Short Essay #2 -Images and Texts: “We Are Each Other’s Helper”

Images and Texts: “We Are Each Other’s Helper”

           Pictures are commonly includes in news reports, stories, novels and research papers. Speaking from personal experience, I have to admit that pictures attract me to a text because they provide the visual representations. If the news does not include pictures, I will feel bored. In the article of “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire”, Errol Morris mentions pictures are dependent on captions and texts; they cannot represent the true or false for the whole stories. I agree with Morris’s ideas and I also think images and texts help each other to make the perfect stories. In my opinion, I think the relationship between pictures and texts are great match because pictures can establish visual situations for readers and texts can explain the exact stories for the pictures.

           The first thing I want to point out is images can help texts become alive, and it is a useful tool to catch reader’s attentions. When we read the news or other texts, the words and information are too objective so that a lot of times, it will not give readers a direct feeling of the stories. However, if there are some pictures showing in the stories to represent the current situations, the whole things will become alive. For example, the news from BBC news websites talks about illegal immigration in the U.S., and a picture is shown above the whole news. There are two separate parts in the pictures: 4 people stand in the one side of double steel fence and wave their hand to the others, and others are stand inside of double steel fence. It shows that they are saying good-bye to each other. Below the picture, the caption writes: A group of recently deported immigrants stand near the double steel fence that separates San Diego and Tijuana. After see the picture, I just got a feeling of the leaving and separation; after reading the caption, I know there are illegal immigrants who have to face leaving; and after I read the whole article, I know that the difficult situation those illegal immigrations have and I think the pictures make me feel their pain.

A group of recently deported immigrants stand near the double steel fence that separates San Diego and Tijuana at the border in Tijuana.

(The original link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/21/us-usa-immigration-idUSBRE91K01A20130221)

The pictures cannot provide strong evidence for stories or news, but it will made a strong influence to your mind about thinking those situations. Pictures are not the centric part of news or stories, but it can improve or forward them.

           The second thing is texts or captions can explain the real situations for pictures and make the whole things alive. Pictures includes a lot of information, but if there are just pictures without any words, readers will feel confused or mislead by the meaning of pictures. The first picture below is a great example of this statement. The cartoon shows one worker is pushed down by someone use a manhole cover, and the cover is the shape of US area.

(The original link: http://cn.nytimes.com/article/world/2013/02/20/c20immig/en/)

However, when we look at the original source, the whole article talks about illegal immigrations will not hurt US economy; increase the rate of unemployment and how illegal immigrants help Americans. The picture shows that a illegal immigrations is trying to come out from the manhole and it represents a lot of illegal immigrants do the low-ends jobs; Someone does not want him to come out and the cover represents the some American do not welcome those illegal immigrants to come to US. This picture can let readers make questions when they see it, and after reading the whole things, readers may change their mind about those immigrations, and this is the magic of this picture.

          In conclusion, I think pictures can give the visual situations and represent the short summary of news. Also, texts can explain the details for pictures to make it has more values so that pictures and texts are dependent on each other to make the good articles.

Unit #2 Blog Post 8 – We Cannot Only Rely On Photographs.

Unit #2 Blog Post 8 – We Cannot Only Rely On Photographs.

        In the New York Times, Errol Morris explains that we cannot say “true” or “false” when we only see the photographs from his article “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire”. He emphasizes that photographs should also showing with captions, contexts and descriptions in order to let people believe. If there are only images without context, we cannot see it is true or false. In the first part, he shows some old photos of his childhood, he said that although he forgot some things or details for those old images, he still could remember what happen at that times because he familiar with his own story. However, if the photos we are not familiar and show without contexts, we will not know the exact meaning of photos. He gives a really great example of the Lusitania and Titanic. If a boat shows in the picture without caption “Lusitania”, we may think of Titanic. At the last part, he shows three pictures to describe the things happened at the Lusitania, and those pictures all have different influences or feeling to bring to people. Morris wants to point that do not just rely on the pictures, and we also need to look at the contexts or captions because the combination can provide the most convictive evidences.

