Author: wildwood89

Visual Rhetoric- Wildwood

End Family Fire

0:00 – 0:02

The video opens up on a cartoon train, one that looks like on a child television show. The camera frame is just the cartoon, so the viewer does not know whether or not the show is the entire video or if it is in fact a television show, even though it shoes a glare. Then on the second of the video, it shows a child, a little boy in pajamas, and what is assumed is his father. His father is wearing boots, jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, meaning he could be going to work or coming from work. It. It does appear to be morning due to the child in pajamas and the sun looks like it is rising. The son could be watching his morning cartoons. The house is clean and well kept, besides the toys on the ground, it appears as a normal middle class suburban household. The couch cushion in on the ground which seems odd, and there is a normal pillow sitting on top of it. Could mean the father slept there last night, or the young boy sits there and watches his morning cartoons.

0:02 – 0:05

Father in a collar shirt, it is in fact daytime because there are windows in the background. Dad is clean shaven and could be headed to work. He startled and started playing with his son as he was watching cartoons. The pillow on the ground indicates some sort of family disfunction. The father could be sleeping on the couch because his significant other and him are going through a rough patch in the relationship. Did not observe any family pictures either on the television stand or hanging up in the dining room. Although the boy seems loved from the affection he is being shown from his father and the endless number of toys he has, no family pictures signifies a sterile house like feel instead of a warm welcoming home.

0:05 – 0:09

The father got off his child, he said goodbye. Father must be preparing for work for the day. Smaller skateboard by the door, probably the boys skateboard. Only one skateboard so more than likely an only child or a much older or younger sibling.

0:09 – 0:12

The boy lays on the floor after his father walks away and seems like he is pondering something. Possibly wanting to ask the father a question, but in reference to what? The father started walking over to the kitchen. Older model residence due to the dark wood accents and trim around windows and doorframes. Two used cups on the counter and two used bowls, meaning they already ate breakfast. Father going over to clean the dishes.

0:12 – 0:16

Father rolling his sleeves up and walking over to the dishes to start cleaning them. Pink flowers in the background on the kitchen table, still look alive and new. Brought them home for his wife who he is currently fighting with in an attempt to make amends. On the table with the dirty dishes, there is a knife within reach of the boy, signifying danger in his young life.

0:16 – 0:19

Little boy asks to play with father’s gun. Little standing by the front door asking the question, clean house with a toy tank by the skateboard. Boy likes guns and likes violence. The boy does not appear to be ready for school even though he is of age, so most likely a weekend or summer. On the right of the screen, on the counter, there is a box of pancake mix. Father made pancakes for breakfast but there are also two bowls on the kitchen counter and no plates. Possibly made the pancakes for his wife while she is still in bed and she still has the dirty dishes still in bed.

0:19 – 0:25

Father and son having a conversation, the father seems surprised by what the boy is saying even though he is standing in the same spot. The camera is close on the boy when he first speaks, as if what he is saying is the whole purpose of the ad, and then when it cuts back onto the boy after the dad, it is a much broader span. The boy then shrugs his shoulders with saying nothing. The broader span signifies it could be a much larger issue being talked about and that it does not only pertain to this single middle class family.

0:25 – 0:30

The father is pouring his glass of coffee but there is another cup next to the coffee machine. He is not pouring it for some reason even though it is being used because it is a clean cup sitting next to the coffee machine.

White paper- Wildwood

Proposal:

The three different branches of government were not created as an organizational tool, as something just to categorize different offices and government workers to make payroll easier. They were built and are maintained to prevent against the tyranny that, let’s face it, help create the idea of this new and innovative land. The three different branches, Legislative, Judicial, and Executive, are tasked to keep the next one in check and to ensure they do not become too powerful with the legislation they pass. To make sure the imaginary boundaries are not crossed and there is no confusion as to where the certain powers come from.

With a couple exceptions, every president in the United States history has used the privilege that comes with the being the head of the executive branch. Executive orders are a privilege afforded to the President of the United States in order for them to enact temporary legislation or effect a new bill that might have been signed off on by the Speaker of the House. But when is it too much? When does the President cross that imaginary line and overstep the privilege? There are steps that the Legislative branch could take to limit the awesome power granted to the President.

