Winter Break Assignment

Link: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/if-gender-is-fluid-what-about-race-and-age-1.11839317

Throughout the recent years, gender identity has been defined as "an individual's internal sense of gender". In the article, the term gender is determined by individuals while the term sex is given by society. This is became the term sex refers to specific parts of the body that will determine whether one is female or male. This also extends to race as shown recently when a "white" woman identified herself as an African American. I understand that such things shouldn't be determined by society but I don't think that things that can be seen such as physical features and race can be denied just because the individual does not identify themselves as such. If a person was born with male body parts, then their sex is male because it is based off of their anatomy. The LGBT community is a different story because people that are transgender believe that they are trapped in another body and not denying their sex or gender. I believe that depending on our word choice, people may perceive us differently and the way we view each other changes.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Everyone!

Gender Neutral Products - Commercials

We have all seen commercials for products such as shampoo and conditioner before. However, despite being gender neutral, these commercials target a specific gender as their audience. For an example, the Pantene commercials use Selena Gomez as the spokesperson to appeal to women about how Pantene shampoo and conditioner would help make their hair shiny and smooth like Selena's hair. The shampoo brand makes shampoo and conditioner for both men and women yet in their commercials, their main audience are women. Not only are commercials like this but so are advertisements. Have you ever received a booklet in the mail from a clothing store? These booklets tend to advertise gender neutral clothing such as t-shirts, jackets, and even socks depending on the season. However, when it comes to female merchandise, words like "slim" and "fashionable" are used and for men, words like "muscular" or even "boss" are used to appeal to a specific gender party. Even advertisements for daily necessities such as shavers and deodorant used different words to try to appeal to certain people. If there was an advertisement for women's deodorant, you would never hear words like "strong" and "power". Despite products being gender neutral, companies market to specific genders and the reason is unclear as to why they would do such a thing. 

The Pillow Angel

When we were young, our parents tend to make all the ecisions for us. These decisions can cause controversy since it causes people to question their morals an ethics. Morals refer to one's personal standards or what is considered right an wrong. Ethics refer to the behavior that is customary in our culture or society. An example woul be the article, Pillow Angels where it talks about a young girl who has been diagnosed with a illness that causes her to not be able to grow mentally. Due to her illness, her parents decided to make her go through a procedure that would make her stop growing. In addition to that, her parents also decided to have her vagina and breasts removed. Her parent's justification was that keeping her short woul make it easier to include her in family activities and the removal of her vagina an breasts woul allow her to be more comfortable while strapped to a wheelchair. This raise controversy because people believe her parents violated her rights as a person and that it wasn't ethical to have her go through those procedures. Another example would be when we were all still toddlers and our parents had to decide which school to enroll us in . The decisions made by our parents in this situation wouln't be considered unethical and a violation of our human rights. In my opinion, when a child is young and doesn't have the mentality to know what is best for them, the parents should be able to decide for them and not be judged for it.

That's it for now, see you all next time!

Logical Fallacies

Were you ever in a situation where you either couldn't win an argument because it has gone way too extreme or someone said something that had nothing to do with the actual argument? If your answer was yes, then you actually dealt with logical fallacies before. There are three types of logical fallacies: Ad Hominen, Slipper Slope, Bandwagon Fallacy, and Straw-man. Ad Hominen is when your character or personal traits are being attacked instead of the actual argument. You probably experienced this when arguing with someone younger than you. This actually happened to me because this young girl that I was looking after wanted to see my earrings and when I said no, she said "well you don't look good in them anyways". Slippery Slope is when a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitably of the event in question. This usually happens when arguing wit your parents. For example, today is Friday November 25, Black Friday, and I headed out this morning and my mom basically said, don't buy a lot of things because you'll end up living in the streets. Upon further examination, her assumption was that if I bought a lot of things, I would've ended up being broke and wouldn't be able to afford anything, thus I'll end up living in the streets. Of course, these two aren't the only Logical Fallacies that we see but these are the ones that we see the most often. In my opinion, Logical Fallacies can be illogical because if you're arguing with someone, attacking their personality or their traits wouldn't help you win the argument. Anyhow, that's all for this week. 

