“Quick Trim”-Logical Fallacy

Upon researching logical fallacies, I came across a major false authority fallacy that forced me to chuckle in disbelief. Kim Kardashian, a famous celebrity socialite, along with her two sisters shot a commercial for the advertisement of the diet supplement “Quick Trim”. In the commercial the three sisters are seen sporting skimpy clothing while displaying racy actions. After watching the commercial, I thought to myself “what were they selling again?” The commercial’s purpose is to advertise a dietary supplement, but yet nothing was mentioned of the product. Clearly, the “Quick Trim” company was aiming to sell their product based off of the Kardashian’s persuasive ability. How do the viewers know if the diet supplement works? These viewers will surely not get that information by watching the Kardashians flaunt their bodies.

Cheers to Writing 140

Writing 140 has definitely been a learning experience from the first time I stepped foot in the class. I must admit that I was nervous about how I would perform knowing that college writing was completely different from high school writing. That is why the first concept that I needed to grasp in order to have successful papers was developing a concise and focused thesis. I realized that my thesis was the driving head of my papers, and if my thesis was not appropriate then my paper was ultimately suffer.

One of my biggest struggling while taking the Writing 140 course was coming up with a topic and ideas for an essay. Throughout the course, we spent time testing invention strategies which included a “fact/idea list”, and a cluster web. After trying out a few of the invention strategies, I found that the cluster web worked the best for me. When I sit down to write an essay, a number of ideas cloud my mind. Therefore, by jotting down ideas and connecting them together using a web cluster, I am able to organize my overwhelming ideas.

Blogging about my topics in Writing 140 has inspired me to pick up writing as a hobby. Now, I keep a journal where I write about my daily life, issues or topics I feel strongly about, or simply what is on my mind. Writing 140 has definitely shaped my writing for the better.

Wikipedia: Friend or Foe?

After investigating just how Wikipedia disseminates knowledge, I have changed the way in which I use Wikipedia as a source of knowledge. After realizing that Wikipedia's quality of knowledge can be improved or disproved by any person from any part of the world, I have chosen to use Wikipedia only as a starting point for any research that I do. As I read Wikipedia to start off my research, I will take the information I read in with a grain of salt. After gaining a sound base for my topic, I will further research my topic using the resources listed at the end of the Wikipedia page in order to verify the information.

The discussions that take place on Wikipedia are indeed intriguing and often help settle any confusion on the topic being discussed. For example, on the discussion page of William Mulholland, confusion came about when one posted on whether or not Mulholland was solely responsible for the collapse of the St. Francis Dam. In the discussion it was made clear that although William Mulholland built the dam, the Los Angeles government as a whole was responsible for leaving Mulholland as the only engineer for the dam. This cleared up a lot of confusion as to whether or not Mulholland deserved all the blame for the collapsing of the St. Francis Dam and also shed more knowledge on all those you participated and viewed the discussion.

Now, I would definitely join the discussion of any Wikipedia page, especially when false statements are being made in regards to a topic. Correcting these false statements with reliable resources as backup will not only help spread correct knowledge, but also clear up any confusion that was made.

Teacher vs. Student

Back in high school, I have encountered many situations where communal acquisition of knowledge has clashed with authoritative acquisition of knowledge. A prime example of this would be when my high school English class discussed the novel "Seabuscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand through the means of a Socratic seminar. In the seminar, each one of my classmates commented on an aspect of the book including the theme, plot, and background story of the novel by using their very own view of the story. Through this method, the entire class was able to gain knowledge on the lessons that Hillenbrand wanted readers to gain through reading the novel.

However, after the Socratic seminar, the entire class found out that Hillenbrand's lesson in "Seabuscuit: An American Legend" was different from the lesson that our class generated through discussion and debate amongst one another. Our teacher, who studied Hillenbrand in college as an English major, presented us with Hillenbrand's lesson in her novel which clearly differed from our generated lesson.

As a class we began to question our teacher's knowledge and even her creditability. How could our class-generated lesson be completely different from the author's intended lesson? Before the class got too rowdy with opposition, our teacher informed us that although our lesson was completely different from the lesson of the author, it does not mean that our lesson is wrong. She continued by stating that when people read novels, they interpret them differently and thus take away different lessons from the novel. The class let out one big sigh of relief as we realized just how true our teacher's statement was.

The form of learning that I find most useful is communal acquisition of knowledge. This is because a group of people with different perspectives and opinions on the world who come together to discuss a topic with the help of research can acquire more knowledge from each other in my opinion. In addition, I feel that I can learn more from peers my age who I can relate to than say an old professor with years of experience under his or her belt.

