Riley's Life Five Weeks Later (23 Weeks not 18)
Sunday, November 24, 2013
TOW #10: The Devastating Abortion Story That Could Change the Way You Vote by Liz Welch (the words of Vanessa Riley)
Vanessa Riley has had a devastating experience in her life the loss of a child. However, this child was still in her womb when she was told to terminate her pregnancy. Since Riley herself had this experience, she is credible to talk about the issue at hand: abortion in politics. As everyone knows, abortion is a controversial issue in politics. Democrats want to give women a choice while Republicans want to take the choice away from women and make abortion illegal. When Riley heard about the new abortion laws about banning abortion at twenty weeks of pregnancy in Texas, she went to Austin in July and shared her story to lawmakers. Yet, the laws were passed and are now being enforced by the Supreme Court. In this article, Riley’s story is shown as well as her pro-life views in order to appeal to her audience of aged 18+ women to see how bad pro-life views are. In order to convince the audience to adapt her view(s), she uses an appeal to pathos, logic, and a persuasive ending argument. Riley’s appeal to emotions is basically the entire story. She shares her sad story of how she had trouble getting pregnant, got pregnant, and how she ended her pregnancy and lost a child. Her use of logic is shown when even after she shared her heartbreaking story with Texas lawmakers, they still passed the law that she was protesting. It did not make sense that after such a touching story those people were fine with passing the legislation. Finally, Riley says in order to bring her point home, “I hear their war cry of "Pro-Life!" and I think of what my little girl's future would have been under these laws with two words — what life?” She is arguing that if these laws were there during her pregnancy, her deceased fetus would have had a bad quality of life due to its illnesses, such as lemon sign. By using these appeals, Riley effectively shares her story and manages to persuade at least a few people to be against pro-life views.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Marking Period Two Independent Reading Book Intro Post
For the second marking period of AP English, I will be reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. This book is basically a book that leads people down the road of success. After reading this book, people should be able to turn any bad situation around and obtain the job of their dreams. This self-help book is divided into four different sections. They include, Three Fundamental Techniques in Handling People, The Six Ways to Make People Like You, The Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking, and The Nine Ways to Change People Without Arousing Resentment. As can be seen, the titles of the sections seem rather comical, which is one part as to why I chose this book. I was going through a list of the best non-fiction books in Times Magazine when I saw this one. Just the title intrigued me because I found it funny and I felt that the book actually would help me. You see, I was computer schooled through middle school so when I went to high school, I noticed that some of my people skills deteriorated. Therefore, I wanted to read this book in order to help redevelop those skills. I hope to gain better people skills from reading this book. I also have been having problems with my friends so I hope that I will gain a better understanding of how to deal with them and our issues from this book. Another reason why I chose to read this guide is because I always feel bad when I am the one odd one out of a group of people. I would really like to be able to charm my way into getting along with everyone seamlessly but still be able to be myself. By reading Carnegie’s book, I will essentially learn how to better deal with many of my personal insecurities and how to advance socially and professionally, not that I even have a job yet.
TOW #9: 9 sabermetric stars who got jilted by baseball's MVP voters by Jon Terbush
On thursday, Miguel Cabrera won his second MVP award in a row. However, Mike Trout of the Anaheim Angels, put up the highest number of wins above replacement, or WAR, for the second year in a row. According to author Jon Terbush, a credible source due to his publications in numerous newspapers and websites, this is not fair. In Terbush’s article, “9 sabermetric stars who got jilted by baseball's MVP voters,” he gives examples of 9 baseball players who had better statistics than the people who beat them out for the MVP title. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to show the audience, people who watch baseball and possibly voters of the MVP award, how great players have been overlooked by others and how the voting needs to improve. Terbush accomplishes his purposes by using effective diction, satire, and an appeal to logos. Terbush uses to great choices of words to convey his purpose. In the title, “sabermetric” and “jilted” are used. Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball records by using mathematics and statistics. Since he uses the word “sabermetric” before saying stars, the readers know right away that the baseball players he is referring to were very good. By using “jilted” after describing the players as being very good, the audience knows exactly where the article is heading. Terbush uses a lot of satire to help get his point of voters picking the wrong men across. He wrote about voters in terms of his Lou Gehrig example, “The voters went with the playoff-bound guy.” Even though Gehrig was a much better player than Mickey Cochrane w, the voters chose Cochrane as MVP because his team went to the playoffs. Terbush views this as a big mistake of the voters. Terbush uses facts to juxtapose his players to the ones that beat them out for MVP. Using statistics and extending arguments help prove his purpose that the listed players deserved to be MVP’s and that voters need to vote based on who has better overall statistics.
2013 MVP: Miguel Cabrera
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
TOW #8: Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (IRB Post)
While I am still not very far in The Devil in the White City, by author Erik Larson, a credible author due to his renowned reputation in the literary world, I have come to realize something. Although nothing has changed, for example, the context is still about how a serial killer used Chicago’s World Fair to cover up his tracks and how his life coincided with Daniel Burnham’s and the book is still about how that collision of lives happened, I have come to see that Larson’s purpose is more than just entertaining his audience of young adults and adults and telling the story. In addition to those two purposes, Larson also wanted to inform his audience of what happened. He proves that by going into detail about the minute of aspects while at the same time using those same aspects to further articulate bigger pictures, such as the childhood of Herman Webster Mudgett, the boy who grow up to become a mass murderer. Larson is able to accomplish his purpose of informing his audience about the events that took place in 1893, as well as events before and after, by basically telling a story in past tense. An example of this is from pages 37 to 44, although the past tense is present throughout the book. It is in these seven pages that the readers learn who Mudgett was before he changed his name to Holmes. In these pages, Larson does more than just say where he was from but includes little mini stories of events that strongly impacted how Mudgett would turn from a somewhat innocent little boy into a killer. Along with these stories, many of which Homes mentioned himself in his memoirs, had Larson’s own personal interpretations of what could have possibly happened at the portrayed events. By including so much background information about not only Mudgett’s past but of Burnham’s life and other little details, Larson accomplishes his purpose to inform his audience of what happened while also entertaining them and telling the story.
H. H. Holmes Formerly Herman Webster Mudgett
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)