Lunsford: Chapter 16 Analysis

The whole point of chapter 16 is evidence. The chapter spoke about different versions of evidence to use to support your argument or to make the best decision. It can be a small argument with a friend over dinner one night or a major decision that influences nations.

Evidence is all about authority, credibility, how it is presented, and in what manner. The chapter showed various ways to gather evidence; Firsthand, interviews, surveys and questionnaires, experiments, personal experiences, Library and online sources and so on.

One section mentioned an example about an argument that a Marine general should use the same tactics as George Washington used based on the evidence that the tactics worked for Washington. But the counter argument is that it worked against a much smaller enemy and it happened in a time where soldiers were still using muskets and were poorly fit for war.Page 471, paragraph 2. I liked that example because it's a great way to explain why some evidence works well, and why some doesn't. Ideas and experiences can change evidence over time. The Marine General is facing an enemy that has technology, intelligence, and more soliders. The evidence is over 200 years old, and the warfare today is more advanced, so the tactics of Washington is very outdated now.


There are various types of evidence to use, ranging from visual evidence, to evidence spoken by those in authority figures. Here's an example I'm using to show visual evidence related to Washington's tactics, and why they would not work today.











The two photos above show the difference in power, mobility, size, and technology between George Washington's time and now. The visual evidence shows that the tactics from the past would not work in the present because of the vast advances in many different fields of warfare.

I have one of my own experiences that applies to chapter 16. It may seem trivial compared to other evidence that plays a role on a much larger scale. My cousin showed me a website on ankle braces for volleyball. The website claimed that the braces would last for 10 years, waterproof, durable, and flexible. But no other evidence other than just the opinion of the person who made the website. I was hooked like a fish, anyway. I bought the very same braces and two weeks later they ripped apart. My mother wanted to show me another website about ankle braces but I was skeptical and wasn't interested at all. She managed to convince me with strong evidence: The website was created and approved by WVF (World Volleyball Federation), and had detailed information, approval seals from all professional sports that used them, and interviews with famous sports stars such as Michael Jordan who said he used them in practice when he had ankle problems. After seeing that evidence, I changed my mind. Next month, I got the braces, and they've been working well since. That experience with the ankle braces showed me if the evidence is credible, and has authority (WVA, and Michael Jordan), and was approved by respectable experts, it can really present a strong case that the ankle braces is a quality product.

In my opinion, I prefer evidence that comes from experiments, because experiments cannot lie. If people cannot believe certain evidence, show them an experiment that supports your evidence like Winn Schwartau did. He showed how it was possible to rob a bank by actually doing it and being successful in it.

In conclusion, evidence is all about finding the right way to present it and the right way to research it and you will have a very strong evidence to use.

Formal Pan's Labyrinth Evalution: Lunsford et al. P. 268

Pan's Labyrinth is a powerful movie that doesn't just make you think, it shatters your illusions and your perspective of what a movie is "supposed" to be. It is a unique and a rare movie that will wow people for years to come. It is one of the best movies that ever came out in years.

For hundreds of years in countless stories from "Cinderella" to "Lord of the Rings" the plot usually conform with what people want it to be. "There is no knight in shining armor to save you", says it all. There are one key element that makes Pan's Labyrinth what it is. Without that element, the movie will vanish in the countless stacks of B-budget movies in history. The element is reality. It's a movie that goes in the opposite direction. Normally, movies that relies heavily on myths and fairy tales has very predictable story lines to follow. The hero(or heroine) saves the day and gets the girl(or guy) basically summarizes fairy tales.

In Pan's Labyrinth, "happily after ever" doesn't happen. That is what makes the movie special. It's unpredictable. If you were watching a batman movie or a superman movie, and when you arrive to the scene when they battle their arch-nemesis, let me ask you this question: "Who wins?" Of course, the answer is the hero. Movies of Pan's Labyrinth's caliber, it would be very difficult to predict it, thus making it more fascinating because you won't know what happens next, because it doesn't follow the rules of people's views of what "it should be" in movies. But what if the hero dies in the movie? An elderly woman sprints and saves a boy scout from an incoming car. These examples never happens in many movies. The point is, movies follow the society's view on how movies should end in their fantasies. Pan's labyrinth went the opposite way and did it in a way nobody expected.

