ToW #30 - Advice to an APELC Newcomer: It's All About Perspective

Hello, success hopefuls.

        Welcome to Advanced Placement English Language and Composition. Congratulations on becoming successfully enrolled in this class. But, before you commend yourself on taking the "more challenging" or "higher caliber" class, know that APELC is not special; plenty of people adore it while plenty of others deplore it. At its very core, it is a course in which your goal is to learn how to consume and produce effective, advanced rhetoric. The course is honestly nothing more and nothing less than that. But, then, what brings some into seething hatred at the mention of its name while others feel glee when reminded of it? While the true content of the course is the same for all of its students, your success with it is functionally determined entirely by your predisposition towards and perception of learning; two factors which combine into your utmost perspective of the class.
        In the case of education, understand predisposition as how much you innately like and want to like a subject (like English) and, more specifically, a course (like APELC). Our personalities define our innate likes; thanks to your genetics and your positive past experiences, you cannot help but to enjoy eating chocolate, playing frisbee, reading an excellent novel, or drawing in your notebook. You are more than willing to do these things -- to varying degrees and under varying circumstances, of course -- and thus perform well while doing them. You knew this fact before reading this letter; it's a universal human truth that we all enjoy doing something. But then, what do you do when you aspire to perform well on something that you do not innately like doing? In a sort of automatic route to tricking yourself into doing that thing, you want to like it so much that you end up growing to like it. This starts off simple -- just a few more pages and then I'll reward myself with some chocolate -- but grows more complex as you grow familiar with it -- ooh, that metaphor made me smile; this book is written pleasingly well -- until it becomes something that you innately enjoy -- I think I'll start reading books in my free time. This, as I hope you'll find, is true for all tasks, fully including APELC assignments. If you truly wish to commit yourself to mastering this course's material, you will find that the most effective way of learning from its assignments is to learn how to love completing them.
        Then, perception is very much like predisposition; it involves your innate and desired likes but, rather than centering on the enjoyment of tasks, it centers on the enjoyment of the purveyors of tasks. This means that you may automatically like your teachers, their teaching styles, the classroom setting, and your classmates, or, if you wish to perform well in the class, you will learn to like them. As all of these factors affect how well you accept a task (you'll do homework more successfully if you respect the teacher assigning it), it is as important to like them as it is to enjoy doing the task itself. But what do you do when you simply cannot perceive these factors favorably? If the dislike is especially gratuitous, you speak with someone who can help you fix it, but if it is a minor grievance, you learn to shift your gaze away from it for the sake of your education.
        These truths apply as fully to AP English Language and Composition as they do to any other aspect of your life. If you wish to succeed in life and learning, you must attempt to guide your perspective -- to require of yourself the enjoyment of both being given responsibilities and of fulfilling those responsibilities. Some people are better at shaping their own perspectives than others, but know that, from my long and successful run as a student, enjoying your own education is by far the most satisfying path through any course, be it a writing course which demands a desire to learn or an uninvolved elective which has the potential to kindle a new hobby. I guarantee that, regardless of my skill with rhetoric, it was my positive perspective of learning that made me one of the many students who adored Mr. Yost and Ms. Pronko's wonderful class this past year.

Remember, you have the full capability to make your APELC career a success.

Thank you,

Ethan Reilly

ToW #29 - Documentary by Ken Burns: The Central Park Five

Judicial Injustice

    Without fail, every era of United States history has a great injustice committed by the legal system: Dred Scott vs. Sandford of 1857 invalidated the citizenships of African Americans; Plessy vs. Ferguson of 1896 legalized segregation; the Sacco and Vanzetti Trials of 1921 killed two Italian immigrants for being anarchists; Korematsu vs. U.S of 1941 legalized the mass forcing of Japanese-Americans into detention camps; and the Central Park jogger case of 1989 falsely convicted five teenagers of rape, assault, robbery, and riot. These teenagers, who had been detained for being around Central Park at the time of a few crime reports, were brought into a police station, interrogated harshly, coerced into fabricating confessions, and ended up serving sentences ranging from five to thirteen years. The Central Park Five is an account of those teenagers' misfortunes brought to life by the ever-acclaimed Ken Burns, detailing their baseless and torturous interrogations, their tired and incongruous confessions, their horror at the outcries of New Yorkers (including calls for the death penalty), and their unjustified prison sentences. 

    While the testimonies of the Five and of various historians prove outright that the teenagers were completely innocent, questions were raised upon the reveal of a lawsuit filed by the Five against the city of New York. Despite being exonerated in 2002 and filing the lawsuit in 2003, the Five have yet to reach a settlement with the City. The New York Times reports that the proceedings have taken so long because "the city's lawyers were 'dragging their feet'". In this delaying action by New York lawyers, the City is unintentionally but unjustifiably taking more years away from the Five's lives. Though it may be reasonable for the City to take some time attempting to lower the Five's claims of fifty million dollars each, eleven years is far too long for those men to go without reparations. Now all in their late thirties, the Five have given their entire young adulthoods to the injustice done to them twenty-five years ago.

    If this were 2004 and the men had already entered in negotiations, I would consider their price of $250 million higher than it should be. After all, millions of people have much worse than years of their life spent without freedom done to them without reparations paid in any sense of the word. But, by sheer principle, if someone is wronged by wasting years of their life and then voluntarily spends more years seeking what they believe would right the wrong, they deserve that reparation. And, understanding that the decision to delay must be bureaucratic in nature, very likely to involve some corruption of morals or of practice, the scales of justice impossible tilt even farther in favor of the Five. But promise now shows: after pledging a quick settlement for the Five in his campaign, Mayor Bill de Blasio has spurred recent settlement talks to take place. It looks like, after every little injustice and hardship that they have endured, the Central Park Five -- that is, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, and Kharey Wise -- finally have some legal meetings to look forward to.

ToW #27 - Reflection: A Faux Conference

After facing much trepidation when trying to tackle this ToW, I have found that it is much easier and more useful for me to structure it as a conference between you, Ms. Pronko and Mr. Yost, and me, your student. I do this because I find it more effective to write as I speak and fabricating a normally vocal situation will help me be more honest and eloquent in my answers. So, please excuse any un-prose-like text in my response.

How have your ToWs progressed throughout this school year?

I notice, simply by skimming my first few ToWs, that my analytical writing has become much more subtle; nowadays, you'll hardly ever find me writing about "this article", "its author", or "the audience". Before I began to refine my writing, I had no other way to communicate than through the rather blatant, single-sentence "The author of this article, Jane Journalist, is an expert, making her very credible" or "As this article was published by OnlineNews.com, it is intended for some kind of audience". My writing became more fluid, with much more of a voice and less consciousness of fulfilling the ToW requirements. My more recent ToWs would probably be better suited to be read as speeches rather than blog posts, as they contain so much of my own voice. While the initial, more stressful ToWs served some purpose, I feel that my voice in writing could have been developed better by assigning me to structure a short oral presentation about my text of the week.

What do you think you mastered?

Quite honestly, absolutely nothing. Mastery is a strong notion and I am surprised to see it used in this context; this was our very first class dealing with complex, free-form writing and to observe any aspect of rhetoric as mastered would be short of miraculous. That said, I have improved in many aspects of my writing, but that was covered in my previous response.

What could you still strive to improve?

Again, given that I have yet to "master" anything to do with writing, I can still strive to improve all aspects of my rhetoric. I see the intent of this question, though: in what aspect is my skill still lacking? While I have performed at least adequately in all prosaic challenges that have met me this year, I find that I still struggle with pre-writing -- forming my argument efficiently and effectively. This is especially difficult when I have time constraints on my writing and when I am unfamiliar with what I am tasked with writing about (see: Sartre). It would almost help me to be impetuous in this regard, hastily choosing one argument so I can dedicate more time to supporting it.

Did you benefit from the ToWs?