No "Japs" Allowed

How could a group of people be treated so badly in a place that they tried so hard to become a part of? In my "Strangers in a Strange Land" essay I decided to focus my paper on the Japanese migrating to America in their first big wave, and their reception once they got there.

I decided to write about the Japanese because after reading the novel "Southland" by Nina Revoyr and realizing how terribly the Japanese were treated after the bombing at Pearl Harbor. The novel tells a vivid account of the Japanese having to pack and sell all their belongings before being shipped off into internment camps. Such drastic measures performed by the US shocked as I would never fathom internment of an innocent group of people occurring in this time period.

The film that I viewed in my "Los Angeles and the American Dream" lecture entitled "White Rabbit" also prompted me to write this essay on the Japanese because it also depicted the Japanese in internment camps. One scene solidified the Japanese's position in American society during the 1940's as a young Japanese girl told her mother that she was American and not Japanese at all. Her mother's response was, "If you're American, why are you in this camp?" This scene allowed me to realize that no matter how much the Japanese people wanted to assimilate into American society during that time period, they would never be accepted.

Continuing to read more primary sources about the Japanese's experience while attempting to assimilate into American culture will definitely give me more insight into how the Japanese personally felt. However, how could a group of people continue to try and assimilate into a culture that blatantly rejected them? My mindset in this time period as a Japanese would be to leave America and create a new life in Japan (which many Issei did). It has been a long battle for the Japanese to finally become accepted in America, but their persistence paid off in the end thanks to the civil rights movements that took place all of the country in the 1960's.

Accessing the Right California Resources

The first resource that I decided to research was James J. Rawls’s “California: A people, a Place, a Dream”. This article discusses the false hope that California promises immigrants that migrate to the dreamland. James J. Rawls states that the California Dream is filled with high expectations that are not met once immigrants get here. California is seen as a place of “endless blue skies and spectacular seacoasts” (Rawls 142). Many people believe that their deepest longing for a better lifestyle will be fulfilled once they arrive to California. However, many immigrants are surely mistaken once they arrive to the “Golden State” and realize that the California Dream is simply a myth. Rawls traces the origin of the false California Dream all the way back to the Gold Rush where a mass influx of eager and expectant people, who believed that no work was required to fulfill their dreams, filled the state of California. These people created the false California Dream that, still to this day, lead immigrants to believing in the false hope that California provides. This article is extremely helpful in the fact that it allows me to get an even better grasp as to what immigrants thought of California before migrating there and how they viewed it afterwards.

The second resource that I explored was “Immigrants Out!: The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States”. This article focuses on the America’s view of immigrant in the country and even focuses on California's Proposition 187, which was a proposition to establish a state-run citizenship screening system as well as prohibit illegal immigrants from using health care, public education, and other social services in California. This article will definitely be useful in figuring out whether California accepted the assimilation of certain groups of immigrants. Identifying key figuring such as intermarriage between ethnic groups is the ultimate measuring stick as to whether or not a group has truly assimilated in America. This along with many of topics concerning immigration is viewed in “Immigration Out”.

Storytelling

On Wednesday October 19,2011 I witnessed Tracey Kidder, a Harvard University graduate, deliver a captivating speech about his time in Africa and his experience with a friend that changed his life. Kidder begins his storytelling with an anecdote about his soon-to-be friend Dei, who endured pain and strife in the midst of civil unrest in his country of Burundi. Dei eventually escaped to America where he enrolled in Columbia University. Immediately, the idea of sunshine and noir hit me as I imagined the war that proceeded in Burundi represented darkness and confusion (noir) while the hope and promise that America provided represented light and positiveness (sunshine).
Later Kidder discusses how he met Dei and traveled back to Burundi in order help with the poverty that consumed the area. Dei had the mindset of creating something bigger than himself upon his arrival and so he did as he constructed the "Village Health Works". This structure was a hospital that aided the sick and wounded in Burundi. Dei's mindset was completely different from the mindsets of the water barons of Los Angeles such as William Mulholland because, in contrast to Dei, Mulholland only cared about getting water into Los Angeles and not the lives of the people of the Owens River Valley.

Kidder closed his speech with the main point of his speech which was, "one can understand the world through storytelling". He proceeded to elaborate by stating that storytelling is an art that if used right can captivate an entire audience. This reminded me of the reason why students at USC are required to take Writing-140. This class is meant to develop student's ability to create arguments and back them up in order to convince your audience of your position.