Pan's labyrinth is reality. Ofelia dies, when normally fairy tales calls for her being saved at the last minute. She wasn't saved. That's one major part of the story that sets the table for it all. The picture shows reality as it is, no matter how much we don't like it or deny it, it happens anyway. Pan's labyrinth showed things that we don't want to happen, but happened anyway. Ofelia was shot by her stepfather. The doctor was shot in the back. A young man was bashed in the nose repeatedly and the movie showed every bit of it.

A lot of people denies reality. They stubbornly cling to their idea of illusion. They can't accept what happened in front of their eyes, may it be the hero who gets killed early in the movie because he accidentally trips and falls in a shark pit. They require the main character to lead the movie, to save the day, to give the dramatic one-liners. They require walking off in the sunset at the end, the children to never die, and that good always triumphs over evil. Those people probably won't like Pan's Labyrinth, but in other ways they will love the movie if they ever watch it.

Purdue OWL Website and The Lessons To Learn

The website was interesting because of how it shows its ideas. Too often in countless books and websites, they use long and fancy words to show their points, which just makes it more complicated to understand. Purdue OWL was simple and straight to the point. For example, one page had several points about literary terms at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/575/01/ It wasn't a 20-page overload of specific details. The page summarized it very well with good points and I understood it easily, and I liked the ideas it gave me how to create a story for the future.

One piece of the website that I liked was "Writer's Block/Writer Anxiety". http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/567/01/ I liked it because with it, I'm able to write this more easily. Many ideas from that certain topic I would probably have never thought about it. One idea from it is a one that I will use in the future. It stated if I got a topic which I found boring, then find an aspect of the topic that interests you, which will get the ball rolling.

My favorite part was "Creative Nonfiction in Writing Courses" http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/753/01/ because for some reason since I was young, I always have loved any essays, personal or impersonal and stories that started with a question. It shows what path your mind is going in the essay or story. The question is the key that begins everything. If I made a story about my life, I would begin with this question; "What made me that I am today?" Then after that talk about my experiences, influences and the people I have had met in the 22 years of my existence. Another topic in it, "Generating Ideas for Personal Essays" was good. In the third paragraph, it spoke about how you would want to know what it's like to be a hot dog vendor who puts mustard on two thousands hot dogs every saturday afternoon. It said if you wanted to be able to write and know about it, a good way to do that is spend the afternoon with the food vendor. Talk with him, spread some mustard, and experience it firsthand, so you'll have a deeper and a more personal thing to write about.

I recommend it to any students who has writer's block, struggling for a good topic or something to build on. Purdue OWL will help with that. If you need proof, look no further. My proof is in the blog I just wrote.

