Snopesy

Until now I had never heard of this website making this an interesting venture into the world of rumors, which is not particularly my favorite topic.  As I entered Snopes.com I browsed through the home page and quickly realized this is not a site I would regularly browse because it just seemed to be a large collection of very few significant stories and a whole lot of bullshit.  Although after a while on the website I did find a few stories that sparked some interest, particularly one about “420”.  I found this to be a cool topic because we all hear it so much, but no one knows what it means; the article surprisingly seemed to be very well-written and credible.  So I believe that the writers of this page know what they are doing, a little too well perhaps.  They know what people want to hear, bullshit.  It’s a pretty creative way to present news, and an interesting idea to incorporate everything found on social media in their topic selection as well.  As for the evidence of bias, I didn’t come across any during my time on the website.  However the site in general seems to me like it isn’t completely serious so it would not surprise me if there were some biased opinions.  

The Sentinel

I read through the latest edition of The Sentinel and I was very impressed.  The stories and articles were very well written while still concise and to the point.  They seem to cover most aspects of what is going on here at Kennesaw State University.  Whether it is upcoming events, past events and how they turned out, or even disturbances on campus The Sentinel will probably cover it in a professional and interesting manner.  A particular article I enjoyed was one covering the “Mental Health Matters Week” which took place March 16 through March 19 and was apparently a huge success.  The event was set up by the CPS, who wanted to have stress relieving activities for anyone to enjoy.  They had a multitude of arts and crafts that really helped keep a calm environment for college students to relax and get rid of some of their mental stress.  Another article that caught my attention was one from a representative for the culinary office here at KSU.  He went over the recent petition that students presented to the college in order to have the commons stay open longer.  He announced that this will indeed happen, and mentioned how important it is for the students to participate in what is happening on their own campus.  I think that is really great that the faculty here at KSU are supporting that students take initiative for what they want, and I think it is great that The Sentinel is covering encouraging news such as this.  

Israel-Gaza Conflict

There was an article in The Lancet called "An Open Letter for the People of Gaza" that discussed the oppression and slaughter of innocent Gaza civilians by the Israelis.  It was written by doctors and scientists that were trying to gain awareness for the problems going on in Gaza.  The article speaks about The blockade Israel has put around Gaza, the terroristic attacks on Gaza civilians, and the war crimes being committed by Israel.  There goal in writing this article was to get as many people to understand the issues going on and join their cause to help the people of Gaza and denounce this Israeli aggression.  Although not everyone was too intrigued by the article.  A response letter that was written by a reader of the article named Bruce Marmor described this article as "inacurate" and "prejudiced".  Marmur was appalled that this was published in a medical journal considering it is concerning political issues.  He says in the letter that the writers show no sympathy for other countries having similar, or worse, situations.  He completely contradicts the article and says that we should sympathize with the people of Israel who are being attacked and persecuted by Hamas.

This is the article:

 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61044-8/fulltext

This is the response letter:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61191-0/fulltext

Analyzing Literature

I am honestly not a big reader, I never really have been.  I have dyslexia and it took me longer than most kids to start reading.  Although I have read books on my leisure before, there have only been two that I truly enjoyed.  The first was Eragon, and the second was The Giver.  I later ended up writing a literary analysis over The Giver in high school and it went very well.

Writing a literary analysis is not quite my favorite type of writing but I have never found it to be a problem.  If I really enjoyed reading the book that I am going to be writing about then the analysis is not bad, in fact I sometimes find it fun.  It allows me to really evaluate my thoughts and ideas about the book, and is like a blank canvas that I can lay out my opinions on.  One assignment that I found very difficult was writing an analysis of one of Shakespeare’s works.  I had this assignment for my high school English class my senior year.  I did not do very well on this project; I have never been a fan of Shakespeare because I have never been able to truly understand his stories (textually or symbolically). 

During my Composition I class here at KSU I did a literary analysis of an excerpt from a non-fiction book.  I found this to be somewhat boring, although I did have a strong opinion on the ideas of the excerpt making it easy to write about.  I believe the Module 9 analysis I will be doing over A Sound of Thunder will not be too big of an issue because I find the theories and ideals of the book very interesting.  