        In my opinion, I agree with Morris’s ideas about pictures are independent information. If there are 1000 people take the pictures of a mountain, there will be 1000 different pictures. I think the role of pictures is just provides a visual part of things or stories, and it cannot regard as the powerful evidences. Also, I think the successful news is the combination with contexts and photos. Photos help readers have visual parts and contexts make people believe. Here I take the example of my own essay about rescue cats’ activities in China from my blog. I post some pictures in the beginning of my article. Those pictures show the poor cats are caught in the cages, rescued by volunteers and then got medical helps from animal hospitals. Those pictures shows that the cats got really great helps, but actually they will all have difficult and hard lives because the both of environments and people cannot raise 1000 cats at the limited times. The pictures do not show things, but those cats may be die, eat or catch behind the pictures. We cannot only believe what the pictures show to us. We also need to believe the truth. Here is the link of my article:

http://victoria0517.blogspot.com/2013/02/short-essay1-cats-problems.html

Unit 2 Blog Post #7- “Taking an approach”

Unit 2 Blog Post #7- “Taking an approach”

In the chapter of “Taking An Approach”, Harris mentions reshape the text by your own aims are influenced. The author mentions three different styles of famous authors to use: naming certain intellectual influences, point to the role of experiences and raise questions. Those three style also called acknowledge influences, turning an approach on itself, and reflexivity. Also, in this chapter, Harris also point the most important part of rewriting is pushing forward and follow your own purpose. In first part, he mentions Sennett and Menand an want to points that rewriters should get know the main focus of the original text and your own focus, you do not need to follow the same writing style of your new one, and to make the connection between the two part of your rewriting. In the second part, Harris uses the example: ideas are social to let us know that to think different ideas and to alternate ideas when you rewrite. In the last part, I really like the example about Braverman because he does not use his personal experience of his project even if he understands it really well. The reason why some authors do not use experiences is they want to keep away from bias.

I think the New York Times use a lot of reflexivity because they want to keep the most objective news with no bias, and it is not the same as opinions. Opinion is what the authors think, but experience of the text is the exact things happened. On the other hand, blog is really different from the New York Times because blog focus on opinions. I read a lot of blog and I blog; even I read some rewriting blog. The main purpose is reflections and response of the blog. I think some bloggers use the ways of acknowledge influences and turning as approach a lot. There is no lost of blog and New York Times because they all follow their own purpose to rewriting things.

Short Essay#1- Cats Problems

(I revised a lot of part of my essay so that it has a really different part than the first one)

To Cats owner: Love Your Cats and Never Abandon Them Again 

    Short Introduction: There is a story from New York Times talks about cat problems in China. The title is “Cat Rescues in China Raise Host of New Questions”, and the link of this article is: http://cn.nytimes.com/article/china/2013/01/29/c29catrescue/en/. The original audience is Chinese readers who check news in the Chinese edition of New York Times. The original purpose is point the issue of cats’ problem in China. The new audience is for the cats’ owners. The new purpose is persuading those owners to take care of cats.

      The story talks about how to solve the problem when the rescuers rescue nearly 1000 cats from a truck. It happened several months ago, animal lovers got the information from Weibo (Chinese Twitter) that a truck has accident in the high way, but someone found that nearly 1000 cats in the truck as the cargo, and they would send to the restaurants in Guangzhou, China. Fifty rescuers found the location of the truck gave 8000 dollars to the drivers and rescued those 1000 cats. Some cats were dead in the crowded cages, some cats were got injured and some cats were even giving birth. Nearly 200 cats are dead in that time. The rescue story is heart-warming, but the big problem is how to deal with the huge amounts of cats. Rescuers did not send them to the original areas because rescuers afraid cats will be caught again or traded again; Rescuers tried to call friends or family to raise some cats, but they could not give all cats homes; In addition, they send other cats to the animal hospitals to give the injured cats some medical helps. The local newspaper, Sanxiang Metropolitan newspaper wrote that: those cats have “the awkward fate”. In China, dogs and cats are widely eaten if they are homeless. Although more and more ordinary citizen are acting to stop trading cats and dogs, the trading activities still exist in a lot of areas. A volunteer Ms. Tian mentions that “cats reproduce fast, and it is very possible to cause alarm people living in the community and lead to the disaster for the feline ecosphere. If it happens, both of owners and other resident will be affected a lot”. Although volunteers’ rescue and current conditions are not perfect, all volunteers have a warm heart and need to encourage. In compare, the owners who abandon their cats should take responsibilities of the cats’ problems, and cats’ traders, catchers and eaters should be punished by laws.         

