"Ocean Levels Could Rise Foot or More If Lots of People Go Swimming"

I was shocked! Will my friends in the Netherlands have to move during the summer season? Will their houses be flooded by the North Sea and molt stay in the walls till the end of their lives? What will happen to all the nature there? I couldn´t believe it when I read that article and had to do find explanations.

Fortunately my research didn´t last very Long. I scrolled up the website and found what I needed: it was written by “The Onion”, one of the most popular fake- websites in the World Wide Web.

The unknown author used parody, hyperbole and slapstick as comedic advices to attract the reader.

Parody can be found where he makes fun of the actual fear of people that sea levels are on the rise. Global warming contributes to the melting of pole caps and increasing ocean levels. People all over the world are concerned about “their” planet, sure that they will get interested after reading the headline of this article.

Hyperboles, or also called overstatements, in combination with the slapstick (an exaggerated physical violence) make their way through the whole text. The author describes how the ocean level would rise, when a lot of people decide to go swimming at the same time, which definitely is not the case. He develops this idea with the outlook that, if people would go under the water all the way, the rise would be much more significant. At the end of the article, to make the top of the iceberg, the author describes that, if many people would jump from a boat the same time, the probability of tsunamis would explode and coastal cities could be in a great danger.

The article is written in a serious tone and supported by sources like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and quotes from oceanographer Paul Acosta, which are either “real” institutions or scientists. And to give this article a concerning touch, the reader will find the advice, only to walk in the water until their waists, at the end.

So, there is something wrong with this whole article. It is ridiculous. But what is in it that makes it like this. I did some research and found it out: it´s the “exaggerated physical violence”, the slapstick. I don´t want to be the party pooper, but… if my calculations are right, it takes more than a lot of people at the same time to make the ocean levels go rise. Let´s take an average 154lbs- person, which takes a room of 2.45ft³ when you fold him together. The earth is covered with water up to 71%, which takes a surface area of about 3.88x 10¹⁵ ft². So after doing some math, I found out that there have to be 1.58 quadrillion people to make oceans rise 1ft (if they go under all the way), in other words 219243 times the current world population.

Just to let you know how it really is!

Sportsman or Superman- You Can´t Be Both!

Jeremy Rozansky, assistant editor of National Affairs, published the article `How to Think About our Steroid Supermen- Lance Armstrong, the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Meaning of Sports` on January 19, 2013. It appeared online on The new Atlantis, a journal of technology and society, and addressed the general, educated American society. The text talks about the use and the consequences of steroids in modern sport and the moral side of this issue. His thesis, “In choosing to use performance- enhancing drugs these men chose to participate not in sport but in a spectacle that bears only a mocking resemblance to true athletic achievement” (Rozansky, 2013), suggests that athletes, who decided to dope, can´t be seen as great sportsmen, even though their foul deeds are decades back in the past.


Armstrong, Bonds, & Clemens

http://prommanow.com/2013/02/06/pandemonium-blog-lance-armstrong-barry-bonds-roger-clemens-and-mma/
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mlb/news/20130109/hall-of-fame-shutout-reaction/
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/harper-hall-bonds-roger-article-1.1570458

Rozansky, who owns a degree from the University of Chicago, used historical, statistical, and psychological evidence to support his article. He provided the reader with background information about the baseball Hall of Fame, talked about athletes from several years ago, explained game statistics, and revealed why “sport is an exclusively human kind of performance” (Rozansky). Further he tried to tie us to his article by using quotes from athletes and experts to give us some “insider information”.

Since I am an athlete and I love to watch athletic events, I know what the author talks about when he mentions how “we admire the willed actions” (Rozansky) and the pure human performance. I also know how it feels when the shadow of performance- enhancing drugs lies over an event and “fundamentally change[s] the character of the act we witness when we cheer on our sport stars” (Rozansky). Therefore, and for some `other reasons`, I totally agree with the position and the arguments of Rozansky.

In my research paper I want to try to explain the `other reasons` I have. I also plan on finding out more about modern drugs and how science is able to help athletes in their abject acts of cheating. Hopefully I can discover more about drug abuse by athletes by examine past and current cases. I consider using other articles, TV documentations, and interviews for my research.

In the Hall of the Mountain King

Social isolation, being a bad mother, losing your job, looking ugly, losing friends, contributing to global warming: who is not afraid of these things? But some of the most terrifying problems we live with today are germs, viruses and bacteria.  Marketers and advertisers use and create panic and anxiety in many different ways to persuade us to buy something or to do a certain thing to protect us and our fellow humans from germs. Their strategies and elements of argumentation are incredible and sometimes unbelievable, but they work.

Ads like the following one (which was released in 2009 by the German government together with the Robert-Koch- Institut) were designed to “peddle panic and paranoia”, like Lindstrom describes it in his book `Brandwashed`.

