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.