I hope that my previous answers have already helped to answer this question: I find that they have brought my writing from a crude-ish state of raw meaning to a more refined, smooth powder of content. They have brought my writing more style and voice, coherence, and avenues for deeper thinking. For this, I am grateful, but these ToWs have still brought me considerable strife. At critical times in the school year, when projects converged, I found the ToWs a burden, diverting my attention from my greater goals. At normal times in the school year, when streams of homework were stable, I found the ToWs a chore, offsetting my natural pace and timing. At lax times in the school year, when workloads trickled, I found the ToWs an obstacle, keeping me bound to the screen despite the beckoning of a life to be lived. Keep in mind that I am a hugely involved writer, one who must stop everything else to focus on his rhetoric and who worries about the engrossing experience of working even when at play. This may only apply to me, but know that, throughout the working year (and even in the summer), ToWs were the enemy -- assignments to be tackled rather than cherished. Only in review do I see the benefit of them and it often took much gut-wrenching and teeth grinding to get me to write the ToWs that you've read. This may be resolved by mixing up the purpose of the blog posts -- maybe nix a few ToWs and assign them as writing times for an extra year-long essay.

If you'd like to talk more about how I feel about the ToWs, I'm always available for a chat. Thank you for this opportunity to provide useful information through my venting.

ToW #26 - Entry in the Ancient History Ency.: Herodotus

Reading Goal: Read a scholarly source about a completely unknown topic.

Writing Goal: Identify a logical purpose of the source and analyze its success.

    Where human history dates back hundreds of thousands of years, the study of it has but one limitation: it must be observed and recorded. With the title of "The Father of History" bestowed upon him, the Ancient Greek Herodotus was the man to first devise the study of history. In his entry in the Ancient History Encyclopedia, modern historian and professor Joshua Mark presents all known aspects of Herodotus' work and life. Writing to an audience of fellow academics, Mark analyzes Herodotus' ultimate credibility as a historian through the use of historical examples, both about his process of cataloguing and his accuracy describing history.
    When it comes to Herodotus' practices of gathering information, Joshua Mark proves that, though revolutionary his efforts were, they were inadequate. Mark proves Herodotus' reliance on faulty translators with a descriptive example: Herodotus once wrote about fox-sized ants in the Himalayas. For centuries, this aspect of his text was evidence of Herodotus' knack for storytelling until it was realized that the Persian word for "mountain ant" was very similar to the word for "marmot". This mistake, though understandable, reveals that Herodotus left something to be desired in translation. Likewise, it is likely that Herodotus wrote about ancient cities that he never visited. Mark proves this with another example: where Herodotus described the Walls of Babylon as having "a hundred gates made of bronze", archeological evidence reveals that there were, in fact, only eight. As this is a wild exaggeration, Mark concludes, "this account was based on hearsay, rather than a personal visit", further defying Herodotus' ancient credibility and revealing that he was often inaccurate. Mark's extensive use of examples may seem misplaced here, but as he wrote a completely historical and objective account, only examples could be used. None of his conclusions about Herodotus' life and credibility go without logical backing and analysis. Like a true scholar, Mark reveals to his readers that, where Herodotus' work may be used to gain an understanding of ancient rumors and approximations, Herodotus is ultimately more story teller and orator than what we imagine as a modern historian. Where Herodotus was a man who helped to originate the study that Mark engages in today, it is concluded that he was not as dedicated to academic honesty as are scholars of the current day.

For reference, a marmot.

ToW #25 - Visual Text by EPIC.MEDIA: "Minimalist effect in the maximalist market"

A designer's take on the progression of brand name products towards minimalist packaging design.

Reading Goal: Find and analyze a visual text that lacks a specific claim.
Writing Goal: Develop a purpose for the text based on my perception of it.

    When it comes to aesthetics, people of all cultures tend to appreciate the succinct and simple over the cluttered and complex. However, when the need comes to disseminate information for whatever purpose arises, complex design holds its educational property over simple design's aesthetic appeal. Thus, a compromise must be made; a creative mind has to balance descriptive complexity and beautiful simplicity. This dichotomous truth is applied to the art of product packaging design by Pawel Kozera in his blog post "Minimalist effect in the maximalist market". Kozera, a web designer, illustrator, and musician, tries "to find alternate simple versions for some package samples of the international brands" in this collection of comparison shots of actual product packages and his progressively simple designs. Seeming to have done this exercise for nobody but himself, Kozera leaves no implication to help us understand his work. Still, it proves a powerful point thanks to its layout and professional execution: popular products no longer need to have packaging as complex as it is; these brand names are so ingrained in our minds that they need no advertisement more than what a wartime package of rations gets: HAM SANDWICH or PEANUTS.

    As Kozera designed these re-imaginings of international franchise packaging, it was surely a conscious decision of his to show the progression of design from complex to simple. The effect of this, however accidental, is that a logical scenario comes to mind in which a corporation may undergo major simplification of branding. Kozera's work reveals that, while a brand may need complex, cluttered, and informational packaging initially in order to effectively describe its product, it no longer needs that clutter as it becomes more and more famous. Thus, once a brand is so well-known and ubiquitous that it needs no descriptive graphics, it may enter the realm of simplicity, one of raw information and minimalist aesthetic. At this point, the brand has a name equivalent to a fruit or vegetable; COKE is a word used as MILK or WINE is, and sales boost further as the product connotation transitions into staple connotation.

    The beauty of this visual text is that it seems unconscious of this lesson; for all we know, Kozera simply wanted some design practice with his favorite supermarket brands. Nevertheless, he provides convincing evidence for an important dichotomy: when information is required, complexity is required; when information is assumed, simplicity is desired. We, as humans, desire escape from the inefficiencies of overstimulus; a simple, single word is often all we need to make our choice.

ToW Source

IRB #4 Introduction: The Last Lecture

        Thanks to this amazingly fast-seeming school year, I was startled to find that I had a fourth independent reading book to choose for my fourth and final semester as a high school Junior. Luckily, amidst my semi-scramble to dig up a suitable IRB, I've found a nugget of gold: The Last Lecture, co-authored by Randy Pausch. A former Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science, Pausch was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2006. Knowing that he had only months of good health left, Pausch took it upon himself to give his "Last Lecture", the ultimate summation of the wisdoms that his life had taught him.
        This book expands on Pausch's speech, going into great depths in order to convey what Pausch felt were the major lessons of his life. In it, I expect to find a collection of stories followed by important messages to take to heart from each. I hope to learn from The Last Lecture not just the concluding ideas of a great person, but some insight into what it is like to be at the forefront of computer science. Pausch himself pioneered a program that we spent a few weeks learning from in my Advanced Computer Science class. I simply wish to see what a man whom I respect without knowing had to say about life.

ToW #24 - IRB by Ernest Hemingway: "A Moveable Feast"

    Reading A Moveable Feast has gone off without a hitch; the smoothness and consistency with which I can read Hemingway's prose is a testament to the skill put into writing it. I find that I never have to reread a paragraph, a sentence, or even a word when reading Hemingway -- he recounts only what he observes and describes it all in effective layman's terms. As the natural ebb and flow of the writing brought me into the second half of A Moveable Feast, I noticed that the chapter subjects moved away from Hemingway's time spent alone -- writing, eating, and thinking -- to his time spent with others -- in cafes, meeting contemporaries, and drinking with friends. This outward progression changes the tone of A Moveable Feast from the secluded turmoils and happinesses of Hemingway's mind to the populated turmoils and happinesses that Hemingway shares with his fellow Parisians.
    The wealth of social interactions that Hemingway suddenly has does not seem to change his overly pragmatic outlook (seen in the first half, for example, when he uses his poverty-caused hunger to help him focus on his writing) -- his time spent with others only proves his complete lack of romantic thinking. At one point, after accidentally insulting a suicidal drug addict, poet Ralph Cheever Dunning, and getting hit by a pegged milk bottle, Hemingway's only remark was "For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle." There was no outwardly expressed worry for the man's well-being or appreciation of the oddity of the situation. He seems so scarred from his time in World War I (after all, he did have to clean up corpses and then was nearly killed by a mortar blast) that he could not think about anything other than stark reality. This frame of mind, in truth, may connect to Hemingway's eventual suicide forty years later. Seven years before his suicide, he was nearly killed again by two successive plane crashes -- burn wounds and damaging concussions. Unequipped with the wishful thinking that most of us have to relax our worries, his slightly controlled alcoholism developed into heavy dependence. Equipped with liver disease, high blood pressure, failing eyesight, and chronic confusion and pain, he lived out the rest of his life bedridden. It seems that, when faced with the reality of everyday pain and low-quality living, it was Ernest Hemingway's lack of romantic thinking that took his life.