 

Source 1:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/executive_powe

Content of this article:

This piece discusses a number of different powers granted to the president and how it can be wielded. Everything from the wartime powers to pardons to citizens convicted of a federal crime. Also states where the powers are limited and where the extent of the privilege lies.

What it proves:

This article proves that the presidential power has a limit and a history too it. I will discuss if the limit is not strong enough and ways the government could limit the power as it pertains to overreach from the president.

Source 2:

https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-use-and-abuse-executive-orders-and-other-presidential-directives

Content of this article:

This article opens up by discussing the fact that in the past, an executive power has been shot down by the high court, which was unthinkable to ever happen in the past. This article goes into depth regarding the separation of powers and how presidential directives are defines.

What it proves:

This piece not only discusses how the president could enact an executive order, but proves that the history of the directives shows there are limits on the power, no matter how broad it may be.

 

Source 3:

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/executive-orders-101-what-are-they-and-how-do-presidents-use-them/

Content of this article:

This article directly points at where the power of the executive orders come from and shines a little light on where in the constitution the directive comes from. It also allows the reader to know that the order has the same effect that a regular law signed has on the regular population.

What is proves:

This piece proves that executive orders were used in the past and help shaped this county to where it is today. It gives examples when historic legislation was passed and wouldn’t of went through if it wasn’t for Article II. Discusses that Lincoln had more executive orders shot down by the supreme court more than anyone in history and shows how he went around even executive orders.

 

Source 4:

https://qz.com/898683/can-an-executive-order-be-revoked/

Content of this article:

This article somewhat shows the line of where executive orders can be overturned and how they can be revoked. Doesn’t go into an enormous amount of detail but it covers where and how executive orders can be overruled.

What it proves:

This piece proves that there are ways to overrule or revoke an executive order even though the laws surrounding such may not be as stringent as they could be.

 

Source 5:

https://www.ranker.com/list/bold-executive-orders-by-presidents/mike-rothschild

Content of this article:

This article dives into the most famous of the executive orders, the orders that helped shape this county. Diving in depth into some of the more infamous executive directives could make the second article of the constitution more relatable and easier to put into plain text.

What it proves:

This piece shows that the most well-known executive orders help shape the country we live in today. Executives orders help outline legal precedent that will shape the court system for many generations in the future.

PTSD contagious- wildwood

Granted, diagnosing PTSD is a tricky thing.

 -Claiming diagnosing the disease being discussed in the article is not easy and opens the door up to the discussion of mistreatments and how that could affect the patients way of coping with the disease.

“I guess we’re just used to dealing with people with more severe injuries,” a VA nurse once told Brannan upon seeing Caleb.

–The nurse makes a blanket claim saying that mental injuries are just something to scoff at and immediately brush off the shoulder, not matter the severity.

Secondary traumatic stress has been documented in the spouses of veterans with PTSD from Vietnam

-Claim does not go into detail about how PTSD was documented or the severity of the disease.

– Does not discuss the backgrounds of the soldiers nor their wives, making assumption that the disorder came from war

Certainly she seems better than some other PTSD vets’ kids Brannan knows, who scream and sob and rock back and forth at the sound of a single loud noise, or who try to commit suicide even before they’re out of middle school

–Very strong claim about other children in PTSD ridden families

-Offers no information besides saying children tried to kill themselves

-Do not know the background about these certain kids or how many suffer to this extent

Stone Money-wildwood89

The thought of money nowadays seems so simplistic and normal. Having a job naturally comes with having a paycheck and that paycheck pays bills and pays for things that people need to live. Going out with friends or buying the new iPhone all happens because of having money. When somebody does work for their respective company, that company, twice a month deposits money into the workers bank account. That worker then is able to pay for their living expenses. But what did the company actually give the worker? Say it’s a construction business and the employee built a shed, the shed is a physical object, it is in a backyard somewhere where a person can touch it and use it. That shed becomes a tangible asset that the customer can now use. All the employee received in return is a higher number in their bank account that is supposed to represent their savings. A made-up number in a bank account is all that the employee receives after doing manual labor for somebody else. Sweat and hard work translates to receiving a green piece of paper that you trust represents something you can use again in the future. Again, it seems so basic and crude but when you stop to think about it, it makes one wonder how it all came about.

