TOW #14 Santa Claus Article

Eric Kaplan, a sitcom producer who write books on philosophy on the side, wrote this article advertising the belief in Santa Claus for adults that he might describe as having an open mind. This article was published in the New York Times opinion section. Kaplan argues that society should try to believe in Santa Claus through references to culture, and through avoidance of the question at hand.

Kaplan’s text is soaked with cultural references, trying anything it can to overwhelm Santa’s impossibility with sentiment associated with him. By comparing him to fairies, the Gift of the Magi, and the intangible but commonplace concepts of “Family” and “Democracy” (para. 9), Kaplan attempts to rationalize a very different intangible concept, Santa Claus. It does this in two ways, the first being submitting that A, no one knows with 100 percent certainty the existence of God, Santa, or anything for that matter. By using cultural references, Kaplan attempts to blur the lines between what we consider real and what we have deemed fictional.

The second way the text tries to justify Santa Claus, is by avoiding the direct question, “Is Santa Claus real?” Kaplan argues that it is beneficial to believe in Santa Claus, and argues that it is possible as a society to make yourself believe in something, even arguing against, “utilitarian rationality,” (para. 6). All of his points are well substantiated and well argued, even if the section on societal self-deception sounded frighteningly Orwellian, but they only seem to work as a cohesive argument because the inconvenient fact of Santa Claus’s nonexistence is never addressed.

At the end of the day, I don’t believe Kaplan was actually trying to convince anyone that there is a Santa Claus. He was arguing that we should believe that there is a Santa Claus. While the latter argument is well argued through the text and effectively handled with rhetorical devices, the former argument is the claim of the text. The former argument is officially what Kaplan is attempting to convince his audience of, and in that sense this text is of course very, very ineffective. 

TOW #13 Stinging Insects IRB Part 1

Edward Saunders, a etymologist, attempts teaches the public the basics of stinging insects with the purpose of inspiring. His intended point, as Saunders explains, is “take up the subject and add to our present scanty stock of information," (vi). In order to convert a casual reader into a well versed enthusiast, Saunders both animates the content and arranges the text in a way that a professor might, so that knowledge is built upon to understand more complicated ideas.

While everyone is familiar with stinging insects, most of our knowledge is about what they look like and how to avoid them. Saunders describes the laying of parasitic eggs into paralyzed living prey, “In consequence of this wonderful maternal instinct, foresight, or whatever the faculty may be, the larva when hatched finds fresh food ready for consumption,” (18). In order to spark life into the topic, Saunders uses creative language to discuss the intimate behaviors and family structure with which we may not be familiar.

Saunders's work is structured like a curriculum. The first section introduces the basics of each stinging insect. The next section describes different areas of study in the lives of the insects and tackles different hot topics in entomology, such as sexual dimorphism or pollination. The final section, as can be assumed from the titles of those chapters listed in the table of contents, is full of overarching ideas such as "On Colour" (119) or "On Structure" (132). This academically styled organization allows the general public to understand a breadth of information at various levels of complexity with the hopes that one area or another might spark some interest.

Yet, this work is more than it appears on the surface. The "humble bee" spoken of in this text, had been assumed to be a British variant on the bumblebee. However, humble bee is an old-fashioned term. This book was written at the turn of the twentieth century before the word bumblebee had been invented. It is very impressive that this work is still effective in its arrangement and style 104 years later.

TOW #12 Movie Theater Article

This New York Times article reports on movie theaters using more extreme presentation methods, for example artificial rain or moving seats, in order to attract a waning younger audience that was once a dependable demographic. Brooks Barnes, the author of this article, seems embittered by the shift, as he attempts to convince his readers that this is a cheapening of the movie experience through clever use of lists and a supposedly detached tone.

            Barnes is very fond of lists in this article. Far more than the expected amount is present. For example, Barnes describes the lives of teenagers, “Or they are at least busying themselves with video games, living room wide-screen televisions and devices that can pull up thousands of movies with a couple of clicks.” In any situation that could conceivably be described with a list without disrupting the flow, you can expect a list. The purpose seems to be to drive home the over-complication and excess of modern movie theater presentation and the modern world in general. It’s a clever tactic and is effective to a point, until it becomes distracting.

Perhaps a more subtle strategy is Barnes’s carefully constructed tone. Refusing to actually make any comment or direct judgment, Barnes instead presents the opinions of others that agree with him. For example, Barnes reports, “For many cinephiles, this is sacrilege. Even some Hollywood executives joke about bringing motion-sickness bags and raincoats.” It’s a way of speaking that gives the impression of an impartial reporter summarizing a general public’s opinions, but still allows the author to direct the takeaway of the text.

