Brain Gain

In Ben Paine’s blog entitled “Brain Gain” he describes the valuable writing tools he learned throughout the semester and shares the readings he enjoyed. Reading critically was an important skill that he needed to work on and he felt this course was effective in increasing his skills in this department. After reading through many, many articles for his research paper he was able to pick out articles of substance within a couple of minutes without having to read an entire paper that either didn’t cover what he needed, or wasn’t credible enough. Confidence in his writing was another skill he gained throughout English 150. Previously Ben didn’t trust his writing and would often edit sentences multiple times before finally being happy with it and moving on to the next. Planning was another skill Ben learned which was in big part thanks to the research paper. He used to just charge at writing assignments head first with empty barrels, often writing himself into corners or hitting a wall. With the research paper, he wrote several notes, rough draft, and zero draft and when he finally got to writing the actual paper he was able to write 2200 words in roughly 3-4 hours.

                Ben enjoyed a majority of the pieces he read from the text; however one stood apart from the rest. “Pandemic: My Country Is on Its Knees” was an intimate look into the real Africa that we rarely hear from. He wouldn’t say he enjoyed this article as it was tragic at times; however he appreciated that the writer chose to use anecdotes of his experiences in Africa rather than shower the reader with numbers and stats. The other essay he liked was “There Are No Lessons to Be Learned from Littleton” which mirrored Ben’s take on the subject of the high school shootings. The essay’s position was that there is no way to predict or curtail events such as the Columbine school shooting. Such extreme circumstances cannot be foreseen and there’s no amount of preventative measures such as gun control that will curtail such an event.

                All in all Ben is thankful to have taken this course, his writing was a skill he believed he needed to work on and he hopes to continue blogging to maintain and even improve the skill further.

Brain Drain

In Japan’s Kamikaze Pilots and Contemporary Suicide Bombers: War and Terror by Yuki Tanaka we learn more about the Kamikaze pilot and suicide bomber as a person rather than a group. Tanaka tells us of the justification process of the kamikaze pilot as they convince themselves that their death will be in the best interest of his “beautiful hometown” (Tanaka 296) as he is in effect protecting it as well as making his family and village proud of his sacrifice.  Responsibility further confirms the notion that the pilot must go through with his duties as backing out would be an act of cowardice.  Finally, the pilots war is a personal battle, he has never seen the enemy before making his battle a philosophical ideal to bring purpose to his shortened life.

            Mankind can certainly be considered wasteful and it doesn’t end with human life.  The idea of sending hundreds of young students to crash into a boat is mind boggling.  Just imagine how many ideas, thoughts, inventions and stories burned in heaps of melting steel, but how proud their parents must be.  This brings up the next point which was how the pilots sent apology letters to their parents, but particularly their mothers for dying prematurely.  How tragic is it that these young men were sent to their death before they were able to even entertain the idea of falling in love and getting married.

            The essay goes on to discuss suicide bombers from Palestine, which ties in really well with the essay we read last week entitled 30 Little Turtles by Thomas Friedman.  Tanaka explains how Palestinians are prisoners and are walled into their own country by outside forces and thus, he and Friedman came to similar conclusions.  With everything taken away in their lives they no longer find it terrifying or difficult to terminate their lives while at the same time returning pain to their oppressors (Tanaka 299).   

My question is this: At what point does sending students on suicide missions become an acceptable practice?

Protecting Ourselves by Helping Others

In Thomas Friedman’s article 30 Little Turtles we the reader are given a glimpse into the lives of the people on the other end of the phone.   Much like other essays and books Friedman has written, this is a very engaging read.   We learn about Indian men and women who are talking to us by night and working on college degrees by day, men and women who are gaining confidence, dignity and purpose thanks to gainful employment.

                Outsourcing in the US has become a hot button political issue in recent months.  Politicians are claiming that they will get those jobs back on American soil, and I have to ask how?  The reason the jobs left was because the call center companies can get away with paying people 200-300 dollars a week in countries such as India.  It doesn’t sound like much due to our inflation, but a job like that in India will assist the average person to pay their parents rent while taking college courses.  To get the call center jobs back (which many Americans don’t want to do in the first place) the government would have to subsidize private companies with tax breaks and other incentives in order to make those companies even think about coming back.

                The key to this essay lies in the last sentence.  Friedman concludes that by employing people from the Middle East with gainful employment in which they can better their lives, the Americans are protecting their own troops.  He touches on the traits that make up the psyche of a suicide bomber:  a person who has no hope, dignity or job.  Through outsourcing, the newfound workforce picks up a phone or headset, rather than an explosive laced backpack. 

                So the question I pose is this, is it worthwhile to bring those jobs back or should we continue to split a piece of the pie with the rest of the world?

Did He or Didn't He

In Jim Holt’s essay “Code-Breaker” he speaks of the life, achievements and death of Alan Turing.  Holt uses the ethos rhetorical appeal by establishing that he is knowledgeable enough to prove that it is the “technical side that Leavitt falls short. His exposition, full of the sort of excess detail that mathematicians call “hair,” is marred by confusions and errors” (Holt, 344) and further by stating that he has read other works based on Turpin.

            Holt wrote this essay to pass on the knowledge of Turing’s remarkable life to the world.  I consider myself someone who knows the bits and bytes of the history of computers and their inventors, and yet I have never heard of this man, and I have to ask, why?  For all intents and purposes this man should be a national hero in Britain for breaking a code that had a “hundred and 50 quintillion” (Holt 342) possibilities, and he should certainly receive more recognition for pioneering some of the earliest known computing machines, and yet he’s not.  That credit for Turing’s computer schematic pioneering goes to John von Neumann (Holt 341) and again I find myself asking why?  Is it because Britain was embarrassed of Turing’s homosexuality despite saving countless lives? Did they see it as a threat to decency?

