TOW #28

Dear Future APELC Student,
         Congrats for getting through tenth grade! Now, starts the probable hardest year of your life. On top of that, you've chosen to take APELC, which you most definitely will struggle with. Going into it, you're going to think, oh its completely fine, I totally know how to write and analyze! Wrong. This class will help you learn how to write better than you ever have before. Your analysis skills right now are weak. Do you even know what a rhetorical device is? If not, you will be completely familiar with them by the end of the year. This class most of all teaches you to analyze text, and that's what you will come away with, so just make sure to do the readings or you will be lost 100% of the time.
        But it isn't just all really tough work, there is also a lot of growth that comes from the course. Your work ethic will be refined and you will finally be able to experience the struggle of working for the grade, if you haven't ever before. I'm not lying, it is going to be difficult, but you can get through it, because all of us did. Get ready for a difficult but rewarding year ahead of you, and good luck.
Neha Jog

TOW #28- Reflection

It is really nice to see growth in my writing, and these TOWs make it plain to see. At the beginning of the year, I stuck to the script, putting everything in a sort of formula that I had in my head. Everything had a place, and deviating from that was apparent death. But as you scroll through the year, you can see my writing get more relaxed. That does not mean it gets lazy, but rather that it gains more flow. I think as the year progressed I mastered the art of making sure my writing had flow, instead of just a formula that I filled in the parts. I also grew better at picking out rhetorical devices, and could often see them at once when I opened an essay. Though I did learn a lot, I could still improve on my diction, because I tend to always sound a bit informal even in my formal writing essays. I think I did benefit from the TOWs because not only did they force me to write something every week, but they forced me to read something every week. This means, while I was honing my writing skills, I was also learning about real world events. It kind of opened my eyes to the thousands of different articles that are written every day. What I mean by that is that even though the Internet has mostly always been at my fingertips, I had never really used it to read articles. That sounds incredibly weird to me now, because even without the TOWs I now keep an eye out for interesting articles to read, instead of the quick reading of lesser articles (10 Crazy Things You Didn't Know About Salad!- Buzzfeed). 

TOW #27 (Written)- When a Culture is Destroyed

A powerful earthquake — the country's worst in 80 years — rocked mountainous Nepal on Saturday, killing more than 1,800 people and leveling buildings and centuries-old temples. Dozens if not hundreds remained trapped under mounds of rubble.

Hospitals in the capital of Katmandu were so crowded that many of the injured were treated outside in the open, according to local media. The magnitude-7.8 quake, which shook a wide swath of northern India, Bangladesh, Tibet and Pakistan, also triggered avalanches in the Himalayas, killing at least 10 people on Mount Everest.

Nepal police said at least 1,865 people were killed. Given the scale of the destruction, the death toll was expected to rise. An emergency Cabinet meeting designated 29 districts as crisis zones, the Home Affairs Ministry said.

Tens of thousands of people, fearful of aftershocks bringing down more buildings, gathered outside during the night.

"My entire neighborhood is still in shock," said Chiranjibi Gurung in Katmandu. "My children who were inside the houses at the time of the earthquake are scared to go inside now even at this time of the night."

Around 180 bodies were pulled from the ruins of the nine-story Dharhara Tower in the center of the capital, China's official Xinhua News Agency reports. It said about 200 were feared trapped in the rubble of the tower in the city's historic Basantapur Durbar Square.

"We had heard the earthquake stories from our ancestors and how I remember my grandparents telling me about the devastation of the 1934 earthquake and how it uprooted the Dharahara Tower then," said Sabita Lal of Katmandu. "I saw the same thing happen today to the tower. It was a massive one."

