Sunday, October 16, 2011

Blog #15

Blog Article #1
       The topic I chose was the war in Iraq because I think there is a lot of controversy going on about this topic. The one blog article I found was a blog from The New York Times, the blog talks about how the plain old headache has been a leading cause of attrition in units deployed to Iraq in Afghanistan. The author of this article is, James Dao. The argument made in this article is that the Kevlar helmets the soldiers wear on their head every day weigh about 3 pounds and put pressure on the occipital nerve in the back of the head. Also a study found that neurological illness was among the top three causes of noncombat related evacuations from war zones, and that headaches were the most common neurological complaint for those evacuees (Dao). I think that this blog article has ethos in it, since it is coming from The New York Times it is easy for a person to believe what they are saying because they are a well known credible newspaper. It also has pathos because it appeals to the reader's emotions, when they begin talking about why soldiers come home with headaches that may eventually turn into other things wrong with the brain, people start to listen more because they feel sorry for them. This blog article is different than anything I've read because it really showed an importance on how serious head injuries are to men and women who are in the army.

Blog Article #2

     The second article I found came from the author Curtis Silver, where he talks about Obama and how his administration is trying to have all of our troops out of Iraq by the end of this year. The one quote that stuck out most to me in this article actually came from Obama himself, "The hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq" (Silver). This stuck with me to think that there have been troops in Iraq for years now and so many people are still going to be sacrificing their lives for our country when the war is no longer going on. This article is so much different than the other ones that I have read because it is very blunt on the issues at hand. Later into the article it tells us that though troops may be withdrawing from Iraq they will now be going to Afghanistan where there's a lot of conflict right now. 


Blog Article #3
      The next article I found was actually again about Obama and how he is trying to dismiss as many troops as he can. Yet this article goes on to explain that though troops may be leaving, about 49,700 of them are still staying in Iraq and remain on a "advise and assist" base. The author of this blog is Katy Stoddard. This article stood out to me most because even though they are sending some troops home they are still keeping the majority of them there even though there is no more war. This article definitely appeals to the rhetorical appeal pathos, which is the appeal to the emotion of what you are reading. I think this article definitely appeals to the reader's emotions because it makes them sad to think that many of the troops in Iraq really won't be coming home.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Blog #14

      While reading What We're Doing When We Blog I found two hotspots that were interesting to me. The first one i found interesting was when it said, "The articles' authors are rarely webloggers themselves, which places them in the unenviable position of describing and defining weblogs based on observations, not experience." (Melzer 294). This was interesting to me because someone else is trying to describe a weblog that they did not write just off of an observation which could very well be a wrong observation of what the weblogger is trying to say.
       Another hotspot I found to be interesting was, that in a blog you will always find the most recent information at the top of the page. It's kind of like a newspaper where the most recent and important information will be on the front page. It goes on to explain that they do this because it allows the reader to find the most important information without having to search for it. Also if new content has been added it's easy to see as soon as the page is loaded. By having these things it sets up an expectation that the readers will return to see what else is new since they were last logged on.

Blog #14

      While reading What We're Doing When We Blog I found two hotspots that were interesting to me. The first one i found interesting was when it said, "The articles' authors are rarely webloggers themselves, which places them in the unenviable position of describing and defining weblogs based on observations, not experience." (Melzer 294). This was interesting to me because someone else is trying to describe a weblog that they did not write just off of an observation which could very well be a wrong observation of what the weblogger is trying to say.
       Another hotspot I found to be interesting was, that in a blog you will always find the most recent information at the top of the page. It's kind of like a newspaper where the most recent and important information will be on the front page. It goes on to explain that they do this because it allows the reader to find the most important information without having to search for it. Also if new content has been added it's easy to see as soon as the page is loaded. By having these things it sets up an expectation that the readers will return to see what else is new since they were last logged on.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Blog #13