This ToW's writing goal: To make up for the romantics that Hemingway lost.

ToW #23 - A report commissioned by the Depression-era Federal Writers' Project: "Afternoon in a pushcart peddlers' colony"

One of the nicer Depression-era shantytowns, dubbed "Hoovervilles", found in Seattle.

Reading and Writing Goals:
    To select a text written about an unfamiliar topic and not for a large audience.
    To write with a sufficient amount of evidence, in the form of both quotation and restatement.

        When asked to name a time of widespread suffering in the United States, many jump to a war fought on American soil; either the Revolutionary or Civil. But perhaps more distraught were the Americans of the Great Depression, 25% of them unemployed and millions too proud to receive government aid. "Afternoon in a pushcart peddlers' colony" is a report written by Frank Byrd, a federally employed journalist, about the lives of men living in an encampment by the Harlem River in 1938. While Byrd and his works are generally unknown, he wrote numerous reports like this one throughout the Depression. Not much is known about his purpose or audience, but it seems that Byrd wrote articles only for the government's archives and his own practice. Whatever his prerogative, Byrd's success in recording the state of this Hooverville comes from his sensory descriptions and dialogued testimonials.
        To any reader, the most striking parts of Byrd's writing are his almost ubiquitous and very effective descriptions. He sets the scene with an appeal to touch and hearing -- "It was snowing and, shortly after noontime, the snow changed to sleet and beat a tattoo against the rocks and board shacks" (1) -- giving the reader a taste of the cold and noisy weather. Once Byrd explains that the only shelter the men had were shanties made out of rotting wood, the reader is firmly planted in their scraggly shoes, immersed just enough to understand the direness of the predicament. But, in an effort to lay out the full circumstance, Byrd also describes the luxuries of this Hooverville: "one is amazed (to say the least) by the comfortable divans,
lounges, bookshelves and, of all things, a drinking fountain," (3). It is through these descriptions that Byrd provides a full, unbiased account of his discoveries.
        Still, the reader is left wondering why these men do not apply for government relief. Anticipating this, Byrd brings in his after-dinner dialogue with them. After some small talk, Byrd gets an answer that eludes reformers even today: "'What duh hell do we wants wid relief anyhow? We is all able-bodied mens an' can take it. We can make our own livin's.'" (5). He continues the interview, accumulating enough testimonials for the reader to figure out why the men live the way they do. With the what and the why of the story answered, Byrd concludes his report knowing that the reader will be satisfied.

Source: http://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001373

Provided by the Library of Congress.

ToW #22 - Article from Businessweek: "What Chess Players Could Teach Obama About Handling Putin"

The dreaded stalemate.

    When it comes to modern politics, all that the public sees are the issues of the day. Everybody's eyes become so focused on current events and outrages that hardly anyone sees the big picture. In light of recent tensions between the U.S and Russia, including issues over Russia's handling of the Ukrainian revolution and housing of Edward Snowden, the American public is confused about the aggressiveness with which Russian-American relations are being handled. This is where Peter Coy and his article comes in; in an effort to clarify recent Russian-American politics, Coy likens the fight between these two superpowers to the game of chess. Coy is the economics editor and senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. Being a reporter for over 30 years, Coy is to be trusted when it comes to political analysis like this. As he writes to an audience that wishes to be informed about political and economic news, Coy takes on a few strategies to inform his audience, including a semi-informal voice and an article-long chess analogy.

    Readers of Bloomberg Businessweek tend to be both intelligent and strategic thinkers. Realizing this, Coy compares and contrasts chess strategies with the strategies of Obama and Putin. He establishes from the get-go that Putin is playing aggressively, fueled not by responsibility to lead but by personal desires. For the duration of the article, however, Obama's policies are questioned. Should he be on the defensive? Should he punish Russia's advances? Should he even be playing the zero-sum game of chess? This is where Coy brings in the strategic advice of chess experts, citing both an online forum responder who advocates fighting fire with fire and Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, who argues for strategy outside the world of chess. For instance, as Coy concludes, where one cannot put indirect pressure on the opponent in chess, it is best for Obama to do this in reality. As it turns out, real-world political strategy cannot result in the suffering of one's entire populous for the sake of subduing the enemy king.

    In order to make his message better received, Coy combines his chess analogy with a fairly informal, passive tone. This makes his argument read more as analysis, a form of writing that cannot be so easily contested. It seems that, in the end, Coy took his own advice and subdued his chess-like aggression in favor of real-world reason.

ToW #21 - IRB by Ernest Hemingway: "A Moveable Feast"

        A Moveable Feast is by far the most uniquely composed book that I have read to date. Each chapter is a few succinct pages long and loosely connects to the next with only a hint of chronology. Every sentence is honest, unromantic, and never speculative. A few mantras are repeated throughout by example and statement, "poverty teaches discipline" and "one must only think of work while working". Ultimately, this journal-like account of Hemingway's life in Paris reads as it was written: in Hemingway's voice and completely grounded in reality. Thus far, Hemingway has described to me his working habits, his relationship with Gertrude Stein (his mentor), his addiction to betting on horse races, and his life between jobs, impoverished almost by choice as he attempts to write a novel.

        Through all of this, he tells stories and proves wisdoms as if he is the father of his readers; one who hopes that others will learn from his life and not make the same mistakes as him. No other purpose seems evident in Hemingway's writing; his memoir is most certainly not a scientific and objective study -- it is more of a life's story told for the sake of telling, perhaps for writing practice or for lack of subjects to create stories about. But the style with which Hemingway writes is not one that needs much practice or getting used to; he only employs one rhetorical strategy: "Write the truest sentence that you know." This simple statement seems to describe Hemingway's entire writing process. He simply writes down sentences that he has heard or thought in passing with the knowledge that sentences from reality will sound the most convincing to the reader. Essentially, as a retelling of his life, A Moveable Feast is the purest form of Hemingway's style; it is purely a collection of moments that came from reality, sentences that are nothing if not true, honest, and unobscured by manipulative rhetoric. This is what makes Hemingway's style so strange and new to me; his writing is not about reality, it is reality. He has no purposes other than to retell his experiences in all of their factuality. He makes no arguments and analyzes no data. He simply describes life.

ToW #20 - Op-Ed from the New York Times: "Looking for a Mirror"

    "Looking for a Mirror", an opinion by journalist and author Lee Billings, is a peculiar mix of science education and sentimental poetry. Billings, who has written an entire book on the subject, discusses our hunt for Earth-like planets in the universe in this article. He begins with the inspiration of the search, the Apollo 8 crew's view of the Earth as a tiny, both remarkable and unremarkable sphere suspended in space. Most of the article speaks of our next step in the journey, basic location of planets akin to Earth in the immediately observable universe. The entire subject is deepened by Billings' effortless transitions from purely informational text to purely emotional prose, expressing the duality of this quest: scientific intrigue mixed with loneliness-fueled exploration.
    The more scientific of Billings' essay is more-or-less standard to articles dealing with technology; it sufficiently and methodically explains uncommon phenomena and defines any outlandish terms with straightforward words. Given the relative intelligence of his audience -- readers of the New York Times, and a science selection, no less -- Billings simply does not have a lot of explaining to do. Many of his readers either already have a technical understanding of his subject or can infer the specifics given the premise. So, what Billings leaves out in topics, he makes up for in vividness of explanation: "By measuring how light interacts with molecules in a planet’s atmosphere, a world can be surveyed for “biosignature” gases such as oxygen and methane, allowing scientists to sniff out the breath of life at interstellar distances." Rather than plainly stating that scientists can predict atmospheric composition based on light behavior, Billings goes deeper, using an extended metaphor to spruce his description up.
    But this rhetoric does not even compare to his more poetic paragraphs. Whenever a scientific method is explained objectively, Billings chooses to describe it in a subjective way. He often weaves the objective and subjective together: "A small rocky planet is a dim mote of dust lost in the glare from a thermonuclear fireball we call a star. For every photon of planetary light that goes into making a picture, 10 billion stellar photons must first be filtered out; remarkably, researchers have already devised several ways to do this." This technique beautifully captures the dichotomy that drives this planet-identifying project. Throughout the essay, he implies the source of the motivation to find "mirror Earths": scientific capability and curiosity meets with human motivation and sentimentality. For truly, if we did not feel a sense of belonging to our own planet, why would we use up its precious resources in the quest for its brethren?

