TOW #10 "Give the kid a holiday break"

This article is from the opinion section of today's Philadelphia Inquirer and is written by Nicolaus Mills, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College. He argues, convincingly, in my opinion, that professors should be lenient in allowing college students to miss class during Thanksgiving week. Among his reasons he explains that travel home the day before Thanksgiving is very expensive for college students and that the amount of time that they are getting to spend with their parents is decreasing. This argument may resonate with me because I am a student with a sibling in college who has taken off school to visit family in the past. I think Mills's argument is valid and convincing to those who may come from a different situation, though he does base his argument on the assumption that his audience accepts that family is one of the most important things in life. Mill's comes to the piece with an established ethos as a college professor, and he reminds his audience of his experience in the first sentence by writing "Years ago, when I began college teaching," (Mills par. 1). Then he goes on to explain how he began by expecting his students to be in class the days before the holiday, but has changed his mind because of two major reasons: the expense students must cover to travel home and the decreasing amount of time they are able to spend with their parents. This, he believes, is due to the increasing amount of education costs students are required to pay and the their need to work to pay these off and get ahead. Mills cites statistics of the cost of college to impress upon his audience with how big a task the paying off college tuition actually is. He also makes a comparison between current college conditions and the ones he encountered as a college student. In the sixties "when I was in college and grad school, my friends and I came home most summers. We got jobs, lived with our parents, and used the money we saved to help pay for our educations. We entered the job market debt-free," (Mills par. 4). Mills compares this to the situation of college students today, who may not find a job at home and must live elsewhere to work, who need to take internships to get ahead, and who finish college with thousands of dollars in debt that they must pay off. Thus Mills concludes that college students should be allowed and enabled to spend time with their parents while they can, because the demands of entering the work force and paying of education debts may inhibit that valuable time in the future.

TOW #9 "Is it right to waste helium on party balloons?" by Tim Bowler

This is an article from the BBC News Magazine by Tim Bowler. It describes the increasingly limited source of helium and presents the potential issue of one day completely running out of helium. Ultimately, Bowler asks if we should be wasting this finite resource on such trivial things as balloons when it is highly valued for such uses as superconducting magnets in MRI scanners. Bowler writes that it is important to conserve and value rare finite resources but his purpose is more to inform the audience of the issue and open up further discussion on the question. The article sites quotes from several scientists on the issue. For example Bowler quotes "'We're going to be looking back and thinking, I can't believe people just used to fill up their balloons with it, when it's so precious and unique,' says Cambridge University chemist Peter Wothers" (par. 7). By including the insight of a scientist, Bowler shows that he has examined the viewpoints of experts working with the issue and knows his topic. He also presents a factual background on the nature of helium, that it is one of the most common elements in the universe but is quite rare on earth, and that it has the lowest boiling point, which makes it a key part of superconducting magnets. Bowler also appeals to pathos in his article by presenting a rather alarming situation. He quotes chemist Andrea Sella as saying "'But helium is unique. When it's gone it is lost to us forever'" (Bowler par. 4). By presenting a potentially scary situation, the complete elimination of a valuable, finite resource, in a dramatic way, Bowler captures the attention of the audience. Finally, defining the issue in terms of a commonly known product allows the audience to understand the connection of the issue to their own lives. Most people have seen those brightly colored helium balloons floating at parties and for sale in grocery stores. By showing the importance of helium for other uses, it's scarcity, and how it is "wasted" for trivial party balloons, the issue can resonate stronger with the audience.

Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24903034

IRB Intro Post: Second Marking Period

The IRB I have chosen for this marking period is Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Currently a huge name in nonfiction, Malcolm Gladwell has written several other books including The Tipping Point, Outliers, and most recently released this fall, David and Goliath. He is also a writer for the New Yorker, just like the author of my last IRB. Blink is about the quick thinking our brains do without our realization of it. In the first two seconds of reaction to a new subject, our brains draw conclusions and make decisions, and as Malcom Gladwell writes in the introduction "Blink is a book about those first two seconds" (8). I heard about Blink a couple years ago and have been meaning to read it. Last year I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and really liked it, and I expect that I will enjoy Blink just as much.

TOW #8 "Malala and Nabila: worlds apart"

"Malala and Nabila: worlds apart" is an article from Al Jazeera by Murtaza Hussain. It describes the struggles a young Pakistani girl named Nabila has faced with her family. She and her siblings were injured and her grandmother was killed by a drone US drone strike on her family. When she and her family came to Washington D.C. to find out why this had happened, hardly anyone showed up to the hearing, and no one could answer why an innocent family had been attacked. Hussain then contrasts this action and response of the US government to its reaction to the struggles of Malala Yousafazai. He contends that the US and other powers praise and sympathize with Malala because she can be used as a symbol for the justness of their cause in fighting in the Middle East. However, they ignore those such as Nabila who they themselves are harming. This article greatly appears to pathos by describing the plight of Nabila and her family and how they were ignored by the US government. He writes of the tradegy "Seven children were wounded, and Nabila's grandmother was killed before her eyes, an act for which no apology, explanation or justification has ever been given," (Hussain par. 1). This image intends to make the audience sympathize with Nabila and to evoke emotions of sadness and horror. The further explanation of how this was annoyed by the government is also intended to evoke anger at the injustice and cruelty of the situation. However, this article is not only based on pathos, it also appeals to logos through a logical comparison of the reactions to Nabila and Malala. It also appeals to ethos, because of the presentation of shared values between the audience and the author, that the killing of innocents is wrong and that the government's response was unjust. Thus this article mainly appeals to pathos, but is built on a foundation of ethos and logos. Its appeals effectively target the audience to achieve its purpose of showing how the US has unjustly and immorally harmed millions of innocents in its operations.