 

After reflecting on a piece by Milton Friedman, “The Island of Stone Money,” the idea of using a giant piece of limestone as a form of currency seems so lucrative, but in actuality, makes more sense than modern day banking. In the article, the author discusses that in the early 1900s, an island of natives, called Yap, on the Caroline Islands, located in Micronesia, had an extremely interesting monetary system where they used stone as currency. This stone was nothing ordinary, these were massive stones with a hole in the middle that a pole could be inserted and wheeled around, making for easier transport. Some stones were so historic and widely talked about, it turned into folktale and the heirs of such stone were living lavish lives, based on the rumors of their family owning it. Some families have never seen their stone, for some was lost years before, but the community still accepted them as wealthy. When the people of Yap were in debt, the government would send teams out to the people in debt and mark their stones with thick black paint, marking an “x” on it until the debt it paid. When the stones had an x painted on it, the community no longer considered that as a sign of wealth and would even shun the family with an x painted on their limestone. As soon as the debt was paid, the government would send out another team, removing the mark. The fact that the community based their belief off of a gigantic stone and an x, says all you need to know about the monetary system.
A sophomoric idea I had when I was little and just starting to understand the idea of having to pay for things I want, was to simply print more money. This was obviously before I even heard the word inflation. After a family trip to the United States Mint, it further backed my idea of using the massive, loud, shiny machines to just print more dollar bills so that everyone has a little more in their pockets. After growing up and realizing it is not that simple, I was very pleased that the government did not follow my lead and print the money.

 

After listening to a segment of an NPR broadcast regarding an economic crisis in Brazil in the 1950s and an unprecedented inflation rate which crippled the economy, it struck me how easily inflation could handicap a population. The inflation crisis continued for 5 decades until the government needed a new idea, something to change the system. The Brazilian government hired four experts and gave them free range to save the bleeding economy. They introduced a new form of currency, one where the population could believe in, and new legislation which slowed down the money printing presses. After a short while, their new procedures actually worked, and once disastrous economy started to level off and stabilize. After analyzing where they went wrong and what caused the multiple decade long economic downturn, they realized that the excess of money floating around the economy caused the money to lose value at an extreme rate. Printing more money to build, buy and expand an economy is not the answer.

 

Another segment in the NPR broadcast discusses the United States and the history of where the modern-day banking has got its shape. All superpowers have a central bank that controls the inflow and outflow of its currency, and the United States central bank is called the Federal Reserve. The fed does what is right for the economy free of political restraints, regardless on which side of the aisle the Fed President votes. The presidents of the different banks are located in 12 different districts and they vote every 6 weeks on whether or not it is a smart decision to add more money into the economy. Pumping more money into the economy means the ease of lending more money to businesses and expansion of the economy but be weary of inflation rates. The publics’ fear of their money losing value is a huge factor when determining to print new money. If the population is losing trust in their economic leaders, they may want to cash out of the banks and have their money in their possession which could cause a ripple effect across not only the nation, but the globe. The problem with that is, there may not be enough physical money for everyone to “cash out.” Money nowadays is just information, numbers on a receipt that Americans trust will be there when they need it. The banks are just revolving doors for cash which they lend out, so they can make their money.

The world has certainly come a long way from the early days of discovering fire to discovering electricity to eradicating certain diseases from our crowded planet, but have we really come a long way in our monetary system? What has changed? We still use symbols of wealth to represent our hard work and those symbols nowadays are nothing more than a green piece of fabric. Any day now could be another financial crisis and the question will sure to be asked, do we need more money?

 

 

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Counterintuitive, Stanford University, Feb. 1991, https://counterintuitive2015.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf

Glass, Ira. “The Invention of Money.” This American Life, 19 Feb. 2018, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money.

