Monday, June 16, 2014
Article and Response Week 2: June 15
Post a link to your article and your two paragraph response. You may read and reply to each other's articles and responses. In looking at the posted responses from last week, you are finding interesting articles and beginning conversations on both the what the writer says and how he/she says it.
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http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/10/justice/oregon-high-school-shooting/?iref=obnetwork
ReplyDeleteI wonder what could have drove these young man to bring a gun to school and start shooting. How did his parents not see that stuff was going on in his life. The things they said made it seem like they were hiding something they say he is a great kid but he shot a teacher and student and then killed himself. President Obama said the nation should be ashamed of not having stricter laws on gun violence but he doesn't do anything to help. He should try harder to get to congress about this. He says the people in the nation must approve but many Americans are actually trying to get a stricter gun law so why is it still not getting done?
http://nypost.com/2014/06/16/how-our-failed-mental-health-system-kills/
ReplyDeleteThis article entitled "How Our Failed Mental Health System Kills" focuses on the recent killings in Santa Barbara; with six dead and thirteen people wounded, the killer Elliot Rodger had made his statement. The author does not explicitly show a high sense of urgency, but with this uprising sensation of "male entitlement" leading to multiple killings in recent months, there must be urgency to fix our nations mental health system. "Elliott Rodger’s family pleaded for help from therapists and the police, just as did my own family when my sister went off the rails. And equally to no avail." (Millett.) The author Mallory Millett goes above and beyond with emotions in this article by sharing a personal story of her sister, Kate, who also suffered mental health issues. She goes into telling the audience what life was like living with her, and trying to find help when none would come. By doing this she is helping readers get a clear feeling of what other families with a child/sister/brother/ etc. might have been like. Which does help people imagine just how bad Elliot Rodgers was, especially with a lack of mental health care from our country. "So when I heard reports of the horror in Santa Barbara, I sympathized and identified not just with the victims but with the family who tried so very hard to obtain help for Elliott Rodger." (Millett.)
I agree with many points the author makes in her article. Elliot Rodger's father was the director of the renowned series "The Hunger Games" which means that Elliot probably didn't have much to complain about in life, especially now that the movies are booming throughout the world. Although, when a person is mentally ill they will find things in life and distort them until their whole life revolves around it. For Elliot, it was women. The morning before Elliot went on his rampage he posted a video to YouTube, of him sitting in his car describing what he was planning to do. "My whole life girls have never given me the satisfaction of their love, so tomorrow, I'll walk into the sorority house, and slaughter every blonde slut I see." If this isn't proof of mental illness, then I don't know what is. A very big statement I agree with the author is when she brings in the gun control situation, "But I didn’t identify with the effort to pretend the Santa Barbara nightmare was all about guns. Half of the people Elliot Rodger killed died by the knife; most of those injured were hurt by his car." (Millett.) There are some things going on in the world that are bigger than guns, and this is an example of one of them. The author does a great job on making a connection, and showing her point on why we need to fix our mental health system.
What does the writer want the audience to do?
ReplyDeleteWhat gets under the writer’s skin?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/arts/music/a-suite-ride-through-nyc-featuring-paul-dwyer.html?ref=music&_r=0
This article, “A Long Day’s Bach Journey, by Train, Foot and Ferry, With Cello” written by James R. Oestreich is basically about Paul Dwyer traveling through each of the five boroughs and performing Bach’s six suites. The author seems to want us to understand what an accomplishment it was for Dwyer to do this. “Mr. Blumberg, one of the Five Boroughs directors writes, ‘not-so-secret dream to reach all five boroughs in one day.’ Regarding Dwyer he adds, ‘not only gifted enough to play all six Bach suites in one day but intrepid enough to traverse the city and play them in five different venues.’” This just adds to the intensity of the fact that Dwyer is just up and beyond for doing this. Oestreich wants us to know that Dwyer did something great. All through the article he talks about `Dwyer’s journey through the five boroughs from nine in the morning to six at night. He tells us that the weather conditions were tough and Dwyer had to carry a ten to fifteen pound cello everywhere, and that acoustics in some areas weren’t the best, but he did it. He managed to play every suite to an excellent ability, though not perfect, very well. Most of all at the end he talks about how it wasn’t about the publicity or the fame. It was about fulfilling dreams and creating a big impact, even though actions may be small, that’s what the author wanted us to get out of it. Things that get under Oestreich’s skin mainly are how the humidity of the day messes with the tuning, or distractions of espresso makers. Just little things about what was going on during Dwyer’s performances that may have bothered him or Dwyer himself. But at the end, the writer really gets deep into the point of it all. He says that it’s not about getting every not exactly right and it wasn’t about publicity or fame either. But just being ambitious and always shooting to do the best gets you somewhere. “‘My actions may be small, but their collective impact will be great.’ was a line in an S.O.S. credo displayed in the Staten Island lounge (One of Dwyer’s venues.)”That’s what the point was. You don’t have to do much, but just by trying you’re doing a lot. That’s what mainly got under the writer’s skin, just what is the point of doing anything? There has to be a point, because everything happens for a reason.
