What Does the World Want from America AOW #15

This week I read a section from my IRB “What Does the World Want from America?” by Alexander T.J. Lennon.  The book, actually, was only edited by Lennon, the main parts of the book were written by many people from varying countries giving their outlook on America.  In the section, writers from China, Japan, India, and Singapore gave their countries views on America.  China’s representative, Wu Xinbo, writes about how the United States changes their views on China frequently, from “Rosy to Grimy Glasses.”  He also says that Americans look at the growth of China to see how it would benefit or hurt them, but never stop to think what is best for the Chinese people.  Similarly, Akio Watanabe, from Japan shares that it is all a matter of perspective when it comes to views on America.  If one is from a smaller country that is not heard very much at the international level, and when they are not given any attention from the United States to try to help them with their issues they do not give them America a positive outlook.  This book was written in a time when Americans view themselves as the great mediators and have a responsibility to help other countries as the sole superpower of the world.  But this is not what people from other countries believe.  This book was written to give Americans the views on themselves from other countries.  Some of the rhetorical elements used in this piece were allusion, and an appeal to ethos.  An appeal to ethos is made just by the entire setup of the book.  After reading the footnotes, it is noticeable that all of the writers are well educated and know what they are talking about.  The fact that this book has many of these writers shows that it is a credible source.  Allusion was used by Akio Watanabe.  He compares the difference in perspectives to “Gulliver’s Travels,” a series of books written by Jonathan Swift that depict a man who travels and gives his own views on the people and from the way the people act, the peoples views on him are inferred.  So far, the authors are able to accomplish their purpose through these rhetorical elements.

Toys For Creating Worlds AOW #14

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

This week I watched a speech on TED.  The speech was introducing a new game that was designed to teach the players as they played the game.  The only difference is that the game allows the players to discover these things themselves.  This allows for a more lasting impact on the player.  The speaker was Will Wright.  He is a game designer who has profited greatly from his extremely popular games like SimCity, The Sims, and Spore.  He knows how to design great games and he has the intention of teaching the players along the way.  This game that Wright has designed is in a world where video games are more accessible and more popular than ever.  His attempt to teach with video games will apply to many people.  His purpose for this speech was to prove to his audience, people who doubt the usefulness of video games and think they are a waste of time, that video games can change the world if they are designed the right way.  Rhetorical devices that I found in his speech were pathos, logos, and ethos.  He applied to logos through the examples that he was able to bring from the game itself.  He established credibility through showing a game that he designed and diction as well.  Lastly he reached the audiences emotions through showing how passionate he was for his work.  His passion made the audience interested in what they were hearing.  I believe that he did accomplish his purpose because he amazed me and all others in his audience with how useful, but also fun, he was able to make a video game.

Video Games Tied to Creativity AOW #13

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111102125355.htm

This week I found an article about a study done with 491 middle school students that proves that playing video games makes one more creative.  How they studied this was they asked the students how often they played video games, and then put them in a category.  After that, they gave them a Torrance test, which gave the student a curved line on a piece of paper and they were told to draw a picture on it, give it a title, and write a story on it.  The results of this test proved that playing video games (violent or non-violent) gives an individual more creativity.  This article was written by science daily authors for the purpose of informing those who had questions about this correlation. Many people believed that there was a correlation, but they could never be sure, until finding out through this article.  I believe that this article did accomplish its purpose through the use of ethos and logos.  Their logos was done with quoting many other scientists who are more informed on the subject, and talking about the study.  This then helped build the ethos through showing that they know what they are talking about and also using diction that makes them sound more knowledgeable.

Unit 2 Reflection

An individual has a duty to his government and a government has a duty to its people. These duties must be met for the society to succeed. This subject was addressed by many famous ideologists. For example, Machiavelli talks about the qualities of a good leader in his book, “The Qualities of the Prince”, Giordano references the duties of an individual to be righteous in his painting, “Justice”, and Socrates mentions the duties of individual compared to the government, and vice versa, in his social contract theory. With a community of people who fulfill they’re duties to their government and a government that fulfills its duties to the people, a society can thrive.

In “The Qualities of the Prince”, by Machiavelli, it is stated that a leader needs to have certain characteristics to be an effective leader. He states, “…the prince must read histories and in them study the deeds of great men…. He must examine the reasons for their victories and for their defeats…” Machiavelli is trying to say that one of the duties of a government is to be well-read and informed of what happened in the past. This will help protect the people. This, according to Machiavelli, is a very important quality, and duty, of a leader or government.

