Humor in Arguments

I am currently deciding between two different visuals. One picture is of a television screen with a hand coming out of it, reaching for a baby, who cannot take his eyes off of the television. It shows humor because there is no way that a hand can even come out of a television. It is just not possible and the baby seems to be so intrigued. The second picture is of a little baby who is grabbing for a big mac. Now why does the baby want the big mac? Not because he/she likes the taste of it. They like the way it looks on TV even though they do not know what it is. This picture is very humorous because no parent in their right mind would let their baby eat a big mac. I am not sure which picture to choose, but I think both of these are pretty good.

Visual

I found this image and it really shocked me. It is a picture of a man hanging himself with sauage links around his neck. This is a horrifying picture. It is trying to send the message that obesity is suicide. I highly doubt that this would happen but it is a very symbolic message. The following link is where I found this picture:

http://www.celebritydietdoctor.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/obesity-noose.jpg

What a Relief!!!

I could not be happier that we finally turned in our essays. It was a stressful weekend working on it. It came so fast that it seemed like I barely had time to work on it. I know it's not the last one we have to do, but we're making process. It's weird to think we're more than halfway through the semester because it has gone pretty fast, not that I am complaining. I also couldn't be happier that we do not have to do engagement hours. Props to whoever got us out of that. It's not that I dont want to do something for the community, I am just worried about finding time. Luckily, we don't have to do them anymore. To conclude this blog...WOO HOO!!!!!!!

"Childhood Obesity: Is Advertising to Blame?"

"Children are exposed to $13 billion of food advertising every year, according to a professor of food and resource economics at the University of Florida." WHOA!! That is a shocking statistic. This article talked about children's exposure to advertisements and its affect on what they eat. The most interesting part of this article was this part about an experiment that she conducted on her niece. Her oldest niece Taylor is in love with princesses, but refused to eat fruits. Taylor's mom recently found packaged grapes with princesses on the cover and Taylor had no trouble eating them. Taylor was influenced by advertising because she only wanted to eat things that had to do with princesses. If the princesses were eating them, she would eat them. This just goes to show that advertising affects what children eat and what they want to eat. The website to this article is:

http://tracyshealthandfitnessblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/childhood-obesity-is-advertising-to.html

Public Blog Response

So....this assignment took me awhile to get started. Every blog I visited expected me to pay at least $50 to leave a simple little comment on the blog!! I went to 8 different websites and all of them told me I had to subscribe to them first to post a comment. Finally I landed on a blog that was from Blogger so I didn't have to pay. The site was called Television vs Children. It was written by a french lady so it wasn't perfect English but it was pretty good. This blog discussed the impact of advertising on child weight gain and was very well researched. It had a really good idea which was for parents to ask their child questions about the commercial when it came on so they knew the difference between commercials and shows. It would make the children aware of the ways that media and advertising people try to lure people in and it would keep them informed and aware.

The weblink to this site is: http://television-vs-children.blogspot.com/2006/11/advertising-impact-on-increaded-weight.html

My Civic Issue

As you can tell, my issue is childhood obesity. I have been looking for good websites that relate childhood obesity and how mass media portrays them for at least 3 days now and I am having the hardest time finding information. Every website and book that I look at talks about childhood obesity and the amount of TV they watch. I just got back from the library and i found some books that I think can give me a little help.

1) Childhood Obesity in the United States. Marie K. Frugier (Editor)

2) Cultural Studies: Medicine and Media. Lester d. Friedman (Editor)

3) Weight Bias: Nature, Consequences, and Remedies. Kelly D. Brownell (Editor)


I have looked at many different websites and read at least 35 different one's and have found some that relate somewhat to my research, but it seems like I am not going to find very many. A couple that I have found are:

1) The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/The-Role-Of-Media-in-Childhood-Obesity.pdf

2) Obesity News
http://www.medindia.net/news/Media-Say-Obesity-Is-Our-Own-Fault-27888-1.htm

3) Choice and Voice: Obesity Debates in Television News (This website is also a scholarly article).
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_08_151007/bon10486_fm.html

I think with these six sources, I am off to a good start, but it's going to take some time for me to find more scholarly articles that have to do with the way media portays obesity rather than the impact of television watching on obese children.

What is Academic Integrity?

When I first saw this question, I was really confused and really had no idea what it meant. I have never even heard of academic integrity until I read chapter 18 in "Everything's an Argument". Academic integrity means giving credit to the author whose information you use. It means citing things properly and making sure you don't plagiarize. Most of the time, what we write is our own words but in research papers, we need facts and information from reliable sources other than ourselves. We will be using MLA format for our upcoming papers and we need to know how to cite things properly so we do not get in trouble. Even if we paraphrase what the author said, we still must site it. Whenever we use information that is not our own, we have to write down where it came from. Common knowledge doesn't need to be cited because it is well known to everyone. Academic integrity is basically the same thing as plagiarism. It's just a different way of telling us to be honest about what we write and where we get our information from. Academic integrity sounds better than plagiarism because it is more official and shows us that we need to be honest in our work. Not plagiarizing is not the easist thing in the world, so in order to be our own words, we need to have integrity.