The Rhetoric of Gun Violence

Luckily, I stumbled upon a very cool article relevant to this year's curriculum in AP English. The article I found, In Public ‘Conversation’ on Guns, a Rhetorical Shift, discussed the frequency of use of different terms for gun control and related it back to the societal and political implications of the changing usage. Nate Silver, the author, is well known for his aptitude at statistics and applying it to social issues. He predicted the outcomes of the 2008 presidential elections almost entirely correct, and correctly predicted the winner of all 35 senate elections that year. He is a pretty qualified guy to be writing this article. The context of the article is the recent elementary school shooting in the last week, which prompted many people to talk about the issue of gun control. His purpose is to suggest that the connotation of the terms now used for gun control (which has now turned to "gun violence" or "gun rights") implicates a new surge of political charge behind the statements made on the issue. The audience is a mature and unbiased audience who is interested in the rhetorical analysis of the conversation on the issue instead of focusing on what should be done about it. It was interesting to see such an insightful perspective without trying to sway someone one way or the other. The most effective rhetorical strategy was arrangement, because having arranged it chronologically really emphasized the change in the views of gun control over the years and how divided our country has become on the rights on own a gun versus the risk of giving those rights to everyone.

The Old Guitarist

This week's analysis is of "The Old Guitarist", by Pablo Picasso. This piece has intrigued me for ages, so it was one of my first choices for a visual piece to take a close look at. Picasso is a world renown French artist from the 20th century, and is one of the most influential artists of all time. He is best known for his co-invention of collage and work with the style of cubism. "The Old Guitarist" is still one of his most famous pieces, despite not being in his trademark cubist style. It is a blue monochromatic picture of a haggard old man playing the guitar. The context of this piece was that it was painted in Picasso's blue period, a time where Picasso developed a somber and blue monochromatic style that depicted his depression. His close friend had just committed suicide and on top of that he was very poor. Both tragedies are obviously depicted in this piece, as the man is so skeletal he seems to be starving. He is also sad and posed in a way that depicts despair. Picasso's audience is anyone who appreciated 20th century impressionist art. The subject of the painting is the guitar, greatly emphasized by the contrasting brown to the blue tone. This leads the audience to see that the guitar seems to be the only means of the old man clinging to life in his state of depression. This leads me to the believe his purpose is to depict the life of an artist, clinging to a means of self-expression in a time of such tragedy. His color and subject emphasis is very effective because it evokes the same sense of depression Picasso was feeling in the audience, and the subject provides an effective metaphor for hardships Picasso was dealing with.

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas

This week's article is an NY Times article about the new science museum in Texas. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is an architectural marvel that emphasizes the idea of science leaving you perplexed, in a state of wonder, and entertained. Edward Rothstein is a critic and composer, receiving his BA from Yale University. He is awarded for his music criticism and is known for relating music theory to scientific concepts. He is extremely qualified to evaluate both artistic ideas and concepts like architecture and science itself. His purpose is to highlight the way that the science museum's architecture captures the potential of entertaining science and capture science's intriguing quality in architecture. He uses imagery and exemplification to explain this concept, by describing a building built in miniature worlds and galleries that organize the matter in a way that the audience can understand the flow and relationship between subjects in a gallery. His audience is for anyone who has architectural interest or who is interested in a new way of portraying science to a young or naive audience. His imagery and exemplification was a proper way of conveying his purpose, but it is not effective because he did not really describe the building very well in a way that the audience can picture how unique the architecture is. He focused a lot on the cool subjects and activities visitors can engage themselves in, but  doesn't really show how the building's structure itself emphasizes how intriguing science is. He seems to lose sight of his focus.