Giordano references the duties of an individual in his painting, “Justice”. The painting shows what a person must overcome to be just. It also shows that everyone should strive to be just. The picture depicts lady justice above 3 other figures that are supposed to be Punishment, Recompense, and Deceit. This is supposed to tell the viewer that one must overcome all 3 of these aspects to truly be just. It also shows that you will be rewarded if you do. This tells us that Giordano’s views on an individual’s duties to their government are that everyone must be just or the society will fall apart.

Socrates has a social contract theory that coincides with an individual’s and a government’s duties to one another. The social contract theory states that if the people give a government power, they expect the government to take that power and benefit the society. It also works the other way around, if a government allows a person to be in a society, they expect the individual to be beneficial to the community. This is another duty that the government and the individual have for one another. They are expected to be beneficial with the freedoms they are given. If one does not hold up their end of the social contract then the society will not work. Each party must work to help the other for a society to be efficient.

An individual has duties for their government and a government for their people. The government must be knowledgeable to know how to protect its people in every situation possible, and an individual must strive to be just. Both must do whatever they can to benefit the other side. With all of these duties completed, a society can thrive and work efficiently.

State of Imitation AOW #12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Rv7czl9cU

This week I decided to analyze State Farm's new advertisement for their "discount double-check" with Aaron Rodgers.  It shows a couple who thank their agent for performing the "discount double-check" but when they say it they do Aaron Rodgers's touchdown dance.  Rodgers is confused as to why they stole his move and they make fun of him for thinking it's his.  State Farm is the creator of this advertisement and they made it for people who were looking for insurance.  They hope to bring in more customers with this commercial.  The context of this piece is a country where almost everyone has insurance and almost everyone else is looking for it.  Some of the rhetorical elements in this piece are pathos, mainly, with logos and ethos built in.  The pathos is built with the humor of the situation.  The fact that they are making fun of Aaron Rodgers over his own move makes a lot of people laugh.  Ethos is built when they show that Aaron Rodgers goes to State Farm.  By showing a well known quarterback, State Farm achieved in making some people believe they should go there too.  Logos was in the "discount double-check".  This action that State Farm does for you is making sure that you save as much money as you can, which appeals to many customers.  I believe this commercial was very effective in reaching its purpose through its humor and appeal to ethos.

Open Science Now! AOW #11

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.

Understanding Emotions Without Language AOW #10

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111102093045.htm

This week I read an article about a study conducted to find out if knowing different languages affects the way that a human perceives body language and facial expression.  They studied German speakers to speakers of Yucatec Maya, a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.  The findings were that while they used different word to describe the emotion, they were both able to name the same emotion.  The context of this piece was that people understand that we perceive body language, but we don't understand how we do it.  This study was conducted and released for those people.  The purpose of this piece was to inform the general public of this new information.  They reached this purpose through using logos and ethos.  The logos of this piece was in the study itself.  They brought in factual evidence to support their claim.  The ethos was then supported by this use of the study.

Freakonomics AOW #9

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner mainly dealt with the fact that all of our lives are dictated by economics.  Every structure in our lives is dictated by similar incentives that structure businesses and other corporations.  The book showed me the hidden side to some worldly puzzles.  For example, the book talked about how the true reason behind the drastic crime drop in 2000 was because of the legalization of abortion.  Dubner and Levitt explain that the mothers who got impregnated  by accident, on average, did not have the physical means or the will to take care of a child, so the child grew up into a life of crime because it was necessary to get by.  Also, they mentioned that sumo wrestlers and school teachers have the same incentive for cheating and are very similar in that they are rewarded in the long-run for it.  Levitt and Dubner effectively use ethos and logos in their book.  They bring logos by stating and examining statistics that they found.  For example, on pages 193 to 206 there were many lists of popular low-education and high-education boy and girl names in past years.  Also, following these lists there was a detailed analysis of the data.  These statistics combined with the sophisticated diction the authors use make up the ethos for these authors.  These analyses lack imagery in literal terms but do effectively paint the picture in one's mind of what the data means.  Overall, this book was effective in its purpose to explain the importance of economics to the common person through mainly their use of statistics and the analyses that went along with them.

