Shawn’s Review

                The first thing that pops out at me from Shawn’s article is that it is very practical. The information that he provides in the article is something that is not often thought of. Many Americans I believe have some strange inherent distrust in the weather service that is well warranted to some extent. Shawn’s article does an excellent job of dispelling this feeling much more by showing his readers through a great deal of logos that the weather service is not as inaccurate as most people believe it to be.  There is a very big issue that I have with this paper and that is that it does not have any color. The topic is very engaging at first because everybody wants to know if the weather man really is just a dummy or not, but the paper needs more engaging content as it continues. I found that it became very hard to continue reading this paper because it is a lot of facts and a little bit of commentary on those facts. I would suggest maybe putting a few fun stories about the weather as it pertains to meteorology just to keep the reader interested. The most engaging things in this paper are some of the facts which is obviously a good tool, but the human element is nonexistent and it needs to be fixed to make a more engaging paper. Shawn did a very good job with his grammar and writing for a draft, there were no immediate errors that shot out at me it was. Overall it is a good paper with a strong base and as long as Shawn can find a way to add more color and put in a human element it will an be excellent paper worth reading.

Research Paper Reviews

Kelly’s Review

                I liked Kelly’s topic a lot, she provided insight into many problems with gender the only problem is that I was not sure exactly what she was trying to prove. She does a very good job of pulling in interesting facts about her topic, but the problem is that they do not seem to lead anywhere or go in a single direction. I felt myself questioning what this paper was about a few times and then when I felt as if it was going somewhere it would change direction again. The paper speaks about gender inequality, gendercide, and treatment of the transgendered. I think that if Kelly takes one of these three topics and roles with it the paper could end up making much more sense. A more realistic approach would be to somehow connect all three topics, maybe talking about the three different topics and relating them to how gender discrimination is a huge problem in today’s world and must be stopped. She could even expand on this by saying what is being done at the moment to stop it. Additionally there are some grammar and writing mistakes that should be improved upon before the final draft is turned in. The last thing I would say is that Kelly’s paper needs to have more of an argument from the other side and then she needs to dispute this argument. When talking about male versus female gender discrimination she makes it seem as though males and females pretty much are the same, which is not necessarily true looking from a biological standpoint. She could start by proving that the two sexes are not the same with some biological evidence and empirical studies. From here she could go into how while we may not be the same exactly it is not right to treat women as an inferior race of people.

Annie’s Review

                Annie’s paper was very engaging. She had a solid introduction with a good deal of imagery that had me wondering what her paper was going to be about until the very last sentence when I got a pretty good idea. The topic is an interesting one because of the fact that many people want to know about lucid dreaming and how to do it. There is a good balance between information and personal experience. One section seems a bit out of place the part about the medicine Galantamine. The paper goes into this, but it feels like it should not be there unless there is going to be more done with it. Also it says that she plans to do use it if all else fails and she did not mention it again. She also contradicted herself at this point because she said that she will not pay for it, but then a few sentences later says that she will get it if needed. In all honesty the paragraph about the Galantamine seems out of place from the rest of the paper. It is definitely related, but it does not feel like the Galantamine should be there. Another thing that I liked about this paper is that when Annie could not lucid dream herself she found a primary source of someone that has. She talked to her friend who used to have lucid dreams, but eventually stopped as she got older. I think this is a chance to expand a little bit, maybe do a little bit of research on if it is more likely for children to lucid dream than it is for adults and so on.  All in all it is a very good paper the topic is interesting, it is well written, it is engaging and at the same time well researched. 

FIFA Paper Next 600 Words

FIFA, short for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, was born in Paris on May 21^st, 1904. It originally governed most of the major leagues in world soccer except the English league who joined later. It has now risen as the most powerful organization in the world of sports with the biggest money maker, the FIFA World Cup. The first World Cup was held in Uruguay on July 18^th, 1930 and has now become the most popular event in the world of sports, so popular that even Americans feel forced to watch it, every once in a while. The two most recent World Cups exemplifies the terrifying power that FIFA has over the host countries.