          In my opinion, although cats trading have no law to prove that is illegal, we should solve the problems for the animals and environments. From the owner’s angel, if owners plan to have cats in homes, you should take care of them until they die. A lot of owners, they purchase cats at homes, but they found that raising cats have to face a lot of problems so that those owners abandon cats. I think those owners should not raise cats if they did not prepare for all things. If owners can be responsible, there will be fewer homeless cats or cats’ problems in China. For the owners, it is better to provide sterilization for cats rather than abandon them, and you will not consider the birth problems of your cats. In the USA, animal hospitals choose to provide sterilization for cats, and the hospitals also do the same things for homeless cats. The problem is that if no one decides to raise homeless cats, they will be chosen to have euthanasia, and nearly 60% cats are dead of euthanasia. Those cats have poor life as a pet so that the owners should consider a better life for cats, and it also will decrease the number of eaten cats. The rescue activities are warm, but we do not want to see the poor stories again so that solving this problem is important and we need to give the pet’s basic rights.

       

Post #6- Argument and Countering

Post #6- Argument and Countering

In the chapter of “countering” in rewriting, Harris writes about how to treat the disagreements when we rewrite texts. He emphasizes that countering is not finding the wrong aspects or correcting weakness. Countering is putting knowledge forward. In the term of countering, we always use “yes, but” to show the adding parts of texts. It is more like adding opposite response when we rewrite. There are also three moves in the countering parts: arguing the other side, uncovering values and dissenting. All three moves add to show ideas that give the ideas you think are useful and then point other ideas you want to add to them. I really like the idea that Harris states: the way you did not see in the texts. You state knowledge, you find new things from your positions and you add to it so that make the knowledge forward. At the last part, there are some important ways to countering: focus on your positions, do not guess, and never use a negative or positive attitude and so on. I think those ways can help us rewrite a great countering.

There is an example of rewrite the argument. This is from the New York Times. This article is the argument of travel. The author use half space to restate the original part about the travel, but the author gives the argument in the rest part. The gains the author own is restate really objective and add thoughts also hint the negative parts. However, I think she need to combine the two things to make it forward, to achieve the goal of countering.

Here is the link:  http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/the-argument-against-pound-foolish-travel/

Post #5(Unit 2)- Four Moves and Rewriting

Post #5(Unit 2)- Four Moves and Rewriting

In the Chapter of “Forwarding”, Harris teaches us four moves about forwarding-to say something new or further talks and writing. The author mentions that “writing is conversations, you add to it, push it ahead, keep it going”. He uses a really great example of emails about reply and forward to show that rewriting is to say something to somebody. From this chapter, we could learn that illustrating, authoring, borrowing and extending. Those four moves both have the centric ideas: translating and responding those ideas from texts.

Illustrating is representing the ideas from other media and offering a particular view of the media. Authoring is pointing succinctly the main ideas of the original writing. Borrowing is reshaping the writing by following your own purposes. Extending is phrasing and adding thoughts to the writing.  Harris talks about strong writers tend to combine those four moves to rewrite. Also, be careful of extend writing because sometimes writers may change the meaning or say something far away from the original one.

There is an example I found about the forwarding, and the author has special response for the newspaper. The blogger use the forwarding method to response the newspaper. At every post, he gives the short summaries about the newspaper, and then he supports his ideas about how he thinks of this report. For example, there is an article called “NEW FORMULA FOR SUCCESS ”, the blogger restates the reporter’s ideas about the role of newspaper plays, but he disagree with the reporter through the special analysis. In this blog, the blogger gains the ideas of borrowing and extending. However, I think this blogger lost the ideas of adding ideas. I am mot saying that the author did not give any response for every article, and I wan to point that there are too many personal ideas than the general ideas so that I think it is the lost of this blog.

Here is the link of this blog:  http://rewrite.blogspot.com

Post #4- Jeff Jarvis’s new model about news

Post #4- Jeff Jarvis’s new model about news

From the article of “The Press Becomes the Press Sphere’, Jeff Jarvis talks about the new model of news is press-sphere. He mentions about the future relationship with news, public and stories. His new models of news tie a lot of things together: government, companies, data and observe. I am kind of confused about this model even when I read this article twice. I want to know how does he define all things at this circle and the reason of it. I really agree with his ideas that how does a story become a news: the story through links, corrections, questions, answers, comments and reporting and so on to become the news. I think in this process, stories revise and change via several processes, to become more valuable and reliable. Then, he talks about the news with us; he uses a picture to show that news and other media around us, and relates to our lives. I like this idea because I think people want to get news to know the society better and tie with everything in their lives.