Pan's Labyrinth

I think the main theme and idea of the whole movie is disobedience. Del Toro, the director, is trying to tell us that it's okay to go against the flow, rather than conform to what you're "supposed" to do. Often in the movie, Ofeila doesn't follow orders that got her in hot water, but yet that is the way she is. She just wants to do things her way.
Disobedience is not always a good thing. When Ofelia ignored the pleas of the fairies to not eat from the delicious banquet where the monster with eyes in its hands sat and slept at the end of the banquet table. She went ahead and ate some grapes which woke up the monster and lead to the death of two fairies and Ofelia barely escaped. That shows you can't always ignore advice from others who know what they're doing.
However, it can be a good thing sometimes too. Without disobedience, many rebels who fought against the fascist soldiers would be dead because many people who worked for the infamous feared Captain secretly rebelled against him and helped them to win. The doctor and Mercedes worked hard to bring the soldiers' regime down by supplying the rebels with medicine.
I liked how Del Toro portrayed that the girl is on her own, and any mistakes she makes, she'll pay with her own life. In nearly any movie with young children in it, they have guardians who lead and protect them at every turn. Not this movie. There's people and monsters who want to kill Ofeila and no one is coming to save her.
The Captain and how Del Toro made the character interested me. The director made the Captain very methodical, cold, precise, narrow-minded, and a person who depends upon routine. He's shown in the movie that he cleans his pocket watch with care, shave, groom himself, and shines his shoes. Normally, that would be pointless in a lot of movies, but not Pan's Labyrinth. It proves that the Captain is not like many others. He is in a class of himself, and he's willing to do anything that's necessary and he will eliminate anything or anyone who gets in his way.
The end was unique. Ofelia died but yet she passed the test. I liked it because it plays with your mind. Was she truly the princess, and is she really in the underworld with her family now? Or is that all in her mind, and she's just an another dead girl? Through the movie, there are some hints that it may be a fantasy. Near the beginning when the girl read a fairy tale book, and the large insect came scurrying on her bed, and she showed the book to the bug with a picture of a fairy in it, and the bug changed in that. Why the same shape and kind of fairy from the book? Was she just bored and just fantasized about it?
The movie stands out from the rest because it breaks the rules in so many ways. Normally, a fantasy or a fairy tale ends with happiness, ray of lights, and everybody lives. Del Toro broke the rules by doing it in a dark and a different way. It may be different and in our minds we don't want that, and we don't want disobedience because that means trouble, but yet you have to stand up for what you think is right. If disobedience is the right way, then it is.

"Pink Think" Rhetorical Analysis Lunsford et al. page 246.

I think what the point the author is trying to get across is people are brainwashed by society in a way we don't realize. " When a eighteen year old girl says a woman's place is in the home with her husband and children, is she right in saying that? I don't know for truly, but that is narrow-minded to me. Why can't that just be one of many choices rather than the only choice? If a woman wants to be a housewife, so let her, because it's her choice. If she wants to be a doctor, let her.

Lynn Peril, the author has a good connection to the story and she's the right person to write it because she has said in the article that she has experienced the "right way to behave and dress" phase when she was young. She has also showed she didn't like the way women were treated and viewed by men, when she stated in a game called Miss Popularity, which players competed to win and to win, they're viewed and questioned by four pageant judges who decide by legs, figure, voice, and "type". Peril emphasized type by saying "Type", to show she sneers at that kind of idea. She managed to do it without really saying it directly. I agree with her, that women always have been seen as sexual objects and often in high school, it's "cool" to look like the girls you see in the movies or the TV. Peril means women should be judged by their intelligence and personality rather than physical beauty. 

Often, women who has credentials and is more experienced but was overlooked for a young woman who big breasts, a sultry voice and blonde and in men's view, more prettier than the other women, which was why she was chose for the job, even thought she's not qualified for it.

That's not fair. Nobody can control what they look like when they're born. You are who you are. You can't change the way you look.(Unless you count plastic surgery.)

For since mankind began, men were always viewed as the protectors, the bread winners, the "man" of the house. Nowadays, that image is slowly fading. Many women has proved they're equal or better than men at various jobs. There are still many old-school people in the world who still think women shouldn't work a "man's job". You know the quote, "Never send a woman to do a man's job?" That shows how much women's viewed by society and men for a very long time. The people who refuses to be open-minded, one day they may get hurt and the only doctor available will be a female doctor. What would they say then?

Rhetorical Analysis

Tobacco has been around for hundreds of years, and millions upon millions of people smoked it heavily without knowing the consequences and the toll it takes on your body. It makes your teeth yellow, blackens your lungs, makes it harder to breathe, make you more susceptible to cancer, and shorten your lifespan.