The 2014 World Cup was hosted in Brazil a country that produces the biggest soccer fans and many of the best players in the world. Naturally they would be ecstatic for the upcoming World Cup to be hosted in their home nation, right? Wrong, Brazilians responded to the news of hosting the 2014 World Cup with mass rioting across the nation. They also set a lot of things on fire and not just because setting stuff on fire is fun, they actually had a good reason. The Brazilian government was spending over eleven billion dollars on preparations for the World Cup because they are held to a certain standard of excellence by FIFA.  Eleven billion dollars is a whole lot of money, but when you think about it that price is justified, the FIFA World Cup is the biggest sports event in the world and something as big as that should bring in just as much money in tourism, taxes, tickets, and a multitude of other things but here’s the catch. Brazil does not make the money, FIFA does. FIFA’s criteria for letting a nation host the World Cup is exemption from all taxes at any level that means local, state, and national taxes (Oliver). This is absolutely baffling and really gives a taste of what FIFA is like. Someone really should not be allowed to compare a nonprofit organization to the mafia and be very convincing, comparing FIFA to the mafia should be like comparing a pineapple to a paper towel, it just should not make any sense. Because of this the only reason to host the World Cup is the prestige of it. At least for a little while that host country is brought on to the world stage. Going back to FIFA the mafia like tendencies do not stop at tax exemption. FIFA actually forced Brazil to make a new law for them. In 2003 Brazil banned alcohol from soccer stadiums because of the enormously high death rate among fans, which in all honesty seems like a pretty good idea (Oliver). This changed because of FIFA, one of FIFA’s sponsors is Budweiser and to make more money FIFA wanted to be able to sell beer. Brazil was then pressured into creating the Budweiser Bill, which allowed stadiums to once again sell beer. FIFA’s secretary general had this to say on the, “I’m sorry to say and maybe I look a bit arrogant, but … we have a right to sell beer.” The implication of this law is potentially deadly, but it is really all about money in the end so who cares? In the 2010 World Cup in South Africa we can see another example of FIFA’s ridiculous power. FIFA forced the creation of the World Cup Court, which first of all sounds completely ridiculous but nonetheless they prosecuted with striking speed to the point where there was barely a trial. After two Zimbabwean men were arrested for the robbery of two journalists they were sentenced to fifteen years in penitentiary in less than a day (Oliver). That is not enough time for a trial to a fifteen year jail sentence and is very unsettling.

                

Intros

                The summers in Qatar are hot, really hot in fact the temperatures can reach up to one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit this weather is not safe to be walking in much less play soccer in. On December 2^nd, 2010 FIFA, the world governing body of soccer announced that the 2022 World Cup would be played in Qatar. A country with no soccer history and incredibly dangerous playing conditions in summer when the World Cup is traditionally played. Not only that, but the country is known to have very little rights for migrant workers and by 2022 by two conservative estimates say there will be at least 4,000 dead migrant workers from working on building the stadiums. People across the World were flabbergasted by the decision, but that quickly turned to outrage. The decision made absolutely no sense so why did it happen, where did FIFA go wrong? The fact is that FIFA did not go wrong, FIFA is rotten. FIFA was and still is aware of the huge problem that the Qatar World Cup brings, but that does not matter all that matters to FIFA and its executives is money and there sure was a lot in this. It is painfully obvious that FIFA executives voting for the upcoming World Cup host were bribed and despite major outrage across the world FIFA has remained in support of Qatar as the 2022 World Cup host. For years it has been clear that the governing body of soccer across the world is corrupt, so how do we know this? Where did it start? And what is being done to stop it?

                When he was young all Sepp Blatter wanted to be was a footballer. The soccer fanatic had a chance too, he worked hard every day for hours to become the best he could be and eventually went to a trial for a local club and was offered a contract. Not soon after young Sepp’s dreams were crushed by his father who told him, “No son of mine will be a footballer,” and refused to sign Blatter’s contract. Sepp Blatter did not give up on his dream and found a way to have a life filled with soccer ironically though the little boy who loved soccer so much has become the man who is ruining it. Sepp Blatter is now seventy nine and the president of FIFA. FIFA is the nonprofit, world governing body of soccer with over one billion dollars in the bank. FIFA under Blatter has faced countless scandal and seems to have drawn up a business model designed after the mafia’s. Under Don Blatter bribery seems to be a common affair in the inner workings of FIFA and that is really just the tip of the ice burg. FIFA itself may be responsible for the deaths of over 4,000 people in Qatar and its executives have broken countless laws in multiple countries as they seem to think they are above it. Now if this is all true what is being done about it? Why is Blatter still in power and why is FIFA allowed to continue operating like this?

                Alexis Sanchez grew up in the Chilean mountain town of Tocopilla and he was dirt poor. Alexis had nothing, his father left him when he was a toddler, and his mother worked several jobs to support her four children, but Alexis did have one thing soccer. While soccer was his love and his escape from the world that he lived in he could not focus on it as from the age of six he had to get a job to help support his family and also attended school. Despite these obstacles Sanchez played and he practiced every day and he got good, real good. Sanchez was signed by a local club at the age of sixteen and was seen as a nobody there, the players didn’t understand who this kid was until his first game. The team was down 1-0 and struggling so the coach decides to put in Sanchez in as a second half substitute. Sanchez went on to score eight goals and proved what he could really be. From there it was smooth sailing all the way up to FC Barcelona and now Arsenal FC. Alexis Sanchez’s story is repeated all over the world, but it might not be so easy for some kids. Recently FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, has banned over four hundred children from playing soccer because they are foreign in the nation that they play in. FIFA is a corrupt nonprofit organization that cares more about making money than trying to fix the problems in the world of soccer. It has been surrounded by scandal and bribery for years and is ruining the game loved by billions of people around the world. 