ToW #19 - Article from The Economist: "A world of robber barons"

Reading Goal: Read an article of an unfamiliar subject. Read multiple times to ensure understanding.
Writing Goal: Try simple, concise structures for body paragraphs. Make sure that intro and conclusion are fairly strong.

    Unlike the robber barons to which it owes its name, this article strives to enrich rather than impoverish. It is an introduction to an in-depth series on the modern relationship between business and government throughout the world. Its author, Philip Coggan, is a long-time economics writer and award winner whose views on the current state of national markets would be well-respected. Being a part of an educational series, this article has a dual purpose: to pique the interest of the core audience, enticing them to follow the series, and to sufficiently educate those readers who are not so dedicated.
    But of course, education and persuasion cannot happen if the reader is too disinterested to want to comprehend the article. All but the most enthusiastic of economists would have plenty of reason to give up on it if not for its consistent sprinkling of satisfying tidbits and conclusions. Wasting no time, the article begins by unraveling a term that often evades definition: "robber baron". It tells the tale of landowners who, in the Middle Ages, charged unapproved tolls for sailing the Rhine. Once the reader realizes that these crooks were both robbers and barons, they continue deciphering the article with enough confidence to carry them along until the next tidbit. This same effect is given whenever the reader understands the concepts that Coggan delicately explains, increasing the chance that they will enjoy this introduction enough to continue the series.
    However, simple enjoyment is not what Coggan wants his audience to glean from his article; he clearly aims to teach them just what makes the business-government relationship tick. And unless a reader is as well-versed as him, Coggan knows that most need the theoreticals of economics spelled out for them despite their education and business interests. He smartly chooses to break down his topic with a series of modern-day examples: explaining governments' desires for corporations by telling of France's once anti-capitalist president who now cuts corporate taxes; exhibiting the conflict between countries and multinationals by describing a group's move in headquarters from London to Dublin over a profit tax dispute. Cases like these are what make Coggan's educational goals realistic to achieve -- without them, his special report would be in vain.
    In terms of success, this article failed in only one way: it attracted the wrong audience, me. While I certainly learned more about the modern business-state relationship, I am wholeheartedly uncompelled to read the rest of the report. However, I am sure that this single situation does not attest to the longevity of the series; The Economist thrives thanks its many readers, both economists and titans of industry, who are constantly enriched by its many articles.

ToW #18 - Advertisement for FirstBank: "Find the sousaphone"

        A straightforward and colorful picture, this advertisement, created by TDA Advertising & Design, is part of a series of magazine ads that involve extremely easy item hunts. The concept is simple: the instructions ask you to locate a prominent item in the drawing and then reward you with a reason to get a FirstBank account. With such a simple premise, many visual choices must have been made in order to fully convince the viewer to buy into FirstBank. The eye-catching but not garish coloring is one, the familiar layout another, and the concise wording is the last. All of these decisions come together to urge any and all members of the check-laden adult audience to ally with FirstBank.

        All of the colors that we can see in this drawing are all from a nice, dusty, and soft palette. Even the black background is more of a gray. The two main colors are yellow and green; real eye-grabbers in an otherwise black and white magazine. There's also a huge variety of color: reds, pinks, blues, purples, browns, oranges, and more. The cartoon-like drawing gives an overall happy and calm sensation to any viewer, including adults who may be so stressed over their finances that any welcoming picture will get them to sign up for a new bank account. Pleasant colors give the company name of FirstBank a pleasant connotation to all possible clients.

        Then, we should consider the layout of the ad. It's clearly reminiscent of I SPY books that everyone played with when they were kids -- there are instructions to find something and a visually complex image to search through. The mosts subtle callback, though, is the placement of the clue on a bottom bar under the picture. This plays on the muscle-memory of the audience, asking viewers to first look at the drawing, then the clue in the lower left, and then search the rest of the bottom bar for more clues before stumbling upon the logo and slogan: "Free checking for all. FirstBank". This strategy makes the ad feel even more natural to look at. Viewers who grew up with image search games see it as almost an old friend. Yet again, this nostalgia gets associated with FirstBank, giving it a more positive image and further convincing viewers to become clients.

IRB #3 Introduction: A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and, um, Owen Wilson

    On one of last week's snow days, when there was nothing to do beyond waiting for our power to return, I sat down with my mom to watch Midnight in Paris, a Woody Allen film about, disregarding the main plot, the many famous authors and artists who inhabited Paris in the 1920s. I found the most striking character in the movie to be Ernest Hemingway, who was depicted by Corey Stoll as a blunt and serious man.

    After enjoying the movie and getting to a place with electricity, I started my search for an IRB. Still curious about 1920s Paris, I stumbled upon Hemingway's memoir on the subject, A Moveable Feast. After taking it out of my local library and reading its first chapter, I was thoroughly hooked on Hemingway's straightforward, convention-disregarding, and almost "stream of consciousness" writing style. It's honestly a very refreshing and revealing way to learn about effective stylistic choices.

    I'll leave off with a Hemingway quote, the beginning of the book and the inspiration for it's title:

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, 

then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

ToW #17 - Article from Popular Science: "Birth of Memory"

        Placed in the "KinderLab" section of the Popular Science online magazine, "Birth Of Memory: Why Kids Forget What Happened Before Age 7" explains the ever present phenomenon of "childhood amnesia" with evidence found in both studies and anecdotes. Childhood amnesia is, in short, the tendency for most children to forget nonemotional events that happened early on in their lives. Kate Gammon, the freelance science writer of this article, keenly transitions from an anecdote about her young niece to scientific analysis, ending her short essay with conclusions about her young niece's forgetfulness.
        Published by Popular Science, this article fittingly has a popular subject: kids. In writing about these extremely common small humans, Gammon appeals to adults with young children, a key demographic, with the fact that there is an entire section devoted to the science of children. Perhaps to hook these readers in, Gammon begins with an anecdote about her four-year-old niece who recently had mouth surgery. She transitions into the bulk of the article by noting that this niece seems to have already forgotten the recent pain of the surgery. This concept -- the capacity for young children to forgive and forget easily -- is one that even I have a grasp on, so doubtless must it pull new parents right in to the article.
        Then, in hopes of satisfying the intellectual side of these parent (and not) readers, Gammon transitions into the scientific side of childhood amnesia. She writes about a recently conducted study conducted by Patricia Bauer and draws some conclusions based on the information that Bauer gave her. This tactic, reporting the ideas of an assumed professional, puts the bulk of the scientific responsibility on the professional. Gammon probably did this simply because she is not a master of childhood memory sciences and Bauer may be, but it leaves a strange impression on the reader. As a reporter, Gammon achieves the basic purpose of entertaining and informing her readers with anecdotes and science, but as a scientist, she completely defers her job, making the article seem one-sided. Perhaps this is acceptable practice, I don't know. But I will say that I feel much more comfortable reading a scientific article written by a scientist, as I did months ago in my ToW #3.

