Slow Poisoning of India Documentary (Blog Post 2)

Claim made by Filmmaker:  Pesticides should not be used by farmers.
Agree
My claim:  Pesticides are harmful to the environment and local inhabitants and therefore should not be used by farmers.

Body Paragraph 1: Harmful to the environment

• The pesticides are a poison that seeps into the soil and water supply and cause harm to the surrounding environment (info from the documentary)
• This disturbs all parts of nature in the surrounding area
•  Nature needs to be preserved if we wish to live healthy lives and the use of pesticides does not allow for that
• Insects develop immunity to the pesticides
• Once this occurs, the pesticide does not accomplish its goal and only damages the environment

Body Paragraph 2: Harmful to local inhabitants

• There are many victims from the use of pesticides
• Many children are born with deformities and illnesses because of the use of pesticides
• It is unhealthy to uses these pesticides and they should not be used

Slow Poisoning of India Documentary (Blog Post 1)

The documentary begins by explaining the way pesticides affect all of the food we eat without us noticing.  Then it starts to tell us the facts about why pesticides are so detrimental.  The narrator states that all pesticides are lethal poisons, and the use of these pesticides contaminates land, water, air, and food.  Next the documentary begins to explain the effects that pesticides like endosulfan have on local communities.  They show many cases of children who have deformities because of the use of the pesticides.  A doctor then gives insight into why the pesticides are so harmful to humans.  He states that the poison suppresses our immune systems and allow mutated cells to remain in the body causing cancer and many other serious illnesses.  The documentary then switches gears and begins to talk about how people are beginning to realize the consequences of these pesticides being used and what they are doing to help the situation.  Many of the farmers who used to use pesticides have reverted back to organic farming and are allowing nature to kill the pests instead of the pesticides.  They are also switching to biopesticides which are not harmful to the environment.  The farmers who did so are now profiting more than ever and the profit increases with every year because the soil is getting more and more healthy from the lack of pesticides.

The filmmaker uses many rhetorical strategies to try to sway the audience to agree with him/her that something must be done about the pesticide use in India.  A large portion of the film was a depiction of the way children have been affected by pesticide use.  This appeals to pathos to try to draw in the emotions of the audience.  It is very effective because many people have children and would not want anything like that happening to them.  Also, the filmmaker decided to incorporate many facts about pesticides and the use of them in the documentary.  This appeals to logos, which shows people the logical reasoning behind why pesticides are so detrimental.  The appeal to logos was effective because it was able to illustrate why the pesticides are so harmful.  Lastly, there was an appeal to ethos in the interviews with the doctors from India.  This was effective because it gave the documentary much credibility.

Violent Games are Emotionally Desensitizing AOW #27

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111012124019.htm

The article I read was about an experiment to see if violent video games made people want to be just as violent in real life. Their studies showed signs of the video games making the participants "emotionally desensitized". By this they mean that the participants who played the first-person shooter games did not respond as strongly with a fear element to the image shown to them because they were so used to seeing images just like it. The source of this article is sciencedaily.com. This site is a very popular website for up to date news for research that has been conducted. It establishes its credibility through referencing the University of Bonn's experiment and explaining it well. Outside of this piece, there are many arguments going on about how violent video games corrupt children and make them want to kill people. This is why this article was written. This piece wants to give the reader the true information about how these video games affect an individual. This article was written for all who relate in any way to the violent video games that this article is talking about.

The main rhetorical element in this piece was the use of logos. The majority of the paper was about the study that was conducted by the University of Bonn. Another element I saw was ethos. The author established his/her credibility through referencing and explaining the experiment. The pattern of development that this piece used mainly was exemplification. It worked well with what the article was trying to do. In the end, I believe that this article achieved its purpose because It gave the straight facts about the effect of violent video games on an individual.

Open Science Now! AOW #26

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_nielsen_open_science_now.html

This video on ted.com is of Michael Nielsen trying to persuade people to join in the Open Science Project. This project is trying to make it so that the scientists who make discoveries do not hide them from the world until they can get credit for everything that they have researched, but post their findings on social networks made for scientific studies. He talks about a similar project called the Polymath Project, which was a blog in which mathematicians posted on in hopes to find a solution to a very complicated problem they faced. On the 37th day that this blog was online, the creator posted that they had found the solution and the polymath project had been a success. Michael Nielsen, the speaker, is a Fulbright grad physicist who has published several books pertaining to quantum physics and, more recently, the Open Science Project. The context of this speech is that many scientist are hiding their discoveries from the public because they do not want to risk losing credit for their work. Nielsen perfomed this speech in hopes that these scientists, his audience, will join together to change the culture of science and share their discoveries as they find them. He uses all three appeals to help prove his point. He uses logos through examples of what worked and what did not work. Also, these examples along with diction and style were used to develop his persona, or ethos. And his and our wish for science to move forward to appeal to pathos. I do not think that he reached his purpose because this may sound like a great idea, but the scientists would put way too much at risk and would not want to lose credit for their discoveries. We will just have to wait and see if the Open Science Project is a success or not.