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Social Media - "Nosedive"

A new app was launched recently and it was called "Peeple". This app allowed its users to rate people using a star system. A clip was made based off of this app called Nosedive and this clip showed everyone using this ranking system and everyone saw each other's ranks when they see their face. A person with a high rank would be friendly to those lower than her rank and would be awkward around those with a higher rank than them. Now, the question is if our society would end up like the society in Nosedive. Many believe that the representation of society in Nosedive is pretty close to society today while other believed otherwise. In my opinion, I believe we as a society is moving closer to the society represented in Nosedive but it wouldn't dictate our life like how it was in the clip. It is true that everyone is "ranked" with their likes and followers and two real life examples would actually be Instagram and Facebook. Everyone judges each other behind the screen but I don't think that it would be so bad that these likes and follows would affect how people treat us on a daily basis. Although we have apps that allow us to like and follower whoever we choose, I don't think apps like Peeple is practical since everyone has a different opinion and no one should be basing their action off of their status. A guy in the Nosedive clip had a ranking of 3.5 and bought everyone drinks but people were still talking behind his back. It was as if only the ranking matters and not the personality.

Why Do Drug Dealers Live With Their Moms?

When people mention drug dealers, do you have positive or negative connotations? Most people think of drug dealers and drug dealing in general as a really bad thing however, for people living with drug dealers, this is a very glamorous profession. This week in class, in order to prep for a podcast, we read about why drug dealers live with their mothers and the dangers to drug dealing. According to Freakonomics, foot soldiers earn approximately $3.30 per hour which is less than the minimum wage. Readers can infer from this fact that foot soldiers can't afford to live by themselves since they earn so little. In this particular article, the researched neighborhood had a "median income... about $15,000 a year, well less than half the United States average." This shows that most drug dealers actually earn less than the median amount but they choose to do it anyways. Since people in those types of neighborhoods are not exposed to office jobs, they see being a drug dealer as a profession that can earn them respect. To them, respect and making a living to support their family is more important than to find a job that is not detested by people. If I happened to be born in a really poor neighborhood and I had no opportunities to be anything more than a drug dealer, I would probably take the job. Also,another reason why a person would be living with their mother would be if they were earning a lot and they can't afford the government to be suspicious about where the money came from. 

That's it for this week, have a great day everyone !

Is compromising a good or bad thing?

When people think of the word compromise, we usually think of it as a bad thing. However, this wasn't always the case. In the past, it was good to compromise and people had positive connotations with the term. Senator Henry Clay made a compromise in the past which helped America avoid a civil war. Some consider this bad and some consider this good. That's because by compromising, Senator Henry Clay increased how long slavery lasted but at the same time, he was also able to avoid bloodshed. Whether compromising is a good or bad thing, it has raised controversy because some people believe that compromising means that they are losing out and not necessarily getting what they want. An example of such would be a small child only gets candy when she answers a riddle correctly. By doing do, the teacher is able to get the child to answer the questions and the child is able to get candy AFTER she has answered the question. Both individuals sacrifice something in order to create middle ground. Another example of compromising would be deciding what days to work throughout the week. The student would have to compromise with the boss to decide what days to work and figure out what days that they are definitely unavailable. That is all for this week.

Until next time :)

Money is the source of all evil?