TOW # 26- Hillary 4 Pres? (Visual)

               In today's news, there are many articles dedicated to Justice Sotomayor, an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The articles are covering all sorts of topics including how race is the most important issue to her, how being a minority is the reason for her votes during 2009, and other subjects that are along the same lines. Then, I came along this political cartoon that has grasped the attention of many. The author, written in a blurry manner on the side of the cartoon, was able to include everyone's views on this matter in one picture. The cartoon displays, what I saw as, Barack Obama on the left saying that he throughly checked Sotomayor's background before he picked her to be on the Supreme Court. On the right, is his checklist for Sotomayor, and it only includes four points of qualifications that are seen as the biggest debates when it comes to politics. The viewers, people interested in the news and information about Sotomayor, mostly agreed with the political cartoon saying that the picture represents everything that shouldn't be present in a judge on the Supreme Court. The viewers do sound racist, but Sotomayor did publicly state that race is a huge matter to her. To Americans, it sounds like she has some sort of safe zone for people of color, which is frankly a little scary because she does hold a lot of power. However, as a woman of race, I don't feel threatened by Sotomayor's outburst on people of color. Now, people could argue I am coming from a biased side, but I don't think that an intellectual woman could make such a poor decision. I think that all she meant by it was that race matters to her, but not the extent people are thinking. As a woman of color, nobody expects her to act aggressively to others in her situation, but with her education and skills, she does not seem like the type to favor others.  Ultimately, the purpose of this cartoon was to portray the different viewpoints of Sotomayor and her recent statement of race mattering to her. 

TOW #25 (written)- The Technology Gap by Ben Wineston

One of the most powerful parts of this article was not the words, but instead the pictures. One picture could mean as much as a thousand words they say. These pictures, or rather, collages that embellished the article were full of "It Girls" and just at a glance you could recognize that at one point every woman up there had been idealized into an it girl. Then there's the pictures of magazine covers-most notably Vouge and Vanity Fair-which have the it girls posing. Not only does this sometimes create the "maniac pixie dream girl", as 500 days of Summer aptly put it, but it expects woman to conform to the standard of that one woman. It also pits women against each other in competition to be the "it girl" when really, we are all the It girl. Now the It girl category is diversifying, take Lupita Nyongo and Benazir Bhutto, but this image limits the woman that it holds. Now, the media expects them to be the exact mix of sexy, demure, smart, but not too smart, different, but not too different, and they take away the power of the woman to define herself. One example of this is Clara Bow, from the 1920-30's. She was the starlet of Hollywood, until she went too much out of the box and proclaimed herself a feminist, gambling, drinking, and partying too much. But of course, the it girl mantle was passed on, as it always is. Take the quick switch from Jennifer Lawrence, to Lupita Nyongo, to Rosmund Pike. The article says, “It's another to see the term-and all its insidious, objectifying power- resurface, proliferate, and thrive nearly a centuary later. Only this time, it's saddled not on one woman, but any woman who seems primed to be more than an object-an It, passive and pliable-in the narrative of their own lives.”

TOW #24 (IRB)- A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

This book makes me want to take "A Walk in the Woods" as Bill Bryson puts it. The book makes me want to live outdoors for a while, reconnect with nature, get healthier and more outdoorsy all at once. It brings the spirit of adventure that I so crave, and I want to see it fufilled. But then I remember that I'm irrevocably attached to my computer, that the internet is my lifeblood. Which may be a bit of a hyperbole, but in most senses its true. When I was born, dial-up internet was the thing and in my short lifespan, it has grown to so much more than that. To say I am anything but a baby of the Information Age would be a farce, because I was weaned on technology in and out.
Which brings me back to Bill Bryson, and the way that books transport us to another reality. I'll probably never walk the Appalacian trail, probably never spend more than a few nights under a tent, but I will always have the yearning to do so. Or at least, I'll always have the feeling that it could be possible for me. This suspension of reality is the great thing books give us, and before this class I didn't realize that nonfiction books could do that too. I thought nonfiction books were dry textbooks on whatever subject they chose, maybe greek mythology, or the anatomy of a bird, and etc. This class has opened my eyes up to how nonfiction can also be mystical and interesting, because our world is mystical and interesting. And who knows, maybe one day I'll walk a day or two on the Appalacian trail. All I know now is that its always an option, and always will be, for the rest of my life.

