Susan Bordo, "Listening to the Khakis"- Malcolm Gladwell

    In Malcolm Gladwell's article, "Listening to the Khakis", he writes about the success of ad campaigns marketed toward males and specific techniques they use to market and sell their product. He frequently refers to the Dockers' ads for pants, and their 1980s television commercials that started the boom of khaki pants. The camera never showed the actors' faces, but instead only stayed focused on the seats of the mens' pants, the pleats of the khakis, or on their hands going in and out of their pockets. The dialogue consisted of fragments of conversations between male friends bonding over a beer or during a football game in the setting of a living room or bar (Gladwell). The mastermind behind this concept realized men don't pay attention to the little details of things such as the different combinations of outfits their Dockers khakis can produce. An experiment proving this was conducted by two psychologists at York University, results showed that women were able to recall 70% more objects than men from the room both had been placed in (testing fashion sense through awareness) (Gladwell). Levi's overall aim was not to have the main focus of their ads be their khaki pants, but to show how well they fit into a scene men would appreciate; one of male camaraderie.
     Almost ten years later Dockers came out with a new slew of ads to counter their competitors'. In these       marketers planned to use a different approach to target the average male. The new "Nice Pants" campaign combined the heart, head, and groin to show "the complete man" and add the element of sex into the commercial. The crucial element in each ad is a man as the central actor who is unaware of his appearance or "Nice Pants", "if a man is self-confident-if he knows he is attractive and is beautifully dressed- then he's not a man anymore. He's a fop." (Gladwell) The consumers made up of men require subtle and distinct characteristics within an ad to feel the need to buy that company's product. "You can't alter men's minds, particularly on subjects like sexuality. It'll never happen." (Gladwell).

Gladwell, Malcolm (1997). "Listening to the Khakis," The New Yorker, July 28, pp. 54-58

David Foster Wallace

When I'm simply just sitting listening to a person talk my mind tends to drift off. It's not always because I find what the person is saying boring or unappealing, just that my thoughts go in a completely different direction. However, reading Wallace's speech I think he would have had my apt attention through out the entire thing. There were so many points he made that I could relate to. Almost like "Oh! Some one else thinks the same thing I always do!" This realization only adds proof to his claim we think in a very self-centered way. Therefore is there anyone in the world that's truly non-selfish and a GOOD person?? Maybe that's why out of all the people that have walked this earth there's not too many that have been named saints. For me, it's enough that I simply strive to be a decent, good person. An "A" for effort.
It especially resonated when he talked about entering the adult world and its routines. Coming to college, I feel like that's what my life has become-one giant routine. I go to class, come home, do homework, eat, study, then wake up the next day and do it all over again. Occasionally I'll have a meeting or event to attend and even earn myself some R&R (which is rare!), but those somehow work themselves into the life i live during the school week.
I thought it was ironic that Wallace mentioned suicide and how people killed the "master" because isn't that how he died?

The "Banking" Concept of Education

   When Freire was speaking about the oppressors using the banking education to oppress and dehumanize I immediately began to think about the Holocaust and Hitler's affect on Nazi Germany. He brainwashed millions of people into thinking that Jews and other minorities deserved the fates they met in the concentration camps located through out Europe. It's amazing and sickening at the same time how through teaching young children and even adults his ideas and values, Hitler almost took over the world.
    To me this is Freire's banking education concept at its peak. People in this kind of education aren't allowed to really "think" or even "be". That's why problem-prose education is literally so liberalizing because it frees people from these molds and lets them think creatively as actual human beings.
   
I think it's pretty cool that Paulo Freire developed this idea and put his own philosophical spin on it. He isn't just "some guy" that lived centuries ago, whose works we still study. He knew the majority of the world that we know today, having died only about 15 years ago.

Research Prospectus

I remember my freshmen year of high school reading a newspaper article about people in Britain needing surgery. They weren’t life-or-death situations, but the surgery would have provided the people more comfort. The article described the lines of people going outside, wrapped around the building, waiting to be seen by their doctor.  A person was interviewed saying they’d probably end up going to another country for their procedure so as not to have to wait over a ridiculous time period of six months otherwise. Even today that writing still resonates with me. I was disgusted at the healthcare the English had to live with; and this was how I became introduced to the system of universal healthcare. I aspire to be a doctor, and my definition of a doctor is of someone that helps people. How can a doctor expect to be as efficient as possible and provide each individual with the care and attention they deserve if they know there’s countless others they need to tend to before the day is through? In my opinion the demand universal healthcare ultimately places on physicians isn’t fair to either the patients or the doctors. A universal healthcare plan implemented into government must also affect the people living in that country. My working thesis is that Obama’s new healthcare plan, “Obama-care”, hurts more people such as the taxpayers and doctors, than helps the people who can’t afford private healthcare.

To support my thesis I would cover Obama’s plan thoroughly, clearly showing what he has suggested and compare it to aspects of our country’s present healthcare. A big portion of my paper would be dedicated to fully dissecting “Obama-care”; what it is, how it would differ, and what Obama’s administration claims the benefits of it would bring Americans. I would also look at articles and statistics showing our country and citizens’ current economic standings and look for a correlation between those and future predictions to see how or if it would drastically affect Americans and our everyday lives.