FIFA Research

                In my paper I would like to fill it with information on three things what FIFA is, the multiple scandals it has had and the players in that, and how the FBI has messed all of FIFA’s corruption up and just generally been awesome while also managing to strengthen my faith in the American legal system. While there has always been scandal surrounding FIFA there has never been proof until an American FIFA official named Chuck Blazer gave it all up. I plan to use Blazer’s claims in my paper. On top of this there have been a few authors on the NY Times who I have found who have been following the FIFA indictment story since the beginning named Stephanie Clifford, Matt Apuzzo, and William K. Rashbaum. All have a few stories on the investigation that will be helpful to my paper. I can also focus on FIFA’s biggest scandal, the Qatar scandal, which by conservative estimations will be the cause of over 4,000 deaths of Qatar migrant workers by 2022. There is also the incredible number of bribes that the FIFA executives have taken from biding nations to get their vote for the host World Cup nation. On top of that FIFA executives are huge idiots who have said and done a multitude of things worth talking about to make the story more interesting and funny like Chuck Blazer getting an apartment complex in Trump Tower for the use of his cat. Then there is the FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, he is a Swiss man who has allowed the corruption of FIFA to go on since he has been in office, which has been a very long time. Blatter has won almost every election under very shady circumstances that scream bribery. Finally I would like to talk about the role of the FBI and how they made the whole world a little bit happier that the United States is around, which is good considering that most of the world doesn’t like us very much. The FBI is in the process of taking the corruption out of FIFA and they are doing a good job of it. They are working on getting Blatter and once they get him that will be a huge step towards eliminating the corruption from FIFA.

America’s Wandering Families Analysis

America’s Wandering Families by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel is an emotional piece about the growing number of homeless families in the United States. I really enjoyed this article because it is very human. While many articles that we’ve read focus greatly on statistics this article was very emotional and made you feel for the people; they were more than just numbers on a page they had faces, names, and stories like the rest of us. This kept me incredibly interested throughout the article and was a great strategy to keep Nobel’s readers engaged. This great deal of emotion meant that the article was filled pathos catered to anyone who sympathizes for people going through hardship making it a pretty good use considering there aren’t many who don’t sympathize with that. In this sense I think that the author really did a great job of making a one-size-fits-all article. She made an article that can be understood by most by most people and she gets them to see her way of thinking not so much by stating a multitude of claims and proving them, but simply by getting her readers to feel for the homeless in their community and all across the U.S. Because of the mass use of logo in this article there is not a lot of room for logos. While this is true and for many can be crippling when convincing a reader towards your way of thinking, it does not seem to matter as much for this article. The emotion in this article is heartwarming at times, but turns on a dime to absolutely crushing because it really makes you feel for these homeless families and a great amount of facts and statistics would just take away from that, it would leave the reader feeling desensitized to the whole ordeal to a point.  

The author adds herself as a character in this article as well, which adds to the way that she convinces her reader. This is the ethos part of the argument. We see the author researching and really making and effort to get to know the people that she meets, which makes the reader feel as if she knows what she’s talking about.

                

One Thing They Aren’t: Maternal Analysis

                One Thing They Aren’t: Maternal is an article by Natalie Angier about the different ways that animals take care of their young.  Angier’s article is challenging to decipher. The article’s original purpose seems to be something informative and fun at the same time, but it has an underlying theme to it. It starts by praising mothers, the article speaks of how great mothers are and the praise that they deserve, but from there she almost seems to refute her claims. She moves on to talk about the way in which so many other species of animals are not very motherly. For instance pandas are not as cute and cuddly as we might like to think; the majority of the time a panda mother gives birth to two babies and then only takes care of one using the other as a backup in case the favored child gets sick, damaged, or dies. Facts like these are very interesting and are useful tools that the author uses to keep her reader engaged, but why does the author contradict herself taking it the complete opposite direction from mothers are to be worshipped to they are awful creatures? The thing that we must pay attention to is this, the author never once mentions the human mother except in the first paragraph when she is praising them and while she still ends on the bad note of rabbit mothers who barely spend any time with their young it is still a significant occurrence. The author wants us to appreciate our own mothers because our mothers never left us in a dark nest to only see the light for two minutes every day and our mothers never pitted us against our siblings for a fight to the death. She wants to stress the importance of our own mothers by comparing them to truly terrible ones so that we know just how lucky we are to have the mothers that we do. Angier’s article is engaging and informative, but ultimately teaches us of the importance of our own mother and makes us see just how lucky we are. 

