I thought the reading examples were interesting, especially the one about hydrogen powered cars, but was kind of bummed about it because so far my only idea for my paper was very similar

I also thought the reading examples were rather interesting. I really like learning something new whenever I read. Honestly the spiders freaked me out but all was pretty interesting.

I wasn’t exactly sure about how much to comment, so I commented by answering the questions after each article. I think I may have said too much!

But here goes:

The article, “How Much Does it Cost to go Organic” is presented in a magazine style format as opposed to an APA format which is much more formal and in my opinion not as interesting to read. The audience for this article would probably be people interested in health and being in the magazine format as opposed to APA style would probably interest many more people.

The information presented was in logical sequence and informative. Matsumoto compares costs and repeats the findings in the table and graph. The table and graph present the same information in a different manner. Perhaps she could have presented the cost per month in the graph so that the two visuals contain different information.

I don’t think it is worth the extra money to go organic. In an argument paper with a persuasive aim, I would argue that the environment we live in contaminates our bodies with the air we breathe, water we drink and that eating an organic diet – fertilized with manure, could ultimately lead to an e coli bacterial infection.

In the article, “Behind Stone Walls” Carp writes for an audience of peers with common belief that prison would be a frightening place to visit. Her surprising view is that visiting prison is uplifting.

The strengths are that she is prepared to answer the common view that most people hold of prisoners. She lists the common views and then expands on activities the inmates participate in – like the clown group or the inmate who learns and teaches origami – to help the reader know that the inmates are involved in activities not known to an ‘outsider.’
The listing of common views is a strength as is including the description of activities in which inmates participate. I’m not sure that I think there is a weakness in her paper.

Shannon King’s article, “How Clean and Green Are Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars?,” uses surprise reversal by posing the statement that her research shows that “hydrogen is not as green as most people think.” Her surprising answer is that the two processes that separate chemical compounds containing hydrogen use fossil fuel and thus make the hydrogen not as green as people think.

King uses research well to present both sides of the argument. This paper is both persuasive and informative. I think she believes that hydrogen fuel cell technology is not the answer to going green.

Eugene Robinson reports that white, African-American and Hispanics are all equally likely to be stopped by police. In his surprising reversal, he indicates that being black or brown increases the likelihood of being stopped, searched, arrested, given a ticket or receiving a written or verbal warning. Robinson also suggests that black and Hispanic drivers are subjected to “police use of force” more than whites.

I find the statistics quoted the most compelling support of Robinson’s thesis.

In this article the logos is the supporting evidence as reason and logic. The ethos is the author’s character in text – which Robinson believes – through evidence presented – black and brown are racially profiled and more likely to have a negative experience with the police. The pathos in this article could be the paragraph where Robinson writes about paranoia (10).

I though the article by Cheryl Carp was very interesting and surprising. However I don’t think that visiting a maximum security prison would be very uplifting. I think it would be quite depressing. I think the topic of hydrogen burning cars would catch the attention of most of us these days. I noticed that Carp also refered to the authors of the sources that she used for research throughout the article and included a “Works cited” list at the end of her article. Was this a tactic to avoid plagerizing?

I never really knew that much about informative and surprising article, so I found this chapter really interesting to read about. I thought that is was important to write about something that was surprising to you, instead of writing about something that you were formally with and could surprise others with your finds. Which let’s be honest would have made my life a whole lot easier when I was writing my papers. When you are writing about something you already know about it makes is easier to have an opinion and more interesting to do the research on.
I think my favorite reading was Behind Stone Walls, I found it to be quite surprising. I know that I have my own views about jail and the people who are in jail. I thought the author did a good job expressing her opinion, and showing others a different side of poisons and the people who are there.

Good reading examples – I’ll comment on two. First, the one about hydrogen fueled cars. Boring reading to me, just because it’s not a topic I’m all that interested in, however that’s not to say it’s a bad idea. The author seemed to have done some extensive research to write her article. Next, Behind Stone Walls was very good and informative. The author does a good job portraying to her readers what things were like in the prison she visited. I was glad that she clarified at the end that she didn’t condone their actions, just that they were trying to get by in the life they now live.

In the reading assignment I found the article titled “Behind Stone Walls” by Cheryl Carp to be a very interesting piece. In the beginning she built up the anticipation of arriving to the prison enough to keep me as the reader wanting to know how her visits to to Monroe state penitentiary turned out. I like how she wrote about the “good” that was being done in the prison and how the inmates were not the monstrous people society makes them out to be. I do believe from her article that she gained a different perspective of the inmates and the prison, but if her motive of writing this paper was to maybe change the reader’s opinion on the view of inmates, I cannot say that it changed mine.
I also enjoyed the article “How Clean and Green Are Hydrogen Fuel-cell Cars?” by Shannon King. I really like informative papers about technology in our present day, so this was very interesting to me. I, like everybody else found Hydrogen Cars to be “clean”, but never really thought about what it took to produce the hydrogen. This paper helps the reader to understand the pros and cons of hydrogen powered vehicles.

The reading assignment for me was very informative. For example, from Shannon King’s article I learned a lot about the hydrogen fuel cell cars. We hear on TV. and from different sources about how much better the hydrogen cars are because they are “better” for our environment and that in most cases water is the waste created. From this article I learned however that is not necessarily the case and depending on how the hydrogen is made it can actually be worse for the environment.
I also really liked Kerri Ann Matsumoto’s article about the cost of going to organic groceries. I knew that buying organic costs more but, I never realized how much more. To the average family a couple of dollars difference in food is a lot especially in today’s society where gas prices are so high.
I feel from reading all of the articles that each author had a good grasp on their audiences and explained each idea with enough information that the readers could form their own opinions or explore a different way of viewing these ideas. I also think that the authors did a good job of putting their surprising information in the right areas to catch and keep the reader’s attention.

I enjoyed the writings, the writers did a good job in keeping the topics interesting and engaged. Though I disagree with some of the thinking, it makes a point and there are always two different views to a topic.