Blog #10

Should performance enhancing drugs be allowed in professional athletics? The vast majority of people would say that these drugs should be prohibited.  I would like to try and argue the opposite.  Let it be known, however, that I do not personally use or encourage the use of these drugs.  I simply argue that others ought to be allowed to use them at their own discretion. 

Argument for allowed use of performance enhancing drug:

-Freedom of choice.  People are allowed to smoke cigarrettes even though it is dangerous to their health, why can’t people use steroids?

-Intense strenuous work outs can cause long term damage to joints and ligiments etc... yet athletes must submit to these routines in order to be able to compete with other athletes.  This is the same principle for steroids. The only way that steroids can become an unfair advantage is if it is prohibited and those disobediant athletes use them anyway without getting caught.  If they were not prohibited then the playing field would be leveled. 

-Remember how fun it was to watch Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mcgwire? All three of these famous basball players were big hitters.  They broke records and generated extreme peaks in spectatorship for the MLB. Yet they are ignored in the history of baseball.  their names are not even mentioned in the most famous baseball history museums. 

Argument against performance enhancing drugs:

-The overall health of our athletes is already poor due to the stresses involved in competing at such high levels of competition.  Why would we shorten their lives further?  We already have super humans playing our sports why do we need gladiators? 

-Athletes do not take these drugs to level the playing field instead they take them to get an advantage on the other athletes.

-A good majority of athletes are healthy and their personalities are to be healthy.  If all the sudden they cannot compete without having to use steroids they would now be forced either to take steroids or lose. This is not fair by any means.

I have a lot more research to do obviously but that’s the basics!!

Blog #9

The rhetorical analysis paper was a bit more difficult than the personal narrative.  I found myself really scrapping for more things to say about the tools used.  To be completely honest it was more difficult because my heart wasn’t in it.  I really didn’t care about it.  I think it was a good learning experience however.  It will help me in writing my own persuasive essays in the future.

Blog # 8: 50 words on my 'Analytical Response'

Well my paper feels iffy.  I love the essay I’m using but I think I’m too easy to impress.  I have a hard time finding the negative things.  I know I don’t have to have a list of cons but I would at least like to be able to see the perspective of the haters.  That way I could combat them.  The rough draft wasn’t too hard to write but I want to change a lot of it before I turn in my final. 

Blog # 7 "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

First off I just want to say , wow!  Martin Luther King, Jr. is an amazing writer.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading his letter and agree with his statements.

Now for the analysis:

Doctor Luther appealed to the reader through emotion, logic and ethics frequently throughout his letter.  He gets the reader on his side form the very first paragraph with some emotional appeal when he talks about all the criticism he deals with regularly. The way in which he incorporates this information doesn’t sound like a childish complaint, instead he calmly acknowledges his hardships and makes them known to the reader.  With this he appeals to the reader ethically as well.  Stating that he generally doesn’t respond to criticism but choses to ignore it to pursue more important matters sets himself above though criticizers.  He elevates his respectability and maturity in the readers mind.  It has an inverse effect in the mind of the reader for the character of the criticizer, giving a mental image of immaturity.  He often uses logic appeal as well. For example: starting with the last paragraph of the one hundred ninety-ninth page, until the second paragraph of the two hundredth page, Doctor Luther shows examples in history when civil disobedience was just.  He mentions Shadrach, Meshach and Abednago who disobeyed King Nebuchadnezzar; the early christians who disobeyed the unjust laws of the Roman Empire; Socrates; and their very own ancestors disobeying England during the events now known as the Boston Tea Party.  Mentioning the Boston Tea Party was brilliant.  This is an event that Americans are proud of that in essence is the same issue being dealt with.  It is the same “disobedience” that Doctor Luther had committed and was imprisoned for.
Another instance where Doctor Luther demonstrated ethical appeal was when I wrote about taking responsibility for his actions.  He disobeyed these “unjust laws” knowingly and with a smile on his face.  He was happy to comply with the consequences.  This builds an even more respectable reputation for him in the readers mind.
Another instance where Doctor Luther uses emotional appeal is found in the second paragraph on the one hundred ninety-eighth page.  He writes of the difficulty in telling your six-year-old daughter that she can’t go to the local amusement park because she is black.  Not only is it difficult to tell her that, but it is more difficult to know that her self esteem and self respect is slowly diminishing.  It is harder to know that over time it will likely waste away entirely.  The reader can most likely relate, whether black or white, to the relationship between parent and child.  This is a very effective way off bringing a white reader to the realization of the emotions felt by the suppressed Negros.  He further attacks this point with another parent child situation and then later with a husband wife situation.  This paragraph was powerful for me, an unmarried childless male, how much more powerful would it be to those with wives and children that they love?
There are several other instances where Doctor Luther uses appeal to logic, emotion or ethics to convey his feelings and ideas to the reader.  He is a very talented writer and obviously his writing and speaking have been very effective rhetoric.