Artificial Intelligence

This week's read is from the NY Times, and is an article called, Scientists See Promise in Deep-Learning Programs. It was an interesting article about the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and that they were getting so advanced to the point where software is surpassing the human brain in recognizing patterns and the process of learning. The article is written by John Markoff, a writer for the NY Times. He is best known for his book and articles that captured the life of famous computer hacker Kevin Mitnick. The author is well involved with the software development industry and is well qualified to write about the concept of artificial intelligence, a big field in software engineering and computer science. He writes for a moderately informed audience, an audience that appreciates the feats of technology accomplished by man, but also does not use much jargon or scientific terms. The article is an easy first approach to computer science. The purpose of the article is to suggest that artificial intelligence has an undeniable place in the economy and the future, that artificial intelligence is rapidly increasing and taking its place in an incredibly advanced and efficient society. One effective strategy that the author likes to implement is personification. The software can't actually learn, but it can store information and recall it, but the author uses verbs to describe the actions of the software, like learning, being trained; the software seems to be like a Frankenstein of sorts. It works well because it enhances the idea of artificial intelligence and also emphasizes the significance of such advancements, to show how human-like computers and software has become.

Outliers: A Story of Success

This week's reading was from my independent reading book. It is called Outliers: The Story of Success,  by Malcolm Gladwell. The section I read had explored a strange statistical occurrence that show in the birth date of talented hockey players are prominently in January and February. He also looked at other "outliers", extraordinary success stories, such as computer scientists and a small town in America that never gets heart disease, to examine the origin of success. Malcolm Gladwell is a British Canadian journalist and speaker who constantly deals with issues in social science. His purpose in writing Outliers is clear from the beginning: to criticize the world's definition of success and change the way in which we allow unfair advantages to occur. He believes that the way in which our society works is that we write off people as failures too quickly, and stunts their development and potential for the extraordinary. He writes for those who want to study social sciences, societal behaviors, and social psychology. Malcolm Gladwell effectively achieves his purpose by using logos, and argues that if we want more extraordinary people in the world, we would have to change the fundamental system in which we breed success. This is an effective strategy because it is straight foward and easy to follow. He makes his argument very reader friendly and does not overwhelm with complicated statistics. He makes the narrative true to character and it is a proper tone.

The Old Man With His Head In His Hands

This week's rhetorical piece is the Old Man with His Head in His Hands by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890).  Vincent van Gogh was a 20th century impressionist painter whose use of bright colors and emotional honesty has left a huge impression on 20th century art culture. The context of this piece is not only the emotional pain and agony that van Gogh endured as he constantly battled mental illness, but van Gogh's spirituality. Though he had rejected religious institution, he still held firmly on the belief that there was a life waiting for him after death. The position of the man crying in his hands while secluded would have easily represented complete sorrow and depression if it weren't for the annotation at the bottom of the page. The annotation at the bottom of the piece shows that van Gogh still clung to his spirituality even at the peak of his mental agony; van Gogh's annotation of the piece is "at eternity's gate." Van Gogh's purpose in many of his late works as his mental illness worsened was to portray his emotional agony and his longing for control and clarity. Van Gogh was a secluded man who painted to cling to reality, which leads me to believe he had no intended audience, but those who see his piece are those who follow 20th century art and those who study the style of impressionism.  His most effective strategy is personification of his emotions. He personifies his pain and depression into a pained and frail old man and it is easy to see what point in his life van Gogh was in when he painted this painting. I think that the annotation and personification achieved his purpose well because the parallel of the two elements show how profound spirituality was to van Gogh.

Greek Philosophy, continued

This week, I am revisiting my IRB, which is An Introduction to Greek Philosophy, by John Mansley Robinson. John Mansley Robinson is the author of many other greek philosophy texts that look at topics such as Presocratic Philosophy and a study of human nature in context of greek society and beliefs. The context of the text is knowing about Greek society in the context of location and time. Greek society was one of the roots of European philosophical traditions, being one of the first sophisticated civilizations in Europe. To also further understand the text, they also competed alongside the Babylonians in evolution of their civilizations. This section I read changed it's purpose from showing how Early Greek philosophers affected later thought; now, it examines how profound greek Philosophers to affect civil life, politics, and mathematics. The audience is those who are studying greek history or who are interested to learn the roots of modern European philosophy, because look at greek philosophy would help to understand current fundamentals in modern thought. One rhetorical element used was dialogue. It was effective especially when trying to teach the thoughts of Pythagoras and Zeno and Melissus. Pythagoras's character was easily examined in how he spoke to his disciples, his noble mannerisms in the dialogue showed that his entire philosophy was framed around his strive for a pure life and emphasized the idea of how Pythagoras spurred the idea of purifying a soul through lifestyle. Zeno and Melissus questioned their teachers to come up with new logical twists and ideas that I can recognize influence modern day mathematics and calculus. Infinity is now put into context of numbers instead of where it was only existent as an origin for matter, according to greek philophy.