Counterarguments to my thesis will be that Obama’s new healthcare plan will bring the opportunity of medical attention to thousands of Americans who previously didn’t have it. Those against my position will use pathos to a great extent in their argument, countering, “Do you not care about the working poor who can’t otherwise afford healthcare?” However, this isn’t the main case. My belief is that this group of working poor won’t have access to satisfactory medical care anyway because of the physician’s less ample time to treat them given their more demanding patient list. If the government could provide more hours in a day this plan could then possibly work.

For research I intend to use scholarly articles I find regarding the subjects of the healthcare reform and how its changes will affect the United States.

I have already found three articles that will be useful in my argument against Obama’s healthcare reform. “The Case Against Obama Care” by Beier, Eric MD, MBA shows why it’s unneeded (http://www.medoptima.net/images/121809PERSPECTIVE.pdf), “Intensive Obama care” by Tanner, D. Michael explains the overall cost the new healthcare plan is going to cost American taxpayers (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10296), and “Faithful Patients: The Effect of Long-Term Physician-Patient Relationships on the Cost and Use of Healthcare by Older Americans” by Weiss, J. Linda PhD and Blustein, Jan MD, PhD (http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/86/12/1742) is a study showing that Americans with a close, long relationship with their doctor results in less expenses and less intensive medical care, supporting that this connectedness between patients and doctors would be lost with the switch to public healthcare.

I think I’ll find a lot of interesting facts regarding this topic and be able to a make well based argument on my own based on the data and information I find.  

"The Achievement of Desire"

"I intended to hurt my mother and father. I was still angry at them for having encouraged me toward classroom English. But gradually this anger was exhausted..." (pg 519)

It's ironic because Rodriguez does end up hurting his family, but for the opposite reasons. He begins to feel his heritage and and his family's background isn't good enough compared to the education he's receiving and the academic world he's enveloped within. It's surprising to know that he was ever against going to school and even learning English because he quickly became accustomed to it and preferred school and books to his family, becoming an outsider amongst the Rodriquez familia. I think he made a mistake in pushing his parents away through out his adolescence and young adulthood. Having a Mexican background set him apart from the "strangers" he'd always encounter in the library in Britain. Rodriquez, himself, even admitted although he was an accomplished reader, he failed to develop his own perspective. I think this is a metaphor regarding his life and ambition. He went very far with his education, fitting the mold of the "scholarship boy", but he failed to find self-purpose or self-identity partly because he alienated those who loved him. Overall Rodriquez made a choice to pursue his education over being more connected with his family, but my belief is that he easily could have had the best of both worlds.

The Pain Scale-According to Eula Bliss

7.
Also known as infinity.
On this portion of the scale I think it's interesting how Eula Bliss dissects the concept of pain and the scale people measure it on.
That scale is not accurate, just simply an approximation. Like the approximation of prime numbers and their square roots, 7 being a popular one located on the number line.
As Eula dissects "pain" itself, she comments that not only is there that physical unpleasantness we physically feel but also the knowledge of how long it'll last, or the mystery of how long it'll last. Because in the case of Eula Bliss, she doesn't know how long she'll have to live with her pain. She doesn't even know what's causing it. Can't that count as a pain all on its own? Earlier in the text Bliss refers to subdivisions of pain such as physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and financial. Which one would this aspect of pain fit into, or maybe it's a part of all of them?

Eula Bliss doesn't seem to be the overly religious, spiritual type yet she refers to Christianity quite often. Her analogy of 7 to the eternity of Hell in my opinion is deep, and it's obviously something she's thought about often. I see her point in it, however.

"Why Bother?"

In "Why Bother?"from the New York Times Magazine, author, Michael Pollan, immediately asks his readers this very question. He asks individuals to really ponder the effects of climate change, what we can actually "do" about it, and if it will even make any difference in the long run. Pollan admits this is a difficult question for many to answer including himself, but he begins to delve into the reasoning and structure behind his opinion and thought process of being economically and socially green and what it takes. Pollan argues that making small changes in your life isn't enough. Why? Because according to the author not everyone is doing it, such as Pollan's "evil twin, some carbon footprint doppelganger in Shanghai or Chongqing" (89), and even if these changes are put into effect (like eating locally and walking to work) they may have no effect whatsoever. Pollan believes that only through a combination of small changes in everyday living, laws established by politicians, and money doled out from anywhere available will an effect really resonate across the globe. He uses the strategy of logos to support his argument, such as a percentage graph of people by country that view global warming as a "very serious" problem and a statistic that states "consumer spending represents 70% of our economy" (90). Pollan writes that he thinks consumers feel helpless to do anything about our current "predicament" (90) because cheap energy has caused "industrial civilization" to become so "specialized" (91) with "divisions of labor being our connection to everyday actions" (91). Pollan's final word on the matter is that if one person decides to bother they can make a difference in their society and influence others to set off a "viral social change" (93). He suggests taking actions such as, abstaining from economic activity one day a week, planting a garden, or giving up imported meat.

Work Cited: Pollan, Michael. "Why Bother?" New York Times Magazine 20 Apr 2008: 19+. Rpt. in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 6th ed. New York: Pearson, 2012. 88-94. Print.