Monday, October 18, 2010
Week 9
Try to find a moment or a phrase or something that didn't work. I know this is quite subjective, but that just means you need to argue your point well. Being a good writer means knowing when something doesn't flow or fit with the rest of the piece. Good writing also comes from good editing. So, what piece would you edit out of this week's reading?
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Sandberg would have been good for the Cubs and also good for business. If you don't think that matters, then you weren't at Wrigley Field during the final month or so of another lost season.
This line just seems a little out of place to me. It is its own very small, separate paragraph that simply does not belong anywhere in the article. This article is talking about the Chicago Cubs made the wrong decision in hiring this new coach Sandberg, and the author just kinda drops this unwanted paragraph into an otherwise intriguing article
Then there’s the Global Partnership for Afghanistan, which is based in New York and helps Afghan villagers improve agricultural yields in the most unstable parts of the country. Some Taliban commanders have even sent word inviting the group into their areas.
This excerpt although is an excellent paragraph. but it did not flow well well with the entire article. This article is about the success of Dr. Greg Mortenson in building many schools around Afghanistan. This whole article is about education and the efforts of Dr. Greg to make education better in Afghanistan.
This line did not fit well because I believe it was just mushed into the paragraph to prove the point on how the Taliban intervene in projects, but it did not fit well. It could have been better to just omit it out of the article. It it is about education in Afghanistan and should stat instead of digressing into agriculture.
Nations thrive or languish usually not because of one big bad decision, but because of thousands of small bad ones — decisions where priorities get lost and resources misallocated so that the nation’s full potential can’t be nurtured and it ends up being less than the sum of its parts.
This may be a good sentence, but I am confused by the phrase at the end "the sum of its parts" I feel as though it takes the reader somewhere else mentally.
"Shakespeare tells us to “be not afraid of greatness.” At the moment, we are acting like we’re terrified." - Bob Herbert, "The Way We Treat Our Troops"
I thought that the article was very powerful and spoke very thoughtfully and knowledgeably about the United States' treatment of its troops during and after service. Herbert used a lot of significant statistics, but sometimes they were a little overwhelming; he often listed many back to back, and transitioned from one aspect to the next through using different statistics. However, besides the immense number of stats, my biggest problem was the very end. I felt that Herbert's closing two lines felt a little out of place considering the rest of the article, because he never mentioned America's motives, or feelings, or anything during the article, but rather Herbert just spoke about the facts.
"The 2009 stimulus package presented these Democrats with the opportunity, and they seized it." --Charles M. Blow, "Smoke and Horrors"
Two words: what opportunity? To give some context, Blow had just discussed how Democrats are funding the Byrne Formula Grant Program, a program that is meant to help wage the war on drugs but finances the arrests of a disproportionate amount of blacks and Latinos. However, then the article immediately jumps into this very vague (and borderline grammatically incorrect) sentence. The next sentence talks about some Byrne Grant legislation soon passed after the 2009 stimulus went into effect, but that darn opportunity is still only implied, never specified.
In the wacky coda to one of the most searing chapters in American history, everyone remained true to form.
Anita Hill reacted with starchy disgust.
Ginni Thomas came across like a spiritually addled nut.
Clarence Thomas was mute, no doubt privately raging about the trouble women have caused him.
And now into the circus comes Lillian McEwen, an old girlfriend of Thomas’s.
Supremely Bad Judgment
By MAUREEN DOWD
This is how this article starts out. The use of these short little sentences, all with a sarcastic tone is a captivating start to the article. But this, I have noticed, its kind of the signature writing style of Dowd, and in this article in particular it can get a little redundant. Most of these short sentences make up their own paragraph, so when I read it in my head I always have a long mental pause between each one. This really breaks up the writing in places where it feels like it shouldn't be broken, and really throws off the flow of the whole article. While I understand that the tone she is going for is snappy and sassy, it can get a little annoying to read, as each one of her thought processes ends abruptly, before she has even fleshed it out. It seems a little more like a collection of statements rather than a real article.
"Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, suggested recently to a group of tea partyers that the U.S. was being taken over by Muslims. Seriously"- Gregory Rodriguez
I didn't like this sentence because this is ho he started. I think if he had more background information on what happened it would have been more helpful. The essay was well written but his beginning sentences did not set up the essay properly.
"One of my favorite things about New York City is our almost complete lack of earthquakes and hurricanes. Most reviews of the city don't start with its lack of natural disasters, but I also love spaghetti because it doesn't have any bones." - Steve Mirsky, from "Scientific American" in his essay "Real Skyscrapers"
Wait a second..... WHAT? These are the opening lines of Mirsky's essay, and in my opinion, they make absolutely no sense. In this article, Mirsky discusses a certain phenomenon pertaining to weather that I do not really understand. It does not help that he begins the piece with a really strange comment about spaghetti. What really bothers me is that the brief comment about spaghetti is just that: brief. Mirsky does not mention it again throughout the essay; it does not become an extended metaphor that the audience can relate to. The comment does not make sense in the first place (of course spaghetti does not have bones). But on top of this, the food reference seems to be really lost among the rest of the science talk about meteorology. Mirsky usually has wonderful and witty opening lines that very successfully grab the reader's attention, but in this case, all he succeeded in doing was confusing the reader.