ToW #16 - IRB by Meg Jay: "The Defining Decade"

        The bulk of Doctor Jay's book on seizing one's third decade of life is occupied by her tips on fully developing a career, a love life,  and one's own brain and body. These tips vary greatly -- from using social media to make one's self look professional to taking relationships slow in order to ensure that one does not dislike her or his friends and family down the line. Despite having a huge range of subjects to explore in her writing, Jay employs only a handful of rhetorical strategies throughout her work -- as I read it, I overwhelmingly noticed two major devices: telling of anecdotes and use of statistics as evidence.

        Jay's use of anecdotes to describe the plight of the twenty- to thirty-something is extensive; in all, I estimate that 80% of The Defining Decade involves some personal story of a patient and how Jay treated him or her. In fact, you would be extremely hard pressed to find a page outside of the Introduction that does not either mention a patient by name or have a direct or adapted quote from a patient. I'm going to turn to a random page right now and type out the first anecdote that I see: "Danielle ... imagined that people at work either had confidence or they didn't, so that any little thing that went wrong on the job suggested she didn't," (157). They are literally all over the place, and for good reason. Jay uses anecdotes because they're both inherently relatable and solid pieces of evidence. If she were examining the scientific aspects of third-decade insecurities, then perhaps statistics would be better suited -- but after all, Jay is trying to help humans get over their feelings of insecurity, so anecdotes reign supreme. Then, there's her secondary use of statistics, which serve as objective backings to what would otherwise be a purely subjective book. Without them, Jay's tips would only hold as much credibility as the believability of her patient's stories.

        In retrospect, it was quite clever of Jay to primarily use these two devices; it made the reading more coherent and understandable than if there were to be five or six main devices. However, there is a danger in only employing a few devices: the author risks monotony and boredom of the reader. At times, I'll admit, Jay droned on so long about her "clients" that I skipped a few paragraphs ahead only to enjoy some more anecdotal evidence. Still, Jay is pretty successful with her work; what she lacks in rhetorical strength, she more than makes up for in well thought-out and interesting messages to her readers.

ToW #15 - Advertisement for a Smartphone: "Samsung Galaxy S4 - Airplane"

        As a commercial designed to be aired on a popular medium, this Samsung spot advertises the fairly new (its debut was about seven months ago) Galaxy S4 Smartphone in a bit of an overused way: posing it as an object of interest on a crowded airplane. This idea has been used enough before to seem like a bit of a cliche; off the top of my head, the products that I remember to be advertised like this range from underwear to car insurance to, of course, airline tickets. It even shares a few of the key components of these aerial advertisements -- a few stereotypically bothersome passengers who obsess over the product, the obviously annoyed passenger who the audience is supposed to relate to, and the flight attendant who points out the absurdity of the situation.
        Obviously, the purpose of this commercial is purely commercial; Samsung wants to sell more of their shiny Galaxy S4s. Other than being a bit tactless in its contribution to the overuse of the airplane experience in advertising, this commercial is very well crafted and directed -- again, not out of the norm. The question of credibility is tricky here, as the advertising company that Samsung hired to author this commercial does not have to be reliable to be successful. However, it can be said that they craft a fairly believable social scenario in this commercial, making it as credible as the audience wants it to be. Along with the strategy of setting the commercial in a common situation, the advertisement creators urge viewers to buy the Galaxy S4 by listing its key features in casual conversation. In doing this, the commercial makes it seem like your friend is telling you about his own new upgrade. "Hey, look at this, my phone pauses videos when I look away from it," your friend says. Well geez, that's neat, you think in reply. Then, there's the final line, "I am sold", which embodies exactly what Samsung wants you to think after this commercial; because being sold on something means that you either intend on buying it or already have. And, to be honest, that's the final impression that the commercial left with me. I thought, Hey, if that guy wants to buy the phone after he hears about all of its key features, why wouldn't I? And, if I did not know better about advertising rhetoric thanks to my parents (who work in advertising) and my APELC class, hey, maybe I would be pondering the price of the S4 right now.

ToW #14 - Article from The New York Times: "50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag"

 

Graph Source

Article Source

        This article by Annie Lowrey depicts the long-fought "War on Poverty" through the usual New York Times media -- exposition, statistics, quotations, and speculation. Clearly written approximately 50 years after Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War, the main operation of this article is to catalog the current state of poverty in the United States of America. As this article deals with a fairly sophisticated issue, has logic-oriented media, and is published by the scholarly New York Times, it is clear that it is intended for an intelligent and socially aware audience. Its author, Lowrey, seems to be of the economically conscious grain -- the operative words of many of her articles vary from "wage" to "unemployment". Her credibility in writing an article on poverty reform is also aided by the fact that she is a graduate of Harvard University who has previously worked for The New Yorker, Slate, and Foreign Policy.

        In presenting the state of U.S poverty to its audience, this article succeeds thanks to its appeals to primarily logos and secondarily ethos. With its consistent spread of statistics, historical facts, and analytic conclusion-drawing, its evidence-craving audience should be pleased with the read, allowing them to learn more from their trusted teacher. One outstanding display of logic in this article manifests itself in two statistics: one straight-forward decrease in the poverty rate from 1964 to 2014 followed later by a reevaluated decrease adjusted for government aid. This display is exactly what the analytical audience of The New York Times wants to see; going beyond a single statistic and finding a more truthful one does a lot for an author's credibility. And credibility is not only gained with a scientific evaluation of evidence; it is also gained with numerous quotations from Presidents, university professors, researchers, and economic advisers. In her appreciation for what an analytical audience desires, Annie Lowrey is highly successful in educating her readers about both modern and decades-old poverty reform.

ToW #13 - Article from ESPN: "Jaguars to let MJD test market"

Disclaimer: Be it through forgetfulness or repeated negligence, I have clearly neglected to complete this ToW, number 13, before its assigned deadline. That said, I have found APELC to be a very rewarding class, so I am determined to complete this ToW in solidarity with APELC's curriculum. Here goes.

        As someone whose only connection to American Football is passing glances at what his brother has on TV, it seems that football player Maurice Jones-Drew (MJD) is nearing the end of his contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars, an NFL team that I have never heard of. This article presents many of the facts of MJD's career with the Jaguars and quotes a few statements from the Jaguars' General Manager and MJD about his chances of getting recontracted. The article excels in reporting and organizing facts but falls far short in being stylistically pleasing. Its author, Michael DiRocco, seems to have a duality in his credibility, too; he has received multiple awards from the AP Sports Editors but was educated at the lesser-known Jacksonville University. Either way, I would say that he succeeds in the reporting aspect of any article's purpose but fails in the entertaining aspect of it.
        Obviously written for football fans eager enough to look for articles on ESPN.com, DiRocco presents all of the facts that I imagine an avid sport connoisseur could want. In one information-filled but ever-so boring paragraph, he states, "Jones-Drew, who will be 29 years old in March, is a physical runner despite his 5-foot-7, 210-pound frame. He has a lot of mileage on his legs, too. He has carried the ball 1,804 times, caught 335 passes for 2,873 yards, and returned 70 kickoffs and 15 punts." These alphanumerics would constitute an appeal to logos, but DiRocco doesn't have anything to prove to the reader -- he simply presents the facts and lets the reader conclude on them.
        My inability to expertly conclude on these facts may be what made the article so boring to me, but we cannot ignore the rather dull style about it. For example, "He said it would be hard to keep Gabbert if the team re-signed Chad Henne and drafted a quarterback with the No. 3 pick, but he also said the Jaguars aren't automatically going to draft a quarterback with their first pick." The stylistic crime committed here is the double repetition -- of "he said" and "draft a quarterback" -- which makes a parallel structure out of an already boring sentence. So many errors like this are made that I have to wonder if DiRocco ever had a class like APELC to teach him the value of entertaining his audience.

Maurice Jones-Drew punching a guy.

ToW #12 - IRB by Meg Jay: "The Defining Decade"

        Jay begins her "self-help"ish book on how to seize your twenties with a chapter-long description of the plight of current twentysomethings and a preview of the advice that she gives them in her psychology practice. In doing so, she gives anecdotes about the twentysomethings that she has sessions with and frequently quotes other psychologists in proving her points.

