IRB intro #3: Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich

For my IRB #3, I chose Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich. I read a review of this book on the Internet and it seemed interesting. The author of this book argues that positive thinking, often overly stressed by Americans, actually causes detrimental consequences to America, especially the economy. I am not sure how the book is going to be divided: whether it would be composed of short articles or all of the chapters will be one story. If it is just one story, I am excited to see how that would work out.

TOW #17: The Art of Failure by Malcolm Gladwell (written, non-fiction text)

When placed in a stressful situation, people fail all the time even when they have never made the same mistakes before. However, do all failures result from same types of mistakes? No. There are two types of failing: choke and panic. Choking happens when the explicit system, or thinking about things too much instead of relying on your instinct takes over. Panicking is the vice versa; it happens when the implicit system, being unable to think takes over the brain and people act instinctively. To get his point across, Gladwell utilizes anecdotes, specific happenings that demonstrate choke and panic. To explain choking, he uses example of Novota, the champion girls tennis player who failed due to choking. “She seemed like a different person–playing with the slow, cautious deliberation of a beginner–because, in a sense, she was a beginner again: she was relying on a learning system that she hadn’t used to hit serves and overhead forehands and volleys since she was first taught tennis, as a child” (6). Novota just choked, due to her nervousness, she had returned to a beginner, that carefully thinks over every step of tennis. Panic is just the opposite. When a pro diver Morphew had water rushed into his hose instead of air, his “hand reached out for my partner’s air supply, as if I was going to rip it out. It was without thought. It was a physiological response. My eyes are seeing my hand do something irresponsible. I’m fighting with myself. Don’t do it” (8). Morphew, in contrast to Novota, acted instinctively, he was unable to perform well-thought out action. These anecdotes effectively explain the two different types of failures, choking and panicking. However, despite the types of failures, all failures are detrimental and are met with unavoidable consequences. Gladwell wants to get that point across, failures can be never hopeful.

TOW #16: Freakonomics: A Rogue Scientist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (IRB, written)

This week, I finished reading Freakonomics: A Rogue Scientist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything written by Steven Levitt and William Morrow. In the second half of the book, chapter 5 “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” especially caught my attention. Every parent wants to do the right thing for their children. As a result, the number of experts on parenting have increased dramatically in recent years. However, Levitt and Morrow discovered that what these experts argue are often contradicting with each other and even with their own actions. So Levitt and Morrow explores common misconceptions such as “how having books at home affects child” and “The child has highly educated parent” to discover the actual correlation. They tell the readers that these parenting skills have little effect on how their children will be with use of the pronoun “you” to connect better with the readers and to direct the question to the readers. For instance, Levitt and Morrow directs the seemingly foolish parent who tries to enhance their children with their parenting. However, they somewhat cold-heartedly declare, “Most

of the things that matter were decided long ago—who you are, whom you married, what

kind of life you lead. If you are smart, hardworking, well educated, well paid, and

married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed” (111). This statement is especially directed to those parents who believe that their children is an exception and can be enhanced with their parenting by making them realize the reality. Levitt’s use of hypothetical examples also exposes the common misconceptions of parenting. He makes readers think about three girls named Amy, Imani, and Molly. Molly’s parents, knowing that Amy’s parent keeps a gun in their house, lets Molly go to only Imani’s house, which has a swimming pool. Levitt explains how “there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States...Molly is roughly 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani’s house than in gunplay at Amy’s” (93). His use of examples appeals to pathos as well as logos, as the usage of number 100 times is very attention catching.

TOW #15: Verbal Abuse Poster (Visual Text)

Physical abuse is not the only kind of abuse people encounter in their everyday lives. Verbal abuse is just as detrimental, if not worse than physical abuse. In this photograph, a man seems to be yelling at a woman. To show that verbal abuse is equivalent to physical abuse, a fist is coming out of the man's mouth and punching the woman. On the bottom, a small caption says, “Verbal Abuse can be just as horrific. But you don’t have to suffer in silence. Call the aware help line for advice and support.” This picture is an awareness poster for gender prevention line, to help victims cope with verbal abuse. By affecting the pathos of the audience, it also makes those aloof to verbal abuse aware that verbal abuse is just as serious as physical abuse.

The maker of this photo especially made the offender to a man and the victim to a woman to signify gender violence. Although the current society stresses gender equality, women are still viewed as weaker than men. By having a man attack a woman in the photo, it signifies gender inequality as well as abuse. This photo also represents dating violence. The society is becoming more aware of husbands or boyfriends attacking their loved ones. The organization for aware help lets women know that if they are suffering because of violence from their loved ones, they should not hesitate to call the gender awareness line. If the genders of the subjects had changed, the photo would have a different impact. That would have represented men being powerless in front of women’s use of harsh words. If the subjects of the photo were two women, it would have represented how women fight with words other than fighting physically, but that the verbal fight is just as strong.