            Turing’s death only creates more questions.  On the one hand there is a theory that he knew too many secrets from his code breaking days as he was privy to many military classified documents when he himself was not a military man.  Another is Leavitt’s theory of Turing being a gay martyr (Holt 337) that he possibly committed suicide via a poisoned apple in hopes of his prince charming waking him up with a kiss.  Holt finds this theory hard to believe but I’m not so sure.  After all a man as eccentric as Turing who solved the decision problem and pioneered some of the earliest known computers as a philosophical quest is not a man who makes decisions that are easily understood. 

            Following the essay there are questions for discussion, one of which asks: was Turing a hero or a victim? Personally, I think he’s both.

The Forgotten

In Jennifer Turpin’s essay entitled “Women Confronting War” she uncovers the truth in the background of war which nobody talks about, women suffer through heartache, pain and suffering during and after wartime.  During and after wars casualty numbers are thrown out in the media on a daily basis but Turpin describes the various torturous events that women undergo including: death, fleeing home country as refugees, sexual assault and violence.

            Turpin uses the rhetorical appeal ethos in validating her claims in this essay.  She references several credible resources to establish her purpose.  Furthermore, she uses concrete examples such as brothels set up near military bases, Yugoslavian women impregnated through rape by enemy soldiers, and Vietnamese women raped in front of passengers and crew on a fleeing vessel.  These examples prove how demeaning and emotionally damaging war can be for women.

            I do feel however that Turpin could have gone more into depth on some of the issues in her essay.  The essay has several short paragraphs on the different issues being discussed.  Turpin could have gone deeper on some of the issues, and merely glances on the surface on others.  The main detriment to this article is much the same as “Aggression” by Sissela Bok in that it relies too much on percentages and large figures to do the talking.  True story recollections from survivors are much more likely to generate empathy and response than slamming the reader with numbers they will not remember.  I hate to keep citing “Pandemic: My Country Is on Its Knees” by Stephen Lewis, but his essay his time spent in Africa is one I will not soon forget.  The personal anecdotes he uses to get his message across are eye opening and sobering to the plight of Africans. 

            Pain and suffering inflicted on women during wartime is a serious issue that is not often discussed in the media.  It is much sexier for the news networks to talk about flat casualty numbers and how current war strategies are failing than to delve deeper into the human element, and I feel that is what Turpin has done here.  I felt she could have delved much deeper into the subject but went with the numbers game instead.

Violence in America Part 2: Someone Agrees With Me

In Gary Kleck’s essay “There Are No Lessons to Be Learned from Littleton” Kleck draws to a conclusion that I did not expect to read just a week after blogging about Sissela Bok’s essay last week.  In it he determines that the media in its quest to make us feel better about terrible tragedies by placing blame.  Why take responsibility as a society when we can just as easily point a finger at some media determined entity such as gun controls or even gun shows.  Kleck states that those who perpetrate mass murder crimes tend to do so far in advance, and thus stricter gun controls and stiffer laws regarding firearm shows would be largely ineffectual.  Due to the premeditated nature of the crime, a perpetrator could plan for months, even years, and in so doing acquiring all of the necessary supplies needed to carry such an act. 

Kleck also speaks of “emotional momentum” which is a great way to describe the media hype machine.  As soon as the media gets a hold of a catastrophic event or heinous crime, it merely rides the wave, pointing fingers and demanding changes so it doesn’t happen again.  They talk to all the foremost authorities and lawmakers to ensure they’re doing their jobs until the next wave comes along, newer and fresher than the one before. 

We are urged to focus on the regular everyday violence that occurs which are more often spur of the moment and quite often could be prevented.  Kleck concedes that it would be nearly impossible to prevent a mass killing as there are no alarm bells surrounding the perpetrator, often from the middle class, with no criminal record and easy access to powerful weapons.  By focusing on preventative measures on smaller, ordinary crimes we may just inadvertently bypass a “freakish event” as he puts it.

Violence in America: Placing the Blame

In Sissela Bok’s article “Aggression: The Impact of Media Violence” the focus is set on the correlation between violence in the media with respects to how it affects violence in America.  The article uses several examples of studies that have proven the negative effect of media violence in everyday life.  Bok uses a logos rhetorical appeal with deductive reasoning in that violence in the media causes the American population to become more violent.  I can’t help but compare this article to “Pandemic: My Country Is on Its Knees” by Stephen Lewis.  In that article Lewis used several examples from his personal experience with life and death in Africa, and in these very personal anecdotes, he makes you care about what his appeal is.  I find in the article being discussed, the author mentions several studies and speaks of many investigators, but goes no deeper than that.  The reader is inundated with generalizations and research figures that don’t really tell the tale of the violence being committed.  Say what you will about Michael Moore’s journalism and interviewing style however “Bowling for Columbine” was much more effective in arguing media violence causing people to be violent.  In the film Moore speaks with family members of victims and criminals, media figures and American soldiers whose recollections paint a much clearer picture for the audience as a whole.  I find Bok and Moore both to be biased towards the conclusion they are drawing for the audience, however to this end I find Moore’s method to be much more effective.

It is extremely easy to place blame in this world, however society must be held more accountable for the way in which children are raised.  Violence has been carried out since the dawn of man, however if children are taught the context of violence and how and when it is needed society will much better off.  I find it comical that a country that was founded on the battlefield, a country which survived a civil war, the Wild West, 2 world wars, and many missions abroad can be confused as to how its children can be so violent.  Americans have a swagger about them that is proud to bear arms and to not take crap from anybody.  A country based on this mentality is bound to be violent in its very heart and nature.