My Major

During high school I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  I was pretty sure I would go to college, because I made fairly good grades and my parents were willing to help me out with the pay, but it really worried me that I did not know what my major would be.  After a lot of thought and contemplation I decided on being a nursing major, I figured that I like to help people and it sounded like an interesting job.  That quickly changed after I took nursing chemistry my first semester of college.  I decided that nursing would be way too much science for me, and was back to square one with no major.  So I did some research on engineering majors and business majors to see what I could find.  Engineering sounded interesting but still required a lot of science classes, and business seemed alright but not all that interesting.  After looking further into business majors I found out about The Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Program here at Kennesaw State University.  It is a program that can be joined in your junior year of college that teaches about the business side of music and entertainment.  I was immediately interested when I found it and decided to learn more.  After doing some more research on the topic I decided I want to do something related to music.  I want to work as an event manager, work with a record label, or run a recording studio and to do so I am planning on majoring in Business Management and starting junior year with The Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Business Program.  

My Average Day

An average day of research for me often involves both Academic and everyday research. When it concerns academic research, I often get on Google to look up broad terms for homework. For example, if I don't understand certain topics in my math homework I will often Google it and click on a reputable source for reference. I also do school research for actual research assignments such as English essays. One source I use to find articles for essays is Galileo. Since I usually need to have scholarly sites, Galileo is the perfect site to use to see articles about the subject I'm researching. When it comes to determining if the sources I use are reliable, I look at the author or the publisher to see if they are a reputable source. For example, authors who have been published already or who are well-versed in this particular subject can be seen as reputable source while those who are just stating opinions are not.  Other than research for school, I often use the internet to research randomly through out the day when I hear about something that interest me. For example, the other day a friend and I were talking about states that have legalized marijuana, and I conveniently looked it up on my phone to find out which states had indeed changed their laws. Doing research like this during the day helps me to feel more knowledgeable about the everyday subjects I encounter and is also an enjoyable thing to learn about and know.

Rhetorical Analysis of the Share a Coke Campaign

I am writing about the recent ad campaign that was sweeping the nation this summer: The Share a Coke Campaign.  The idea is very simple, they start selling cokes with the top 250 most popular names in the United States on them.  They then throw advertisements out all over the place suggesting that you buy a coke with a friend or family member's name on it and share it with that person.

This campaign was meant to expand the sales of Coca Cola especially to those that hadn't tried it before.  It was an extremely successful campaign with an increase in sales dollars of 2.5% in the last year.  The reason for this is because the message of the campaign is to share, and someone sharing a coke with a friend is essentially advertisement in itself.

In this advertisement it starts out with a girl buying cokes from a store and having obvious interest in the cashier.  She continues coming back to get more and more cokes with her and her friends, who seem to just have the most wonderful times while drinking coke.  Then at the end of the commercial the girl finally invites the cashier to come outside and party in the streets with them (or whatever it is they are doing).  

The reason that this commercial was so successful was because of the use of the rhetorical triangle.  From start to finish we see plenty of pathos: the happy music, the chemistry between the girl and the cashier, the fun that these kids have together, the heartfelt love story theme, and last but not least when the girl grabs the cashier's hand at the end of the commercial.  These are all examples of things that appeal to our emotions, thus being categorized as pathos.  Although ethos is not quite as apparent in this commercial as pathos it is indeed still there.  I found ethos in this commercial with the use of the famous coca cola logo.  The logo is placed fairly often throughout the advertisement, this is an example of ethos because what is more credible and well-known than the coca cola logo?  I had a hard time trying to find anything related to logos in this commercial considering that the commercial itself if fairly illogical (I kind of doubt that coke really makes people have that much fun).  So, i am just going to say that the appeal for this particular commercial is mostly pathos and ethos.  

This campaign was a very well thought out plan to bring sales up and was extremely successful in doing so.  I am sure that coca cola will have more great ads to come in the near future and i am excited to see what they bring to the table.