Many people don't realize how harmful it is physically and mentally. Without realizing it, they become cranky, restless, and anxious if they don't have their tobacco fix. That's a lot of power that tobacco has over them. The worst thing about it isn't how it damages your body, but the addiction. For people who don't smoke, when they're stressed, unhappy, among other things, what do you do? Relax by reading a book, watch a movie, go out in the town with friends. What does smokers do when they have the same symptoms? They light a cigarette to relieve it, no matter how temporary it is. It becomes a cycle, just going on forever.

In Lunsford et al. 2009, page 109, it talks about tobacco executives brainstorming ideas how to get children into smoking their products. What kind of brilliant ideas they came up with? They thought of introducing fruit-flavored chewing tobacco, tobacco gumballs in an effort to get them hooked.

With all the technology available to us to research, and with all the evidence we have, we can prove tobacco is bad, but yet many people still smoke it anyway. All restaurants, bars and many other places forbids smoking cigarettes now, so that's a step in the right direction. A small step, but an important step.

I remember reading in a basketball magazine called "SLAM", there was one ad in it called "Truth". It said Tobacco companies prepare for the future by advertising their products on signs below counters at stores and many other places at a child's eye level. If we can't protect our next generation, where will it stop? We can't let our children make the same mistakes our generation did growing up with tobacco. The ball is in our court, and it's all up to us to do something with it.

List of this I believe

I believe in...

Humility
Honesty
Embracing Life
Belief in yourself
Love
Family
Honor
Second chances
Courage
Loyalty

Nafisi In Lunsford, Pg. 909.

I like the hidden meaning behind Azar Nafisi's article. What she's saying is go against the current. Don't be a mindless zombie just plopping along, guided by society's hand like a lapdog. Think for yourself, believe in yourself and look within yourself, not outside of yourself. History is littered with people just blindly believing what they learned without a second thought. Remember the Nazis? Many people believe that most Germans think they are an Aryan race, that they want to kill who are not of the same color or beliefs. That is very untrue. What happened is that they were brainwashed by Hitler and his group of Nazis. Millions of young German men are very similar to any young men around the world, only that they had the bad luck of being influenced by the Nazis. If they thought for themselves, maybe history would be different.
Nafisi talked about broadening your horizons, and opening your eyes to different perspectives. I believe certain situations and experiences can do that. Like Huck Finn(Lunsford 2007), Huck grew to respect and view Jim as a human being because they shared their time and experiences together for a long time. I think that applies to anybody, anytime and any place.
One funny thing about people is that often they react and think unconsciously, even when they say they don't do that. A man who could have been robbed by a black man once, and never forgotten about it, even though he's not a racist, but yet when a black person walks by, he grips his wallet without thinking. Did the man react wrong? Perhaps, but is it his fault? No. He does not mean it.
Almost everything in life is acquired by repetition, including thinking for yourself. People can fall in a habit of letting others think for them for years until they don't think at all. It is the same in the opposite way. People can develop a habit of being self-conscious of who you are and what yourself truly wants in life and your own mind.
The point is, no matter who, where, when, or what, everybody should be able to think for themselves, while still listening to others' ways and opinions, but not necessary to commit to their ideals. You may not like it, but you have to respect it.

"Mother Tongue" By Amy Tan

I liked this story because I can actually relate to it in a way. In deaf culture, many deaf people write the way they sign. To English-speaking people it may not make sense, but to other deaf people it makes perfect sense. Tan's mother spoken broken English but in her own world and her culture, it was perfect. How can we dispute such a claim if her Chinese history, culture, style, and grammar is so different from English?

The argument was effective, because it showed that her mother was a brilliant woman who read the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, reads difficult books like Shirley MacLaine's books. Tan's mother knew what she was doing, her only "imaginary barrier" is the prejudice she received from white people who assume she was a stupid woman because she did not speak in perfect grammar.

In the deaf world, a similar prejudice occurs. In writing, "How are you", is a English sentence, however in American Sign Language, people sign; "How you". In signing it is the right thing to say. So, which is which? Yet, when hearing people glance on paper when some deaf write the way they sign, they automatically think they are special-need or retarded, when in reality they can be lawyers, scientists, doctors and teachers.