Do You Want Lies with That? Analysis

                Do You Want Lies with That? by Morgan Spurlock is an interesting article about the dangers of overconsumption. The first thing that jumps out at you in this article is the creativity right out of the gate it gets you hooked with creative and humorous piece about eating a book. The author does an excellent job of using humor to keep his audience interested and engaged. Not only that, he uses the humor to make a better argument. The author uses humor in a mocking tone to make fun of a variety of different things, but all with the purpose of making the thing he is mocking seem ridiculous to the reader. Another tool the author uses is examples. His major example is the smoking industry as it began to die in the United States. It fought to make smoking seem cool and safe to the people of America, but ultimately it failed. The problem was that everybody was consuming the smoking industries products and it was killing everyone so the responsibility had to be put on something. Instead of the people who bought cigarettes taking responsibility it was the companies that sold them the cigarettes. The author uses this to call out the ridiculousness of our over consumption and how we cannot just blame ourselves for what we do to us. He then goes on to make this example have a little bit less sting by admitting that to some degree we don’t have control because of the huge power that comes with advertising. This advertising has made us consume, consume, consume, and it’s getting out of proportion. Spurlock then brings in facts to his argument by stating shocking statistics about the amount of consuming the people of the United States does compared to every other country in the world. Takes these facts and then uses a bit of pathos to get his point across. He points out that all this consumption that we are doing isn’t actually making us happier people even though that’s what all the advertisements say. He finishes by just saying simply, “Americans are eating themselves to death” another dangerous form of overconsumption and something that is incredibly scary. 

Related Article

                My research paper is about the corruption of FIFA, which is if you have not been informed the world governing body of FIFA. I am not going to try to emulate my paper around an article, but rather a video. In fact this video is the thing that actually brought my attention to the problems that FIFA has and as a result the entire world even the United States. It is a video on John Oliver’s Show: Last Week Tonight that is absolutely amazing and I highly recommend that you take fifteen minutes to watch it. Also if you have another fifteen minutes I recommend you watch the follow up video, which in my personal opinion is even funnier than the first. I do know that FIFA is an organization that many people do not actually care about in the United States and to be honest have probably not even heard of. I’m hoping to get my readers interested in the organization in the same way that Oliver does. He makes his viewers realize just how important the sport is and also constantly relates it back to things in the United States that are more relatable to us like football. While these are all very important tools that he uses his most important and most utilized tool is humor. Oliver is constantly making jokes to help get his point across and uses it very effectively. He mocks the thing that he is opposes to the point that it is absolutely ridiculous in his viewers mind just something that makes you wonder, “How is this even something that exists?” I know that I am not as funny as Oliver and that bringing it to the level that he does is likely out of my reach, but I can still do my best to engage the reader using humor. It is likely that I will end up using pathos like Oliver does at certain points in his article more often than I do humor because with FIFA there is no shortage of that. The story on FIFA still has not ended and it gives me plenty to write about in my article.

iGod Analysis

                Nicholas Carr in his article iGod is attempting to inform his readers about the future, specifically the future of technology and where that will take us. While Carr’s purpose is to inform us of the future he uses many relatable and present examples to keep us interested. He often uses the google founders in his examples, these examples are something that we can all relate to and something that we know very well. We may not know the founders themselves, but we do know the google the search engine and many of us know how incredible and inventive google can be. Carr’s examples are relatable, but they are also very informative and to a curious mind this can be a very powerful tool to engage his audience. The article is filled to the brim with interesting and engaging facts, but the problem with this tool is that it is double edged. The facts are interesting to a point and then from there they seem to get very repetitive, which makes them boring and could cause people to space out. I am only saying this because this is exactly what I did while reading the article at certain points. It at times was just too much information to handle, but Carr often found a way to rope you back in. When things started to get boring eventually there would come something that got the audience to pay attention once again. Carr did this with pathos, there are some predictions in his article made by him and others that are very worrisome to most humans because they imply huge changes. Most humans are afraid of change to some degree and predictions of machines becoming smarter than man can be very worrisome to pretty much anyone. Another way that he ropes his audience in is by answering questions. At times I found myself questioning what this prediction or that statement could mean for someone like me and Carr always related it back to the common man. He did an excellent job of answering the questions that came up in his article.

Casey’s Paper Reflection

                The initial thing that stuck out for me was just how relatable this article is. I found myself continually quietly snickering and thinking in my head, “Yeah, me too.” I think anyone who has a smartphone can relate to Casey’s paper even if maybe it’s a person who does not often use their phone. Another aspect that I liked is that because it is so personable the paper very enjoyable to read.  While these are all good things I felt that it was so personable as to take away from the research part a little bit. The narrative is very good but I don’t feel as though I’ve learned much from it. The quote about people gaining emotional attachments to their phones was something that I did learn, but I feel as though the rest of the information is commonly known. Another thing is that I felt the paper had no conclusion. This may be that Casey is still performing her experiment, but I still feel as though there should be more to it. Overall the paper is good and other than adding more research, expanding on it a little bit more and adding more to the conclusion I would not change anything.