I agree with Oestreich about his main point at the end. I believe that everything occurs due to something else and nothing just happens. I feel that would be the deeper meaning of this whole article. Of course, I find the story of Dwyer performing the amazing Bach’s six suites around the five boroughs very inspiring, but the whole point of the article is what gets to me. I also really like this article because it involves music, and I love music. Just hearing that someone did something so amazing and diligent puts a smile on my face. It reminds me that there’s still good in the world. I feel like Oestreich would like it if more people did little things like this. It doesn’t have to be a lot of work, but something that will make an impact. If everyone does something small, it will sum up to something larger, and that’s all we can ask for out of us humans. If we work together, we’ll all create a wonderful world. And that’s an idea I am all for. If that’s the message Oestreich is sending, I totally agree with his article and I also enjoyed the lovely story about Dwyer and his cello.
What is the tone of the article?
ReplyDeleteWho is the Audience?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/business/international/new-zealand-rejects-mining-project-on-pacific-seafloor.html?ref=energy-environment
This Article talks of a mining project of the coast of New Zealand. This mining project is quickly turned down by the environmental agency of New Zealand. The leader of this project tries to fight back by pointing at profits and job increase. The writer gives more of an informative tone to the piece, and doesn’t really take a side. I also think this is a more general article meant for a public eye not really targeting any one audience. This author doesn’t seem to take a side, but I believe New Zealand made the right choice by declining this offer. This procedure might’ve caused more pollution than what’s necessary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/opinion/sports-should-be-childs-play.html?hpw&rref=opinion&module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar
ReplyDeleteHow does the writer appeal to the emotions and self-interest of the audience?
Who is the audience?
“Sports Should be Child’s Play”, by David Epstein, is an article that questions primarily focusing on one sport as a young child is detrimental to the athlete in the long run of his athletic future. The writer appeals to the emotions and self-interest of the reader through his choice of words. He used pathos to his benefit in this article. He uses words like dangerous, counter productive, and attacking sports to bring these worried and concerned emotions out. He also used evidence from different studies to touch our emotions. In one three year long study over a number of young aged athletes the results showed that, “kids in the study who were highly specialized had a 36 percent increased risk of suffering a serious overuse injury”. He used this to touch the reader's emotion by using young kids as the ones getting injured because of working and training so hard as kids and not having fully developed bodies. So as human’s we feel bad for the kids. So this article is reaching out to parents who have children and will feel bad and want to protect their children from these injuries in the future. In the article he mentions kids who focus on one sport in their youth will not do so well in other sports when they get older as other kids who have a wide variety not just one sport. He writes, “It can lead to serious injuries and, a growing body of sports science shows, a lesser ultimate level of athletic success”. So it is not beneficial to the child to only focus on one sport. The smart way would be to do a couple of different sports that use different parts of the body to avoid serious injury.
I agree with the author in that parents should let the child play and practice more than one sport. The child should be able to have a variety of sports they can play not just one. It is selfish of the parents to have their children practicing day in and day out for one sport that could potentially lead to serious injury in the child's future. Hopefully parents will read this article and become aware of the effects of practicing to hard as a young child and avoid it.