Goldstein, Jacob. “The Invention of ‘The Economy.” National Public Radio, February 28, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/02/28/283477546/the-invention-of-the-economy

 

My hypothesis—Wildwood

  1. Executive power
  2. Executive power and the ease of overreach
  3. Overreach and new regulations to maintain checks and  balances
  4. Ways executive power is abused and what constitutes overreach
  5. Ways to emphasize limitations on the privilege and close loopholes
  6. Ways executive power is abused and the pathway for Congress could take to keep better checks and balances on the policy

Summaries—Wildwood

  1. Drug Addictions

It seems counterintuitive that maybe the best way to curb the spike of drug addiction is to give the most addicted, free prescriptions of heroin. Now by no stretch of the imagination does  this insist on making the drug free or legal to the regular population, but to help facilitate the process of which the drug is consumed. Cities across Europe and Vancouver thought of the idea to create areas where addicts could use heroin. Insite in Vancouver is an area where only 26 approved users who are of the most addicted, are allowed to come and use heroin. The addicts there receive the tools they need to do the drug meanwhile are under constant supervision from nurses and medical professionals incase something ought to go wrong. Believe it or not, the addicts also receive free prescriptions for some of the best cut heroin on the planet.

This idea stemmed from experiments when heroin alternatives were used as a replacement for the real thing, that ultimately failed. The idea of giving hopeless addicts free heroin is that it keeps them off of the street, committing violent crimes to feed the addiction. Addicts either get free heroin from the city or they burglarize vehicles and rob the innocent to get the drugs they crave. It could be considered blackmail but if they are only harming themselves, that in itself is a small win. The article quotes “…let’s provide you with heroin so you are the least dangerous drug addict you can possibly be.”

Programs across Europe have successfully helped hopeless addicts by keeping them off of the street, which is where Vancouver got the idea. Critics of the Insite program think the city is giving up on the addicts and hiding behind the excuse of the term “hopelessly addicted,” in a way to attempt to justify killing them. 

2. Armored Planes

It seems counterintuitive that the best way to armor a war plane, may be to put armor where bullets did not hit. When a plane is struck by gunfire and riddled with bullet holes, it may either crash due to the damage or safely make it back to the air base. If it crashes, then so be it, the plane wasn’t able to handle the apparent extreme damage. But if the plane is able to make it back to the airbase and land safely, that aircraft needs to be examined. When looking at the plane, and all of the holes due to the barrage of gun fire it took, the first thought may be to put armor on it and concentrate the armor where the holes are. But according to Hungarian-born mathematician Abraham Wald, he stated it would be counter productive to armor the plane where it was hit, yet armor the plane where it was not hit.

The plane was able to return safely with the damage, but the ones that do not return must of received damage in different places. One might think just to armor the entire plane but planes cannot be too heavy or else they will lose things such as maneuverability and speed, so adding weight in places they don’t need too it paramount. The weight of the armor alone needed to defend against an anti aircraft weapon would already be extremely heavy. Cutting weight means cutting cost and cutting cost would make this already wild idea, an economically friendly one as well. By armoring aircrafts and increasing the likelihood of them returning, means the government will not have to shell out the billions of dollars that it already does for a new plane every time one of the crafts come under heavy fire. 

3. Multi vitamins

It seems counterintuitive that multi vitamins do more harm than good when consumed. A seemingly honest and ever growing 28 billion dollar a year industry such as the vitamin industry could be robbing those trying to better themselves blind. Nearly one third in all Americans regularly take a multi vitamin although it may not be worth it.

A 2009 study, published in “Archives of Internal Medicine,” and a 2011 study proved that taking a multi on a daily basis does not necessarily ward off any disease that the billion dollar industry claims it does. Another study proves that typical multi users are more likely to receive their quota of vitamins through their normal food intake than those who do not take a multi. When someone gets their normal vitamin intake from their diet, and adds a multi to their day, it could push them over their recommended limits of each vitamin, causing harm instead of good.  Different types of diseases one could be exposed too when consuming too many vitamins is when too much iron is taken, it could result in an increased risk of heart disease. Pregnant women who also use a multi containing vitamin A could very well boost the chance of birth defects.

Much to the dismay of the manufactures, politicians are joining the fight of mandating an honest label on supplements warning of health risks that have been proven scientifically. Current labeling is not as it seems. An outside agency conducted a test on 60 common multivitamins and found that they are plagued with faulty info. For example, one label on a certain gummy multi vitamin for children exceeded the upper daily limits of vitamin A and zinc, which could prove harmful, as well as an adult multi which was double the recommended dosage of vitamin A. Doctors suggest to healthy eaters to stop worrying about multi vitamins while picky eaters should remain conscious and think about taking a multi to round out their diets.