Kelly’s Paper Reflection

                What I really liked about Kelly’s paper is how balanced it is. There is a good amount of information without it be overwhelming. While sometimes the transitions are abrupt I still find that the paper doesn’t get boring because there is not too much time spent on one narrative or piece of research. I also liked Kelly’s conclusion, it built up with the paragraph before by talking about the terrible day that Kelly had had and then was defused and ended on a happy note. The last thing I liked is the research itself. It was often very interesting to me because I can associate with social media and it is interesting to learn more about its functions and how it has affected society. As I already mentioned the transitions could use some work. The paper jumps from research to narrative and leaves me wondering how one has to do with the other. This is a problem, but there are only a few places where I found this, it is mostly very well written. Another problem I had is that the intro seems to set up a different paper it starts out very broad and stays broad, but never transitions into lower, it just kind of jumps in.

Experiment Findings, Research, etc.

                In my experiment, I am trying to figure out the best way to get motivated to do things that I have to do, but don’t necessarily want to do. The first thing that I found is that attempting to break this habit of lacking motivation is incredibly difficult and I still have not managed to find a way to beat the habit in a way that I would like to. While I have made minor progress by doing a bit of research on motivational strategies they have not really helped much. These strategies include, yelling at yourself like a drill sergeant, imagining the task completed, and imagining a big task as individual pieces. These strategies haven’t been working so I decided to look a little more into what causes a person to be motivated. There is a whole theory in psychology called behaviorism that goes along the lines that all living organisms get motivated to do things through stimulus, basically it goes like this you start to feel hungry so you’re then motivated to stop whatever you’re doing at the moment to get up and go get some food. According to the behaviorist theory this will work all the way up to incredibly complex decisions that humans have to make every day. I decided to try an experiment based upon this theory I would give myself rewards to help motivate me, the motivation mostly being cookies. My recent experiment has me questioning this theory though because I do often know what is best for me, running for example is very good for me. If I know this is good for me then why don’t I just do this immediately because I know that this is what’s best for me why do I need that extra incentive? It turns out that this form of extra motivation does not really help all that much for me. The behaviorist theory can be spotty at times and there are a few other theories that say that as a species we are above simple stimuli to motivate every single one of our actions there must be a better way to get motivated.

                

Inequality… Analysis

                In Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Devision? a chapter from Danah Boyd’s book Boyd speaks about, well the title really is self-explanatory. Boyd creates an argument that uses a ridiculous amount of logos taken from an even more ridiculous amount of research.  She does extensive field research filling this chapter with interviews from teens of all backgrounds from an inner city girl to a preppy rich girl.  These interviews are done and recorded over years and Boyd makes more and more conclusions to support her claim from them. Most of her interviews are focused around a pivotal point, when teens started to change from Myspace to Facebook. She points out what a few students said about their classmates; many of them said that the classmates that “higher ups” which more often than not turned out to be white people and one interviewee came out and said that the biggest reason that she and her friends switched to Facebook was to “and not to sound racist but” get away from the more ghetto people. Boyd eventually comes to a final conclusion that social media cannot fight segregation and that the race problem will be a problem for many years to come. Although her fieldwork is the main examples she uses to come to her conclusion it is apparent that she uses many secondary sources as well. Boyd often times talks about the huge racial segregation on the internet between teens. They will more often have friends of the same race commenting on their posts than of other races Boyd says after careful observation of teens’ social media pages. The more secondary research is really the meat of the argument. From this research Boyd comes to more serious conclusions and even implements it into her field work like when she pointed out to one of her interviewees some of her findings and built upon how surprised the interviewee was. She also makes many claims in the chapter and then puts a footnote on that claim to a piece of secondary research that she found that supported that claim. It seemed that every claim she made had some way to support it  and made the chapter very convincing to the reader. 

Consider the Lobster Analysis

                David Foster Wallace in his essay Consider the Lobster writes an intriguing essay (from a rhetorical standpoint) about a lobster festival that develops into something much more. The essay begins with just the lobster festival and a description of it, but Wallace expertly transitions the essay to become something of a moral battleground causing many of us what is called in psychology cognitive dissonance (the discomfort that you feel when two opposing opinions come into contact with each other in your mind). It is really impressive the way in which he does this. He uses this festival as an opportunity to write about the morality of cooking lobster while it is still alive. It is interesting how he uses the festival as a starting point to move into his opinions lobsters. He first starts with festival and then moves into the subject of lobsters, many facts and statistics are pulled out so that by the end of the essay you feel as though you could write this 350 page paper solely on the facts that he states, but this seems to be essential to the paper because the reader then feels that they know lobsters better than just that really expensive food that you get every once in a while.  The lobster then becomes more of a living thing to the reader. After what seems like a possibly infinite amount of lobster facts Wallace brings the focus back to the festival and starts talking about the organization PETA, who is apparently at the lobster festival most years to explain the pain that lobsters may or may not experience while being boiled. From here Wallace gets into the lobster meat of things¹ he turns the reader’s attention to what he really wanted to go to all along, the lobster cooking morality. He leaves the reader in a grey ambiguous area where you’re left not quite sure what you believe anymore because the whole world seems to have been turned upside down by lobsters. Wallace makes the reader think about their view on the subject and probably even managed to change a few opinions on the matter.