Chapter 5 in the Pearson text is mostly about exploratory essays. The text also talks about annotated bibliographies and how they along with exploratory essays serve as an intermediate stage in the research process. While reading I found an important rule to writing exploratory essays, "The essential move for exploratory thinking and writing is to keep a problem alive through consideration of multiple solutions or points of view". This reminded me of when I had to write my exploratory essay and while writing it I had to search for many solutions to the problem at hand, I couldn't just have one solution because people would get bored with it then. Another important factor I found in writing an exploratory essay is, "The key to effective exploratory writing is to create a tension between alternative views". I found this significant because you can't just have one view towards the issue you are writing about, you have to show people that you are open to changing your opinion on it. It may be easy for a person to write just through their own opinion but it challenges the writer to look more in depth into the issue and allow themselves to maybe change their opinion after doing research.

While reading chapter 9 I found a couple of things that stuck out to me as they were talking about citation. The first thing that stuck out to me was when they were talking about attributive tag method. This is where you place the author's name at the beginning of what you are citing and the page number at the end. I think this is useful because you are citing while not having to follow the real guidelines to citing in a paper. The second thing that stuck out to me was, how to cite when there are 4 or more authors. I didn't know how to do this in the past so when I read about it I finally learned how to properly cite it. When you are citing 4 or more authors you put the first two authors then et al. afterwards.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Blog #11

I found rhetoric in advertising.




-The first picture is to show censorship and how there are things people aren't allowed to say so that's why his mouth is covered.
-The second picture is more of a visual pun with all of the man's body being different fruits and vegetables.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Blog #10

My question for the exploratory essay was: What are the effects of lowering the drinking age to 18 years old?

October 2

Journal Article

Source #1
Wechsler, Henry, and Toben F. Nelson. "Will Increasing Alcohol Availability By Lowering the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Decrease Drinking and Related Consequences Among Youths?." American Journal of Public Health 100.6 (2010): 986-992. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 Oct. 2011.


This article talks about the risks of lowering the drinking age to eighteen years old and if it will increase the amount of alcohol available to youths. They also discuss whether this will decrease the drinking related consequences among youths or will it increase the consequences.


"Since 1984 the national legal drinking age in the United States has been 21 years"



"The lower minimum legal drinking age was followed by increases in the sale and consumption of alcohol and in alcohol-involved traffic fatalities, particularly among young adults aged 18–20 years"



"Approximately three quarters of college students aged 18–20 years drank alcohol in the past year"


The article then goes on to talk about the statistics behind lowering the drinking age. There are some statistics that show that when the drinking age was lowered there were less alcohol related deaths because teens would drink responsibly. Later into the article they talk about college students and how they binge drink, which proves that teens under the age of 21 still drink heavily in the college environment. I believe that this article tries to show you the good and the bad of lowering the drinking age to 18, which is a good thing because people need to see both sides of it.


Source #2
Streeter, Ruth. "The Debate on Lowering the Drinking Age." CBS News 01.Mar.2010. n. pag. Web. 2 Oct. 2011


News Article


"When the age was raised to 21 in the mid-1980s, the goal was to reduce highway fatalities. But everyone knows that the 21 age limit hasn't stopped minors from drinking. And now some experts believe it's actually contributing to an increase in extreme drinking."


"Asked what the advantage is to lowering the age to 18, Beckner said, "The overall advantage is we're not trying to enforce a law that's unenforceable. The abuse of alcohol and the over-consumption of alcohol and DUI driving. Those are the areas we've gotta focus our efforts. Not on chasing kids around trying to give 'em a ticket for having a cup of beer in their hand."


This article is mostly about people who are in favor of lowering the drinking age. I agree with the first quote though that teens under the age of 21 drink to an extreme because they are not allowed to drink at the bars so they will get drunk before they go out but they will do it quickly which is extreme drinking. Later into the article they discuss a boy in a fraternity who had died from alcohol poisoning because the fraternity was going through their "hazing" stage of recruitment. The parents of the boy who died said they think that if the drinking age was 18 the boys in the fraternity would have called the police instead of leaving the boy to die on the couch. This article makes very good points on what could be different if the drinking age was lowered.