TOW #8 - Deep (second half)

I recently finished the book Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and what the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves by James Nestor.  As I wrote about in my previous blog post, this book is fantastic.  The second half of the book was just as good, if not better than the first half.  This section expanded upon the ideas brought up in the first half of the book.  Nestor chronicles his adventures with free divers and unconventional scientists while also giving the reader an in-depth understanding of the marine biology.  Interestingly enough, this book is just as much about the state of research on the deep sea as it is about the research itself.  Nestor works primarily with renegade scientists- people who aren’t necessarily associated with a University or governmental organization.  These are the people who are getting actually into the water and taking videos and listening to audio clips and running experiments and doing work in the field rather than having to deal with all of the bureaucracy and logistics in the nightmare that is organized research.  Because of his extensive work with renegade scientists, Nestor is a clearly biased author.  This book is not simply a research textbook, but rather an argumentative piece that creates a clear and logical argument through the use of anecdotes and expert testimony. 

One of the best things about this novel is the use of quotations from experts.  However, these quotations are things the experts have said to Nestor in the flesh- they combine aspects of anecdotes with the testimony.  For example, Nestor writes about when he and an expert free diver/whale scientist were swimming with enormous Sperm Whales.  He writes:

“You can never chase down a whale,” Prinsloo explains as she yanks off the sheet and grabs her fins.  “They always needs to choose to come to you.”  If we move slowly in predictable motions, just in front of the whales’ path, they can easily echolocate the boat and get comfortable with our presence.  If they’re disturbed by us, they’ll take a deep breath and disappear beneath the surface.  We’ll never see them again. (Nestor 184).

In this excerpt, one can clearly see elements of narrative, anecdotal writing, expert testimony, and scientific logic.  This exemplifies how Nestor crafts this book to be entertaining, through the use of narrative and anecdotes, and also informative, through the use of expert testimony and logical scientific fact.  This joining of the two worlds is key in Nestor’s book.  It creates not only an enjoyable read but also a useful one.

I recommend this book to anyone, regardless of interests or preconceived notions.  I had not though I was interested in the science part of this novel (I read it for the free diving aspect), but as I read it I found myself getting more and more immersed in the science.  This is a wonderful book- a must-read for everyone. 

TOW #7- On a Trip to Fenway

If I say peanut butter, the first word that comes to your mind is jelly.  If I say flotsam, the first word that comes to your mind is jetsam.  If I say ALS, the first phrase that comes to your mind is Lou Gehrig’s disease.  The two have become completely synonymous- what started out as a simple way to remember what this disease was has become so ingrained in our culture that it is used a medical term by professionals.  This is simply a matter of semantics to most Americans; however, for Bill Malinowski, it extends beyond.  Bill is a diehard Red Sox fan (and thus a diehard Yankees hater), who also happens to have ALS.  The unfortunate irony is that what will one day take his life is named after a ball player who was on a team he hates more than anything else in the world. 

This week, I read an article called “On a Trip to Fenway, Only the Game Was Meaningless” by Dan Barry.  I plan on reading a couple more articles by Dan Barry in the coming weeks as a part of my GIEP goal of exploring the different types of rhetoric used by famous journalists.  Dan Barry is currently a journalist for the New York Times.  This article is about Barry’s dear friend Bill, and his fight against ALS.  Barry recounts a recent summer night when he and Bill went to a meaningless Red Sox game.  This article included baseball, but it was about so much more.  Barry used elements of narrative and the rhetorical device of short sentences in order to achieve his purpose of showing how baseball can help someone dealing with something much greater than a sport. 

This entire article is basically a narrative, since Barry is recounting his experience with Bill.  He characterizes Bill in such a way that the audience begins to somewhat understand this man.  He inserts text messages that Bill has sent him in the past:

May 4: “Doc says I have ALS.”

May 20: “Great joy! The Skanks have lost 8 of 11 & the Sox are pitching well.”

June 2: “I despise A-Fraud. The ultimate jerk.”

June 18: “I despise the Yankees, the most hated team in pro sports.”

June 28: “Just got a leg brace on Thursday @ Mass General. It helps stabilize my walking.”

July 27: “Just took the Detroit series!”

Sept. 8: “I can go with you to a night game...Just scheduled an appointment at Johns Hopkins...”

By including these different texts, the audience can begin to understand Bill’s priorities and the thought process that he makes.  This makes helps Barry’s purpose by allowing the audience to get a deeper understanding of his subject.