            Barnes’s careful tone and arrangement of the text is highly effective and not immediately obvious. While reading the article, one should keep in mind that the New York Times was once merely a newspaper and has been forced to modernize and pander to a younger internet-savvy generation. If Barnes is an older writer for the Times, this may explain his attitude towards similar shifts in the cinema. Whatever the reason, his heart or his shoes, he seems well prepared to state his case on modernization.

TOW #11 Live Science Article

In an article on Live Science, Calla Cofield reports on the discovery of two examples of baryons produced in the proton smashing facility known as the Large Hadron Collider. Based on the level of terms explained in the article, such as protons, this article is directed at readers with casual interests in science. Cofield takes advantage of that. This article exaggerates the importance of the discovery of Xi_b'- and Xi_b*- by oversimplifying and comparing it to the discovery of the Higgs boson.

            While it is important to make science easier for readers like you and me to understand, sometimes the most accurate way is to avoid complicated points rather than reduce them. In Cofield’s article, she writes, “This is part of the Standard Model — the reigning theory of particle physics that outlines how the universe should behave,” (para. 9). This explaination portrays combinations of quarks as being central to the Standard Model and by extension the universe. The effect is powerful. Even though there are at least hundreds of combinations of quarks into baryons and mesons, plus combinations of particles in the Standard Model which aren’t quarks, this article makes the discovery of two baryons seem a profound step toward universal knowledge.

            Additionally, Cofield details a more important discovery that occurred in the same facility. She writes, “The discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson also represented the final piece of the puzzle predicted by the Standard Model,” (para. 11). By placing the discovery of the baryons in proximity to the Higgs, Cofield implies some comparable level of importance. However, it backfires. Juxtaposing the discovery of the particle which donates mass to the entire universe with the two most recent pieces of evidence for an accepted theory underlines the degree to which Cofield embellishes.

            Since 2008, the Large Hadron Collider has been producing important information about particles. However, some articles extend the importance of the collider's more ground-breaking research to trivial of experiments. Methods like simplification can make an esoteric but conventional occurrence seem like a miracle of science, but comparing one to the other is bound to reveal the discrepancy.

TOW #10 Guernica

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The title of this painting is the name of a place among the likes of Warsaw or Hiroshima, which have become synonymous with the terrible attacks that occurred there. In 1937, the Spanish town of Guernica was bombed by German planes. Spain was fighting a civil war, and the Nazis were “supporting” the Nationalist party as an experiment for war strategies and weapons. The attack’s resulting fires cost the lives of predominantly women and children. Spanish-born Pablo Picasso had obvious connections to the tragedy and was already a very well known painter. He immediately dropped the painting requested of him by the Spanish government, to begin work on Guernica.

The Spanish government had asked him to paint a piece for one of the most significant exchanges of ideals in the early 20^th century. This exchange was the 1937 Paris Expo. The main events of the Expo were the opposing Communist and Nazi pavilions, each equipped with extravagant artwork (read propaganda). The strain of international conflict hung heavy on Expo guests. At the time, the war-centric work Guernica received little accolade in a world two years away from being thrust back into global war.

Since then, the piece’s powerful imagery and composition have become important symbols of the horrors of war. Like cubism, the painting takes multiple angles of perspective on a subject and composes them all into a single fractured image. A wailing mother on the left side holds her dead child. Bodiless faces to the right show terror and concern. The focus on expressions and personal interaction attempts to humanize the statistics of death and injury. At least two animals are present, a bull and a horse, both of which have open mouths and wide eyes. These may be symbols of working class farm life, innocence, and nature, which war is about to destroy. Even the coloring is a monochromatic blue and the composition is a whirlwind. These two elements suggest a chaotic tendency towards war that is unending and unchanging. Even without analysis of individual images or the benefit of research, the painting is clearly cautionary and effectively so. Its continued use in classrooms and museums is evidence of its effective message of, “Peace or else”.

Works Cited

"1937 Paris." Bie-Paris.org. Official Site of the Bureau International Des Expositions, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
"Guernica." Spanish Masterworks: Pablo Picasso: (1937). Spanish Arts, 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.
"Pablo Picasso." PabloPicasso.org. Pablo Picasso Paintings, Quotes, and Biography, 2009. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

IRB 1 - Introduction

Hello, new readers. This week, my Independent Reading Book will be a look into the world of insects. It's an introduction for the amateur naturalist called Wild Bees, Wasps and Ants and Other Stinging Insects by entomologist Edward Saunders. The preface is plainly written but is formal and professional. Hopefully, this will carry through and I will enjoy a book that effectively communicates without becoming too conversational. I'm looking forward to learning the minutia that separate a fire ant from its non-toxic cousin.