Blog # 6 Analytic Response - "What Christians Believe"

I seriously enjoyed reading this short essay by C.S. Lewis! It was so good to hear someone, not LDS, look at religion in a  very similar way to how it actually is.  He was definitely writing in the genre of persuasive.

His purpose for writing this essay was to take take the information he has mentally gathered about the basics of religion and display them in a convincing manner to the reason, in hopes of persuading them to accept that there must be a Christ and an opposing force that originally came from good.

Lewis was once an atheist and can therefor empathize very well with them.  He understands why people would reject the truth but also understands how stupid they’re being.  He assumes that most people that do not believe in God are looking at it logically and therefor attacks from that angle.

Lewis spent most of his writing on the topic of God verses Devil.  He writes about how the devil can not be an independent force of evil.  Evil cannot not, itself, independently exist.  just as darkness without light never could have been discovered.  Evil is the lack of good.  Good things sought after in the wrong way.

Lewis uses several analagies in this piece to further explain his examples.  One being; how can someone not see something and realize that if they have never seen anything before?  They can’t! it makes no sense to them.  It’s essentially incomprehensible.  A blind man form birth will never understand or miss sight.  If there were no right and wrong, no law, no sin, no God, then we would not be able to comprehend that those things are or were missing.  BUT WE CAN comprehend these things.   the simple fact that we’re debating over this topic proves itself! he uses many such analogies.  He uses a lot of logic to prove his ideas and does it well.

All in all I really enjoyed his writing and I agree with what his is saying.  I kinda of wish I could send him a Book of Mormon!

Blog #5: Analytic Snapshot: Veil of Fears

Genre:  Persuasive

Purpose:  To bring to the attention of the reader the misconception that veils and other muslim traditions are of a suppressive nature and to persuade them that this is a way they preserve their family unit.

Central Message:  Americans wrongly view the traditions of the Afghan culture form their own "Westernized Perspective".  This has caused many false assumptions.  Americans should not be so involved in removing, what they view, wrong in others' cultures. without first exploring the "wrongness" of that item from the other's point of view.

World View and Assumptions:  Americans have good intentions and want to help give freedom to others but do not realize that their views of freedom may differ from the “others.”  He assumes that most Americans have developed these views from the media, whether directly or indirectly. 

Use of Tools and Evidence:  

--Page 229, paragraph two, line four: ‘Time magazine dubbed the Afghan burka “a body bag for the living”’-analogy.

--Page 229, paragraph three, line ten:  “Veiling is embraced by millions of Muslim men and women as one of the keys to their way of life.” -Symbol

--Page 230, paragraph two, line three: “The press has been obsessed with the relatively small number of modernized women in Afghan cities who were indeed viciously oppressed by the Taliban’t infamous policies.”-hyperbole (italics added).

Blog # 4 Personal Narrative Review

Well I really enjoyed writing my personal narrative! It may not have been the best paper ever written, but to me it was a true work of art! Learning as I went, I tried to incorporate some of the new tidbits I had learned from our reading assignments in my writing class.  While trying out these new writing tips, I found I could better express what was stuck in my head! It became easier to translate the language of “Zack Brain” to English.  I still struggle with where to put commas and when to start a new sentence.  However, my mom already gave me a short lesson over the phone on that topic.  She has always been an expert at editing, so I sent my draft to her for advice.  It turns out, I did leave out a lot of commas and spelt some words wrong! Unfortunately however, I had already turned in my paper by the time Mom got back to me.  

I learned a lot about myself during the writing process.  While I was searching for a topic, I really had to go back into the deep parts of my memory.  I found all kinds of good stuff back there!  Though each memory was a little dusty, I saw them all there! Reminiscing with yourself can be quit enjoyable! It can even be therapeutic.  When I did find the treasure I was looking for, my topic, I excitedly started writing! I just started typing and it all came flowing out of my head onto the screen.  Throughout the editing and refining process I really put the story into the words I wanted.  It was a great experience! I ,surprisingly to myself, am looking forward to the next writing assignment we get!  Yay!

P.S. I really want to read it to people and see what they think! is that bad??