(Erreger verbreiten sich schneller, als man denkt. = Germs spread faster than you think.)
(Händewaschen schützt. = Washing hands protects.)

 

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this ad: Now I´m going to wash my hands a minimum of fifteen times a day! Congratulations to the creators of the video, they did their job well and reached their goal, they raised fear in me!

I believe that there are many people in this world who are afraid of getting sick and picking up viruses of any kind. Just by touching "everyday- things", pushing a button in the elevator, grabbing a pole in the bus, or using a dollar note (which are all things that were probably touched by millions of people before) we can get infected. And not only careless children or old people with a weak immune system are affected. Office workers, teenagers, parents, and all the others who are not living in quarantine at home, so basically everybody, is exposed to the small living things who make us sick. But there is one simple trick to avoid all this: wash your hands.

 

1) Turn on the water!

2) Get some soap!

3) Rub your hands for a couple of seconds!

4) Wash the soap off your hands and dry them!

5) Don´t forget to turn off the water (because everybody is afraid of climate Change, too)!

 

Sounds easy, doesn´t it? We actually don´t need to buy hand sanitizer or other expensive cleaning products; it´s all about soap and water. And to put something at the top of the iceberg: we are not only responsible for ourselves, but also for all the other people we have contact with, as the video shows properly. “Fear with a high level of blame, regret, guilt, or even a dare tends to translate emotion into action. (from an article in the Journal of Consumer Research from 2006 and cited in Lindstrom´s book). We watch the ad and immediately think of our friends, coworkers, and family. We don´t want them to get a serious sickness, so what is the outcome? From now on we will wash our hands regularly.

The music used to illustrate the spread of germs intensifies our fear. Edvard Grieg´s Peer Gynt Suite with the song “In the Hall of the Mountain King” makes us anxious and we don´t know what´s coming next and if “something is hiding behind the next corner”.

Ads like this one don´t exist often. The advertisers don´t want us to buy something, but just appeal to our responsibility, and share a piece of information.

“…Identifying the fear…, activating it, amplifying it, and paying on it in ways that hit us at the deepest subconscious level” (Martin Lindstrom, Brandwashed) are the strategies of advertisers and the best way to spread their virus- like campaigns.

"The first draft of anything is shit." - Ernest Hemingway

In two ways Anne Lamott ( "Shitty First Drafts" ) and William Zinsser ( "Simplicity" ) agree in their texts about the question “How do I write good stuff”. They both agree that writers are not born as writers and writing is not a natural trait. Writing is hard work and requires a lot of time, effort, good ideas and skills. As well, they both try to make us read their articles by mentioning reality. They say things that are true, but that not many people are aware of, like the fact that writing a book doesn´t happen in one week and takes more than one try to complete it.

William Zinsser, a well-educated editor who wrote his text for students like me, says it´s all about editing. “Clutter is the disease of American writing.” Unnecessary words, long sentences, circular constructions, meaningless jargon; these are all symptoms of this widespread, epidemic illness. But as long as it exists, people find some good medications to recover and get immune: easy, short and descriptive words and sentences. Crossing out wasted words and phrases makes paragraphs clear and understandable. As well, a writer has to ask himself: “What am I trying to say and do I say it in the possibly best way?” rather than “Have I said it?” Phrases have to be well- structured and clear to not distract the “30-seconds-attention-span” of the reader.

In contrast to Zinsser (deductive), Lamott uses the inductive method of writing, starting with some evidence and concluding to a certain statement. Since her article was written for the general public and published in a book ( "Bird by Bird" ), the tone is more casual and figurative. She argues to: “Let it all pour out” what comes to your mind; no one is going to see your shitty first drafts. She speaks from experience when she mentions that ALL first drafts are chaotic, unorganized, unstructured, uncensored, too personal and too long. But there is, obviously, a way to fix that: sit down the next day, go through it, take a pen, cross things out, add others, and maybe even find hidden ideas and ways to express something. All you need to do is start somewhere and put ANYTHING down on paper (or computer or whatever)! Just get it down… it´s all about the process. Then you have time to fix it and make it appropriate for your specific audience.

After reading both texts, I tend to compare my writing methods to Anne Lamott´s. To “brainstorm” is a great way to organize thoughts and ideas. Usually I start with dividing an assignment into different parts and getting down anything I know about it (like thinking aloud), followed by some research to complete my lack of knowledge. My next step is to connect everything, to divide it in paragraphs, and to make it sound “all right”. Correcting, crossing out, and adding words, checking the spelling, and grammar: those are the last steps to the final product. Zinsser´s arguments are not very convincing to me. Maybe because I am that kind of person who rather adds words to make my essays longer and more complex. But I guess that differs from writer to writer.

“If you find writing is hard, it´s because it is hard.” (William Zinsser)