I see a connection to this from "Using Reason and Common Sense", Page 93. One sentence matches the story is "Consciously or not, people are constantly stating claims, drawing conclusions, and making and questioning assumptions whenever they read or write." In books, Pop culture, movies, theater acting and drawings, many of them are assumed the wrong way. Not all Chinese people do Kung Fu. Not all black people play basketball. Not all Russians play chess.

It is a struggle to overcome cultural differences and changing the way people view others. As Tan put it perfectly, "What I imagined to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her internal language, and for I sought to preserve the essence, but not either an English or a Chinese structure. I wanted to capture what language ability test can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts." I believe that should apply to all languages, especially American Sign Language.

Critical Thinking Applied to the Arts

I found this one very interesting. I don't think art is a singular thing.I don't just mean painting and drawings only. For me, art can be everything. Clothing, signing, motion, faces, games, and so much more. Over the years, I've listened and seen people criticize art. What gives them the authority and the judgment to decide what is beautiful and what is not? A woman who is not physically attractive by society's standards, but yet is very beautiful in the eyes of her husband. Is the husband wrong? I disagree. Everybody has their own perspective of what is beautiful and what is not. Who is right, and who is wrong? I think everyone is right and wrong. There is no middle ground.

I feel influence of others can be a major impact. A child looks up to his father, and wants to emulate him and to please him. To do that, the child will usually follow what the father's views on art are, and over the years it becomes the child's own views. A child growing up hearing his father criticize a certain art, then in turn the child does the same thing. That can make a big difference in criticizing.

While reading "Critical Thinking Applied to the Arts", a story popped up in my mind. I don't know if it's really related to this at all, but yet somehow I feel a connection to this. I remember that I read a story about a group of college students who went to a prison for a experiment. The group was divided in half, one half became prison guards and the other half, prisoners. All was watched by secret cameras hidden around the prison. At the beginning, the "guards" were friendly, helpful, and cheerful. Over the weeks, they slowly changed. They took their jobs very seriously, taunting the prisoners, abusing them and made the prisoners' life a hell and they enjoyed it. It became so bad, the experiment had to be called off. Where did that viciousness come from? Peer pressure? Feeling like you're more superior than others? I thought of that story because very often in art, a "expert" panel judges and chooses which art is genius, and which is not, and often they think average people cannot criticize art as well as the experts themselves can. Eventually, they stop listening to others' opinions and think their own opinions is the only one that matters.

If our perspectives and opinions vary by the billions of the people who inhabit this planet, how do we ascertain who's right and who's wrong? I think you cannot. All you can do is keep an open mind and find out why they like it or don't, rather than just keeping to your own beliefs. Everything is beautiful and everything is not.

GSR reflective blog

Well....*pauses* I'm not sure where quite to begin. I've never, ever touched a blog in my life. Hmm. I hail from the north, but not THAT far north. Apparently, some people think I live in igloos and ride dogsleds to school. Interesting and amusing but not true. I finished high school four years ago, and worked with my dad in carpentry until few months ago, I just decided I didn't want to work that kind of job all my life, and here am I, at GU as an 22-year old freshman. I've seen more deaf people in a day than i have seen in a year back home. That's how small the deaf community up there is.

What's up with Legendary Frog? I honestly cannot answer that. By chance i stumbled across that name about seven years ago on the internet, and that name just stuck to me like a bee to honey. No true reason why i chose that name. I just like the sound(in our case, sight) of it.

I love to play sports, especially basketball and volleyball. i traveled a lot across the country to play volleyball. I was disappointed when i found out GU did not have a men's team. I love to read and watch movies. Manga, anime, horror, action, you name it.

I have a habit of looking serious sometimes, but I got a sense of humor. I love sarcasm. I love jokes. What more can I say? A lot more, but I have a feeling this is enough for now, hopefully.
"I'll be back." If anybody knows that quote, i applaud you. Have a great night.