Post Secret Card

I have chosen the Card that says "I was beautiful before drugs." I chose this one because it shows a young person who is living above the influence and realizing that drugs are not the right way to feel better about yourself. The author looks to be a high school or college student based on the picture which is also where kids feel the most pressure from their peers to experiment with drugs. The author is also trying to show other high school and college students that they do not need drugs either and that there are plenty of other ways to make yourself feel good about who you are. The picture in the card is a cartoon person who can not face the camera because they are ashamed in themselves for the drugs they are poisoning their body with. The picture goes with the text because this person realizes that they do not need drugs and they are embarrassed about how they are living their lives.

Food For Thought Images

As a viewer of these pictures it showed me how blessed we are in America with our food supplies and what we have to eat. After seeing the images around the world it breaks your heart to see how these people have limited to no food and are struggling to survive because of it. It is also disgusting to us to see some of the things that these people are forced to eat because of their limited diet. the picture with the kid biting into the fish is one that tugs at my heart the most because it shows how children are just trying to find food to survive as well and they will eat it any way they can get it. Also the pictures with people eating the beetles is particularly gross to me but the pictures make it seem as though they don't have a choice. I think his argument is that we need to help other nations more as we are very blessed and they are not.

extra credit Prompt #3

Many readers find Wranghams book to have many clever ideas. The problem however is these ideas lack the amount of evidence to make it possible to give a convincing argument. This is the same thing that the reviews I have found have been saying as well. It is just too hard to have enough evidence to prove your point on something that happened such a long time ago. That’s why this piece is more of a persuasive piece as it aims to make you think about the possibility instead of an argument saying that this is what occurred. As far as Wrangham being successful in his persuasiveness I have found mixed reviews a few people have said he did a fantastic job while other claim that it was an ineffective piece because of their views that the human race did not come from apes, hence the battle of evolution vs. Christianity.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6250132/Catching-Fire-How-Cooking-Made-Us-Human-by-Richard-Wrangham-review.html

Prompt #3: Food for Thought

Unfortunately I do not see Wendell Berry’s list of seven things being very reasonable for most college students. For one a lot of students do not have a suitable kitchen to cook their own meals. This requires us to rely on the microwave for most meals that we want to cook on our own. One thing that we can do however is visit the farmers market or buy fresh fruit and vegetables from the grocery store to balance our diet’s better. Also college students can find people who do have kitchens and have “family dinners” where they take turns cooking meals. My roommates another room on our hall do this and we enjoy it a lot. As far as the gardening goes, this might be possible for people living off campus but even then we are in the biggest city in South Carolina so there is not much space for a garden. This does not seem possible to me but like I said you can still visit the farmers market for fresh produce or even grocery stores to receive what you are not getting from the meal plan meals around campus.

Prompt #1: The Cooking Ape

Wrangham uses many casual links to show how humans have adapted over time. He uses the examples of differences between the chimpanzees and gorillas in their way of eating. He says that gorillas’ ability to adapt is how they survive. Wrangham claims that both chimps and gorillas’ typically eat fruit but if there is no fruit available gorillas can adapt and shift their diet to strictly plant materials where as chimps continue to search for the fruit. Wrangham then continues to link these changes to how Humans “evolved” from apes by the simplest changes. Wrangham mentions that our bodies have changed around the simplicity of cooking our meals. He claims that our teeth and jaws have shrunk due to the fact we do not need them to as much with cooked food as we did with raw food. He also makes the statement of how our ancestor’s calorie intake was much lower than our calorie intake based on the fact that the food they ate was much more indigestible. Their food also included much more fiber which would take longer to break down. Because of this increase in calories with the lack of fiber it has caused our brains to get larger and he also says it has cause women to gain weight. Wrangham uses these links to pull the article together by discussing the impact cooking has had on the social aspect of society. He claims that our ancestors would have the women cook for the men in exchange for protection from other people, and this leads to how women received their role of being the ones in charge of meals.

Peer Review Workshop

My main concern about my Rhetorical Analysis is that I summarized the book to much and possibly did not go into quite as much depth about the writing. This was because I was concerned about the length of the paper at first and making sure I hit the 4 page requirement. Also I may not have used enough examples straight from the text. I would also like to know if my paragraphs seem to make my paper flow. When I was going back through my paper I moved a couple paragraphs around but then moved some of them back cause I was not sure how to make them transition to my next point. Also my thesis probably could be worded better. And lastly I would like to know if my title is effective for my piece.

SWA #3

When Wiesel distinguishes between information and knowledge he is talking much about what our past three reading have been about. Wiesel is saying that in today’s world we know a lot of different information but that is it. Knowledge, instead, is knowing the information but also researching it, knowing the whole story, and being able to have an educated discussion about it. What Wiesel is trying to get at is that you can know information without being knowledgeable about it, and that is what’s most important.

Wiesel defines responsibility as taking action on things that you know. He ties it to knowledge by trying to show that responsibility is taking action when you know something needs to be fixed. He uses the example of him going to Biafra. He claims that after he went and saw the children it gave him the responsibility of trying to help these kids. He claims that because we are a wealthy and blessed country that we have the responsibility of helping these less fortunate.