The Bloated Nuclear Weapons Budget AOW #8

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/the-bloated-nuclear-weapons-budget.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

This week I read an editorial about America's nuclear weapons budget that many believe to be over-funded.  The authors state that with 2,500 deployed nuclear weapons and 2,600 as backup, we spend too much on nuclear weapons.  In the article, it states that the budget could rise up to $600 billion over the next decade.  They propose many ideas to save billions of dollars regarding this budget.  The authors of this piece are credible because they are supported by the New York Times, which is a very reliable source.  Also, with the facts they bring up in the piece, they are obviously well-read on the subject.  This editorial was written as a response to the believed overspending on nuclear weapons.  People who do not believe, or know, that the government is spending this much on nuclear weapons are the audience of this piece.  This editorial was written to make the audience believe the same thing as them.  Some rhetorical elements in this piece are the ethos and logos used by the authors.  They used logos through the facts and statistics that they brought to the piece.  They used this logos to develop their ethos so that the audience believes their claim.  This piece achieved its purpose through this very effective use of ethos and logos.

No Link Between Mobile Phone Use and Tumors AOW #7

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.

Violent Games are Emotionally Desensitizing AOW #6

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.

Unit 1 Assignment Reflection

The most helpful assignment, for me, has been the article of the weeks.  The articles that I read help keep me up to date on the current news while also give me practice for analyzing documents rhetorically.  In the beginning my rhetorical analysis of articles took a very long time.  I had to read the article first to understand it, then go back and find each piece that I was looking for, but now, I am able to read and pick out most of the rhetorical elements at the same time.  This is helping me become a better analyzer and reader alike.  With the rest of the year to continue doing these article of the weeks, I feel confident in saying that by the time the AP test rolls around I will be ready to analyze anything that they throw at me quickly and efficiently.

Unit 1 Essential Question

How do speakers & writers use Rhetorical devices to communicate their ideas?

Rhetorical devices are necessary when a speaker or writer is trying to communicate their ideas. The rhetorical devices they use define how the audience interprets what the rhetor is trying to say. This proves the importance of using the correct rhetorical devices for your message. There are many devices and strategies in their disposal, but some of the more popular ones are ethos, pathos, and logos, also known as the appeals. These appeals work well for rhetors when they are trying to connect to their audience and provoke their interest. Another device would be the patterns of development. These patterns help to develop information in the best way possible to achieve its purpose.

The appeals help a speaker or writer connect to its audience and provoke their interest. Ethos is the credibility that the speaker or writer has with the audience. Appealing to ethos is done through a rhetor's diction and the logos that they appeal to. This logos that the speaker or writer is trying to appeal to is the logical reasoning behind whatever point they are trying to get across. The last appeal, pathos, is the strongest of all three. Pathos is the appeal to the audience that reaches their emotions. Emotions of the audience are invoked by personal stories that an writer or speaker can write about.

Patterns of development are the ways that rhetors organize their information to become the best it can to achieve the writer or speaker's purpose. The patterns are narration, description, process analysis, exemplification, comparison and contrast, classification and division, definition, and cause and effect. The patterns help rhetors, after they establish their point, to then develop it and connect it back to their purpose in a fitting way. The multitude of patterns allows for multiple ways of analyzing a point. All the rhetor has to do is pick the most fitting one.

Welcome to the Genomic Revolution AOW #5

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.

Kia Soul Commercial AOW #4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zJWA3Vo6TU

This commercial is for the Kia Soul.  It depicts what looks like a war between two races of robots.  These robots are destroying everything in sight, until a Kia Soul rolls into the picture, and out popped 3 hamsters.  The hamsters started doing a dance called shuffling to LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem.  This song and dance brought the two nations of robots to peace and the war ended.  The hamsters then drive off in their Kia Soul, where Kia also adds good facts about their car.  Kia devised this commercial for the american car buyers, specifically targeting the younger crowd who are in a constant battle to become, or stay, "cool".  This commercial applies to that genre of people because it takes a very popular song, at the moment, and shows hamsters dancing to it.  The hamsters dancing adds humor to the commercial to connect even more to the younger audience.

The obvious purpose of this commercial was to make people want to buy the Kia Soul.  The way that Kia attempted to reach this goal was to appeal to mainly pathos and little bit of logos at the end.  They appeal to pathos through depicting these hamsters as the cool people that every person (or robot) likes.  And since everyone wants people to like them and be cool people, it brings emotions of wanting to the watcher.  It appeals to logos at the end by adding facts about its machine.  I believe that this commercial, for the most part, reached its purpose because it made the Kia Soul look like a cool car to drive.

