TOW 10

Michael Ramirez

The political cartoon below is a commentary on Obamacare.  It is meant to be a criticism of how Obama went back on his comment that if you like your healthcare you can keep it.  He later changed this when it was found that millions of people were loosing healthcare they liked.  The comment was then that you couldn’t always keep your healthcare but you could get something “better”.  This cartoon was created by Michael Ramirez, an acclaimed political cartoonist who has won two Pulitzer prizes in so far for his work.  Many of his works contain conservative viewpoints.  In the case of this cartoon, as with most others, humor is a major device.  Ramirez offers a few jokes in his drawling.  The most obvious joke is the women’s retort “What about our president?”  There are also more subtle jokes for example the t-shirt by the character meant to depict Obama is one that says “with stupid” and an arrow at Obama’s character.  These jokes are meant to appeal emotionally and do a good job of this helping to convey Ramirez’s criticism of Obama.  Another aspect, which is subtler, is the dog growling at Obama’s character.  This also appeals to emotion as dogs are often a good judge of character, so with the dog in anger people looking associate themselves with the dog in dislike of Obama.  This cartoon was likely created for conservative minded citizens who also likely pay attention to politics.  This is because he likely targets like-minded people and these conservative minded citizens are fans of his commentary.  Because of this targeting Ramirez knows that he is not trying to change anyone’s political ideals, but instead trying appeal to what they already believe.  It is like an inside joke, he does not to put in much of the context or any logic just emotional appeals and the joke.

IRB 2: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

For my second IRB I am choosing to read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.  I stumbled upon this title when searching simply good non-fiction books.  The title stood out to me, being an odd title, and so I chose to look into it.  This book was one of the first ever self-help books.  It was started in the 1930s as an edited transcript of what Dale Carnegie said at one of his talks.  From there it grew to be one of the most famous books of its genre.  Dale Carnegie was a successful businessman turned lecturer.  When he became a lecturer he was even more successful even spurring Dale Carnegie training, which is still around to this day.  Carnegie put many people through his training including Warren Buffet who was so influenced by it that he still hangs the diploma on his wall.  This book has been revised most recently in 1981 with new anecdotes but still the majority of the ideas have not changed and only a couple was omitted.  This pair of sections included a section on how to write good business letters, which was the shortest in the entire book, and also a section on how to have a better marital life.  I do not know why these sections were omitted but they work out to be more positive for me as I am not yet married and letters in business are essentially obsolete.   This book was written with the intent of helping people to better themselves.  Its ideas can be stretched to any number of topics from business to everyday life because although the situation may change the general idea of it will not.  This book is a way of understanding how to succeed in the world by understanding how it works.  

TOW 9: Complexity and the Ten-Thousand-Hour Rule by Malcolm Gladwell

In his article from the New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell defends his point from his book Outliers.  This point, about the ten thousand hour rule, came under fire.  One criticism came from Time magazine and said that talent had nothing to do with how good you innately are.  The author’s comments being that Gladwell meant that no matter how good you were at the beginning, if you spent 10,000 hours you would be top tier were misunderstood as what Gladwell truly meant was that to be proficient you must add 10,000 hours on top of initial skill.  He also contradicted another mans critique that this rule did not apply to some categories for example sprinter because he’d, “Never seen a boy who was slow become fast.”  To this Gladwell responds that it is “complex” tasks that this rule is essential.  This article is likely targeted at people who have already read his book and are also simply a fan of his writing, as there is little other reason as to why you would stumble upon it.  One method that Gladwell uses to get his point across is direct response.  He directly cuts apart what the critiques commented about his work and instead of simply criticizing the entire works he specifically picks out the points that they make to criticize.  He over simplifies their writings as a way of showing how they oversimplified the 10,000 hours theory in the wrong way.  Although this theory is not something that cannot be simplified and sill understood well he realizes that this is the issue with the writing of the other authors and uses their mistakes as a way of highlighting their failures.  The oversimplification at the same time also makes it easier for Gladwell to point out the flaws in their reasoning and counteract their arguments.

TOW 7: Outliers part 2

Since my last post about Gladwell’s book Outliers some of the ideas differ.  The ideas switch from those of pure work, like his 10,000 hours idea, to that of prior circumstances.  He lists one of the main attributes to success as being your heritage.  An example he gives of this is why Asians are so good at math.  The first reason he gives is linguistic.  Where as English words for numbers are complex and long Chinese terms are short and simple.  A word like seven is qi.  This difference allows a longer numerical memory.  Secondly, the simplicity in the names makes it easier.  Instead of numbers like fifteen they are literally one-ten-and-five.  This makes concepts much simpler to grasp.  The next thing he cites is the culture.  Asian cultures grew growing rice, a much more labor-intensive job than wheat.  This culture of more work holds firm and is not just a stereotype but also a cultural trait.  All of this information is drawn from great sources and compiled by Gladwell into another award winning book.  It is also a way of sharing insight into his view on how success forms itself.  One way, besides his anecdotes, that Gladwell does this is through his appeals to authority.  One thing about Gladwell’s writing is that it gives little new information, it is more the compilation of other scientist theories and experiments into one mass theory.  One thing that Gladwell constantly does to get his point across is to say that these aren’t simply his ideas but he gives credit where it is due.  He utilizes the resources of many scientists in a way that he can put their ideas together to make a whole.  In using all of these strong sources he is also strengthening himself, because it is not simply one man’s theory, but the compilation of many scientists results.