Final Exam: Vaccines

The anti-vaccination debate analysis

Field Map

The rhetoric of sports communication

Analysis of Visual Rhetoric

This image was on the website, Social Times, which has articles about games, apps, social media and other advertising and marketing topics. The purpose of the graphic was for informational and functional purposes. Since the two teams playing in this NBA playoffs were both in the southern part of the United States, it was obvious that the most tweets would be coming from people in nearby states. Since the two infographics are very similar, it would have been helpful if the article gave more of a description discussing the differences in the maps. Also the title of the article was "26.7 Million Tweets Sent During NBA Finals, 150,000 Tweets Per Minute Game 7 Peak" which could not be gathered from these tweet maps. The legend for the maps stated that the different colors represented the number of tweets per million population, so if the audience is not familiar with the population of each states, then it would be impossible to infer how many tweets actually were coming from those states. Since there was no caption for the two maps and they looked relatively similar, this was an ineffective way to compare tweets about the two teams unless the purpose was to show that there was no significant difference between the numbers of tweets about each team.

The Ethics of Expediency

Katz Article

• a piece can be written "technically correct" if it has all of the parts that the technical piece requires but still have "flaws" in regards to other types of rhetoric (ethics/ethos)
• in persuasive argument we have learned in my speech class two types:
• problem solution
• problem cause solution
• how can you use logic to persuade
• making the voice of the argument less personal (to remove responsibility)
• sometimes technical writing can make a topic trivial and vague emotionally
• clear, easy to understand

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• to write well is to have power
• can do good or bad things
• Cicero: the good man speaking (ethical, moral)
• Ex. Hitler, a good speaker, rhetorician, influenced many people --but without virtue
• "put weapons in the hands of madmen"
•  what words are not used?
• "persons", "humans"
• PROBLEM: that it is so stripped down emotionally on a topic that has a lot of emotion tied to it.

Ethics

• where do they come from?
• teachers, parents, peers, Bible, laws (government and natural), religion, conscience, media, societal norms, experience (nature vs. nurture), role models, employer,
• Philosophy --> Logical (things we don't think about)
• What's wrong? Why?
• hitting, cheating, stealing, lying, killing, adultery, incest, selfishness, greed, lust, gluttony, envy, laziness
•  What's right? What's the value?
• honesty
• loyalty
• protection of property
• Without ethics?
• chaos
• anarchy
• death

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

I think you could relate this passage to unboxing a black box. Since the output (record player) wasn't exactly to the turtoises' specifications and wasn't "perfect" he set out to have one created that was indeed "perfect". This meant he had to think about the details of the record player, the sounds it made and the materials it was made of. Many times we just accept the completed product and even if we are not completely happy with it we do not make suggestions to the manufacturer on ways to make the product better or more to our individual likings, we assume that we are the only ones who would want a specific detail added or removed. He also mentions the workings of musicians and poets as well and what goes into creating their masterpieces as well.

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• laws: 
• what goes up must come down
• once you have a law there is a possibly that there is a contradiction to the law
•  how do we figure out truth?
• dialectic to create rhetoric (Plato)
• Contracrosticpunctus: acrostics
• levels of hidden meaning
• if you had a machine that could fix itself before it broke, could it ever be broken?

Self Made Man by Jonathan Kingdon

• can history be scientific?
• we can use scientific measures in historical manners
• is history fact?
• Dates, names and locations can be factual
• there will always be bias depending on who is relaying the history
• history is based on experience
• we are constantly learning about history, and the learning will be never ending since each present moment eventually becomes history
• what history is the most important, recent history or the origins of mankind?
• what can we learn most from?

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• we come from a common ancestry--
• spasms of sexual chemistry, that pass on their genes
• everyone that has come before us had sex, eaten, lived
• acknowledging those who came before us
• sex as passing on a baton

Writing for Science 4/15

Chapter 6: Scientifc Visuals

• to make the argument
• Ex. recolored to make meaning
• dye or electron microscopy to differentiate imagery
•  

Latour Chapter 2

• shifting from literature --> laboratories
• how do the devices help them write things down?
• studying scientists as outsiders
• following them at work
• how else do they figure out the world besides writing?
• "essential to visit the places where the fields/papers are happening/written"
• how do we move backwards to see where the journal articles are written
• what is an English/Literature laboratory?
• have text of Huck Finn
• word document or piece of paper
• other sources
• extracted, clean, redrawn, end result
• actual visual display of the mess
• can go back and forth between "clean and mess"
• inscription device:
• scale: temperature display
• machines: MRI, CAT
• poetry: text generators, 
• a test taster for quality
• a scanner: ex. looking at an ancient text
• to communicate

J.B.S Haldane: On Being the Right Size

• no matter what size, shape, composition you are, everyone has problems and inconviences
• "the higher animals are not larger because they are more complicated, they are more complicated because they are larger"
• evolution has allowed them to adapt
• so who is the most efficient?

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• giants are impossible if they have the same proportions of anatomy as regular humans
• the case of insects
• need to be small for the way they "breathe"
• "Super Bugs" would not exist
• Interesting how this is kind of disapproving of the creatures that are used in horror films
•  How do we get the common man (working man) to want to read science?

