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.