TOW 23- (written) Scientists Call For Moratorium on Human Genetic Experiments (Dan Vergano)

Though this is an undoubtly very scary article, the author uses an allusion to make it easier to understand. Or at least easier to understand for people alive in 1997, because it references the 1997 movie Gattaca. I was not alive in 1997, so I guess I was a year too late to get the joke. Anyway, this article is about how close scientists are to being able to genetically engineer babies and how they are struggling with how unethical it could turn out to be. At first, to me, genetically engineered babies didn't seem so bad, but then I remembered something my AP Bio teacher had told us in our DNA unit. She had been talking about how if people could genetically engineer babies, they could choose what traits they wanted their babies to have. Meaning, they could choose if they wanted babies with any hair color, any eye color, any body type. This isn't build-a-bear people, this is a potentially extrememly unethical thing.
Just think of the modern standard for beauty, thin, possibly blonde and blue eyed. I mean, if Hitler had this technology, we would all look exactly the same right now. Our differences are what make us beautiful, not all looking the same and this technology endangers that. Now, this can still be used for tweaking the genes of people with debilitating diseases, like HIV, but it should be kept away from most everyone else. Just think of the book the Uglies, a society where, at the age of 16, everyone goes through a surgery to become "beautiful", but really, they are just being brainwashed into following the government's every decree. We deserve better, and the world must stay diverse, because diverse, is beautiful.

Political Cartoon (Visual)- TOW #22

This political cartoon depicts Dumbo, the beloved childhood elephant, stretching out his trunk towards his mom and saying, "Good news Mom...". Next to him is a discarded newspaper with the headline "Ringling Brothers Eliminating Elephant Acts". I am very happy with this development personally because elephants have to endure terrible things under circus management, so if the biggest circus people are setting them free, maybe other people with follow suit and do the same. Elephants are amazing and I love them and there are barely any left, so they must be saved.

There is a lot of rhetoric used in this picture. The first is the usage of mute colors, brown, gray, blue, to show the bleak environment in which the elephants are in currently. The brightest thing in the picture is the newspaper, because the artist, Steven Breen, is trying to draw your eye towards it. Dumbo's ear kind of looks like a strip of bacon, but that's okay because it's just an art style. Another thing your eye is drawn to is the lock of the mother of Dumbo's cart. It represents the cruelty that goes on behind the scenes, because not all of Dumbo's mother can be seen. Something that was interesting though was the comments, where one person was doubtful of the fate of the elephants, saying they would just be killed once the Ringling Brothers were done with them. Commenters showed him up though, saying how the elephants will be sent to a sanctuary in Florida instead. They even provided a link, showing how helpful people on the internet can really be. 

TOW #21 (Written)- David Fincher's Portrait of a Marriage by Richard Brody

Don't let the title fool you, this article is not about a typical marriage. This is a review of the movie Gone Girl, meaning that the marriage being talked about here is toxic and downright scary, a marriage of which I hope nobody ever has to suffer through. Now I have to admit, parts of the article, especially with its word choice did confused me a lot (I had to look up several words), but this is part of the rhetoric Brody uses. By using highly technical vocabulary, he is showing who his audience is, film critics and people educated in the nuances of movies, not juniors in high school (though Max might be an exception). He also uses his organization of the article to further his analysis. He starts off in the movie verse, using the characters to explain what he thinks the movie's point is, then goes into the real world, talking about the director and writer.

Brody also uses many, many allusions. They are so heavily used, in fact, that they are part of the problem of why I had so much trouble reading and understanding this. Again, this points towards his audience of people a little better versed in the world of movies than me, though I did get the Social Network reference. Brody also alludes to many movements going on in the real world right now. For example, he uses the “Yes to All Men” movement to show how Nick thinks of himself, while also showing the problems with the movement. I thought Brody was spot on when describing the book and movie as “Unleashing that primordial archetypal fury along with its cosmic irony, making a movie that is a tragedy of our time.” Fancy words, but the meaning behind them is true, and you kind of do have to go all out to even start to explain the raw emotion in the movie, as well as the masked brilliance.

TOW #20 (Written)- Reading This on A Computer? Then you (probably) don't live in Africa

Reading This on A Computer? Then You (probably) Don't Live in Africa by Milena Veselinovic and Brandom Clements first pulled me in because of the title. It is true that I'm on a computer and not currently living in Africa, but that title seemed a like stereotypical to me. I mean, Africa is a whole continent, with many, many countries in it, which I know because I had to memorize them all last year in history class for extra credit I really did not need, and it seemed awfully like a blanket statement, even if the (probably) was added in there. So though the title put me off a little, I continued to read, and it turns out the article was talking about how more and more people in Africa are using mobile phones to access the internet as opposed to computers. The reasoning is that many poorer countries in Africa didn't have the resources for many computers in the 90's and 2000's when computering was taking off, so they skipped that part and fast forwarded to phones, which are basically mini computers now. My question is, what about tablets, which are crosses between computers and phones.