India's Traditional Silence

A NYTimes article this week caught my attention about the changing gender roles in India and social classes leading to an increase in rape. There were many interesting implications from this article, especially when they mentioned that men felt threatened by women's increasing power in Indian society and react with urges to dominate through rape. Jim Yardley, the author, is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist who frequently documents social issues in China and India. His purpose is to pinpoint the causes of the increases of rape in India, like women's power increasing the vulnerability of women in weaker social classes. He also emphasizes the issue of hesitance to report a crime and the neglect of rape victims in India, as they are now tainted and unable to fit in again. One rhetorical element he used effectively was pathos. He focuses on a single victim, and young girl who was raped, and shows how the rape has greatly affected her life. He makes the audience pity the suicide of her father after he learned about the rape, and makes them pity the fact that the rape has caused her to be unsure of her future career as a doctor. I think that he was effective in achieving his purpose, which was to make the audience aware of such issues, but he didn't really do much to suggest what to do with the information. It did make a significant emotional impact, but didn't give any incentive to take action.

Presidential Debate #2

The recent presidential debate was full of some poorly used rhetorical strategies, mostly on Mitt Romney's part. I watched the debate to keep up with the 2012 presidential electron, which is the context of the debate. The intended audience consisted of 200,000,000 able voters who can make a difference in the outcome of this year's election, and even though I can't vote, I was part of the audience who kept up with the election to maintain my role as a responsible and informed U.S. citizen, and if given the chance, I can say with confidence that I would vote for Barack Obama to stay our president for the next four years, and for Mitt Romney, I would argue that anyone else in the world would make a better president than him. In an attempt to build his persona (using the ethos strategy), Mitt Romney not only repeatedly undermined Obama's statements mid-sentence, he kept interrupting the debate moderator. Romney also spewed a string of incoherent and invalid statistics or "potential plans." My favorite incoherent Romney thought was when he stated, "I would give the children of illegal immigrants the chance to earn their citizenship through military service." Not only was this a close minded and rude statement, he undermined his authority to speak on the matter by ignoring the U.S. law that guarantees citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. Obama then effectively played off of that by using pathos to rally support for his opinion, which was that he realizes that illegal immigrants are not bad people, they're just coming to the U.S. for economic opportunity to "feed their families."  Obama was able to effectively implement logos into his argument, and not only was he good with the delivery of his attempts to win over the audience (and voters watching from all around the country), he was also good at listening with a keen ear so he could effectively argue against Romney's vague and unsupported claims.  He was able to pull at the loose ends of Romney's tax plans, and I found that Obama was the winner of the debate. Obama and Romney had the same purpose of winning America's votes, but Obama was the only one who effectively achieved his purpose.

Vice Presidential Debate

This week's article is a close look at the Vice Presidential Debate and both Obama and Romney's intended foreign policies. Matt Zeller, a writer for the Huffington Post and former Afghanistan veteran, not only commends Joe Biden's passionate and informed responses, but also regard's Paul Ryan's performance as shameful and oblivious. He focuses on the candidates' responses to the situation in Afghanistan. The purpose of this text is to not only inform of the candidates' performances and campaigning platforms on Afghanistan, but to emphasize the future implications of a continued Afghanistan War. He states somberly that to maintain peace in Afghanistan comes at a cost of keeping troops and more military spending for the next 10 years. He wants these ideas to be known to anyone keeping up with the presidential campaign; he educates the audience so they can make a careful choice in the upcoming election. One rhetorical element that he used is parallelism, a strategy that linked the Bush administration to what the Romney administration could be, which he finds as frightfully arrogant and essentially ineffective. The rhetorical element succeeded in giving the author the persona of being a democrat, and also showing the Romney administration as inadequate. He also uses pathos throughout the text, making the audience fear the loss of American lives in different situations, such as the Afghanistan War and Libyan attack on the U.S. embassy. These strategies were effective and helped to achieve the purpose of making the foreign policy an immediate concern for the audience. 