        The introduction begins with the tale of Kate, a lost twentysomething who enrolled in Jay's therapy sessions. Stories are told about Kate's failures so far: she needs a driver's license to get to any good jobs, she distracts herself from her depression with shallow histrionics, and she insists on contemplating her life rather than living it. A conclusion is eventually made; Kate acts the way she does because she follows the doctrine that "thirty is the new twenty", giving her an excuse to procrastinate on her goals with the promise that they'll be easier to fulfill in her thirties. Jay denies this and makes an example out of Kate, likening her experiences and thoughts with those of many other twentysomethings. In talking specifically about Kate, Meg Jay makes it much easier to understand the plight of every new adult.

        Then, understanding that just anecdotes and examples are have messages too shallow to provoke understanding amongst her readers, Jay weaves a few quotations regarding early adult life for twentysomethings to use as maxims to live by. For example, when countering Kate's desire to contemplate her life, Jay urges her to stop following Socrates' "the unexamined life is not worth living" and start abiding by Sheldon Kopp's "the unlived life is not worth examining". She later states the adage that "hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper" when asking twentysomethings to hope before their twenties and then act during their twenties rather than hoping before and after their twenties. In using these short, memorable phrases, Jay provides her readers with a constant stream of take-aways from her text. Instead of having to develop mottos for themselves, they just have to read Jay's book.

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ToW #11 - Article from BBC "Autos": "For Japan’s hot-rodders, the eyes have it"

        This randomly-selected article from BBC's online magazine, written by Brendan McAleer, an "independent automotive writer" and thus member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada, compellingly portrays the history of Japan's Mooneyes hot-rod shop. Mooneyes, an extension of Dean Moon's 1950s-revolutionary custom parts company, soups-up cars from all over the world with Japanese style. This automobile culture, which is normally uninteresting to me, is artfully and expertly described by McAleer, making it not only interesting, but engaging. This raises a question: is he only writing for automobile enthusiasts? Its seems not; his prose is entertaining enough to appeal to a much broader audience than that. It is a combination of McAleer's unexpectedly descriptive writing and his tasteful choice of subject that allowed him to successfully educate me about the half-ordinary and half-wondrous Mooneyes Japan shop.

        At the very outset of his article, McAleer goes into a frankly startling level of detail. Perhaps I'm just used to the rather sterile world of functional cars and not the realm of artful hot-rods, but doesn't this paint a gorgeous mental image?

"Welcome to Mooneyes Japan, a slice of Californian automotive history basking in the glow of the Rising Sun. Holding pride of place out front, a glinting yellow dune buggy looks as if it just alighted from the cover of a vintage hot-rodding magazine. Millions of metallic golden flecks in the citrus-yellow paint catch the dancing light, making the car twinkle like a mirage."

        You can almost feel the brush strokes. The beauty of the prose parallels the beauty of the cars perfectly. I can only assume that this move towards creative writing was a result of McAleer's perception of the creative side of custom car design. This makes McAleer the most literary "automotive writer" that I expect to find any time soon.

        Even without the more engaging of the descriptive tricks employed, this article may have still appealed to me. Through the sheer luck of myself being a student of the Japanese language, I find learning anything about the culture engaging. From working through the proper pronunciations of names like "Sugamuma" and "Ishii" to exploring the relationship between the Japanese Mooneyes and the Californian Dean Moon, I have to say that I found the experience spontaneously enjoyable. But I do not think that I am the only one who could enjoy a piece involving Japan; in modern times, when Japan seems to balance both extreme technological innovation and a richly historied culture, almost every forward-thinking or sentimental person has an eye for the Japanese. This recalls the question of audience; perhaps it was not fully wise for this particular article to be situated only in the "Autos" section. In my opinion at least, it's front page material.

ToW #10 - Infographic on Salt Intake: "Salt Mountains"

Yes, I did randomly select this infographic. 

I originally thought that it was about those huge piles of sediment that you see at mining sites.

        Made by the aptly named company GDS Infographics, this is a rather unengaging though powerful infographic that effectively compares the salt content of various foods with daily required salt intake. Though little information can be found about GDS Infographics (maybe they should make an infographic about themselves), its overflowing online portfolio tells me that the designer(s) behind it has a lot of experience. The inclusion of sources on "Salt Mountains" also lends itself to the credibility of GDS Infographics. Given the current state of health of the average American and the inclusion of the monstrously tall "Average US intake" mountain, it seems that the main reason behind the creation of this infographic was to ignite some movement towards salt intake awareness. Of course, given that it is only concerned with salt intake within the US, it is clear that this infographic was intended for Americans who eat or know someone who eats a lot of salt-rich food (i.e. all of us). While "Salt Mountains" was seemingly made for Next Generation Food, it seems that the denoted website, www.nextgenerationfood.com, is out of commission, adding to the ambiguity of the infographic's context.

        Being an infographic, "Salt Mountains" inherently appeals to logos. But how does it do this? In two simple ways: through its visual and numerical comparisons and through its orderly sorting system. Of course, its comparisons are its main premise, being perceived both through the number values in mg of salt and through the easier to understand mountains depicted throughout. But alas, these comparisons are not all that easy to see from a glance; the viewer has to read (which takes effort, often a deal-breaker) what each mountain represents, taking them out of the overall visual dissemination of information. If, say, pictures of each food item were depicted, the infographic would be both more engaging (allowing for easier view of the comparisons) and more visually appealing. Then, the sorting system, embodied by the upwards legend and the color coding, is a more passive appeal to logos; it doesn't exactly impose anything on the viewer. Instead, it is more a tool for the viewer to use in understanding the infographic. Again, if there were pictures of each food item, the viewer would be able to see the categories without a key. Because of these shortcomings, the entire infographic is pretty unengaging, hiding the powerful message about salt moderation beneath a layer of cognition.

ToW #9 - Magazine Article from Esquire: "The Best Coast to Buy Oysters From"

        I feel like I've only been reading ToWs that agree with my personality recently, so I decided to go for something conflicting with me: Esquire Magazine's "Eat Like a Man" blog. At odds were a deep thinker versus a shallow subject, a lover of obscure culture versus the poppiest of pop-culture magazines, a vegan teen versus a carnivorous man. And yet, I still found it somewhat enjoyable. Let's see why.

        So, this particular (October 13th) installation of "Eat Like a Man" was a sort of Q&A correspondence between the "Man" himself, Josh Ozersky, and writers-in from all around the United States. Set up like an interrogation of Ozersky conducted by unassuming fans, the article flows pretty smoothly between questions on technical food terms to advice on what to make for "Thankakkuh" (of course, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah mix a bit this year). Ozersky does much to prove his credibility as an experienced chef and linguist throughout his answers, effortlessly naming various varieties of oysters, explaining the specifics of what makes a steak "rare" or "medium well", and using very impressive words like "milquetoast", "merroir", and "heterodoxy". Now, unless I've underestimated Esquire's key demographic, this article seems more than a bit advanced for the magazine. Some sprucing up could make it acceptable for some high-brow bi-quarterly food journal.

        The question-and-answer format of this article gives a good hint towards what the audience is like: people with nicknames akin to "Dr. BBQ" and locations within North America. It is quite clear that Ozersky's explicit purpose is to answer his audience's various questions effectively and act as a teacher of the food arts. In doing this, there are hardly any obvious rhetorical choices made; Ozersky writes very conversationally; one gets the feeling that he did not think through or revise his prose. Still, this creates a sort of uncluttered, simplistic feeling to the article, perhaps making it easier to glean facts from it. In this way, I'd have to say that this blog post was undeniably effective and even enjoyable; Ozersky's sheer knowledge of all things food is astounding and his conversational tone is engaging. But then, glancing at the sidebar titled "What to Read Next" and seeing oodles of banal, shallow articles, I still don't think that I'll stick around with Esquire Magazine.

Glidden Point oysters: "full of oomph and mineral zing".

