TOW #3 - The two Mexicos: and the lessons for development

The two Mexicos - The Economist

After telling my father about my weekly TOW’s, he immediately subscribed to The New Yorker and gave me his login information for The Economist, New York Times, and The New Yorker so that I could access these magazines online. Thanks Dad! This week, I’ve taken advantage of this. The image I’ve chosen, which isn’t credited to any artist, was printed as the cover of The Economist on September 19, 2015. The main article of this issue discusses development in Mexico, as the title of the image and the issue suggests. This image is a great example of juxtaposition; there is even a visible line down to middle to show the contrasting sides. On the top, the artist depicts developed Mexico as happy, rich with culture, and industrialized. The latter is shown by the car and city skyline, and the former two are shown by the happy face on the statue and the singing man. On the bottom, the artist depicts undeveloped Mexico as poor and violent. The latter is shown by the man with the gun, the crows, and the gravemarkers. The former is shown by the man on horseback, the rundown statue, and the subpar housing. Originally, I thought the undeveloped Mexico was under water because the sky was more blue. I thought this was interesting because it reminded me of the iceberg metaphor, in which the main message is that there’s a lot more to a person or a thing than people can see. In this situation, undeveloped Mexico would be the part that people usually don’t see, especially American tourists. Aside from all of this great comparison, this picture also leaves the viewer with some unanswered questions. The picture is not nearly detailed enough to replace the article, especially for someone without extensive foreknowledge of the subject. Therefore, a purpose of this picture, other than to show the differences in the two Mexicos, is to entice the reader into opening the magazine so that they might subscribe to it if they hadn’t already or so that they stay interested and continue their subscriptions.

TOW #2 - FEC Implements One-Year Break Between All Presidential Terms As Reprieve For Weary Nation

Satire for dummies - Jerm

It’s been too long since I’ve read some nice satire, and the Onion is the perfect place to slide back in. This article discusses a new one-year break between presidential terms implemented by the Federal Election Committee (FEC) in order to give citizens a break between the drama that surrounds a presidency. Of course, the nature of satire is to ridicule, in this case the US presidential elections, so it is not necessary for the report to be true. I could not find the author of this article, but the author and his or her credibility is not important in this situation because any informed reader would know that the information is inaccurate and heavily exaggerated to create a humorous effect. However, the author does create a sort of “ethos” by citing official organizations, like the FEC, and leaders of those organizations, like FEC chair Ann M. Ravel. As aforementioned, the reader of this article would have to be well informed on how the US government works as well as smart enough to understand that waiting a year between presidencies is completely out of the question because it would leave the world superpower without a leader. To further ridicule and make the article funnier, the author adds quotes from citizens reacting to the “change” made by the FEC. For example, alleged Columbus, OH resident Caroline Helling says, “Seeing all these TV and newspaper reports about whatever the current president just did or might do, hearing months and months of speculation about whether some guy’s gonna run or not—it will be the most amazing thing in the world to have a break from all that. I would love, absolutely love, to stop hearing a candidate’s sound bite on loop in the media, then hearing the other side overreacting and denouncing the sound bite, then seeing all the thinkpieces that come out about the overreaction, then having to go through the same shit all over again the next day.” This appeals to the author’s “ethos” by supporting his earlier statements and “logos” by providing a logical argument for keeping the breaks.

TOW #1 - Learning to Live

My grandmother handed me a magazine this weekend, asking me to please actually read it instead of just putting it away somewhere like I usually do. The magazine was a supplement to the World Journal (世界日报), a Chinese newspaper that all Chinese grandparents at Chinese school read frequently. This supplement, with essays both printed in Chinese and English, is targeted to Chinese-American families getting ready to send their children off to prestigious colleges. All of the essays include some sort of advice and make me feel bad as I read about “kids around my age who rose to face challenges usually more daunting than my own” and have already gone so far in life. Unfortunately, most of the essays are written fairly poorly as well, but that can be forgiven since some of the writers primarily speak Chinese. If I could read Chinese well, then I’m sure I’d love their essays.

A boy yawns while awaiting Hilary Clinton's arrival in Beijing last May - Reuters
...Or maybe he's already feeling the pressure of getting into a good college

Liren Ma, the author of Learning to Live and the child of a Chinese immigrant like me, has something different. On one hand, his prose is coherent and flows well, and it doesn’t seem tentative and unsure like that of other writers of the magazine. On the other hand, his advice isn’t to give back to your parents because of the huge sacrifice they made for you, because that would be giving up on yourself. Instead, one should “remember that everything they did was to give [you] the freedom to one day chase [your] own dreams.” He conveys this message by telling us his story, establishing ethos and pathos with the reader. The former he does by sharing experiences that are relatable to other children of Chinese immigrants. For example, he writes about the pressure he felt from the stories his grandparents would tell him about their childhoods or even other kids his age who are doing much better than him, stories which my grandparents frequently tell me too. He establishes pathos by evoking emotions from these stories. He describes the pressure of the stories, the stress of college applications, and the worry of not living a fulfilling life.

IRB Intro Post #1

The scene from Ratatouille

Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals discusses the way we eat food and aims to change “the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.” During the summer between middle and high school, I read Pollan’s other book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, and I enjoyed it a lot. It gave eating a whole different meaning, like that scene from Ratatouille in which Remy teaches his brother Emile to really taste food.