TOW #24 - The Most Important things in life, violence, by Harlan Ellison - written

Harlan Ellison was, at the time of the anecdote he references in this essay, a "Nice quiet Jewish kid from Ohio... a published author... well into terminal destitution. Poverty would have been, for me, a sharp jump into a higher-income bracket."  He is also one of the best known writers of the 20th century, namely for his amazing humor and ability to put you in a situation. In this essay he writes about the prominence of violence in life. He illustrates this through the entire section of the essay being an anecdote, in which he uses humor and great description to put you in the scene and make it believable. He outlines a story about him and his friend seeing a movie at four in the morning with a bunch of food when a fight breaks out amongst the few people in the theater aside from them. He uses great humor in sentences like '"Oh shit," I murmured, slumping down even deeper in the seat, till my knees were up around my ears like a grasshopper. Beside me, my Texican buddy was praying in High Church Latin, Yiddish and Sufi, all at the same time.' This humor opens up readers to accept the reality of the story more and to let the reality of the anecdote convince them more truly of his point. He describes everything down to the smallest details, which, along with the humor, serves to immerse the readers even deeper in the world that Ellison creates. Overall, Ellison crafts another great essay in "Violence".

TOW 23 - Feeding Kids Meat is Child Abuse by PETA - visual

Seen above is a visual rhetorical text brought to you by our favorite Animal Rights group, PETA. PETA is well known for their borderline militant views on animal rights, going farther than anyone else has or wants them to in order to make their points, even when there is no real backing to what they are saying. This one is particularly bad, having next to no rhetorical validity to it, though there are many strategies in effect in an attempt to get people's attention. First of all, there is the image in the top part of the advertisement. It shows an abnormally large child about to bite into what is presumably a ham or cheeseburger of some sort. This, in tandem with the message at the lower portion of the advertisement, saying "Fight the Fat", is an attempt to convince people that eating meat will make them fat - something that has been backed by no evidence, placed in the ad or in existence otherwise. Next, they make the gutsy claim that "feeding kids meat is child abuse", a very large and controversial claim that has no support in the advertisement or out of it. Just like any of their other terrible ads, this is just another attempt by PETA to shock people into listening to their message without presenting any information with depth in it. At all. PETA fails again.

TOW #22 - ON A MOTHER'S LOVE by T. Augustus Forbes Leith - Written

T. Augustus Forbes Leith was an ornithologist and ethnologist in Australia during the 1800s. His manuscript is held at the National Library of Australia. In this essay, titled "On a Mother's Love", he ruminates on, well, the nature of the love that mothers have for their children. This essay is beautifully written, and ephemerally short, a style and form that match very well the subject matter at hand. He argues that a mother's love is the purest of them all, that no love can ever be as unbiased, unwavering, or unselfish. He cites how it lasts from your birth to your mother's death. This is a rhetorically sound example because in the data that he presents, from the birth of the child to the death of the mother, the entanglement between mother and child is highlighted. It is not the birth and death of just one party that determines the love, it requires the birth of one and the death of another. This demonstrates the almost destiny-like entanglement of souls that Leith argues is present in motherly love. He argues that a mother's love never leaves you, and in that respect, it is the truest, most unbiased love of all. Because it does not discriminate between rich and poor or good and bad, it is true and absolute, and this brings it to rise above all other loves as the purest. Although Leith's evidence is primarily speculative, it is quite effective due to the beautiful and concise form in which he presents it. Leith's views on motherly love are valid and believable.

TOW #20 - Isaac Asimov on New Ideas - Written

Isaac Asimov is widely considered to be one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time. Having written many great classics like I, Robot and the colored Mars series, Asimov is undoubtedly one of the ost important writers in the entire genre. Like many short essays published by popular authors, On New Ideas is a large departure from his normal writing material. Isaac argues that creativity is the act of flying in the face of reason in order to create something new and beautiful. He argues this with manny examples an anecdotes from his own personal experience, and supports these anecdotes with beautifully simple prose. He references many of the works of 19th centruy naturalists and their view on creativity and beauty in combination with their views on nature. He speaks about how they, in the face of a looming and inevitable industrial revolution, write their ideas about the beauty of nature. This fits in well with his thesis of flying in the face of reason and inevitablitiy in order to create something amazing. He references Thomas Huxley's saying upon completing the origion of the species, "Why didn't I think of that?" The reason he gives is because Huxley was not one to fly in the face of what was at the time known as reason, the ideas of fundamentalist religious ideas on the nature of man and biology. Darwin was a dude who was like "I have some ideas about how this works, and I'm going to go up against what most of you view as reason to present them." This, Asimov argues, was the epitome of creativity, the O.G. of new ideas. All in all, On Ideas is a great meditation on the nature of how one gets new ideas and how creativity is spawned in humanity. It is a very effective rhetorical text.

TOW #21 - IRB halfway review - Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is widely considered to be one of, if not the, greatest living scientists. His contributions to math science, and theoretical physics are undeniably earth-shattering. He is also known to have sent John Oliver to the hospital with one of the sickest burns of all time, especially for a theoretical physicist. His book, The Universe in a Nutshell, is about the universe and some popular theoretical physics concepts that are prominent in today's science world. He presents these theories masterfully, imparting the complexity and brilliance of the theories in language that a filthy 11th grade peasant like me could understand. Hi Caroline. He presents these with as much evidence as possible, and his analysis of that evidence is very clear, concise, and detailed. So far, he has described the backing of quantum physics, M theory, superstrings, and Multidimensional theory. He goes about this by citing several studies and displaying the mathematical calculations and equations that have been made so far to describe these. With precision, he breaks down the implications of these studies skillfully and with great patience. With the equations, he breaks them down better than freaking CPM did for the precalc curriculum. His efforts to make this book readable by the general public go quite a way - so far, this book has been fantastically easy to understand, yet still interesting and engaging.