SWA16

"Animal Rights Uncompromised: PETA's Tactics." PETA.org. People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, n.d. Web. 29 Feb 2012.

This page is a short explanation of PETA’s tactics towards animal rights awareness from their own perspective. According to PETA, they go over the top with their activism because that is the only way to constantly get the attention of the media. The page is a very strong example of working with words so that the message you are trying to get across sounds more acceptable than many people might think it is.

Freedman, Lew. "PETA's Tactics Cruel to Humans." The Chicago Tribune. The Chicago Tribune, 17 Jun 2004. Web. 29 Feb 2012. .

This article is in strong contrast to PETA’s views on their tactics. The article describes a particular campaign PETA embarked on in which they insulted well known celebrities who were overweight. According to the author’s opinions, PETA is unforgiveable because they ignore the rights of humans to try and make the lives of animals better. The author does lose a bit of credibility because of his open hostility, but he does make some good points on the tactics of PETA that PETA prefers not to mention in their own descriptions.

SWA15

While researching my issues, I ran into a slight problem. There do not seem to be very many scholarly articles available on any of the three issues I had chosen. Looking back, I think I may have specialized my issues a bit too much, as they are very specific and do not deal with very broad controversies at all. Only a certain percentage of people would have any interest in these issues.

SWA13

Issue 1- Bobs vs Toms
a)Toms is a well-known brand of shoes that are also part of a charity effort- for every pair that is purchased, a poor child gets a free pair of shoes. Skechers released a brand of shoes called Bobs which essentially copy the idea, down to the shoes being very similarly designed.
b) The controversy is the fact that Skechers is capitalizing on an idea that someone else came up with by changing the name, and whether or not this should be considered theft of intellectual property.
c) I am of the belief that Bobs is essentially a theft and should not be allowed to operate.
d) I would like to learn if there is a side to this story that I have not heard that changes the way I see things.

Issue 2- PETA
a)People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an activist group for animal rights, and they have employed many tactics over the years that some consider to be extreme.
b)Peta2 is the young adult division of PETA, which is often seen on college campuses trying to convince people to be vegetarians. The controversy is whether or not the methods that Peta2 uses are too extreme for what they are trying to accomplish.
c) I am a firm believer that Peta2 is much too strong-armed in their tactics.
d) I would like to learn if there is more to Peta2 than just what I have seen, and if they might actually have some positive aspects to their campaign.

Issue 3- SOPA
a) SOPA is a bill currently being reviewed in the US House of Representatives that would give much more power over the Internet to the US government.
b) The controversy is whether or not this bill would violate basic rights set down in the Constitution by allowing the government to censor essentially anything they wanted to on the Internet.
c) Right now I am against this bill because I believe it violates some of the rights given to us by the First Amendment.
d) I would like to learn if there is more to this bill than the people against it have claimed, and whether or not it actually is unfair to the common people of the US.

SWA12

Waters, Alice. "A Healthy Constitution." The Carolina Reader. . 3rd ed. Southlake: Fountainhead, 2012. 337-338. Print.

In this article, Waters makes parallels between raising American kids with good food in their schools and the kids being good citizens when they are older. Waters discusses the idea of an “edible education” in which teachers use food to teach their students concepts such as math, science, and economics, requiring the students to realize that they depend on farmers in the country for the food that keeps them alive. According to Waters, this teaches good democracy from a young age, by teaching students that we must all depend on each other to survive.

1. 1. From what Waters writes, we can use food to teach democracy in ways such as teaching young people that if they make a mess, they need to clean it up, a very applicable lesson in modern society. By teaching about where the food comes from, they can also learn that people must work together as a society so everyone can have the things that they need to survive.

2. 2. Waters discusses the fact that schools with healthier food tend to have less disciplinary problems and educational problems. She also quotes a few students who have been served healthier foods, and they each show positive attitudes towards the new foods and learning styles. More evidence would probably have helped the argument.

3. 3. I seem to be having difficulty finding information about this question.