1: I know it was bad, but after seeing Wallace do it so many times I thought that I’d give footnotes a shot and for some reason it was the only thing I could think of that seemed worthy of one. I apologize for any pain that the pun may have caused.

Shipping Out Analysis

                Shipping Out by David Foster Wallace is a twenty four page essay about Wallace’s experience on a cruise ship. Wallace talks extensively about the human condition or at least the American condition and often likes to make fun of it. The author’s main purpose is to entertain his audience and to accurately describe his experience on the trip. Wallace’s attention to detail is incredible, he recounts every piece of the ship and describes the things that he did very well. He molds these details all into one common theme, everything on the ship is fake. The tourists, the workers, even the ship itself has a faux atmosphere around it that all ties into the theme. Wallace talks extensively about the details of the ship making some keen observations, or really just one observation, it is always spotless and perfect. There is no place with rust on it, the windows get washed every morning to wash the salt, and the one time that Wallace did come in contact with a defect it was fixed within minutes of him catching it. The author leads this all back to the fakeness of the ship he almost seems to imply that it is in some way a dystopian society that holds the appearance of a perfect world. The workers on this ship according to Wallace work to achieve the image, they as Wallace puts it, “pamper you to death” where they truly work as hard as they can to make sure their customers have a good time on the ship and feel the luxury. The author describes how his maid would somehow always know when he was going to be out for thirty minutes or more because when that happened he would come back to a spotless room. There was also his waiter who was so serious about the tourists experiencing a good time that it would pain him to hear anything other than that their experience was great. This plays once again into the dystopian society that Wallace has created on the ship through his reflections. The tourists are then the final piece to the dystopian puzzle, the stupid citizens that play into the hands of the higher ups and have lost all value. He constantly speaks of the materialistic tourists and how in the end he starts to become one too no matter how hard he fights it. Wallace really uses his experiences to paint a picture of a cruise ship in a light that many would not think of.

Being Healthy

                Because of a desire not to gain the freshman 15 and the fact that I’ve always wanted to get into the habit of exercising consistently I’ll be doing my experiment on being healthy through a good diet, exercising every day and going to bed and waking up at the same time. Studies show that good habits such as these can not only increase mood, but longevity as well. To do this I will attempt to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time as well, I will try to only eat healthy options at dining halls and in my dorm and I will try to exercise every day. I plan on going to bed each night at eleven and waking up at 7 then I will either go to the gym or go for a run. When eating I will only eat healthy things, which means mostly vegetables and meat with a little bit of grain. The experiment will be a challenge, I won’t be able to eat my favorite food, burritos, or stay out with my friends until two on the weekends. I really see the sleeping part and the consistent exercise part as my biggest humps to get over, it will be hard to stave off that late night Oreo craving, but getting up at seven and going to exercise will be rough and purposely excluding myself from going out with my friends past eleven will be even harder. To keep the experiment consistent I plan to reward myself for every time that I find it hard to get through it. When my friends are about to leave for a party instead I’ll go to my dorm and watch lost, my latest Netflix show, which I never have time to watch because I’m either doing homework or with my friends. When I don’t feel like exercising in the morning come back and take a long shower, which I really enjoy and find very relaxing. The problem with the food is that it will probably just have to be its own reward. I’m going to have to think of healthy snacks that I like and they will become my rewards. There is a possibility that this reward system will not work and then I will have to reevaluate my incentives and hopefully make them better.

Unitasker Rhetorical Analysis

                The Unitasker by AJ Jacobs is a chapter in Jacobs’ book about how he performed an experiment trying to kick a bad habit that he and many others have, multi-tasking. Jacobs uses extensive evidence in his writing to help the reader understand what he is doing and why. He uses evidence from ranging from primary sources- an interview with a scribe- to books, a lot of books. With this evidence he shows his purpose more and more, Jacobs is trying to inform the public of the dangers of multi-tasking. While the main focus is his struggle to focus on a single task at once the purpose becomes clearer when he puts ominous quotes, or in this case a summary, such as, “Multi-tasking shortchanges the higher regions of the brain, the ones devoted to learning and memory.”  It is an essay that is filled with logos. He uses this rhetorical appeal very nicely so that the reader is properly informed. Jacobs does an excellent job of scaring the reader with his striking facts and statistics then diffusing the situation with some form of humor or good will leaving the reader with a sense that this is a very serious issue, but not overly afraid of what is to come. The structure of the chapter is also interesting, Jacobs splits the chapter up into twelve different sections. The most of these sections are devoted to his personal experiences in his experiment, but there are a few more sobering and factual sections. Through these sections the Huxley model is shown in different lights. There are the sections that focus on his experiment. Theses sections show the inner self and have some abstract and poetic pieces in them where the author makes the reader feel good and makes light of the situation and oncoming problem that effects many of us today. He keeps objectivity to a lower degree, but does not exclude it completely so that the reader can always have the idea in the back of their mind. As you probably have guessed the sobering more factual sections are much more objective and only have minor moments of subjectivity. With these sections the author can really get his point across.

