other women may see that they are not the only experiencing this issue. It may be difficult for some women to share their experiences with other women because they are driven away from online chat rooms, which is shown through a drop from “28 percent to 17” from 2000 to 2005. By publishing her own experiences along with the experience of multiple female activists and journalist, along with the use of extremely vulgar examples of comments they receive, she is able to gain the attention of more people. The author does a pretty good job of present her argument from all points of view, but she fails to prevent a solution to the problem. However she does point out that there is no easy solution to this argument because most men do not understand where women are coming from since it only happens to women for the most part. One possible way to help women, but not completely solve the issue, would be to increase law that are already in place. There are only 3 federal laws that apply to cyber stalking and only 34 states with cyber stalking laws, so it is apparent that more needs to be done to get rid of this issue. 

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The Loneliness of the Interconnected analysis

The Loneliness of the Interconnected is an essay on how the internet has made it easier for people to become isolated, while being in the midst of everything. The author, Charles Seife, proposes that humans have strong mental foundations based on opinions we form throughout our lives. As we encounter information that opposes what we think we tend to shy away from it, and figure it to be lies. The goal of his essay is to illustrate to the young adults and children of the internet age, that they should not be so close-minded on their beliefs. The author uses facts and relevant examples to demonstrate how the internet links us to an unimaginable amounts of information and people, and with these resources people tend to gravitate towards the opinions on which their foundations were formed. People will seek out the knowledge that they want to hear and band together to form a cult of similar minded web surfers. Seife wants us as a society to understand how we can benefit from the helpful aspects of the internet, while simultaneously trying to fight against human nature and prevent from being intellectually isolated. The internet itself is a never ending library filled with valuable information that can be accessed in seconds and we, the users, unintentionally dictate what we see. This is beneficial to society because we can automatically have access to the information we want, however it can also prevent us from seeing the other side of the coin and only be narrow minded. That is the thin line that society now a days has to learn to balance on. Are we going to be robots to the information that is funneled into our computer screens, or are we going to be self-thinkers and be able to process factual information even if we do not want to see it?