SWA11

When reading Oswalt’s article, it quickly becomes clear that he was, by popular definition, a geek in the 1980’s. Reading further, however, it becomes even more glaringly obvious that he is not ready to let go of that status. Whether it is intentional or not, his misuse of the term “otaku” is one indicator of this. At first, he uses the term as it is meant to be used- talking about people with very strong interests in video games or anime. When he brings it into modern times, however, he completely corrupts it. Although “otaku” can technically be applied to any borderline obsessive interest, in the modern world it is almost universally applied only to those who are into anime, manga, or video games. When Oswalt starts complaining that “all America is otaku”, it becomes clear that he is bitter about some of his old interests falling into the mainstream. What he fails to point out is that being familiar with something does not make a person an otaku. Someone who saw a movie such as Green Lantern is not automatically an otaku in the field of comic books, they just happened to see the movie. There is a large difference between familiarity and extensive knowledge, but Oswalt never makes reference to this. If anything, he should be glad that more and more people are being exposed to things that made his childhood enjoyable, but instead he frowns upon the idea like a music snob angry that a favorite band has suddenly become mainstream.

SWA10

Geek Culture Never Existed

The idea of “geek culture” is a completely subjective concept, which Patton Oswalt unwittingly demonstrates through his life experiences in the essay “Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die.”

I. Although he does make some strong points about geek culture of the past, Oswalt fails to realize that there is in fact still a modern geek culture- it just does not consist of the same things that it did when he was younger.

A. Improper usage of “otaku”

B. Lost/Top Chef example

II. The idea that pop culture and geek culture are one and the same is an idea that is inherently flawed by the basic definition of both terms.

A. “Etewaf” as a legitimate concept- the Internet

B. Oswalt’s daughter and “Dr. Cali-gory”

Aging and seeing the development of a culture is not an excuse to claim that you know everything about it. The whole point of pop culture is for it to grow and change over time as people put their influences on it. It seems that this is a concept Oswalt does not grasp, as he appears to pine for his childhood over the modern day.

SWA9

http://www.naturalnews.com/029854_factory_food_health.html

The central claim in this article is that food coming from animals raised in factories as opposed to smaller farms is much cheaper, but also much less healthy for humans to eat. The reasons given are that the animals are not able to have natural diets and are kept in unreasonably confined areas, problems which lead to disease for the animals and can make the food we eat have all sorts of unhealthy and dangerous things in them. The values behind the argument are that family run farms are healthier and overall better ways to raise animals and plants for food. The assumptions behind the argument are that all factories are bad places for animals and unhealthy environments for the food we eat to be raised.

SWA8

p.364
1.Scully makes numerous points in the essay about why the issue of animal cruelty in farming should be a conservative issue. One of the statements that stood out most strongly to me was the idea that a Smithfield Foods executive told Scully that "it's for their own good", a statement Scully refutes by making a comparison to that of a fetus being aborted. If the conservative movement does not agree with abortion, there is no real reason that they can morally agree with the torture of animals in farming, so that statement really stuck with me.

2. I think that Scully means that reason and morality are what we as humans claim set us apart from animals in this world- without our morality and reason, we are no different from the animals. Because we have them, it should be our job to treat the animals with the same kind of compassion that we as humans receive from one another. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Many animals have no control over their food sources or where they live, and because they can't control it doesn't mean that they should be subjected to terrible living conditions. As moral and reasonable humans, it should be our obligation to protect the animals for the time that they are alive.

Paper concerns

I think I may need to split my paragraphs up a bit more, they're just a little long. The transitions could also use work. I really don't know what could be fixed or changed, since I'm not really that familiar with how rhetorical analysis are properly written. I think my arguments are mostly solid, though they could probably use refining.

SWA6

Advertising is one of the most diverse fields in the world. Advertisements for a single product can be marketed to any demographic; all it takes is for the advertiser to know who they are appealing to, and why they are appealing to them. One type of advertisement is particularly well-known for being treated completely differently based on the intended demographic. Cigarette advertisements have often come under fire for being too appealing to children, but they also can have completely different appeals to adults. Depending on who is reading, however, this can be a good or a bad thing for the company trying to sell their products. Whether it is intentional to avoid having to justify their claims or just a marketing strategy, the advertisers will rarely talk about the product itself, but will instead offer images of people enjoying themselves. Cigarette advertisers want their target audience to associate cigarettes not with health risks, but with having a good time.