The next thing that interested me in this article was the app company start ups that are capitalizing on this mobile phone trend. The article cited examples such as M-Pesa, a money transferring apps, and mPedigree, to check if the medicine you are receiving are real or not. These new apps are showing how people in African are taking a trend from America and western countries and utilizing it for their own advantages, because really, how many Americans would need the app Farmerline, which gives you farming tips? So really, when I thought the article was perpetuating a harmful stereotype of all of Africa being technology barren, it was showing how more advanced the continent as a whole is becoming. I still think that they could stop classifying it as all of Africa though. I mean, how would the German feel if we looped them in with the Greek? (A stereotypically hardworking country vs a stereotypically not hard working country, if you couldn’t tell.)

TOW #19- Downward Dogged The Onion (visual)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/downward-dogged,37964/

My favorite part of this political cartoon is how downright offensive it is. I mean, the Bible and the American Flag are burning in the middle, down at the bottom there is a book that says, "weird books (probably korans)". There's also a grim reaper and satanic symbols, but those are just extra details. The funny thing about this is that I know people that would totally be the people on the left, who are willingly going into these weird new fitness things without knowing a thing about them. I mean, just look at Kim Kardashian, who sparked the whole "eating your own placenta to make your skin better" thing. That was insane, but people still did it. Also, crossfit. Now crossfit is actually good for you, but it seems like the spawn of satan to me. I mean, all that moving around and getting healthy, it's truly scary.

I started off the first paragraph with what my favorite part was, but I think I've found a true favorite. I'm a sucker for puns, especially the horrendously bad ones, like the little man in the bottom right corner saying, "Bad OM-en." That just gets me. I love it a lot. The cartoon is really going after band wagon mentality, and how people jump on new trends so quickly. Take all of L.A., for example. I mean, I'm guilty of this myself too, especially in my younger days, as evidenced by the 30 or so Silly Bands and one Tamagotchi I can see just sitting at my desk right now. My dad calls us 'iSheep', but the truth is that we have no money, he is the one buying the iPhones for us. Who's the iSheep now, dad? Back on track, people will do anything to fit in, including going to yoga sessions led by the grim reaper. The comic really gets at the things that people do to help, when they are actually hurting their body.

TOW #18 (IRB)- A Walk in the Woods

    A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson is funny and entertaining, even though the premise seems a bit dry. Bryson tells the story of how he and a buddy of his decide to hike the 2168 mile Appalacian Trail, up the East Coast. The problem is, that he is slightly overweight, and while he thought the buddy he invited along was a real rough-and-tougher, instead this friend is even more overweight, and even more used to the nice things in life, like running water. Bryson uses a lot of humor in the book, starting off by the shocked way his wife acts when he tells her his decision. The vernacular of the book is very informal, with occasional cursing (like when they were chased by bears).
     Hidden by the gags and funny parts, is the true reflective nature of Bryson. Though he could not complete the trail, he learns a lot, and in between hilarious anecdotes are profound statements, such as, "“But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn't know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.” This statement spoke volumes to me, and almost makes me want to go out right now, and "rediscover America", the beauty of the natural wilderness. Even though Bryson described horrible things, rain, fog, bears, cold, and getting lost, you're still left with a sense of respect for nature. I come from a hiking family after all, so who knows if I'll do it or not? And the way Bryson described the Pennsylvanian part of the trail, "miserable, with rocks stabbing every part of your shoe", well that just made me feel right at home, because the trails in Pennsylvania really are like that. Thanks, glaciers, and thank you, nature.

IRB #3- A Walk in the Woods.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson is his own recounting of how he was overweight and decided to hike the formidable Appalacian Trail. I picked this book because the librarians said I would enjoy it maybe.