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/article/20130908/News/309089913/?Start=1
ReplyDeleteIn this editorial, the author wants the audience to push back school start times. This is due to a recent study on the biology of a teen.”Extensive research into the neurochemistry of sleep cycles has found that patterns vary at different ages: Toddlers wake at the crack of dawn; oldsters start nodding off by 10 p.m. And adolescents, by nature, don’t get sleepy until later at night and don’t get alert until later in the morning.” Many schools have tried to push back start times. One school even saw a major difference with attendance, tardy’s, and how well they do in the class.”Almost 55 percent of students reported getting at least eight hours sleep, compared to 16 percent prior; first-period tardiness dropped in half; more kids ate breakfast; and students reported better outlooks.” Some of the major arguments in pushing back school start times are the busing schedules. While pushing the times back may help in school, it will affect the buses. It will also affect extracurricular activities, jobs, and it will cause the school day to end later.
I disagree with pushing back school start times. Although less kids will most likely stay out of trouble after school and the attendance will have a major increase, it would be hard changing the whole schedule. I think people should just learn to go to bed earlier instead or they can just be tardy. It would also be alright if they just gave the easy class that don’t require as much thinking in 1st hour instead of something like math or science.
http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SALHS21-0-269&artno=0000357876&type=ART
ReplyDeleteIn this article the author talks about how the minimum wage should be raised. In California, a last-minute decision with the Californian governor and senate affirmed a way for a bill to increase minimum wage over the next 2 1/2 years in the state. It's believed by a group of people that raising minimum wage will cut jobs, which is true in some ways. In some ways jobs can be cut and reduced hours but the bill will be bring a satisfaction for people struggling by. Raising minimum wage will also help the businesses grow if they're doing well.
The author believes that the best available research shows previous increases in minimum wage has not increased or decreased working hours or jobs in that matter. A higher minimum wage means jobs will be kept longer and it will cost less for the employer to associate training new employees. In conclusion, the author believes improving minimum wage can leave no Californian working full time in poverty.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeffrey-sachs-universal-basic-education-is-the-millennium-goal-everyone-forgot/2014/06/22/6b7bc374-f8cb-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
ReplyDeleteI read the opinion article “Universal basic education is the millenium goal everyone forgot” by Jeffrey Sachs, in which he states that partnerships with big telecom companies, social networking giants, national governments, private donors, and many other sources need to pool money into a flexible and creative global fund for education. In Sachs’ article, he shows the reader (who would more than likely be an affiliate of the education system) that improving education is one of the millenium goals, yet it seems to get almost no attention from governments worldwide in the topic of improving the system and possibly even creating a worldwide education system. He also states that children who are not educated are more than likely to join a terrorist group, and that the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is asking for $3.5 billion dollars (roughly $1 per citizen of the civilized world), but even with such a low cost the U.S. still might not give them $250 million in the next two years. He then goes on to type that we need to get a better education system for the children without it, and girls. After that he says that he is working with the Connect to Learn project to help people in Africa learn by online resources to finish high school, but to expand to thousands of more children he needs quite a bit more money than he currently doesn’t have, and needs the partnerships with big telecom companies, social networking giants, national governments, private donors, and many other sources to pool money into this rewarding system.
I agree with the author because he is trying to tell the audience that the world needs a better, and global, education system that would let children around the world gain knowledge and pass high school, and that would solve many problems. A global education system would unite the world and make it so that countries would have little to no fighting due to them being more educated, and, in little under a century, propel humanity into what would be, inevitably, the technological singularity due to a plethora of more people having intelligence, and the technological singularity would either obliterate humanity, imprison humanity (due to artificial intelligence), or, the more than likely outcome, propel humanity into an age of peace, reason, and extreme intelligence.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/02/health/gallery/sugar-sweetened-beverages/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
ReplyDeleteWhat are the major arguments?
Is there more than one potential audience here?