Obama Miners' Ad

This ad is a short advertisement for the Obama campaign that reveals that Romney forced miners' to attend Mitt Romney's rally to be props in his commercial. The context of this advertisement is the 2012 Presidential Campaign, where Obama and Romney are the two primary candidates in the running for the president of the United States. The purpose of the commercial is to reveal the bad character of Mitt Romney. The advertisement says that Mitt Romney is "not one of us" for shutting down the mine without giving the miners necessary pay for the day. He made them feel like they would be out of a job if they didn't attend. The audience for this ad is all American citizens: those who would be able to make a difference in the outcome of the 2012 Presidential campaign. One rhetorical element in this advertisement is ethos. By disgracing the character of the other candidate, Obama establishes a “good-guy” persona. Another rhetorical element is pathos. It makes you want to pity the miners’ so the offense of putting them out of work for the day makes you angrier at Romney. This ad does a good job of building off of all the other “insensitive Romney” incidents and makes him look un-American. It also keeps building up the “Good-guy Obama” persona.

IRB

I am currently reading An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy by John Mansley Robinson.  I had just completed a section that lays the foundation of Greek thought by evaluating the "origin of things." One section was dedicated to the explanation of Hesoid's account of the beginning of time, and another section was dedicated to that of Anaximander's account. The book draws parallels and differences between both of the philosopher's opinions. Not much is known about Robinson, but he references the actual Greek texts themselves and provides reports from a variety of modern day authors to support his claims. He references writings of modern day physicists and other studiers of Greek philosophies. The context of the book was writing it to use as introductory material in a philosophy course. The purpose of the text was to provide a look at the development of Greek philosophy over time and show how it affected current day thought. He writes specifically for students of philosophy, by directly stating in his preface how his book's organization will aid the student. The book so far has used parallelism between two thinkers to show how both has come together to affect modern day thought. I think he has not really accomplished his task so far because all I have read is him providing the foundations of Greek thought. I think this is helping to later reference back to it when he analyzes its affects on current philosophy.

Flash Point, Magazine Article

This week's text is "Flash Point," an article found in the the September 24, 2012 issue of TIME Magazine. "Flash Point" discusses the current attacks on the U.S. embassies in Benghazi and Cairo that led to the death of 4 U.S. officials.

The author of this article is Bobby Ghosh. He is a journalist and World Editor to TIME Magazine. Hw was one TIME's Baghdad bureau chief and a long serving correspondent in Iraq. He is an expert on profiling Iraq and Arab Countries.

The context of the text is the occurrence of the Arab Springs in both Egypt and Libya last year. The overthrow of harsh dictatorships have left the countries with a series of temporary and unstable democracies that don't know how to handle angry mobs and outbursts by the people.

The purpose of the text was to evaluate the effect of the Arab Springs on the countries' overall security and the author suggests that these Arab countries compromised civil safety in exchange for freedom. He also condemns both countries by saying the state of their civil unrest is headed down the path of becoming as chaotic as Pakistan.

The audience of the text are readers of TIME magazine. The article is under the WORLD section of the magazine, and is also on the front cover. The audience was anyone who found the cover story intriguing or anyone who keeps up with Middle Eastern events often.

Some rhetorical devices used was one of the appeals, logos, who argued logically to make his point of the countries becoming as chaotic as Pakistan. He drew parallels to different events that are similar to each other in all of the countries and uses that to make a prediction of Egypt and Libya's future.

The author completely achieved his point and was constantly supporting his condemnation of those countries by supporting it with the failure of the new Arab democracies and growing tension and anger from Islamic extremists. I believe he has achieved his purpose because I support his "cause-and-effect" examination of the events and I believe that his opinion of the countries' future are completely valid.