Barry also uses short sentences for dramatic effect.  After spending much of the first half of the article talking about Bill’s history and ALS, he brings us back into the present by talking about the baseball game they are attending.  As a transition, he simple uses, “Baseball” (Barry 2).  In a paragraph unto itself, this simple word changes the entire tone and completion of the text.  It helps Barry achieve his purpose by relating baseball and ALS in a way that fits his needs.

TOW #6 - Lugano

Rich, pure, smooth, famous Swiss chocolate.  From Tobler to Lindt to a small brand called Teuscher, Switzerland has always been known for their chocolate expertise.  In the advertisement above, E. Marinella, one of the most coveted necktie brands in the world, takes advantage of this general knowledge.  E. Marinella is an Italian brand, so the logical question to ask would be, “why is this brand referencing Switzerland?”  Well, the connection becomes clear once the audience realizes what Lugano means.  Lugano is a city in Switzerland that lies within the Ticino region, an Italian-speaking territory.  Now, the connection between the Italian brand and Swiss chocolate makes sense.  This advertisement is a very simple one, relying on color contrast, symbolism, and a very specific audience to convey its message.  This advertisement uses color contrast in order to immediately catch the eye of potential any potential customers.  The bright white background contrasted with the dark tones of the chocolate bar is quite eye-catching.  That, compounded with the simply yet bold lettering above the subject, achieves the first step of the advertising process.  Now that the company has caught the attention of the public, the next step is to make a meaningful sales pitch.  E. Marinella makes this effectively with the use of the chocolate bar/tie combination.  The end of the tie comes out of the chocolate bar, indicating that the tie itself is made of pure chocolate.  The sentence at the bottom of the poster adds to this effect.  It reads, “Since 1914, the taste of elegance.”  Since nearly everybody loves a rich, high-quality chocolate bar, E. Marinella relates its product to a universally appreciated one in order to establish a connection.  Now when people think of E. Marinella ties, they also think of beautiful, elegant chocolate.  The final aspect of this visual text is the very specific target audience.  E. Marinella is a luxury brand: they are expensive, lavish, and have brand name value.  Because of this, the company is trying to target the very upper class who can afford to buy the neckties.  This upper class is the same market that expensive chocolatiers appeal to.  Since there is a shared market, E. Marinella taps in to this similarity and in essence uses all of the chocolatiers advertisements the came before them.  In effect, E. Marinella accesses and entire catalog of past advertisements in their single poster ad.  This renders the visual text a very effective one.

Tow #5 - Chat: How Much Damage Has The Email Scandal Done To Hillary Clinton

This week, I read “Chat: How Much Damage Has The Email Scandal Done To Hillary Clinton?” which is a text found of the website www.fivethirtyeight.com.  This is somewhat of a unique text because it is not an article or an essay in the traditional sense.  It is what the name implies, a chat.  Four FiveThirtyEight staff members (Micah Cohen, politics editor; Nate Silver, editor in chief; Harry Enten, senior political writer; and Farai Chideya, senior writer) engage in a back and forth dialogue with the ebb and flow of a normal, real life conversation.  FiveThirtyEight is a very reputable source that deals with statistical analysis of politics, sports, and nearly every facet of modern life.  This chat was based on the question “How much damage has the email scandal done to Hillary Clinton?”  In the dialogue, the writers conversed about the different ways in which this scandal has affected Clinton and could potentially affect Clinton.  The general consensus was that it is very difficult to predict how Clinton would have done without this scandal.  However, the media is playing this scandal up to be a huge deal and, in actually, it is probably not as important as the media make it out to be.  With that said, if the scandal intensifies with more allegations, or another scandal involving Clinton breaks, then the results could be devastating for Clinton.  At this point in time, it is impossible to predict with any certainty whether another scandal will come to light.  If the member had to bet, they would agree that this scandal has not hurt Clinton as much as is perceived, but they could not find a definitive answer for just how much damage the scandal has done.

