golb: January 2012

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Index/Poem

Audience: Who are you writing to

Augh: The word uttered while doing homework

Bitzer: Rhetorical Situations...WARNING: grab a dictionary

Humor:

Parody: Weird Al
Satire: The Onion

Logical Fallacies:

Add Hominem
Beg the Question
False Dichotomy
Non-Sequitur
Slippery Slope
Tu Quoque
Post Hoc
Red Herring

Orwell: Orwell knows everything.

Why I write

Purpose: Why are you writing....What is the meaning to life (ps. answer is 42)

Rhetorical Devices: So many that I probably wouldn't survive writing out the list....

Spoken Arguments:

Audience
Eye Contact: LOOK AROUND
Pacing
Signposts: signal to your Argument

Visual Argument

Colors are beautiful but none can be just as effective
Where is your audience looking

Monday, January 16, 2012

Outliers is a book about success and the factors behind being successful. Overall, the author says that success is the result of luck. Yes, success does take hard work and some natural talent, but if those they are not supported by the right circumstances, then success will not occur. A lot of success depends on when you were born, where you were raised, and the culture that you were born into. According to Malcolm Gladwell, circumstances are much more important than hard work and talent.

The book was very easy to read. It is directed to a very wide audience, so it is written so that anybody can understand it. He uses mostly anecdotes to prove his points, and compared to "Freakonomics" he doesn't use very many statistics or studies. The idea behind the book is very interesting, but halfway through, it becomes very repetitive. It is a good coffee table book to skim through and read one chapter if you are bored, but to read straight through is hard to do.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Secret Santa: Homemade gift edition

This year I participated in two secret Santa gift exchanges. One was for orchestra, and the other was just in my group of friends. Coincidentally, I got Sarah both times!!!! How that happened, I have no idea. Sarah and I both love Harry Potter and Doctor Who, so I decided to make a present that related to one of each. For orchestra, I crocheted her an Adipose. Basically, they are an alien from "Doctor Who" that is made of fat, but they are really cute. I looked online for a pattern, or at least another example to base my design off of, but most of them didn't look that good. So I just made it up as I went along. Making a blob isn't too difficult, at least not compared to some of the other doctor who characters people make http://www.buzzfeed.com/doctorwho/doctor-who-crochet. Here is a picture of mine. I made it in three pieces. The body, the legs, and the top of the head, and then I sewed them together and stuffed it.

For the Secret Santa just with a few of my friends, I made Sarah a harry potter light switch plate. A light switch plate? Yeah, its a weird present, but I thought it would be really cool. Maybe it would be neat to put up in her dorm room. Basically, I painted "Lumos" on the ON position and "Nox" on the OFF position. I saw it while I was surfing the web, and then I found a lot of other ones that I based my design off of http://acciomagic.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/somebody-turn-on-the-light-lumos/. Here is mine. I think it turned out pretty good.

I just realized that I didn't do a free topic blog post over break. I don't know if you accept late blog posts, but if not, I still thought these would be cool to share.

Letter to my Future Self

Dear Emily,
How are you. I just finished writing all of your college apps. You have probably blocked this horrendous task from your mind already, but all you need to know is that it sucked. You better not be wasting all of that work! I want to see A's on my report card when I get there. Please continue to practice your violin and piano. I also want to be proficient at guitar, so get on that. Are you in a band now? If college doesn't work, you need something to fall back on :P Also, make sure to call Mom and Dad in college. I forget to do that when I am at camp or out of town, and I think they would prefer if I called more, so if I haven't yet, start now! When you come back to visit for Christmas, make sure to go to that LOTR marathon at that theater downtown. If you have forgotten, you missed it this year because you were working on your part II (stupid!). You have to go to that. It's going to be AWESOME! Another thing that I hope you have done by now is visit another country. Not Mexico or Canada, but England or China. I realize that you are probably in serious debt (you did get some financial aid from your college, right?), but maybe you could sneak into the cargo area of a ship. That would be more exciting anyways. As for books, hopefully you still have time to read. Here is a list of the books that you should have read by now (the following are just the books on your shelf that I haven't read yet.....)

LOTR
tinker tailor soldier spy (don't watch the movie before reading the book. I promised!)
Any Michael Crichton book you haven't read yet
Sequels to rendezvous with Rama
Master and Commander (and sequels of course)
Stranger in a Strange land
1984
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
sequels to the foundations novels
i robot
Dune
Sherlock Holmes
2001 a space Odyssey

Please! Read them! They sound so interesting.

Anyways, have a great life. Its going good so far.