TOW #7 IRB Post "We Just Up and Left"

This is another chapter from my IRB, My Kind of Place, called "We Just Up and Left". It describes the author, Susan Orlean 's visit to a mobile home park in Oregon called Portland Meadows Mobile Home Park. She starts out with a story of a man who used to own a hundred cats in a trailer and then recounts stories of many other people who lived in the park at one point, but then left. Orlean describes the trailer park itself, which is secluded and unnoticed from the main road. She presents an anecdote to introduce the managers of the park. Then she goes on to reflect on trailer parks in general, how they often have dreamy sounding names and seem to attract disaster, how a trailer is the cheapest form of shelter, and how it is also the most mobile. One woman Orlean talked to who used to live in a mobile home park in Colorado said "'When the wages dropped in the sixties, we just up and left... Up and left.'" Most of what makes up the chapter are anecdotes, stories of different people who Orlean met in the trailer park. She describes how they came to the park, what their life is like there, and how they are part of the community. This helps Orlean to present an unbiased view of life in a mobile home park. There is a lot of existing prejudice about mobile homes and the people who live in them, because trailers are cheaper housing. By introducing the reader to different, real people, Orlean helps to break some of these stereotypes. Anecdotes are the most effective way to achieve her purpose, to give the reader a different view of mobile home parks. This also is incorporated into the overall goal of the book itself, which I believe, again, is to show the reader the often hidden, potentially stereotyped communities of the world in an unbiased light. This widens the reader's horizons and opens their minds. She uses anecdotes in all her chapters throughout the book and by writing a different chapter on each different subculture or phenomenon. Altogether the reader is presented with varying stories of different people and events, both with each chapter and within each chapter.

TOW #6 "Brown By The Numbers" College Information Brochure

This weekend I went to visit a few colleges and one of them was Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. While there I picked up a brochure called "Brown By The Numbers" offering basic information about Brown University. The brochure includes an introduction to Brown, a lot of statistics and facts about the university in several different categories, a brief description of the campus, a collection of images, and an explanation of how financial aid is managed at the school. Ultimately, the purpose of the brochure is to pique a potential student's interest and to get him or her to apply to Brown. It uses a variety of different strategies to appeal to college-searching high school students and their parents. The main appeal generated is ethos, and the brochure uses a lot of statistics and numbers to do so. For example, it provides the student to faculty ratio, the breakdown of class sizes, the racial and regional breakdown of the class of 2017, and the amount of financial aid distributed to students this year. All these numbers are facts that prospective college students and their families are considering, and it boosts Brown's ethos to show off small class sizes, a diverse student body, and it's generosity with financial aid. Some of the numbers it offers create appeals to pathos and logos as well. For example, Brown advertises that it was ranked fourth in Newsweek's survey of the happiest college students in the US. This appeals to the ethos of prospective students, because they desire a school where they are going to be happy, as well as logos because the logic dictates that if Brown's students are happy, and one attends Brown, one will have a happy college experience. Though the numbers are the main focus of the brochure, it also appeals to ethos and pathos in it's introduction by comparing college education to a journey, and then characterizing the "academic journey" at Brown versus at other schools. For example, the brochure states "students at Brown have more opportunity to define their own education than do students at any other American university," (p. 2). According to Brown, at other schools the journey is predefined and never changing, but at Brown it is open and flexible and based on students decisions. This appeals to ethos, because it argues that Brown has more opportunities for students than other colleges, and it appeals to pathos because it bases it's argument on the assumption that students desire choice and freedom. Finally, the brochure provides images to illustrate it's facts and arguments.

Here is a link I found to an online copy of the brochure: http://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/sites/brown.edu.admission.undergraduate/files/uploads/BrownByNumbers.pdf

TOW #5 "100 Women: What chance does a young girl have?" Visual

This was a video made by BBC for it's "100 Woman Season", a program running for the month of October that explores the reality of life for women across the world in the twenty-first century. The video points out ways that life has improved for women and how equality has increased, and it also calls attention to the injustice and inequality that still exists. It uses bold text and simple animation to communicate information. The video begins by reminding the audience that there are 3.5 billion women on earth: half of the world. From there it represents the woman and the journey she takes in today's society with a recurring simple red figure. Despite the differences in women and their situations across countries and cultures, we are united in our triumphs and our challenges. To communicate these triumphs and challenges, the video presents statistics, accompanied by animation of graphs, maps, and other figures. The animation is simple, but makes a statement, effectively accentuating the statistics. These statistics appeal to both the ethos and pathos of an audience. They certainly build up the credibility of the video. For example, the video cites statistics from UNICEF, UNESCO, World Health Organization, and other such respected and credible organizations. The statistics show both improvements and injustices, such as the increasing rate of girls attending primary school, the high numbers of teenage mothers, the rate of sex trafficking and abuse of women, the lower wages of women than men, and the increased rate of women's presence in government. The statistics appeal to the pathos of the audience because they plainly show the dramatic injustice that still exists in our world. However, they also communicates hope because of the achievements that have been made and the changes we can continue to make in the future. Finally, slightly dramatic background music and subtle sound affects help illustrate the statistics and give the video a polished feel. This builds up the credibility of the video because it looks professional, as well as helping to illicit an emotional reaction in the viewer through music and sounds that demonstrate the statistics. Though I think the video probably appeals more to women, I think it is also designed to bring attention of these issues to male viewers. This video definitely achieves it's purpose, to shed light on both the progress that has been made as well as the injustice that still exists in the lives of women.

Here is a link to the video: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-24402849