The Huxley Model

The Huxley Model states that at any given moment an essay is moving into three different directions the subjective, the objective and the abstract.  Overly Documented Life by A.J. Jacobs does just this in his essay in Esquire magazine. The essay is a document of the experiment Jacobs performs on himself where he goes into the depths of “lifeblogging.”  Jacobs states, “In 2013, Google plans to release Internet-enabled glasses that, the company boasts, have the capacity to display data on the lenses and also to record every moment (including, presumably, those moments when you get beat up for wearing Internet-enabled goggles). Very spooky.”  This excerpt is most obviously objective. It states a series of facts about google goggles and what the capabilities of the product are.  Then from there it starts to become very subjective and abstract. The abstractness comes from the creativity of the sentence, he puts his opinion in parentheses to separate it from the objective piece then puts his own personal feelings towards it, which is where the subjective parts enter. All three almost simultaneously occur in the essay and Huxley’s model is once again in effect. It is not always like this though there can be different combinations and intensities of the three parts. Jacobs later in his paper states, “It clues you in to how often your emotions fluctuate. It reminds you that your morning funk is temporary. As dark as the world seems at the moment, you will climb back to level 9.”  This piece seems to be more dominated by the subjective. There is more feeling in the author’s voice and the reader has more feeling as the excerpt is being read. Yet, there are still moments of objectivity as in the first sentence of the quote when it is clear that there is much less emotion than in the rest of the quote. And at the end of the quote he italicizes “will” this is the point where the abstract shows most brightly. He uses the italicized word to emphasize his statement and it seems to pull out a little more objectivity to this more emotional part by making it seem like more of a true statement. An object fact. 

Section 1

Scheidegger, Kent. “Abolish the Death Penalty.” Intelligence Squared. April 15, 2015.                         Keynote Address.

Section 2

            Scheidegger’s main claim is that the death penalty should not be abolished. This claim he supports trough his sub-claims, which are it deters people from killing, in most capital cases there is no doubt who did it, and innocents would still be in prison with or without the death penalty. He supports these claims through a series of counter arguments. He starts with the fact that the studies that show the death penalty does not deter are not scientific but empirically proven to support his first sub-claim. He does not support his second claim with evidence as he seems to believe that it is common knowledge and the evidence used for the last claim is that death penalty cases are so expensive that the innocent would not be able to afford a good lawyer. Scheidegger concludes the same way that he started by stating that the death penalty should not be abolished.

Section 3

            The purpose of the speaker is to convince his audience that the death penalty should not be abolished. His immediate audience is intelligent people in the crowd, but Scheidegger seems to focus on a more general audience judging by the fact that he never uses excessively big words and his argument is very clear and easy to understand. He also ends his opening statement with a quirky rhyme that suggests he is trying to reach a broader audience. The speaker provides mostly counter arguments to the other side’s claims to prove his point. He does not provide new information that would push the audience to sway towards his side and thus does not do a good job of achieving his purpose. Although this may be true he does have time constraints, which could very easily impair him from stating something very important to his argument. Scheidegger’s debate is very different from other sources on this topic because he is in a debate and does not have time to come up with the best response possible and has to more often think on his toes.

Section 4

“An executed killer never kills again.”

Section 1

Kaveny, Cathleen. “A Horrific Crime: but is Execution the Answer.” Gale. Literature Resource Center, December 17, 2010. Web. September 3, 2015.

Section 2

            Kaveny writes an article where she tries to argue against the death penalty. She starts with a death penalty case in which two men, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, commit horrible acts. She takes this evidence and bases most of her claims on this case. Her main claim that society must look for a way to stop these crimes at the source is mainly supported by this evidence. She also makes claims that there is a point where the death penalty stops being effective and that death by lethal injection is not an appropriate way to give these men what they deserve, which she then supports using the acts of these men. She also uses a statement by Pope John Paul II to support her main claim that we as a society must go back to our roots to stop crimes such as these from happening. In Kaveny’s conclusion she supports her main claim again by implying that society is fighting againsty evil and that the death penalty is not a way that can stop it.