William Hazlitt is a nineteenth century author who wrote an essay called, "On the want of Money". This piece was evaluated in class and proposed the question, "is money the root of all evil or is it a source of happiness?" In my opinion, i believe that money can be a source of happiness but at the sane time,  it may also be the root of most evil actions. This is because, money can allow a person to feed their loved ones and help sustain life. However, many people consider selling things in the black market, selling drugs, buying drugs, and gambling just for the sake of money. Money can invoke greed and make people develop a higher self esteem and ego. In this case, money can cause people to do thinks that can be considered immoral or inhumane. In Hazlitt's essay, he provides the reader with many examples about life would be for a person that is considered wealthy versus a person who is considered poor. Hazlitt says, "To be in want of it, ... is to live out of the world, or to be despised if you come into it; it is not to be sent for to court; ... it is to be scrutinized by strangers, and neglected by friends" to describe what a deathly person can experience. On the other hand, Hazlitt describes a poor person by saying, "full of enthusiasm and extravagance in youth, ... or avoided by those who know your worth and shrink from it as a claim on their respect or their purse; to be burden to your relations, or unable to do anything for them; to be ashamed to venture into crowds; to have cold comfort at home". By saying this Hazlitt is trying to say that even though someone can have a lot of money, they might not necessarily be happy and vise versa for poor people. At the end of his essay, Hazlitt says "The wiseacres will possibly, however, crowd round your coffin, an raise a monument at a considerable expense expense, and after a lapse of time to commemorate your genius and your misfortunes!" By ending his essay with this sentence, he gives his readers the idea that at the end of the day, people will still talk about you whether you are rich or poor.  

UNITL NEXT TIME :)

Lecture on Visual Arguments

This week in class, we had a lecture on visual arguments. The essential question was "How do we effectively analyze the visual argument in various mediums?" The main example that was given was advertisements. We spoke about advertisements featuring celebrities, logos, pathos, ethos, and steps to "deconstruct" a visual argument. A few examples would be a Pantene commercial featuring Selena Gomez and X-out featuring Zendaya Coleman. According to Ms. Moccia, visual arguments don't have to be a paragraph and doesn't need a thesis; however, the image can still be read the same way text is read. An example of a visual argument that is not written as  paragraph would be the the fast food chain, Subway, where their motto is only a few words : "FRESH IS WHAT WE DO" (printed on all their napkins). Throughout the lecture, one of the things that caught my attention was that visual arguments are used to support claims and present new research. This surprises me since none of the other statements mentioned in the lecture shows that visual arguments can present new research. Therefore, my questions is, How can new research be presented based on visual arguments. Since we were mostly discussing advertisements, it made me even more confused how an advertisement such as a poster can induce new research. 

See you all next time!

Trump Speech Reflection

This week in AP Language, the class has been talking about the issue regarding Hillary and Trump's speech for the election. We have been discussing the use of rhetorical devices such as ethos, logos and pathos and how both candidates uses these devices to appeal to the audience. Donald Trump uses mostly ethos in his speech to help instill fear in the audience. He uses specific words like "attack", "terrorists" and "ISIS" which all connects to the emotion of fear. Not only does Trump use ethos to instill fear, he also talks negatively about his opponent, Hillary, and the current president, Barack Obama. For an example, Trump claims that "President Obama has doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion, and growing" which implies that after Obama was a bad president, since our debt has only increased after he was elected. As for Hillary, Trump states that, "In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map" almost as if ISIS was on the map because of Hillary or that Hillary was the cause for ISIS. In my opinion, I feel that Trump should have used other ways to try to get people to support him instead of insulting or "bashing" on Hillary, Obama, and other politicians. 

Let's talk next week but for now, bye!

Link of Trump's Speech : http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/full-transcript-donald-trump-nomination-acceptance-speech-at-rnc-225974 

9/11 Speech by George W. Bush

This week in class, we read the speech that President Bush gave after the attack on 9/11. The tone of the speech was very serious and President Bush's intention with the speech was to help comfort the people that were related to the victims of 9/11. When I was reading this speech, I noticed that President Bush used Pathos to evoke the public's emotion. By using Pathos, his speech was very successful because it helped to comfort the victims loved ones and to help reassure the public that everything was going to be fine. This speech also reminds me of other tragic events that happened such as the attack at Pearl Harbor. 

Hey my name is Ellen and I live in school. I like math and science but I prefer to stay home and sleep all day. I go to Midwood High School at Brooklyn College and this blog is dedicated to my AP Language Class.Thanks for reading! Bye!