Alan Turing: Computer Machinery and Intelligence

• humans can be "machine-like" too
• when we are simply relaying information or reading from a script, are we actually "thinking"?
• The robot cannot write poetry, why?
• poetry is creative
• it could tell a joke and pull from a database, write an essay and use facts and reason
• human experience can be genetically passed down as well and our relationships can affect how we deal with later experiences and how our children do
• language can be taught with punishment and reward--social synapse
• predicting other's behavior based on past history (experience)

Writing Analysis Paragraph

 Formal writing can vary depending on the topic on hand. In general formal writing is a more difficult read, using longer sentences, and precise but sometimes unknown terms. The article written in the Journal of Sports Economics, “Political Correctness, Selection Bias, and the NCAA Basketball Tournament”, Paul & Wilson, 2015, uses less scientific terms and formulas and more theoretical terms and program based language. This language is used since the audience for this journal is more likely to be those interested in either the economics, sociology or theoretical calculations behind sports rather than experimental scientists. The average words per sentence was 24, which is considered to be a complex sentence, and the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease was 37.4. This means the article is meant to be read by at least university students. Jargon terms such as “running up the score” (203) are put in quotation marks, and are the main reasoning behind the long sentences as they use subordinate clauses to include definitions and/or explanations of these terms. Although this article was found using a scientific article database, the format of the article is not in the typical IMRAD format, at least for headings. The article does include several of the sections of IMRAD including an introduction and statistical methods section, but they are not split up by paragraphs or headings, and the only headings are Abstract, Economic Rationale Behind Tournament Selection, Regression Results, and Conclusion. Another notable observation is the use of “We” and the repetition of “we believe”, “we wish” and “we consider.” The first person writing style in combination with the statistical methods effectively relates back to the idea of human and computer error and biases in the topic of selecting teams for the NCAA basketball tournament.

Latour Chapter 1 and Intro

Intro: The Black Box

• instead of looking simply at the finished product we should look at the process--"Science in the Making" (from the view of an anthropologist)
• "Where can we start a study of science and technology?"
• **good point for photographing the work places for our field map
• go backwards from the "point of invention"
• when did  people even start thinking about making the invention?
• science is not FIXED--will these black boxes get reopened? How do we know which ones and when?
• black boxing: scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs not on its internal complexity."
• the more the output is positive/consistent, the less we care about "how" as long as it's still producing

• How did truth become?
• when things hold they start becoming true
• when things are true they hold 

• Science/Knowledge in the making is create --> fact in textbook

From Weaker to Stronger Rhetoric--Chapter 1 Literature

• modalities: sentences that modify or qualify another one
• positive modalities: sentences that lead a statement away from its conditions of production
• negative modalities: sentences that lead a statement in the other direction towards its condition of product, why it is solid or weak instead of using it to render some other consequences more necessary
• facts and fact making:
• made more of a fact depending on how it is inserted into sentences
• Rhetoric: name of the discipline that studies how people are made to believe and behave and how to persuade others
• argument from authority: appeal to higher and more numerous allies
• using peer review, former texts/studies --> more accuracy/persuasive
• citations
• perfunctory
• context
• paradigm
• stratified: texts become more technical with the mobilization of new elements brought in from other people and papers

Children's Book: Track and Field Encyclopedia for Children

Children's Book on ISSUU

LIttle Men and Flying Saucers by Loren Eiseley

• Is there a point to learn about our origins or worry about the future?
• If we all come from different paths, what is the reason for us trying to find out about them? 
• Can our past really tell us about our future, and why should we want this?
• I think the problem is that, even though we may be the only species who can "think" it is also possible to think too much, to worry, and have anxiety about the past and the future.
• It would be better to simply accept who we are and where we came from and live life in the present, and then maybe we wouldn't be so lonely.
• We wouldn't be lonely because we would be interacting with others who are also living in the present instead of trying to relate with people who aren't alive anymore or who aren't alive yet.

The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin

• Is life as we know it a result of a mathematical model?
• How is it that we are able to change our futures based on our present actions?
• I do not believe there is simply one concept of reality, reality is however an individual sees the world, which is far from the same for everyone.
• I think there may have been some mathematically explained beginning, but since then we change the world in unmathematical ways.
• You could use faith and religion to describe everything, or you could say that God has given us mathematical models in order to explain this phenomenon. Either way, mathematics alone cannot explain reality, there must be a combination of theories and subjects to explain it.

Technical Review: Fake Bake Flawless Self-Tanning Liquid

Is your skin so pale that you blend in with piles of snow from this winter? Then, Fake Bake Flawless Self-Tanning Liquid is your solution! The spray bottle comes with a professional mitt to ensure minimal streaking. You won’t have to worry about anyone will telling you to try out for the next Jersey Shore season since your tan will will look as natural as if you Spring Breaked in Florida or some other sunny location. You can also decide how dark you would like your tan to be by applying more solution. You can go from Olaf to Cinderella, to even Princess Jasmine if you desire.