How much sugar is in that drink, or rather how much drink is in that sugar? People can drink and drink and drink tasty beverages and think, one bottle wouldn’t hurt. But one 16 oz. bottle of coke or pepsi has 65-69 grams of sugar hidden inside it. This is the same amount of sugar in five little debbie swiss rolls. But not only is sugar contaminating soda, It is everywhere. you can find just about 56 grams of sugar in sports drinks like gatorade or powerade. Even in milk there is approximately four starbursts or 11 grams of sugar in each 8 oz. glass of milk. The author wrote this article to raise awareness on how much sugar a day we are consuming, and if those amounts are safe for us. This has gotten out of control, milk has sugar in it, tea has sugar in it. The only thing left is water, and people are selling flavored sugar for water. When does it stop? Hopefully this is a warning to people who are young enough to save themselves before they get addicted. Maybe it can convince some people to stop drinking it. But hopefully it will at least alert people of what exactly they are putting into their bodies.
I myself love to drink pop and lemonade, both of these things have extreme amounts of sugar, more than I should be consuming each day. But i have drinken them my whole life and I haven’t given a thought as to what I was drinking. But now i can see exactly why i have been told that pop isn’t good for people and i have been set straight. Everything is good in moderation but is that much sugar really safe?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/us/politics/montana-senator-john-walsh-plagiarized-thesis.html?_r=0
ReplyDeleteIn this article I believe that the audience is to John Walsh himself. This is because the article is all about him. I think that there is more than one audience. The other audience that it could possibly be is any other person that writes a speech/essay. I believe this because it shows that plagiarism is a big deal and not some little thing that you can get away with.
I do agree with the author of this article. I agree with the author because he shows how serious that plagiarism is. And how it's not just some little joke. Based on what the author said I believe that John Walsh knew that he was plagiarizing and is just saying that he supposedly didn't know it.
This sounds like a interesting article. I like how you used examples from the article you read, also I agree with you on who the audience is.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/07/25/winging-it-in-middle-east/
ReplyDeleteThe main thing that gets under the writers skin is that Obama took a situation that didn’t directly involve him and made it his problem. He shut down the Israeli airlines after there were terrorist attacks in the area. Israel itself did not shut down its own flights, but Obama did it for them afterwards. The author wants the readers to be against Obama’s thinking of taking someone else's decisions out of their hands. He does not believe in what Obama is doing and is trying to get others to be alongside him.
I agree with the author and his thinking. He has good points in that Israel has one of the most secure airlines in the world. They did not shut down their airlines themselves, but yet we did it for them being miles and miles away. It has reportedly given the terrorists a psychological victory and harmed Israel. This in my opinion was not our action to take and we did it anyways. The author points out that we the allies of Israel should at least discuss this with them first. Obama acted first and talked second though resulting some bad things.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/28/opinion/cevallos-saggy-pants-ban-constitutional/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
ReplyDeleteThe opinion article titled “Pull Up those Saggy Pants” by Danny Cevallos discusses the opinion of whether or not sagging your pants should be legal or not. He supports his opinion that it should not be legal with strong and bold statements. For example “Why do I suggest it singles out young people? I'm not ascribing any evil motive to law enforcement. Rather, as a society, we won't expect the police to ticket a plumber crouched over at work, accidentally revealing his tighty-whiteys. We'll expect them to target teens who show underwear as a fashion statement.” The author also makes his opinion stronger with the question he uses to lead into his counter argument , “Can the government even outlaw saggy pants in the first place?”.
I disagree with this article because I think it’s their right to cho
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/21/opinion/mona-eltahawy-egypts-sexual-violence.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
ReplyDeleteWhat gets underneath the writer's skin?
What constitutes the writer's urgency?
In this article, the author talks about the issue of sexual harassment and violence against women in Egypt by both Egyptian citizens, and the government. The fact that rape and assault on women in that particular area, and may other areas, has just become a cultural norm, and is just accepted as a common happening rather than an abomination is what gets underneath the authors skin. "We must connect domestic violence, marital rape and female genital mutilation with street sexual violence and clearly call them all crimes against women," says Eltahawy to her readers. The author's sense of urgency comes from the lack of action that has taken place from the Egyptian government, who also contributes to many of the crimes against the women there. This is shown to be true when she says, "When the state violates women with such impunity, it should not come as a shock when the street does as well."
I wholeheartedly agree that something needs to be done about the situation in Egypt. Not just because it is a crime against women, but because it is quite simply a crime against humanity. If the local government in Egypt refuses to address the situation, it is obvious that it should become a global issue rather than a local one.