Blog 3 (Week 3) (Visual) 9-26-11

 

     This political cartoon is about the United States' current economic situation.  The main view point this picture portrays is that no matter what the government does to try and fix the current situation, our economy is only getting worse. 
   The author of this cartoon is Clay Bennet who has won awards such as the Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons, and has had his cartoons in various newspapers as well as online cartoon websites. He drew this piece in context of the U.S current situation of economic stress. 
   The purpose of this piece is to show that nothing can work if it is upside down like the car in the picture.  The economy right now is to the point where it just won't work anymore at the rate our country is going.  His purpose was to show this through drawing his views for the national public. The audience that Bennet was aiming towards was most likely political activists in the United States and to inform the general public of what has happened to our economy. 


Some rhetorical devices:
   ~exaggeration (exaggerating how bad the economy has become)
   ~placement (of the wires from working car, to the FRONT of the economy car)
   ~captions (within text where "stimulus" is placed, and "economy" as license                              plate)
    ~ bias (viewpoint of stance of economy/government)


  The author accomplished his purpose because this political cartoon has gone viral all over the internet and has been looked at by thousands of people.  

Blog 2 (Week 2) (IRB): 9-19-11

     Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D, author of My Stroke of Insight,  is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist (brain scientist) who has become a health celebrity through her eight year recovery from a stroke.
   In the first quarter of the book I read she has introduced her childhood, and what motivated her to become a brain scientist when she was younger.  She ends this mini autobiography with the day of her stroke, and proceeds the next chapters explaining what exactly goes on in the brain and what went wrong with her brain for it to rupture on the morning of December 10, 1996.
   The book was written in 2009, which was five years after she had made her full recovery from the stroke. The context of this is that she printed the book after she recovered, sorted her thoughts, and wrote them down in order to help other victims of this brain malfunction make full recoveries also.  In her journey she found her inner peace and with this realization she wrote the book for others to find themselves as well as help and inform people of how to properly care for a stroke victim through the eyes of a recovered patient.
   There are two specific audiences Taylor appeals to through this book, one of which is people in general that she wants to inspire to live life full of hope and inner peace.  Secondly, she wrote the book for friends and families of stroke victims to help them understand what is going on in the brain of their loved one, and what they can do to help them get better.
   Rhetorical elements used in this section of the book:
              - Pathos
              - Logos (her facts about the brain, statistics)
              - Quoted passages
              - Vocabulary
              - Cause and effect (illness description)
              - Persona (developed who she was through her autobiography)
              - Anecdotes

   The author did fulfill her purpose because the book became a New York Times best seller and has sold millions of copies all over the world, globally informing the public about her story and how to help victims of strokes.

Intro. to IRB (NOT one of weekly blogs...)

Title: My Stroke of Insight
Author: Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D

Breakdown of reading:
    First section: Pg 1 - 48 (Ending on Chapter 5)
    Second: Pgs 48 - 96 (Ending on Chapter 11)
    Third:    Pgs 96 - 144 (Ending on Chapter 16)
    Fourth:  Pgs 144 - 187 (End of book)


   A few days ago on Monday, I was looking around Barnes and Noble browsing through non-fiction books just to get a feel of what type of non-fiction book I was most drawn to.  At first I had picked up a book about the unwritten fact that beauty is sometimes the key to success, such as getting a job, etc.  Then I picked up a book at random on a table that had bestselling non-fiction books.  I read the back summary and I came to find it was a book about a brain scientist (neurologist) from Harvard who had a very successful life through medical school and also when she went on through her discoveries and successes as a  researcher of brain tissue and different brain dysfunctions.  Then one morning she wakes up and is in the middle of a stroke, one that causes her brain to collapse within four hours.  She finds that she can not walk, talk, or remember any of her life.  Yet after eight years she makes a full recovery and writes this book called My Stroke of Insight where she tells all about how during those years of no speech she finds her inner peace and finds a new meaning about life.  I chose this book because it seems as if it would be a life changing read, and I have never read any book about brain science so I would like to see if this is something I become more interested in.

Blog 1 (Week 1) (Article): 9-12-11

Title of article: "Congressman Resigns Amid Craigslist Scandal"
Source: msnbc.com (NBC news)
Author: N/A

    I was browsing through my small collection of Ok! magazines when I came across an article featuring a scandal concerning a representative of congress in New York over a Craigslist scandal that happened back in February. I searched online for a more detailed article, and I came across a link to msnbc.com that had a whole page of information about what had actually happened.  I was able to confirm the credibility of msnbc.com because it is the online version of the nbc news station that has to provide accurate and credible information to the public. 
   In a nutshell, Congressman Christopher Lee had responded to a post by a woman on Craigslist who was searching for a man, by sending her a picture of himself posing shirtless in front of his bathroom mirror and told her lies about himself. The woman traced his e-mail to his facebook page and found that he was indeed lying. As a result she posted on Gawker his picture which leaked into the public. A few hours later, he announced that he was resigning from office.
   The context of this article is that at the time it was making national headlines. The author's purpose for writing the piece was just to inform the public which is the audience the author was aiming towards.
  
  Some rhetorical elements that were used in this piece were:
         -Insightful vocabulary
         -Anecdotes from the congressman's past
         -Pathos
         -Ethos
         
   I feel as if the author did fulfill the purpose they were trying to get across by writing this article because the same article has been reprinted elsewhere, and many people across the country are aware of this course of events.


  - Ali Mason
  Period 8/9