Medium version 

3/6/15 Writing for Science

Scientific Journals

• social and collaborative nature
• peer reviewed
• to ensure that other scientists can "follow, assess, and replicate" presented findings
• professional standard of validity
• types of journals/research articles
• empirical/experimental
• methodological
• theoretical
• review
• case study
• IMRAD
• Introduction
• framework for research
• background, significance
• specific purpose
• primary results and conclusions
• Methods/Materials
• straightforward
• complete/precise/detailed
• design, instruments, techniques, procedures, measurement
• Results
• most important part, but shortest part
• can permit use of visuals
• graphs, photos, tables
•  "hourglass or egg timer"
• broader beginning and end funneling toward specific data in middle
• and 
• Discussion
• freer hand than previous sections
• brief reminder of important findings
• move toward progressively more generalized statements, relationships and connections
• major patterns
• compare to other previous or current work
• unresolved issues, discrepancies
• predictions, future research
• solution to posed problem
• implications

• abstract also follows IMRAD model but with summarizing paper
• Ethics
• authorship credit
• originality of research
• multiple publication
• treatment of sources
• intentionally misrepresented data

Pop vs. Pro: The science behind the “munchies”

Two people tell a story about the same event to two different people. One is telling their friend this story, and another is telling the story to an interviewer. Although they are talking about the same event, each person is going to have their own spin on the story, and depending on who they are talking about, details might be explained differently or even left out. When telling my friend about my college experience I most likely am going to be a lot more explicit with my word choice, use some slang or inside jokes, and tell stories that I think my friend would think are interesting or funny. When telling an interviewer about my college experience I might focus more on what I learned, who I met, and how I have changed and leave out details about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I am still talking about one topic, my college experience, and yet these two stories are going to be much different. The same goes for scientific topics. Depending on who the author is, who the audience is, and what the context is, the story is going to be portrayed differently.

Nature is an international weekly journal of science and one of the most notable and distinguished journals. According to their website mission statement, one of the goals of the journal is “to rapidly disseminate results of science to the public throughout the world in a fashion that conveys their significance for knowledge, culture and daily life”. The website is categorized into Chemistry, Life Sciences, Clinical Practice, Earth & Environment and Physical Sciences. Since all of these articles are peer reviewed, many of the readers of this journal are other scientists, doctors and professors who may even be published themselves. Like in my experience, students read these articles too, but mainly from the science and tech fields of study, and many of my science classes have assigned case studies that come from this journal because of its reliability in the science world.

The article uses an exorbitant amount of acronyms although mentioned briefly at the beginning, became confusing when every other word was an acronym. The article also requires the reader to be highly involved as it references many figures and tables and has about nine pages of extended data tables and graphs. If the reader is unfamiliar with reading these types of graphs then they would have a hard time understanding much of the article. I thought that the article was very distracting because the figure captions were extremely long, although necessary to include the appropriate data. The article was full of scientific jargon and probably unreadable for most lay people. Even the title, including the word “cannabinoid-induced feeling” probably would not turn a light on in the most pot smoking familiar person until the last paragraph of the discussion mentions that “the phenomenon of cannabis-triggered feeding in a state of satiety is a hallmark of marijuana use in humans” (Koch 4).

In contrast, The Guardian is a British national daily newspaper that now also has US and Australia editions. It is one of the top read newspapers in the world. The audience of this newspaper is people of all ages and levels of education. A majority of the people reading this article were probably intrigued by the title of this article since a “recreational activity” such as smoking pot was in a research science article.

The article uses the slang word “munchies’ to describe the increased appetite while under the influence of marijuana. The article is much more readable, clear, and relatable, using terms known by younger populations. This article only uses acronyms three times and the scientific word is in parenthesis directly after the acronym.  This article “dumbs down” the science behind the mechanism in the brain that is responsible for appetite and cravings. The article still falls under the science section and uses terms such as “neurons” and “organelles” which are basic science vocabulary that is learned in middle school. The article also uses specific imagery such as a “desire for a packet of Doritos or a bowl of Coco Pops” to relate to the audience’s behaviors (Devlin).

Although smoking marijuana is a relatively well-known practice, most people do not know the specific science behind the physical changes it causes. They might be able to describe behaviors and thoughts that arise as a result of smoking or ingesting marijuana, but probably rely more on basic news articles like The Guardian’s rather than scientific research articles from journals such as Nature. I would also relate the difference in the writing and readability of these two different types of articles to the full ingredient list on the back of a package versus the ingredients promoted on the front. On the front are familiar words and ingredients such as “high fiber” and “protein”, while the back might contain unpronounceable sources for those nutrients, but each is technically describing the same thing, the front simply chooses more eye catching words and phrases, than the back, which is more comprehensive.

Works Cited

Devlin, Hannah. "Reefer research: cannabis 'munchies' explained by new study ." The Guardian

[New York, NY]. Guardian News and Media Limited, 18 Feb. 2015. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.

Koch, Marco, et al. "Hypothalamic POMC neurons promote cannabinoid-induced feeding."

Nature (2015): Web. 25 Feb. 2015.