My Favorite Holiday

  Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday.  I love it because it's mainly about a meaning rather than receiving gifts, like you do at Christmas.  I love the whole cozy family feel of it also. I love how every year my family continues their traditions that we all love so much!
    One tradition that my family has is they make the same recopies every single year. From the succulent turkey that my daddy stuffs with many different vegetables, to the flavorful stuffing that is jam packed with seasonings. Then there's also the part that my little brother, Joseph, loves the most.  The cranberry sauce, he does what most young kids do, he plops a heaping blob of rich red cranberry sauce onto his plate, which is CLEARLY way more than he really needs for his turkey.  He then will scarf down that and move onto the desert, which is always homemade pie and then this Jell-o dish that is impossible to explain, but is soo yummy!  Then pie is always made by my mommy, she makes a pumpkin pie every single Thanksgiving and then makes homemade whipped cream to go along with it, she also makes cherry pie which is my favorite!  I never eat the pumpkin pie because I am not a huge fan of pumpkin pie. My family never really spends a lot of family time though so once we have eaten we all go do our own things. :)

Visual Essay!

Visual Essay Analysis:

          I decided that my topic would be the enviorment. The purpose of the video is to reach a general audience of any age and and any sex and to appeal to their emotions so that they will feel compelled to step forward and makes a change. I feel that visual arguments are more for appealing to pathos than to ethos or logos, since images are usually more emotionally touching than words are.

The Argument:

Claim

• We should stop destroying the the world (environment) and instead make changes to save it.

Reasons

• By destroying the nature, we would be making thousands of species of creatures homeless and make them struggle to survive.
• The wildlife and animals are somewhat depending on use to save them.
• The animals deserve to be treated nicer.

Warrants

• Animals deserve homes.
• Destroying nature and habitats isn't good.
• Living things deserved to live a good life.

        I chose each of the images in the video for a particular reason. For the first group of pictures, I purposely picked harsh images that looks kind of cool, but that I knew the viewer would be able to identify. I tried to evoke emotions like pity. The reason I chose these images is because I felt like they would be much more powerful. I purposely put the horrible images of animals last, because I felt that it had a much more powerful affect, and I wanted to leave the viewer with a lasting impression not to mention, a horrid one. 

        After seeing these pictures, I wanted the viewer to start to feel bad for the animals and I wanted to to drive them, or compel them to do something.

The question, “If we don't take care of something what will we end up with?” forces the viewer to think about the consequences of these harmful acts.

          My song is perfect! It kind of cuts off because I was only able to use 30 seconds, but the last thing Raffi sings is, “It’s up to you." This is, in my eyes, the perfect way to end the slide show! If I had chosen a different music selection, the mood of the video would not have been as effective, or strong. I hope you like my video!!

Entitlement

I was asked to write about entitlement. For starters, why entitlement? What exactly is entitlement? According to Dictionary.com, entitlement is to give (a person or thing) a title, right, or claim to something, or to furnish with grounds for laying claim. Is anyone really entitled anything? the honestly to God answer is....NO! Many of us think that we are when in fact..many, many, many of us ARE NOT! Yes the Constitution entitles us to a bunch of different rights but one can break those rules in a blink of an eye. So this word is a vague word. That may mean nothing to many people. There are sooo many different types of people that may look at this word differently. I have so many things that I DON'T HAVE TO have. A cell phone, a car, an ipod, a super nice camera, I go to an amazing school, but I have these things because I take care of them. :) Everything I have I get because of others, I don't get them because I am a breathing person and sometimes I forget that....

Raffi (:

The Lies in Listerine, and Bob Greene

            There used to be a Listerine commercial claiming that if you used their mouthwash, it was equivalent to flossing. Their reasoning was that it worked to get in between teeth to clean in the same way that flossing would. This is a fallacy of hasty generalization because they draw the conclusion that it works like floss; they didn’t have enough data.  It could also be equivocation because they are using a lie and making it seem true. This really appeals to a lot of people because I don’t know of anyone who likes to floss their teeth; mouthwash is much quicker and less of your hands in your mouth.

           Another example of fallacies of argument would be Bob Greene’s “Total Body Makeover” site that is used as a persuasive appeal to attract women that want to lose weight just like Oprah did. I don’t think that this guarantees that everyone will be loosing ten pounds by a certain day. This advertisement tries to imply that because Oprah was part of this program and lost weight, then it is true. But this may not necessarily be true for everyone, but since she is a reputable known person in the media, people might be willing to try this exercise program.