Section 3

            Kaveny’s purpose is to tell the American people that we live in a brutal society and need to make reforms. It is obvious that she wants to speak to all Americans in general this is shown by her informal tone and the fact that she humanizes herself by starting the story off with a report that she saw on the news. The purpose is only made clear when she begins to talk about how the death penalty is not good for our society. She talks about the death penalty and its problems then uses those problems to show her audience the shortcomings of our society as a whole. The only constraints that the author may have to this article is her editor may have only allowed a certain number of words and the edits that the editor makes himself/herself. The problem with the constraints is that they could have hindered the author in saying exactly what she wanted to say. This particular article is interesting because while most of the media on this issue are truly about the subject at hand the author tried to get a deeper meaning using the issue as a gateway into it.

Section 4

“Two traditional goals of punishment are retribution and deterrence. But the evildoing in this case calls both those goals into question.”                 

“The bottom line is that society cannot impose a condign punishment, or an effective deterrent to these monstrous acts, without in some sense recreating and participating in the brutality of the criminals themselves.”

Comparative Rhetorical Analysis Subject

            The subject that I chose to write about is an issue that is very controversial. Should the death penalty be legal? There are a few reasons that I chose this subject, the first is that I do not have a personal opinion one way or the other on the topic (I don’t believe I have enough information on the subject to make a final decision over something so important) and was hoping to have a final opinion on the matter by the end of the assignment. Another reason is that many people have very strong opinions one way or the other, which I think will make the assignment more enjoyable in that it will be more interesting to read the reasoning from the writers and to find their voice. The third and final reason is that I believe there will be a huge range of discourse for this topic. It has always seemed to me that in this issue there has been a few in the middle that can see it from both sides and most that have made up their minds and have a straight opinion one way or the other even to the point where there are some extreme views- I at one time had a teacher that expressed his belief so strongly in the death penalty that he told the class that, “those people should be tortured first.” Because of the amount of people that have an opinion on either side it is likely that I will be able to find media on the issue in many places.  Social media sights such as twitter are a good way to get the viewpoint and reasoning of a more common everyday person. The problem with this is that there purpose and voice may not be very developed as most tweets are very short. Another place to go would be the news, which debates about this issue every once in a while. The arguments on this issue coming from the news would be another good way to get people’s opinions on a less broad scale, but at the same time the argument is likely more developed and the voice more clear than in the social media sites. Debates on the subject would also be a good form of discourse so that professionals could get their opinions on the matter out there and hopefully provide a very clear cut voice, purpose, and audience.

Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet Rhetorical Analysis

            Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet by Amanda Hess was written with the purpose to inform about the plight of women on the internet and to argue against the way that society treats the cases. While Hess does make some good points about the way that society treats women on the internet her argument is flimsy in many places and relies on pathos to get the audience angry and thus more easily convince them. The main problem with her argument that women specifically are being treated in a way they should not is that almost every one of her examples is of women in positions of power. Not so much power in the traditional sense, but the power to write and inform. All of her examples of women being mistreated on the internet are when a woman wrote something controversial. While she is right that no person should be threatened for stating their opinion on a matter she is wrong in saying that these women in her examples are being treated this way because they are women they are being treated this way more so because with controversy comes adversaries to that controversy and some are not intelligent enough to handle it in a civilized way. On the other hand Hess’ voice seems to help her argument. Her voice is one that is being victimized and through this the reader starts to feel sympathy for her. She often mentions the situations that she and others had to go through with law enforcement and does well to make the reader feel as though she had been treated unfairly even though at some points, when looked at closer, it feels like she is grasping at straws to help her argument along. There are a few different audiences in this essay. The main one is women on the internet. At times the feeling is that she is trying to empower women and make them specifically feel that they have been mistreated and must force change. The two secondary audiences are men that threaten on the internet and law enforcement. She makes a call to law enforcement to do their jobs and protect those that need it. Hess also is trying to tell men that threaten that they have no place on the internet and should stop. Overall Hess’ argument is flimsy and does not convince.

In The Loneliness of the Interconnected by Charles Seife the author attempts to persuade his audience in the idea that the internet is changing our ability to create new opinions from new information. The author comes to one major conclusion, which he then goes on to explain in very fine and explicit detail using real life examples. The important conclusion that Seife writes is this, “We are becoming ever more resistant to the effects of uncomfortable facts--and ever more capable of treating them as noise.”(Readings for Writing at Virginia Tech, pg. 225). From here he goes into a process of writing that supports this statement. He starts with a small anecdote and uses it to build onto his argument. The story that is one about Hyde Park in London where the author explains how groups of strong belief speak to passersby and can more easily get an audience because of the amount of people in Hyde Park. Once this is thoroughly explained he goes on to compare this to the internet, he says that the internet is exactly like this, but on a much bigger scale where almost anyone can go and read whatever a person of strong belief has to say. After he explains the idea he continues into further detail by using another example that is closer to the topic. He speaks of a time when people actually managed to get the CDC to look into a disease that was all in their heads because so many people believed it to be a real thing. The CDC proved this disease to be all in in the head of the person that believed to be inflicted and yet many still think that this is a real disease. The author explains this belief to be powered by the internet. Seife clearly outlines facts that prove his statement to be true.