Wiesel defines presence as talking sincerely with the utmost respect to a person. I think by this he means to be there for people when they are in need. He uses this word presence with the word communication. He then says that communication means “To be able to give and receive at the same time” This means that we should be able to listen to each other but also talk and understand where they are coming from. This communication is what he refers to as a human presence.

Listening plays a huge role in this communication and presence that Wiesel refers to. In order to have the proper communication you must first listen to the person in need before you can talk to them and help them with your presence.

Wiesel starts out his argument about “am I my brother’s keeper?” with the story of Cain and Able. He uses the references to God and the Bible because he was a Jew in the Nazi death camp. Most of his audience is typically Jews so they can relate to the bible and also the close relationship to God through prayer.

Wiesel says that we can deal with this conundrum by taking responsibility for the issues around the world. He says that he challenges his students to not let things in the media just pass by but instead if they here of a story try to take action and become knowledgeable about the issue so that they can help those people in need.

Womb for Rent - With a Price

Goodman's main claim is that these surrogate pregnancy's are good but may become dangerous. Goodman says that people who may not have jobs or women who are having to do very strenuous work are being paid much more money by having these babies. But she also brings up the point of where do we draw the line? These surrogate mothers may bring up a lot of questions in the future of slavery and also selling these children.

Goodman uses these ideas of slavery and the selling of children to try and appeal towards pathos. When people think of slavery they think of people being treated terribly and being forced to work which because this was a very large deal in our country may make people think about if the surrogate is the right thing to do. Goodman also uses selling of children to appeal to pathos. Any parent with a kid would fall into this argument as it is obvious the selling of children is unethical.

Goodmans purpose for this piece was to show people the future problems of surrogate mothers and the ethical issues we need to deal with. Goodman brings up the points that surrogate mothers come very close to the boundaries of both slavery and also selling of children. If people think that these surrogate mothers are okay then they can twist it and bring back slavery or start selling children and claim that they are doing the same types of things.

The thing that strikes me as most problematic is people in the future bringing up the point that because they are selling babies to families that it is okay to start selling children for whatever the reason is and just use the excuse that the family wanted a child. People with bad intentions can take something that is meant for good and turn it into something to profit them.

SWA #7

Jeremy Kahn uses Pathos the most in the piece by drawing the audience’s emotions by going through John Dowery’s situation of turning his life around. He opens the piece by giving background on Dowery’s life and letting the audience know what he is doing to turn his life around. He uses the examples of Dowery going through drug classes, getting a steady job, coming clean about what he witnessed, being moved from his neighborhood, missing his family and even to the point of him being killed because of his situation. Kahn spends a large portion of this article focusing on Dowery which weakens his argument because he is not able to branch out. He uses the pathos to make his audience go from not liking John Dowery because he is a convicted felon to making us feel bad for Dowery because he is trying to turn his life around. Because Kahn focuses on Dowery so much during the article it limits him from branching out of Baltimore neighborhoods as well. This would be good for people who live in Baltimore or even Maryland but for the audience outside of these places they are left with the question of is this really that big of a deal where I live? Kahn’s argument would have been much more effective if he was able to give other examples throughout the United States.

Outline

The Story of a Snitch

Murder cases are becoming harder to prove because of the lack of witnesses willing to step to the stand. These witnesses are being threatened and even killed so that they can not accurately give their side of the story.

A. Kahn wants this piece to be directed to the people of Maryland

a. Kahn feels as though the Government is not doing enough to protect these witnesses

b. His argument is very narrow staying specifically in Baltimore and branching out briefly to Maryland as a state

c. Kahn’s purpose is to persuade us as Citizens to rise up and put an end to these criminals by “snitching”

B. Kahn clearly make’s it known that he agrees that witness intimidation is a problem. - logos

a. He only shows the other side once in the whole piece

i. Pg. 61 Elizabeth Julian – defense attorney, claims when witnesses step back it is because they were lying to get out of jail the first time and are now telling the truth

b. Sticks with the pathos of showing John Dowery’s complete story throughout the whole article

C. Kahn uses Pathos the most in the piece by drawing the audience’s emotions by going through John Dowery’s situation of turning his life around.

a. Kahn gives examples of Dowery going through drug classes

b. Coming clean even though he was receiving death threats for being a “snitch”

c. Being shot 6 times

d. Being moved from his house

e. Showing his emotions of not being with his family

f. Even to the story of his death

D. Kahn shows uses his ethos by giving facts on crime rates and interviewing many different people.

a. Bottom of pg. 56-57 David Kennedy

b. Pg 58-59 Colonel Frederick Bealefeld III, 26 year veteran

c. Pg 61 shows his knowledge and research of the DVD Stop Snitching

E. Kahn uses a sense of urgency in his writing

a. Makes the reader believe something must be done urgently

b. Helps to convince the reader this is happening everywhere and not just Baltimore