-Emily

P.S. If you invent time travel, meet me here in 4 seconds, unless of course there are laws against that.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

CENSORED

Link to Video: http://animoto.com/play/XznpXChumUinWElXA6ZtOg

Process Analysis

Claim: China's censorship laws deprive the people of their rights, they present a danger of more controls in the future, and there needs to be change

Warrants: I am assuming that censorship is bad. I also assume that the people of china value a freedom of expression.

Audience: I am targeting those who are unaware of the current censorship in China. My second target are those who agree that censorship is bad, and that there needs to be change.

Purpose: to inform the viewer of the degree of censorship in china and to persuade them to take an action .

Music: I chose the song "Uprising" by Muse. This song is about not letting the government oppress its citizens and it also makes a call to action. The song has a powerful beat and will evoke emotion from the audience. The intent is to get the audience a little riled up at the censorship so they will be more likely to act. The audience needs to feel passion about something or they will be left unchanged. The lyrics can be found here http://www.musewiki.org/Uprising_(song). I will add the key lyrics next to the pictures they play with.

These first two images tell the audience what to expect. The picture of China gives the setting, and the censored picture gives the topic. I chose this specific photo of censorship because it was on a Chinese flag, and a film strip. The Chinese flag reinforces where the censorship is taking place. The film strip shows that I have narrowed my focus to censorship in the media. The color of the flag also grabs the audience's attention right away. It has a very strong

Music: During the first few pictures, the lyrics explain a world in chaos where the government is paranoid and they are trying to prevent the people from knowing the truth. This is censorship.

"Paranoia is in bloom,
The PR transmissions will resume They'll try to, push drugs that keep us all dumbed down And hope that, we will never see the truth around"

I chose these next two political cartoons to set up the crossed out websites that follow. These explicitly show the government monitoring and blocking the internet. Their overexertion makes it easy for the audience to understand what is being said.

These next five pictures show popular social network/news websites that have been blocked in china. The bold red circles catch the audiences eye and portray a sense of importance. I used repetition of crossed out websites in order to show the magnitude of the censorship.

Music: The music has important lyrics for these pictures too. "And endless, red tape to keep the truth confined". These photos show that red tape that has banned social networking sites, and prevents the people from easily spreading truths and information.

The next political cartoons help to emphasize the power and magnitude of the Chinese internet censorship. It is sometimes referred to as The Great Firewall of China.

At this point I added dialogue that says "How far will it go?" After the dialogue the pictures become darker. The purpose of this is to show the audience the dangers and invasion of rights that censorship poses. The man with his eyes and mouth covered portrays the dehumanizing affects of censorship, and the invasion of the right to express one's self.

Music: Here the lyrics talk about the government controlling the minds of the people. "Interchanging mind control" This relates to censorship, because the ultimate goal of censorship is to control what the people see, and ultimately think.

This is where I shift to persuade the audience to take an action. I have a slide that says "It's time to change". After showing the extent, invasion of privacy, and danger of censorship in china, I move to a solution. The fist represents taking a stand. The man climbing over the wall represents overcoming The Great Firewall of China's censorship. The man with the sledge hammer represents a leader taking up the cause. These images are powerful, and are meant to stir the audience deep down.

Music: At this point the song has also shifted to a call to action.

"Rise up and take the power back,
It's time the fat cats had a heart attack, You know that their time's coming to an end, We have to unify and watch our flag ascend."
This creates a powerful final emotion in the audience because
"Rise up and take the power back" plays right as the image of the fist is shown. And then "We have to unify and watch our flag ascend" plays as the man holding the sledge hammer stands strong. This powerful emotion is what the audience needs to be influenced to take a stand and work for change.

Picture links:

Monday, January 2, 2012

Don't worry about knocking

Dear lady who watches our house through her window so knows when we get home and comes over to talk before we are even out of the car,

I cannot express how much I truly enjoy the way you neglect to knock before you enter. I can really feel the neighborly love. And yes, the food sitting out on the table is yours for the taking. I wasn't going to eat it anyways. I don't eat food after it has been exposed to air longer than five minutes. Also, I bought some fruit snacks for your son the last time we went grocery shopping. I realize that in such tough economic times, delicacies like the fruit snack can be difficult to afford, and your son loves them so much. I never knew another person who could eat an entire box in an hour. I can't wait to chat (well, mostly listen i guess) next week.

Happy Holidays!

P.S. I cannot thank you for having your dog pee on our driveway. It is much easier to get rid of it there than from the grass. Plus, I just feel so bad for him. I can't imagine having to walk around with a face like that.

golb

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