Is There a Link Between Cell Phone Use and Brain Tumors? AOW #25

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111020191848.htm

The article that I read this week was about a study done in Denmark that tested one of the most widely believed myths. They tested to see if there was a connection between mobile phone use and the risk of getting a tumor. This was claimed to be the biggest study ever, with about 360 thousand test subjects. The results showed that the same percentage of people who got a brain tumor between those who use mobile devices frequently and those who rarely use them were the same, proving that there is no correlation between the mobile device usage and the risk of tumors. The author of the piece was sciencedaily.com. This website offers up to date articles on all topics under the science category. The audience that this was directed to was those who believe that using a mobile device increases the risk for cancer. The purpose was to inform people that this myth was proven wrong and to tell them to live their life without worrying about how much they use their cellphone because of a believed risk of cancer. The piece accomplished this because it gave all of the information it needed to using logos and ethos. The piece used logos by going into deep detail about the experiment that proved a widely believed myth wrong. An appeal to ethos was made through the use of logos and the diction of the speaker.

6 Ways to Get Anyone to Believe a Clearly Fake News Story AOW #24

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ways-to-get-anyone-to-believe-clearly-fake-news-story/

This week I read 6 Ways to Get Anyone to Believe a Clearly Fake News Story, which explained to me different ways that could be used to develop fake news stories. It mentioned that our society is ignorant on a lot of subjects and we are also to lazy to research what we read, so believing crazy stories happened to us many times before. I noticed as I was reading that a lot of the topics connected to the appeals. For example, one of the topics was about how we make specific studies more general to make it appealing to the reader. This appealed to the logos by sounding so smart that people do not understand you, but still believe whatever you say. Also, the article talked about how heart-wrenching stories made many believe stories that weren't true and I thought that that was a demonstration of how pathos is the most powerful appeal.

The author of the piece was Christina H, she has written many other pieces for cracked that have been viewed by millions of people. This piece was written in a time where Americans have all of the resources they need to research everything at the tips of their fingers, but never do because they are too lazy. This helped give the article a little humor because they had examples of news articles that weren't true. The reason this article was written was to provide the lazy American a realization of how lazy they are and hopefully change so we do not make mistakes like believing these news articles again. The audience that it was written for was the average, lazy American who believe everything they read, no matter how crazy the stories are. Rhetorical elements in the piece were in the ways to get people to believe clearly fake news stories. One point was that exaggerating scientific breakthroughs works because people do not know much on the subject, so the reader feels like the evidence applied to the logos. Also, the article said that heart-wrenching stories work because people do not want to sound heartless by denying them; this is also an application to pathos. The author reached their purpose because they effectively made me a little paranoid about where the articles I read are coming from and gave me a motivation to research the stories instead of just believing everything I read.

The Genome Revolution AOW #23

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_resnick_welcome_to_the_genomic_revolution.html

In the video in the link above Richard Resnick talks about the advances in genome technology that many people are not aware of. He explained that the technology we have allows us to genetically sequence a human, and compare it to other genetic sequences to discover the source of a disease or sickness. People who were genetically sequenced and were helped in the end were mentioned to show the audience how useful this technology can be. The speaker in this video is Richard Resnick. He is CEO of GenomeQuest, which is a company that builds software to support genomic medicine. Before this, he was CEO of Mosaic Bioinformatics and a member of the Human Genome Project at MIT. He has been involved in many organisations involving genetics for a very long time which makes him very credible for this topic. The context that surrounds this speech is that we are having breakthroughs in this science that would be very helpful for all humans, but not many are informed of this or are using this science to its full potential. The audience of this speech is all humans who do not know how amazing this technology truly is. This is why the speech was made, to develop interest and inform the uninformed. The rhetorical elements used in this speech are logos, pathos and ethos. The logos was developed through the charts and graphs that project the information and predicted information that support the genetic technology and its usefulness. Pathos was in the piece of this where he tells the stories of individuals who were affected by life-threatening diseases and were saved by the technology of his company. This drew my emotions because I felt bad for the ill individuals and was happy to hear that they were saved by genetic technology. His ethos was established through all of the knowledge he gave us on the subject and the confidence in his voice. I believe that Richard Resnick did accomplish his purpose because he made me interested on this newer technology and informed me of all its amazing capabilities.