Tow #3: Article: "The Case Against High School Sports" by Amanda Ripley

Amanda Ripley, the author of The Smartest Kids in the World- and How They Got That Way, wrote "The Case Against High School Sports" for The Atlantic because she firmly believes that high school sports are ruining academic opportunities for students. She establishes her credibility by stating that she played and enjoyed sports throughout her high school experience and it is evident that she did an extensive amount of research before writing this article. However, I do not think she will successfully achieve her purpose of convincing American principals and school districts and to ban sports, especially football, in their schools. In the article, Ripley makes the argument that schools are spending too much money paying for their football teams and coaches. Also she uses many examples to strengthen this argument. There is a school district in Texas that would have had to close down completely if they hadn't gotten rid of all sports. I agree with Ripley in the sense that too much money is being spent on sports, but getting rid of sports in high schools across the country is a bit extreme. There needs to be a balance in the amount of money that goes towards sports and academics. Rather than giving a football team new uniforms and spending a fortune on artificial turf in the same year, the school could pay for one of those things in that year and spend the rest of the money on buying new books or hiring better math teachers that may not double as coaches. I do not think it was smart for Ripley to mention that in the school in Texas, many sports were put back into their school, such as tennis, track, basketball, and cross country. I believe the sports were put back in because it is part of American culture to have sports in our schools. Ripley also makes the argument that American schools are not testing in math as Korea, China or Finland. She uses statistics that are difficult to argue with such as the fact that 93 percent of South Korean students graduate high school as opposed to 77 percent of American students. However I do not believe that these numbers are directly related to sports. Also, 77 percent of our high school population is still a lot of people considering the size of the country, so why does it matter if there are a few bad apples. They made the choice to not go to college because they have the right to live life how they want to. Overall I do not believe that Ripley accomplished her purpose in writing the article because America is still producing enough intelligent, innovative minds that there is no need to take extreme measures to change anything.

Tow #2: Visual Text: Global Warming Deniers by Nick Anderson

When trying to find a visual text this week, I looked through many political cartoons, but this particular one made me stop scrolling and actually look at the message. In the center of the cartoon is a large turkey that immediately grabbed my attention because it is in a barren landscape with a dark orange sky. Nick Anderson, the cartoonist responsible for this political cartoon published this in the Houston Chronicle's blog on August 9th, 2012. He has won the Pulitzer Prize as well as other awards for his works because of the powerful messages they give. Even though this particular cartoon was published over a year ago, it will stay relevant for as long as global warming is an issue, so it was important that Anderson tackled this subject. Ultimately the picture is of a cooked turkey living on future planet Earth. The use of food, especially meat, planted a much harsher and less humorous thought in my mind. If a turkey will cook to death due to global warming, why not human flesh? I believe that Anderson intended to appeal to pathos and make people laugh while at the same time make them feel a bit uncomfortable. The dark, orange sky as opposed to a bright blue one makes the American audience feel angry and think dark thoughts. This cartoon is mainly a warning message. Although it is humorous because the turkey is lost to the world with its head stuck in the ground, it was published to warn Americans of what can happen in the near future. Specifically, Anderson is addressing the global warming deniers, because those are the ones with their heads stuck in the ground and burned to death. I think that Anderson achieved his purpose to most viewers, because instead of outright saying "we are all going to die" he shows a dead turkey to illustrate the death of global warming deniers.

Tow #1: Article: "A Young Gymnast's Body Is Mysteriously Transformed" by Lisa Sanders, M.D.

Lisa Sanders is a professor at Yale School of Medicine and has been writing a column called Diagnosis for the New York Times since 2002. In this column, she writes about people with a serious illness that is difficult to be solved. In this article, she wrote about a fifteen year-old gymnast whose body suddenly changed. Overnight, her stomach protruded to the size of a woman who is six months pregnant, preventing her from doing gymnastics. The young girl saw many doctors, but all of them couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. Some even said that it was all in her head and put the gymnast on antidepressants. That was the part of the article that bothered me the most. When it comes to children and teenagers, many adults dismiss what they are saying and assume it is a lie. Sanders, a former doctor, felt ashamed that other doctors would think the gymnast was lying, so she included that moment in her article. When the gymnast was in her worst pain, she begged the doctor, "cut me open and take it all out" because "anything is better than this." Sanders included this quote in her article to appeal to pathos and hopefully make parents feel sympathy towards this child. The reason why Sanders wrote about this case was not only to inform people about this rare disease, but also to encourage parents to believe their child when they say they are in pain or sick and to never give up on finding a diagnosis. Eventually a gastroenterologist named Rayna Gothe figured out that the involuntary muscles in her digestive system were uncoordinated and working incorrectly. The gymnast was able to return to gymnastics after a few weeks of physical therapy. By adding this happy ending to the story, I think that Sanders achieved her purpose. She showed that even some of the most difficult cases can still be solved and cured, so a person should never give up.