IRB #2 Introduction: "The Defining Decade"

        In this next installment of these quickly progressing marking periods, I plan to read a book by clinical psychologist Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why your twenties matter--and how to make the most of them now. In case that subtitle does not explain the book thoroughly enough, The Defining Decade's premise is the argument that most of a person's personality and future life is decided while they are between 20 and 30 years old. After establishing this premise, it speaks primarily about how to seize that decade in productive ways.
        So why, out of all of the possible nonfiction books in the world did I pick this one? I mean, being a sixteen-year-old, I'm not quite worried about my twenties just yet. To put my reasoning shortly and sweetly, I love my mom. Yep, she's been reading this book recently (as her paper-towel bookmark sticking out of its middle attests) and, respecting her choices in reading, I decided to pick it up myself. And hey, after Jay used a Pink Floyd lyric to introduce her first chapter, I'm obliged to say there have not been any regrets so far.

ToW #8 - IRB by Michael Pollan: "The Botany of Desire"

        Michael Pollan, the long-time botanist, journalist, and author, continues The Botany of Desire with chapters on the human relationships to the beautiful Tulip, the mind-altering Cannabis, and the easily controlled Potato. The sophistication of his explorations increase somewhat as these chapters go by, making the book best suited for people with a high capacity for understanding and versed science and history educations. For example, subjects vary from neurological chemistry to Dutch history to Nietzschean philosophy. Pollan writes about the formerly mentioned plants after much scholarly research (he speaks with leading neuroscientists about THC, the high-inducing chemical in Cannabis) and after growing each of the plants in his own garden. In fact, he begins his chapter on Cannabis with an anecdote from his one and only pot-farming escapade. Needless to say, Pollan proves himself as an expert on the human history of those aforementioned plants.
        The primary purpose of Pollan's seems to be to encourage a deeper appreciation of cultivated vegetation. In the chapter on tulips, he contrasts the dime-a-dozen brightly colored modern tulip with the Semper Augustus, a tulip that brought the Netherlands into an economic flower frenzy. This comparison enriches the cultural significance of the tulip in the reader's eyes, allowing them to regard it in a more flattering light. Then, when speaking about marijuana, Pollan takes a scientific look at the chemical genius that it contains rather than the traditional romanticized sentiment that so many others write about. This brings the reader into a sort of reverence for the drug's chemistry regardless of whether or not they approve of its cultural taboo. For myself at least, a reader who was very lucky to find a book that was extremely well-suited for him, Pollan was undeniably successful. As I read The Botany of Desire, I felt my intellectual world broadening, my neurological connections being reinforced, and, most importantly for Mr. Pollan, I felt the seed of botanical appreciation being sown and enjoyed every moment of its roots burrowing ever deeper into my mind.

A little bit more than your average tulip, eh?

ToW #7 - Visual Text by Daniel Kurtzman: "Marriage Equality"

"Marriage Equality"
Found Here

        Clay Bennett, the 2002 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, published this political cartoon in the Tennessee newspaper Chattanooga Times Free Press. The cartoon is on the topic of recent developments in marriage equality, specifically the New Jersey law enacted on October 21st allowing gay couples to marry. Triumphantly playing on this recent piece of legislation, it juxtaposes three happy advocates of marriage equality with one of its defeated-looking opponents. It also features the old marriage adage, "Something old, something new / something borrowed, something blue," which describes four separate items that are supposed to be worn by a bride on her wedding day. This reference to tradition emphasizes the four items worn/held by the figures in the comic: an old Constitution, a new LGBTQ support flag, a borrowed marriage equality pin, and a sign protesting gay marriage held by a blue, or sad, man.
        The Chattanooga Times Free Press seems to have online articles that are written with equal amounts neutral, liberal, and conservative intents, implying that its audience is of no specific political orientation. Other information, found on a demographics database, claims that 55.8% of Chattanoogans vote Republican while 42.4% of them vote Democratic. It is important to note here that Bennett depicted the defeated opponent of marriage equality as being a Republican, wearing a GOP hat. In doing this, Bennett seems to be isolating over half of his potential audience for the sake of celebrating with the implied Democrats who support marriage equality. That said, there does not seem to be much more to his purpose than celebration, besides perhaps guilting Republicans into considering the cause for equality. All in all, it can be said that Bennett is very successful in his celebration. This success comes mainly from his usage of the marriage adage; it's punchline, a defeated opponent, is snarky and gloating but nonetheless effective. He also includes the US Constitution on the side of support for gay marriage, reminding all that the primary document of United States government enforces marriage equality.

ToW #6 - Short Story by David Malone: "George II"

        "George II" is a second-person command narrative (much like "What Really Happened") in which the reader takes the perspective of George, a professor who has recently come back from the dead after six months of afterlife. The entire story manifests itself in a conversation between George and his already moved-on widow, Anita. It's writer, David Malone, is a postgraduate who works as a researcher for BBC World Service. His works have been published by five relatively small-time but high quality literary magazines.
        Carve Magazine published Malone's "George II" as one of the five short stories in their Summer 2013 issue. The core demographic of Carve, which has the slogan "Honest Fiction", must by nature be people interested in reading provoking literature. They don't even have to have formal training in literature; "George II" can be read at face value or analyzed deeply to be enjoyed. That said, as perception of honesty often comes with age and experience, Carve is probably best suited for an all-around mature audience. And Malone's subject is most certainly mature: in an interview with Carve, Malone gives some indication of the muse for his work, speaking about the "rational fear ... that there may be nothing beyond this life". He then poses the question "what if you suddenly knew the answer to the ultimate what’s next and didn’t like it?" The inclusion of these lines leads me to believe that his motive in writing was to explore this question with philosophical intent.
        Obviously, it is easy to get lost when following a philosophical path. Realizing this, Malone employed a few strategies in order to help his reader through the journey. From start to finish, he begins most sentences with command words, writing sentences along the lines of "Eat the spaghetti. Look at your glistening fork." These commands immediately immerse the reader into the narrative, forcing them into the perspective of George and thus helping them take ownership of the story. Also throughout the story, Malone helps his readers understand the story's implications by referencing familiarities from Christianity. Examples include Anita's Christ-on-a-cross necklace and her new boyfriend, "Peter the rock" (Peter the Apostle was named for the Greek petros, meaning "rock").
        All in all, Malone had a pretty simple purpose: to write a short story about knowing what the afterlife is. I have to say that he did fulfill that purpose; heck, George even divulges what the afterlife is like at one point. But of course, most authors have a higher purpose than their primary one. They want to make their writing good. Simply from the sheer sophistication of the previously mentioned strategies, I hope that it's clear that Malone's "George II" is better than good.

Read "George II" here.

George rises in much the same way, 

though Anita isn't sat there crying any more.

ToW #5 - Article by Joanne Lipman: "Is Music the Key to Success?"

        This New York Times article is an examination of music's role in success. In order to gather her information, Joanne Lipman interviewed traditionally successful people (Woody Allen, Chuck Todd, etc.) about how their musical pursuits have contributed to their success.

        Lipman is a frequent business commentator, appearing on CNBC and CNN. She is also the co-author of Strings Attached, a nonfiction work about her childhood music mentor, making her very qualified to write about music and success. Written just 11 days after Strings Attached was published, it seems that the main context behind this article is clear. I hypothesize that Lipman wrote this article in with the idea of promoting her book in mind. After all, each page of the article is followed by a line mentioning it. While the explicit purpose of this article is to answer the question "is music the key to success?", Lipman hints at a perhaps ulterior motive of hers (besides promoting her book) in the fifth-to-last sentence. She states, "[Music's ability to improve perseverance is] an observation worth remembering at a time when music as a serious pursuit — and music education — is in decline in this country." This note of Lipman's points to an implicit purpose of her's in writing this article about the benefits of dedication to music: to encourage more people to pick up instruments, saving music from its decline.
        Published by The New York Times and clearly written for people actively pursuing methods to success, this article is rather simply intended for an intelligent audience. This assumption is bolstered by Lipman's almost scientific data-collection and conclusion-making processes. Not to mention that the article is strewn with logical appeals. Lipman both begins and ends the article with lists of examples: at the start, it's successful people who play instruments; at the end, it's success-bringing skills that music teaches. Quotes from her interviewees are also frequently used, constituting appeals to ethos when the speakers are famous and pathos when they recollect personal stories. This article had an interesting effect on me: just a day after I declined an offer to learn how to play the guitar, I'm reconsidering my estrangement of playing music. Simply because of this effect, I feel compelled to say that Joanne Lipman was especially successful in this article. In fact, she was so successful that I must assume that she has played music for all her life.