            Since this text was a chat (I am not sure whether this was a live, in person chat or a chat over the internet), the rhetorical devices used by the authors are much different than the devices generally used in essays or articles.  There was a back and forth to this conversation, which added a fresh, interesting dynamic to a normal essay.  Writers had the opportunity to rebut against other writers and speak directly to disagreements.  Throughout this chat, logos was appealed to often and effectively, not surprising since this is a statistical analysis website.  Polling numbers, favorability numbers, and other impressive statistics were utilized in order to argue points.  In one message, Harry Enten writes, “Let’s just look at the fact that Gallup has her net favorable at +53 among Democrats. That’s better than it was eight years ago in Gallup polling (+50). We obviously don’t know how it would look without the email scandal. But in terms of primary voters’ perceptions of her, she’s doing just as well. Which shouldn’t be surprising given that she is pretty much universally known” (Enten 2).  Simply saying that Clinton’s favorable rating is higher than it was eight years ago without any specific data to back it up means absolutely nothing in this world of advanced statistics.  Enten can only be taken seriously if he backs his theory with fact, and he does so effectively.  Another device that was used was the use of counter argument.  Farai Chideya uses this device in an attempt to change the perspective of the reader.  She writes, “Devil’s advocate: Couldn’t you say the sound bite is “Hillary Rodham Clinton kept classified information improperly.” Well, that’s not sexy either but … it’s an argument” (Chideya 4).  This comes right after Nate Silver wrote that this scandal cannot be reduced into a one sentence soundbite that appeals to the general public.  Chideya may not necessarily believe in what she wrote, but she recognizes that there is value to the opposite side of the story.  This is what made this chat so engaging to read.  The writers all attempted to broaden the horizon and perspective of the reader by noting interesting connections and ideas that would not have fit into a normal essay.  This style of text was much deeper than a normal essay because it allowed for the flexibility of authors to go off on tangents without any repercussions.  Because of that, I believe the authors were successful in exploring how the scandal affected Clinton.

TOW #4 - Deep (first half)

I have just completed reading half of Deep: Freediving, renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves by James Nestor.  If I had to describe this book in one word, I would say it is phenomenal.  Everything about this book, from the writing style to the content to the anecdotes to the pictures (I’ll get into later) is so amazing.  This book is about the sport of freediving.  James Nestor is a reporter who was supposed to cover the freediving world championships in 2011.  He then got hooked on the idea of freediving and decided to pursue this sport.  However, he soon found out that he hated competitive freediving.  It is too egotistical, he says, and eliminated any love for the ocean, which is how freediving started.  Nestor was much more interested in the idea of freediving as a meditative activity, and the great research about marine life that can come as a result of freediving.  He writes:

After the horrors of Nitsch’s dive in Santorini, David King’s near drowning, and Michael Risian almost getting lost at sea, I swore off watching any more competitive freediving.  Sure, the human body could dive deeper than scientists thought possible, but it also had limits.  We all saw those limits.  And I had gotten tired of seeing the bloody and blue faces of those who went beyond them.

     In freediving, the ego is a deadly goad.  It’s also something of a blinder.  Most of the competitive divers I met seemed to have little interest in exploring the deep ocean that they had painstakingly trained their bodies to enter.  They dived with their eyes closed; nitrogen narcosis struck them dumb; they forgot where they were and why they were there.  The deepest divers lolled themselves into a catatonic state that removed any sense of actually being in the water.  The aim: Hitting a number on a rope.  Beating your opponent.  Winning a medal.  Bragging rights.

     Yes, they were swimming where no human had before.  But this struck me as maddening, like an explorer arriving in previously undiscovered wilderness and focusing only on his GPS coordinates (Nestor 88).

The writing style of Nestor is very engaging, in my opinion.  He uses somewhat casual language, and does not let the jargon of the freediving world confuse the reader.  At the same time, he does not dumb down all of the information so that it no longer has scientific value.  Nestor uses narrative a lot in this book.  He uses anecdotes about his experiences with the freediving community to convey his point.  His anecdotes are interesting and very fun to read, in part because of his great use of metaphorical language.  His simile in the final paragraph of the passage above was brilliant.  It truly demonstrated the idea that Nestor wanted to convey in a clear manner.  It relates his struggle with freediving to something much less alien that all readers will be able to comprehend.

            Another aspect of this book that I love is the pictures.  No, this is not a picture book, but rather a book with pictures.  In around the middle of the book, there is a series of 12 pictures that encapsulates the ideas of the book.  I think this is an extremely important aspect of the book because it gives an image to the stories that Nestor tells.  Most of what Nestor talks about is foreign to readers, so these pictures make the concepts much more down to earth and believable.  This appeals to both the ethos because it proves existence of some creatures and logos because it provides concrete, legitimate pictures of the ideas Nestor explores.

            I’m only half way in to the book, but I surely recommend it to any reader.