IRB Introduction #1: The Buried Book

For the first unit I have chosen to read The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh by David Damrosch. I chose to read this because it was recommended by my mother. She read this for her English class in grad school a year ago and said it was one of her favorite non-fiction books she has ever read. I also chose it because I am very unfamiliar with the topic of Gilgamesh and I wanted to learn something new about ancient history. After reading the introduction of the book, I realized that the book is essentially about a book and that book is The Epic of Gilgamesh. I hope I can learn a lot from this book about ancient history and about rediscovery.

Robert Boyers: A Beauty

Robert Boyers wrote the essay "A Beauty" for the literary magazine Agni to describe the most beautiful man he had ever met. When I first read the title of the essay, I assumed it would be about a woman or a piece of artwork, but it ended up being about a man named Charles Newman. Boyers met him in the 1970s when Newman was approaching forty years old and editing the journal he founded, TriQuarterly. Newman was also a gifted novelist. Boyers became friends with Newman, but Newman's beauty never went unnoticed by Boyers or anyone else they encountered. Along with describing the most beautiful man he's ever met, Boyers wrote this essay to explain the effect of beauty on people and to be read by adults of all ages and gender. In order to fully achieve his purpose he uses his friend as an example throughout the entire story. Many younger women liked to flirt with Newman and he enjoyed doing it back. Boyers also explained that the beauty had an effect on Newman himself. When Newman got married for the fourth and last time, he was also dating another girl across the country. Because he was so good looking, Boyers had the confidence to be in a relationship with more than one woman. It was actions like this that made Boyers only base his opinions of Newman's beauty from the outside. I think that Boyers only partially achieved his purpose. He did a wonderful job of describing his friend, which I believe was the main reason for writing the essay. However, I think he could have done a better job of explaining the effect of beauty on others, because he really only described the effect of Newman's beauty on others. It may have been completely intentional for Boyers to keep the focus on Newman, but I would have liked the essay better if he had tied in some other examples.

Charles Hamilton Newman (1938-2006)

from his wikipedia page

Francine Prose: Other Women

When Francine Prose was twenty-five years old, she was unhappily married and living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Because of her problems with her marriage, she decided to join a feminist group to help her see the value in being a woman. Unfortunately, Prose's husband ended up sleeping with every single woman in the group, or that's how she likes to tell the story forty years later in Granta magazine. In reality he was only with two of the women in the group, but Prose uses exaggeration as a rhetorical device to achieve her purpose. That purpose is to inform women of all ages that they are equal to men and also that feminist groups do not always work in the way they are supposed to. The use of exaggeration works because she does tell the truth later and explains that the exaggeration is a way of expressing how "betrayed [she] felt by [her] husband and feminist sisters" (Brooks and Atwan 241). The women were supposed to support each other in the group, but instead Prose felt betrayal. Because this was exaggerated, it made me realize that the group really did not fulfill its purpose. Prose also talks about the subject of the war of men against women.  Her strategy in accomplishing this purpose is the use of repetition. Towards the end of the essay, she asks herself six questions starting with the words "do I think" and answering all of them with "yes". One of the questions was "do I think women are as smart and capable as men?" (Brooks and Atwan 242). With the use of repetition, it drills the message into the readers head, and it also shows that Prose is very passionate about her purpose. It is because of this passion that I believe Prose accomplished her purpose.

 
Feminism
from asap-asia.org
 

Works Cited

Brooks, David, and Robert Atwan, eds. The Best American Essays 2012. Boston: 
       Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.

Ken Murray: How Doctors Die

Ken Murray quit being a doctor ten years before he wrote the essay "How Doctors Die" for the Zocalo Public Square. Although the essay is titled "How Doctors Die", it is more about how the average patient is overtreated. If someone is terminally ill, they do anything they can to try to find a cure, even if the doctor knows the procedure is useless. However, according to Murray, doctors will never overtreat themselves. Murray wrote this essay to convince terminally ill people and families of terminally ill people to die how doctors die: surrounded by family. The main strategy that he uses to persuade is the use of examples. He uses the example if his mentor Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist that died of pancreatic cancer. As soon as Charlie got the diagnosis, he stayed at home to be with his family and ended up dying several months later. Charlie died a happy man, but Murray would not have accomplished his purpose unless he included a story with an unpleasant death. That was the purpose of including the story about one of his former patients. She was the attorney of a famous political family that had severe diabetes and poor circulation throughout her body. After Murray refused to do a surgery on her, she went to another hospital that would perform the surgery. Unfortunately the surgical wounds did not heal and she ended up dying. This is the example that made me agree with Murray. If that woman had only stayed with the doctor that knew her better, she may still be alive, or at least have been alive for a little longer. People should not try so hard to seek out a cure, especially terminally ill people. I believe that Murray accomplished his purpose because he knows that modern medicine has its limits. He made me think that when given the choice, its better to have a life of quality, not quantity.

Overtreatment

 www.cchsr.iph.cam.ac.uk/519