Freakonomics AOW #3 (IRB)

Freakonomics was written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.  Levitt is a Professor of Economics at University of Chicago.  At the University of Chicago, he directs the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory.  Dubner is an award-winning author and journalist who also taught English at Columbia University.  In this first section that I read, these two authors talk about how many solutions to important issues are not always prominent, and how incentives can work positively and negatively.  For example, in the introduction they discussed that the reason that the crime rate dropped so much in the 1990's was not because of the proliferation of gun control laws, nor the new police strategies put into place, not even because of the great economy.  Dubner and Levitt showed us that it was one case for Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, that was taken all the way to the Supreme Court.  This case ended with the legalization of abortion throughout all of the U.S.  This made the crime rate drop because the people who could not afford to have a child, or did not want to support one, could decide not to have one.  These fetuses that were now being aborted, it turns out, had a higher probability of turning to crime when they grew up, but they could not commit these crimes because they never got the chance.  When this book was published, the U.S. economy was not doing too well, just a year later the recession was declared.  It was written to help explain to people who are trying to understand economics where the base of all economics lie, which is incentives.  Some rhetorical elements I found in the piece were that they referenced the appeals through different types of incentives.  They said, "There are three basic flavors of incentive: economic, social, and moral." (Levitt and Dubner 17).  This connects to the appeals through economic being the logical reasoning, or logos, the social being the credibility among peers, or ethos, and moral being how you feel that you acted a certain way, or pathos.  So far, the authors have reached their purpose because I am learning a lot about economics very quickly, while also staying interested.

6 Ways to Get Anyone to Believe a Clearly Fake News Story- AOW #2

This week I read 6 Ways to Get Anyone to Believe a Clearly Fake News Story (found at http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ways-to-get-anyone-to-believe-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.

Freakonomics

Freakonomics
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Section 1: Introduction and Chapter 1
Section 2: Chapters 2 and 3
Section 3: Chapters 4 and 5
Section 4: Chapter 6 and Epilogue

I chose this book because I've heard of it before; I heard it was a great book.  Also, When Ms. Pronko brought it up in class as one of her 3 great books to choose from, she didn't have a bad word to say about it.  Then, when I got home I asked my family if they've ever heard of it, my brother said that he read it and enjoyed it very much.  This book also interests me because I like to figure out how things work and this book shows how one can figure out the puzzles of everyday life.  I am very excited to begin reading this book.

Google's Energy Consumption

This week, I read an article about how Google has recently come out with the secret that they had been keeping for a very long time; how much energy they use.  (Found at http://techland.time.com/2011/09/09/6-things-youd-never-guess-about-googles-energy-use/)  This article stated that 0.013% of the entire world's energy use is used by Google.  It also gave me interesting facts about how much energy that truly is.  For example, the article states that, "Google uses enough energy to continuously power 200,000 homes.

The article was written by Jared Newman, a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, G4, PCWorld.com and Technologizer.com.  He knows all about the new and upcoming technology and has written many other articles on Google.

This Piece was written in a time when Google is one of the biggest companies developing the new technology.  Everyone wonders how much energy it takes for Google to run their searches and support the millions of people who own Gmail accounts.  Not to mention the other cool things that Google can do.  The article was written to show the people how much it really takes to simply search "Yellow Lab Puppies" on a Google image search just to look at the cute pictures of playful puppies.  It did not try to tell us that we should not be using Google because they use too much energy.  The audience that they wrote this for is the ones who use Google, which is pretty much everyone, as far as I know.  The rhetorical elements that are used in this piece are:

1. A use of many different statistics to appeal to logos
• "Google accounts for roughly 0.013 percent of the world's energy use"
2. Little anecdotal examples to appeal to pathos
• "One Google search is equal to turning on a 60W light bulb for 17 seconds"
3. Jared Newman added smaller sentences that don't mean much that added to the persona that he depicted himself as
• "That's hard work!" and "Google's just getting silly with this statistic."

I believe that the author did accomplish his purpose because he effectively intrigued me into reading further on through the article.  Also, at the end, he left me wanting to read more and learn more about the site that I use everyday.  He really put into perspective how much energy it takes to run Google.