TOW 19

            After so much money has flowed into China due to their cheap labor costs some of it is finally coming back.  In “Choose me! No, me!” The Economist, a prominent financial magazine with a mainly educated, older audience, paints a picture of how small town American politicians are looking towards Chinese investors as a way of supplying jobs.  One strategy that helps get the essays point across is the way in which it is structured.  The article starts out by talking about a specific Alabaman mayor, Sheldon Day.  Day is spotlighted because he has visited China a few times all in an effort to bring back jobs, and has even done so through his convincing of one company to build its first factory on U.S. soil.  From this specific example zooms out wide to talk about the topic on a nation wide scale talking about such things as China’s direct investments in America raising by about 71% a year between 2008 and 2012.  After this it cites a few more specific examples only spending about a sentence or two on each.  From there it moves more to the controversy of the topic, talking about how some people are reluctant to let their mayors spend their tax money on expensive trips to China, and if it’s really something that they should be doing.  The last thing the article does is leave it on a controversy, that an Alabaman business delegation said that they would love to gain investments from a Chinese company, Huawei, which has been accused of cyber spying by people in Washington.  It uses this to come full circle saying that Mayor Day would not go that far.  This structuring worked well because it showed a little bit of everything and flowed well.  It talked about specifics and the overall, positives and the negatives and the extent to which it would go.  In all the way this essay was written furthered the points they were trying to get across effectively.

TOW 18

With the raise of minimum wage being an important part of President Obama’s plans the editorial board of the New York Times decided to weigh in.  With the Times being a liberal based group the opinions of the piece match suit.  The opinion of the piece was that the raise of the minimum wage would be a positive move, and the authors tried to structure the piece to make it clear.  The essay uses a structure in which they state a question frequently asked about minimum wage in general and then they answer said question.  The structure is often effective as it allows the author to logically answer the question while also focusing the readers’ thoughts.  In this case however this strategy was not as effective.  This was because the answers were weakly defended.  Answering questions that you get to hand pick should be simple enough and also easy to back up, but that is where this essay fails.  It answers the questions with an ideological outlook that does not delve deeper into issues and that does not consider the greater consequences of any choice.  One of the greatest examples of this is in the last section.  The last section deals with whether or not it cuts jobs to equate the money spent in the pay hikes.  They answer that it doesn’t kill jobs because, “Instead, they pay up out of savings from reduced labor turnover, by slower wage increases higher up the scale, modest price increases or other adjustments.”  So, it doesn’t kill jobs because they will find a way to pay for them.  This is one of the many logical fallacies that harm the essays ethos and cause it to gain less effect through its well set up structure.  If it was to take out these fallacies and was to be written with more thorough answering of the questions it’s asking it could be an effective paper, but in its current state the structure serves no benefit.

TOW 17

How can you get someone’s attention in under a minute and make it worth a few million dollars.  That is the question that many companies ask when they make their commercials for the Super Bowl.  As they are investing millions simply for the airtime for a single commercial, companies have to make every second count.  Companies have been making jokes about the commercials themselves and have used multiple coordinated commercials to get the point across.  One example where both of these are used well was in the Wonderful Pistachios commercials.  The commercials by Wonderful Pistachios were a series of two commercials.  The first one was like most of their commercials, a joke by a celebrity endorsing pistachios.  Stephan Colbert was the center figure accompanied by a matching bald eagle in an American looking room.  They then stared out by making a basic joke, “I’m wonderful, they’re wonderful,” and that was about it.  Thirty seconds later however the commercial was vastly different.  The conservative commercial was replaced by a heavily endorsed commercial filled with as many logos as possible including Stephan Colbert wearing a suit that was covered with the brands name and was finished with Colbert splitting his head and having a pistachio inside.  This commercial utilized humor as a hooking factor.  The humor works well for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the humor causes people to pay attention.  Secondly, because Wonderful Pistachios knows there is no real logos or ethos that they can use to get people to buy their product they have to use pathos.  Because of this they choose humor to get their point across because it is really their only possible method.  They then use a celebrity sponsor because it allows them to have a divers group of jokes.  This utilization of humor works well and captures the audience’s attention and although, “sales of pistachios have not skyrocketed,” the commercial still accomplishes its purpose through humor.

IRB 3

For my third IRB I am going down a different route.  My first two books were based around ideas and were concepts.  This marking period however, I am going with a book that is based purely on real events.  This marking period I am going to read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.  I chose this book because I enjoy the outdoors and I like things like hiking and backpacking.  Also, since the Appalachian trail is so close to home I have thought of hiking long segments of it and so I’d like to see what he says about it to see a first hand perspective.  I have also heard that it is a humorous interesting book and it might be a good way to change up what I have been reading so far.