Link to the Article

ToW #4 - IRB by Michael Pollan: "The Botany of Desire", Chapter 1

        Michael Pollan has been educated in Bennington College, Oxford University, and Columbia University and is an author of four agriculturally-rooted New York Times bestsellers. He begins the core content of his book on the causal relationship between human desire and the success of plants with a chapter on the sweet-tooth-gratifying apple. He primarily investigates the story of John Chapman, commonly known as Johnny Appleseed, in order to explain how the desires of early American colonists led to the biological success of the apple tree in North America. Pollan writes this chapter assumedly after he takes a trip along Chapman's path from Pennsylvania to Illinois and visits an apple orchard in Geneva, New York that houses some 2,500 varieties of apple.
        The most evident goal of the first chapter of Pollan's The Botany of Desire is to illustrate the marriage between the success of Americans and the success of apples. In order to accomplish this goal, Pollan transports his readers to early 1800s America, where he notes that John Chapman made it his business to plant orchards of apple trees so he could sell them to frontiersmen looking to establish new towns. When explaining this history, Pollan often employs primary source accounts, theories from established historians, and completely logical arguments to get his points across, constituting both appeals to ethos and logos. Appealing to pathos, he also reasons about the fear of starting a settlement in the 1800s and the comfort that the ownership of an apple tree brought. Given that Botany of Desire contains a fair amount of science, Pollan makes it very understandable to people of most levels of education by explaining any and all complex concepts that he presents (for example, the extreme heterozygosity of apple seeds). In other words, his audience ranges from the hardworking farmer of Tennessee to the scholarly biology professor of Harvard. With his combination of a large audience, credibly written arguments, and plenty of examples of the mutually beneficial American-apple relationship, Pollan is very successful in convincing his readers to view botany as a projection of human desire.

Recommended Reading

ToW #3 - Article by George Johnson: "Glowing Tumors, Cyclopean Eyes, and a Cancer Called Medulloblastoma"

        Fittingly found under the "Health & Medicine" section of Discover Magazine online, this article reports the cause of, treatments for, and stories behind the childhood brain cancer medulloblastoma. In this article, George Johnson establishes himself as a seasoned science writer by explaining various concepts with an authoritative tone. He also quotes a section of his own book, The Cancer Chronicles, appealing to ethos by proving to the reader that he is an authority in oncology. However, Johnson brings a very relaxed and even uncontrolled tone to this article, prompting the reader to question his experience in professional writing.
        This article was published by the online Discover Magazine, the slogan of which is "Science for the Curious". Thus, the explicit audience for this article is quite simply people who are scientifically inquisitive. However, the article discusses more sophisticated ideas than all can understand. All of its concepts are complex enough to only be understood by readers with the equivalent of a rigorous high school biology education. Besides being written on 9/15/13 for Discover Magazine by a science journalist, this text does not have any visible context. It does not speak about any recent developments in the study of medulloblastoma or give any reason for its being written. There is a small hint at Johnson's motive for writing this article: he speaks about being particularly moved by a number of medulloblastoma-related stories.
        Being a scientific article published by a purely scientific magazine, the almost predetermined purpose of this text is to educate on and spark interest in its subject. We see that Johnson primarily educates on the cause and treatments of medulloblastoma while interspersing emotional stories and moving statistics to ensure his readers' curiosity of the brain cancer. These stories are also Johnson’s main appeals to pathos, as they all focus on children being mentally disabled or even killed by brain cancers. The science magazine article is often very successful in its purpose; its scientifically curious audience is already interested in and wants to learn about its subject, so little persuasion is required. Johnson’s article is clearly no exception from this rule.

A dyed sample of medulloblastoma-infected brain matter. 

Article found at:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/fire-in-the-mind/?p=789#.UkjLSGSUMio

ToW #2 - Visual Text from xkcd: "Bee Orchid"

Comic from http://xkcd.com/1259/

        XKCD is a long-running webcomic that is focused on scientific and often nerdy topics. Its posts can vary in tone from the most sarcastic and modern to entirely sentimental and sincere. The artist behind xkcd is Randall Munroe, an American programmer, former NASA roboticist, and lecturer. Given the facts of Munroe's qualifications and his eight years' experience running xkcd (with over 1,200 comics produced), it is clear that Munroe's credibility has been long established. XKCD.com, being the 784th most-visited website in the United States, has a rather large and dedicated audience. I, for one, frequent it because of my love of both science and humor.

        This comic is no exception from xkcd's norm: it presents a scientific topic, the bee-courting Ophrys apifera, in a completely sentimental light (see: panel five, a watercolor painting). It also features recurring characters in the webcomic: Megan, the stick figure with long hair; and Beret Guy, the guy wearing the beret. Beret Guy is so consistently sincere in his comics that he has become a sort of indicator for which comics Munroe intends to be sincere and which he does not. As Munroe has established this text as being sincere, his purpose is clearly not to point out the humor or quirkiness in this comic's subject. He implies through his use of the poetic Beret Guy that his purpose is to plainly and humanly show the reader the sad state that the Ophrys apifera is in.
        It is notable that the two characters that Munroe depicts in this comic each fulfill a different aspect of his purpose. Megan explains the scientific value of the orchid, stating its proper name and evolutionary strategy while Beret Guy creates the sentimental tone of the piece, using artistic and emotional language to describe the flower's saddening predicament. Each character could then be considered, more or less, a rhetorical device that Munroe uses to ensure that his comic follows one of xkcd's established patterns: having a scientific topic and a sentimental, sincere tone. In using these devices, Munroe is fairly successful. His comic did not personally touch me very much, but this is almost definitely because I often visit xkcd.com in order to laugh, not to cry. If this text is provided with its intended audience of more emotional science nerds, then it will very likely be effective in its purpose.

ToW #1 - Article by Edward Lifson: "James Turrell Experiments With The 'Thingness Of Light Itself'"

        James Turrell, a contemporary artist who aims to concretize light in his works, is currently having an exhibition in the New York Guggenheim museum. This NPR article is written in light of Turrell's three big shows in the last year: one in Houston, LA, and most recently, New York City.
        Written by Edward Lifson, this story focuses on the why and what of Turrell's installations, noting the religious significance of light that Turrell investigates and the strangely solid way that light materializes in his works. Lifson is a long-time journalist for NPR, architecture critic, and once ran a Chicago-based radio program on the arts and culture. As the smooth, sleek shapes of light that Turrell creates are reminiscent of architectural forms used by Frank Lloyd Wright and I. M. Pei, there seems to be no one better to write about his works than art- and architecture-interested journalist Edward Lifson.
        As this story was written for a listening radio audience, Lifson included many quotes from art critics and Turrell himself to add a variety of voices to the report. However, when read, it is obvious that quotations do more than add variety; they act as rhetorical devices, aiding the ethos of the composition by providing more credibility to Lifson's argument that Turrell's works are unique.
        Given that Lifson includes many references to seeing Turrell's Guggenheim exhibition in his piece (he writes about long lines, walking into exhibits, and finally leaving feeling affected), it seems that his major purpose is to get his educated and art-aware NPR audience to see Turrell's works for themselves. The article, even neglecting the praise that Lifson gives to Turrell, encourages the surreal experience that Turrell offers. While I do not intend to make the trek to the Guggenheim to catch a glimpse of Turrell's light installations, I have to say that Lifson was very effective in making me want to. His generous inclusion of pictures of Turrell’s works is what did it for me. After looking at them for even a second, how could you not want to stare into those rich, pure colors in person?

In case you are interested:
Article Source
An excellent recollection of an experience with one of Turrell's works