"Finally, there’s the weather. Rain reduces turnout by almost 1 percent per inch, found a 2007 paper, and helps Republicans: downpours deter turnout among marginal, Democratic-leaning voters more than among committed (high-income, highly educated) GOP voters. Democrats should pray for coast-to-coast sunshine." - Sharon Begley, "The Mind of the Marginal Voter"
This is the last paragraph of the article, and it does not end the article well. Along with being the weakest of the reasons why Democrats are not turning out to vote as much as they used to, it does not summarize the article or contain anything that is thought provoking. The rest of the article is very serious and well supported with quotes and statistics, but this is the weakest argument and not very serious. I think that this paragraph should have been moved, to a less important part of the article or not included at all.
"The sun is down but there is still a little pink in the western sky. Beneath the helicopter, the ground is made of what the troops call "moon dust." Fine-grained and dry, it is a color not as dark as dirt and not as light as sand. " David Brown
Brown's article this week is about the front line in the war and forward operating base Wilson. This is unlike his usual writing this week becuase he isn't really reporting on news but rather telling a story. This paragraph is one of many that introduces the story and sets the scene. It is a pretty picture that he has painted, but at this point, the reader wants to know where he is headed. This describes the surroundings, but it doesn't get to his point The longer someone takes to open a story, the less interested the reader will get.
"Try to imagine a Giants team being forced to leave town, for whatever reason, and then a new team shows up with the same name. It's just a bunch of clowns, really, the product of an expansion draft. A bunch of guys nobody wanted. That's how the now-Texas franchise was born, in the nation's capital, after the real Senators moved to Minneapolis and a bunch of strangers took over the uniform."--"Rangers and SF Giants in World Series? Bring it on" by Bryce Jenkins
I just really do not like how Jenkins created a hypothetical situation of the Giants having to experience events as the Texas Rangers had to. Why didn't Jenkins talk about the Senators and the Rangers? I understand that since the Giants and Rangers will be playing each other in the World Series, so there is some relation, but I disagree with Jenkins execution of trying to make the reader imagine the Giants as something else that they are not.
"As its narrator, Matt Damon, intones, our country has been robbed by insiders who..." -- Frank Rich, "What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?"
It was hard to find something I didn't like about the author's writing. However, I did find it a little awkward that he used 3 commas over the stretch of only 4 words in the first line of the sentence. I think that he could have introduced Matt Damon in a clearer, more concise way (According to narrator Matt Damon, _____ perhaps).
In my article, Amilia Duchon talks about her experience when helping a woman leave her abusive husband. I didn't find one specific moment in the report I didn't like but I found that Duchon writes leaning towards telling the story rather then showing. Throughout the essay, it seems that Duchon is just stating one line after another of what happened next. "But then she started worrying..." "So our first stop was at Other Mothers consignment store to pick up a car seat." And later on in the essay "Alexis, who is now 10, was there, and she remembers a lot of what happened with my ex husband." Theres nothing particularly wrong with these sentences but the way she writes them is boring. Also, Duchon uses the phrase "a lot": an extremely undescriptive and casual term. Although I found the essay topic to be very interesting, I thought the style of writing throughout the essay was boring and and unskilled.
"For a child still in the single-digit years, life in the rock world is like an endless parade of loopy uncles"
Although I do not find a big problem with this sentence I found it a bit confusing and random in the context of the article. I found the part where she says "single-digit years" especially confusing and I had to read it over to fully understand the sentence. This was also the beginning of the paragraph and I think the placement was not very beneficial to the paragraph. The article was talking about how the children of rock stars often try to get into the family business and how they often fail.
It is tough for mere humans to move beyond their natural -- and sometimes logic-based -- fears and prejudices. Sometimes fear keeps us alive; sometimes it creates unfair assumptions. Let's talk about that. Let's figure out how not to fear and smear people who are not like us, but with whom we must share the planet -- and the plane. -- Kathleen Parker
Some may argue that the many breaks and pauses in Parker's writing makes it clearer and helps get her point across. However, in these 3 sentences, she has 5 relatively abrupt pauses which tamper with the flow of her column. Additionally, I had to read the paragraph a few times until I completely understood the logic in the quick transition between Sentences 2 and 3 (how they relate). Perhaps Parker would be better off without the many pauses in this paragraph although the "start-and-stop" writing is a defining characteristic of her style.
"They could end up like Hall of Fame offensive lineman Mike Webster, who was diagnosed with brain damage in 1999 after taking too many hits to the head during his 16-year career. In 2002, Webster, who was periodically homeless, died of a heart attack at 50 years old."
In this weeks article Hill talks about how violence is inevitable in football, but something should be done to cut it down. She doesn't think that the new 18-game schedule is going to do anything about the violence. Her argument was solid throughout the entirety of the article, but when she tied it all together in the end (the paragraph above) her argument ended on a week note. She is saying in a nutshell that violence will end to brain damage which will lead to homelessness then a heart-attack at and early age. This is not a valid conclusion. In the end the whole thing sounds like a huge stretch.
"From the Panic of 1893, to the Swedish crisis of 1992, to Japan’s lost decade, financial crises have consistently been followed by long periods of economic distress. And that has been true even when, as in the case of Sweden, the government moved quickly and decisively to fix the banking system."
While I thought that the essay as a while was excellent, I thought that this section was quite awkward in that it assumes that the reader understands instances such as the Swedish crisis of 1992 or the Panic of 1893. To me it weakened the argument a bit because some of the recessions mentioned were so obscure that there citation didn't mean anything. I think that Krugman would have been better off citing economic disturbances that are more common knowledge in making his argument. I just think that this one part didn't quite flow with the common sense down to earth tone set by the rest of the essay.
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