TOW #17 (Written)- The Trouble With "It Girls" by Anne Helen Peterson

One of the most powerful parts of this article was not the words, but instead the pictures. One picture could mean as much as a thousand words they say. These pictures, or rather, collages that embellished the article were full of "It Girls" and just at a glance you could recognize that at one point every woman up there had been idealized into an it girl. Then there's the pictures of magazine covers-most notably Vouge and Vanity Fair-which have the it girls posing. Not only does this sometimes create the "maniac pixie dream girl", as 500 days of Summer aptly put it, but it expects woman to conform to the standard of that one woman. It also pits women against each other in competition to be the "it girl" when really, we are all the It girl. Now the It girl category is diversifying, take Lupita Nyongo and Benazir Bhutto, but this image limits the woman that it holds. Now, the media expects them to be the exact mix of sexy, demure, smart, but not too smart, different, but not too different, and they take away the power of the woman to define herself. One example of this is Clara Bow, from the 1920-30's. She was the starlet of Hollywood, until she went too much out of the box and proclaimed herself a feminist, gambling, drinking, and partying too much. But of course, the it girl mantle was passed on, as it always is. Take the quick switch from Jennifer Lawrence, to Lupita Nyongo, to Rosmund Pike. The article says, “It's another to see the term-and all its insidious, objectifying power- resurface, proliferate, and thrive nearly a centuary later. Only this time, it's saddled not on one woman, but any woman who seems primed to be more than an object-an It, passive and pliable-in the narrative of their own lives.”

My Brother Is Going To Love This Forwarded List Of Lawyer Jokes by Steve Schwantes (TOW #16 Written)

My Brother Is Going To Love This Forwarded List Of Lawyer Jokes by Steve Schwantes is another in a long list of Onion articles that point out the real issues. Everyone has that one person that just will not stop sending you pointless emails that you're going to delete automatically, or even better, have set to spam. For me, it's my dad, who sends endless emails about how millennials are lazy and how I should have my major picked out by now. Jokes on you dad, this millennial knows how to delete emails in two easy clicks! And then they'll ask you about it later and you'll be all “yes, that was very helpful, what would I do without your life changing emails?” But enough with the passive-aggressiveness, let's analyze the rhetoric in this passage!

The first part of this article is a picture of the author, a balding, white, middle aged man. It is very obviously meant to represent the majority of people who send the annoying emails you delete. Next is the satire, which is quite obviously there because the Onion is a satire website. While at first look, to a very gullible four-year-old this may look like a genuine man talking about genuine things, everyone else will be able to know that they are using satire to point out a very annoying #firstworldproblems. The article uses a first-person point of view to show how ridiculous it actually is. For example, “When you forward a mass-forwarded email, you get a good feeling inside”. Not to mention that everyone stopped mass-forwarding jokes in like, 6^th grade. Middle aged people, am I right? It paints them as excited puppies who understand nothing and have just found out what the internet is. Wow, gmail, what a revolutionary concept, am I right?

Visual Text -TOW #15

This political cartoon depicts a huge crowd of people rallying with a banner that has “save the twinkie” on it. Meanwhile, two people, one holding a sign that says “save the earth” look on to the crowd, and the man wearing blue jeans part of the twosome says, “we're doomed”. It is a critique of the causes people choose to rally around. Also noted should be the fact that the people holding the save the twinkie sign are seemingly overweight, or close to it. They are also white and middle aged. Then, the people holding the save the earth sign are younger, thin, and looking on with disapproving faces. The people holding the sign save the twinkie are aggressive in their manner, not even taking notice of the save the earth people. This points out the fact that many of the people rallying around twinkies would not even take a second glance at save the earth posters, or the whole cause in general.

The author of this piece is trying to say that people rally for dumb causes much of the time bypassing more important ones, like saving the earth. One example of this is the potato salad guy, who on kickstarter, raised a couple hundred thousand bucks just to make a potato salad. While these people could have been giving to worthwhile charities, they instead chose to help someone make a 1 dollar potato salad. His cause was dumb, but people still gave to it, thinking it was funny. The author is pointing out the shallowness in society, and how we get numb to causes that are important but seemingly overexposed. This is what sucks in society because we need to learn more to not overlook things we have seen before, like save the earth posters.