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.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

In this blog I will be discussing Stephen Lewis’ article entitled “Pandemic: My Country Is On Its Knees”.   This article recounts the time Lewis spent during his early adulthood in Africa.  He speaks of a time before HIV/AIDS in which he spent a great deal of time teaching the impressionable youth and young professionals in various areas of Africa.  He spoke very highly of Africa during this time period, the people had a thirst for knowledge and a burning desire to improve their knowledge and community.  The second portion of the article goes into great detail a series of stories on how AIDS and hunger have ravaged present day Africa.   He uses these anecdotes effectively and purposefully, as he even states his reasoning for this in the article.  “I’ve deliberately chosen anecdotes as the narrative vehicle, in order to give the pandemic an accessible face, rather than relying on the dehumanizing swamp of numbers” (Ackley, Blank, Hume 378).

This is an effective article created to conjure sympathy in the reader.  Instead of inundating the reader with countless numbers, he first tells the reader of how great and proud Africa once was, just 40 years ago.  He then goes on to go into great detail the horror stories that dictate everyday life in Africa.  They are tragic stories that this reader had to put down and pick back up several times throughout reading.   One of the worst, Lewis was visiting a maternity ward where 3 newborn infants “passed’ in 45 minutes.

This article plays out somewhat opposite to those underwater documentaries the Discovery Channel pushes out on a regular basis.   The one’s where they show you a lot of beautiful scenes of undersea life for forty five minutes, telling you about the lives of the species covered in the film.   Then they hit you with the bit about how we’re destroying their habitats and they’ll be extinct soon.   Instead, Lewis chooses to take a different approach.  He first lures you in, telling you all about the Africa you didn’t know about, the one full of promise, the one trying to become the “United States of Africa”.  Then he hits you with the direness of life as Africans know it today.  The life filled with tragedy, 12 year olds acting as mothers and fathers, young women not knowing why they bleed every month because their parents died before they turned ten.  He then hits you the “good news’, he talks about all of the programs going on right now that even he can get behind and feel optimistic about.  These programs such as the Umoyo school, which empower young women to learn and gain self-confidence, empowering them to “never automatically submit to any young man”. 

 
This article is told somewhat like a bad news sandwich, first the good, then the bad, then finishing with a note of positivity.  It encourages the reader to take action and help in any way possible, but mostly to stop being content with the status quo.

THE UNITED STATES of AMERICA – THEN AND….NOW.

In my first blog entry, and subsequently the first blog entry I have ever written, I will be discussing Margaret Atwood’s “Letter to America”.  This is an interesting article in that the writer basically came of age in the U.S.A’s golden age, including the rise of television and movies.  She has deep seeded feelings of sentimentality for literature as well as radio/television/film programming that broadcasted the values of Americans from a time that came from a more wholesome and pure era.  The writer is essentially looking at the current situation the United States is in and attempting to use nostalgia in order to wake up our southern neighbors and remind them of how great they can, and used to be.  If you think about it in the sense that the writer was approximately 16 when the U.S. had just concluded a war that saw to the death of millions of people but prevented the death of millions more.  A war whose veterans returned with a sense of accomplishment and went on to make the United States the richest country in the world during the car manufacturing boom.  Now in her 70s, the country she once regarded so highly now has its military entrenched in a nearly un-winnable war to ensure the supply of oil is safe.  It is no doubt easy to see how the writer would reminisce in her article, and I find it difficult to blame her for doing so.  One example I found to be ineffective was a reference to "Marley's ghost", I felt it was a tad obscure as I had to look up what exactly it meant.  I do, however, enjoy the paragraph where Atwood compares Canadians to “Roman Gauls” in that we try so hard to emulate Americans, yet we fail to do it 100% right.  In the past the United States appeared to be a good yardstick for Canada to measure itself by, have times changed?