IRB Intro Post #3- Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow

For this marking period, I have decided to try the book, Subliminal, written by Leonard Mlodinow.  In the past, I have been reading historical non-fiction books, both of which did not excite me in the least bit.  This book seems a lot more interesting and it's more about psychology, something that I really do not know muc about.  It is a national bestseller, and although it is focused mainly on neurological research, by skimming through the chapters, it is obvious that Mlodinow is an equally talented writer as he is a scientist.  As the Huffington Post reviewed, "with great wit and intelligence, Mlodinow takes us on a sweeping tour of this [mental] landscape and the latest revelations in neuroscience." How could a student looking for the opposite of a history book pass this up?

TOW #16- IRB 2 Post

In TOW #12, I discussed the first half of the Biography of Abraham Lincoln, a book that 5 weeks ago, I was thoroughly interested in and it seemed to be getting better and better.  However, it seems like one teenage girl can only take so many pages about one man.  Mr. Donald is definitely a historian who has great knowledge about President Lincoln and has provided me with information about him that I may have never learned elsewhere.  Out of his two purposes, one to entertain the reader, and one to portray Lincoln as something other than the Civil War, Donald is truly only successful in the latter.  Although this may seem like the more important of the two purposes, without capturing the readers' attention, the author loses the audience of purpose, ultimately losing the basis to build the larger purpose onto.

Through the beginning of the first half of the book, Donald mainly used imagery and lengthy, detailed stories about Lincoln's childhood and early days in politics.  Then, the second half of the book was all politics, something that I'm not as much interested in as how Lincoln grew up.  At first, Donald's long stories were interesting, but soon they became boring, and I found myself wanting to skip ahead in the book to find any sort of change in plot.  Donald's use of diction is so dry, that the audience could plop it down into a history textbook without anyone noticing.  In one paragraph, Donald writes, "They were eager to get away from Washington, which Mary thought was a place filled with their enemies and which Lincoln knew was a city filled with office-seekers.  They wanted to learn how Robert was faring in the army.  And, most of all, they needed rest" (571).  These were some of the most interesting sentences that I could find.  Unfortunately, most of this biography, was written this way, with bare sentence structure, and adjectives that look like they are sick and in need of care.  With this sort of writing style, Donald makes it very difficult for the audience to stay engaged in Lincoln's story.  Perhaps, the disconnect here may just be that I did not like history as much as I thought I did.  If someone were to write a biography about Lincoln, it would be very difficult to capture the entire spirit of one of the best human beings in all of American history.  But, if you are attempting to do it, don't fill 600 pages with meaningless details and stale language.

TOW #15- You to Still Die One Day

The Onion, as we know it, is meant to lighten the mood, to spread laughter, and perhaps to emphasize the atrocities that fill the lives of the average American.  When I came across this article, I wasn't exactly attracted to the title; "You To Still Die One Day".  It's a Sunday afternoon, right before midterms, not especially a time that I want to spend thinking about when my life is going to end.  However, my love for The Onion was stronger than this haunting title, so I gave it a read and surprised myself.  The Onion had almost outdone itself by taking the most melancholic topic imaginable and allowed the audience to laugh at themselves and find a bright spot in their day.  The author, who was unnamed, used devices such as allusion and intelligent sarcasm to alleviate the wonders of the typical human being, by proving that everyone has thought about dying, no matter how positive they are.

By using allusions, the author successfully makes the audience laugh without seeming like that's what they want to do.  Throughout the article, and even in the subtitle, the author alludes to the fact that everyone thinks about death too much, by repeatedly saying that they "...wondered it perhaps you had momentarily forgotten about that-- forgotten that one day, you will be dead for all of eternity."  And if in a conversation, someone would probably say, wow, thanks for bringing it up.  Everyone knows that they will die someday, and most people probably try to forget about it.  But this article makes it impossible for us to forget about it, with allusions to thinking about death in every paragraph.

Articles on this website are popularly ridden with intelligent sarcasm, something that makes The Onion stand out among other "news" providers.  This article uses it to entertain the audience and make them feel a little better about their death obsession.  Through the article, the author always references to "sources" or "experts", who obviously are neither of the two.  These sources and experts all verify our nightmares that "...everyone you've ever known and loved is going to die, too..."

By writing about death and how unavoidable it is, The Onion allowed their audience to perhaps forget about death and laugh a little.

http://www.theonion.com/article/you-still-die-one-day-52183

TOW #14- Humans of New York

  

November 27, 2015

While scrolling Facebook, its quite common to come across all sorts of posts, pages, and videos.  Perhaps including a couple of politically enthusiastic rants, adorably addicting cat videos, and even purely humanitarian pages designed solely for the benefit of mankind. The popular "Humans of New York" page is one of these humanitarian pages, created by a New York native named Brandon in efforts to tell the stories of people in his great city.  

Along with their sometimes lengthy captions, the photographs that Brandon captures are stunning, in a sense that they're completely human.  It seems elementary, but capturing absolute human emotion is an extremely difficult task.  The emphasis on this woman is extraordinary, by focusing the lens on her instead of the background, and by having a background that is mainly black and white.  If this picture were a paragraph, the woman would be a sentence of vivid adjectives and unique sentence structure among a blob of repetitive "potato chip" style English.  

This drastic emphasis on her obviously genuine happiness is what makes Brandon so successful.  His main purpose is to give hope to all types of Americans, no matter what situation we are in.  He simultaneously gives his audience a rich perspective, that while walking through the streets of New York, or any city, there are stories like these everywhere.  The caption of this particular photograph was entirely made up of this woman talking about her battle with depression, yet in this picture, it looks like she is the happiest woman on earth.  By capturing this moment of juxtaposition, Brandon proves that even though life may seem tough, there are always ways to be optimistic.  This gives his audience a humbling sense of happiness and by incorporating pictures like these throughout his page, he reinforces time and time again the amazing stories of what may seem like the average New York person.