There is a quotation that I think it is really interesting: “ news come in and stories come out, or text and photos come in and paper go out.” In fact, it not point that paper or stories is not good as news or photos. It is just because we want to the more convenient and easier life so we just change them. People choose to become efficient through the whole life. Compare with my personal experience, I agree with the idea about news related to our life, but I just cannot understand his new models. Maybe in the future, people choose to get only get news from the television or videos. It cannot be predicted. From reading blogs or NYT, I think news still make a near relationship with people because we need news or social media to provide information for us. 

Post#3- Compare with peer’s news

Post#3- Compare with peer’s news

In class, we talk about the news, and we focus on the type of news, the measures of news and the attitudes to news from our classmates.

I read 8 classmates’ post about news; a lot of them get news from online newspaper, Facebook and videos. Someone mentions that they use New York Times as reliable sources or follow the requirements. Two authors talks about Facebook news. They check Facebook, and they could get news from other’s sharing, comments or any related links to news. I admit that and I use Facebook to get news firstly, and then, if I am really interested in that news, I will search or check other sources. About Twitter, I never use it to get news because I think it is just let people to show opinions. Another media we talk about lot is videos. People like video because it helps us to save more time to read news, and it is more visual and fast.

Compare with my classmates’ opinions about news, I think people want to read news more efficient and immediate. People would like to choose some popular newspapers or social media to get news. In our group, we mentions about some people really rely on the news from newspaper or Internet. I think we do not need to believe every word from that news. The writers is human being, she or he also may overstate some necessary details or have bias, and this is normal thing so that we do not need to believe every piece of writing because we all have our own judgments. I think the Carr may add that the online reading may let us have fewer concentrations for long reading. 

Post #2- New York Times Response

Post #2- New York Times Response

About the News York Times, I would like to say I think it is reliable sources for study because it is almost objective; It is kind of fake but New York Times improve my writing in someway. Firstly, I use it as reliable sources when I studied on the English Language Center. I read New York Times; I use it for my presentations, research papers and reading practice. In my opinion, I think New York Tines is objective sources for study. Secondly, I use it to help me remember words and it is a great sample of writing. When I read it, I will not check the words meaning if I do not know, and I push myself to guess because the whole article will repeat the important words so that I can remember the words efficiently. As for sample of writing, the NYT report news always objective, and it helps me write thing more objective if the requirements ask me to do.

 I got a lot of information or news from it. I follow my favorite topics, but I might have missed the sports part. Sports are really popular in US, but I just have less interest on sports news. A lot of times, I may skim some part of news when I had known some details already. I just want to get the most important part of the news. Reading New York Times also happens at lunch or dinner times so that reading the newspaper is one of my meal part.

Repost #1 –News

Repost #1 –News

People all get news from different media, and I usually get news from the online newspapers: New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or Wang Yi News (Chinese newspaper websites); watch videos and get news from chatting with friends. In General, I choose topics of news all about environment, people, culture or finance. I like the objective writing to report news because I do not want to see any bias on news. However, there are a lot of news writing includes personal opinions so that I would like to read news from the famous newspapers (sometimes, even the famous newspaper media also add personal opinions into news).

Additionally, I watch television or to see some videos to get some details about recent big news, such as the president debates. I like videos because they are visual media, and it helps me get know the news quickly than read.

Sometimes, I like to chat with my friends about recent news and share opinions with them. At this time, I think the news seems like more subjective when peer talk about that. Some of my friends will believe everything typed or printed, and they believe those news are really true. I tend to search more before I share opinions because I want to know everything about the news. A lot of times, even people typed or printed, there is also some misleading news or untrue news exists. I would like to believe the famous news as sources, and I will search a lot before I express opinions. 

Unit 2 Post-News

Unit 2 Blog Post

I posted this homework on time, but i am so sorry i make all topic together so that i rewrite and add more things of it. so, this is a wrong one for unit 2. Please look at the post above.

I usually get news from the Internet, and I read news from New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or Wang Yi News (Chinese newspaper websites). I choose news about environment, people, culture or finance. Additionally, I watch television to get some details about recent big news, such as the president debates. I nearly never get news from the radio just because of personal interests.

About the News York Times, I got a lot of information or news from it. I always notice the business, US news and educations parts, and I also will look the most popular news on New York Times. The reason why I focus on those topics not only because of my major, interests, but also I want to get the most fresh and popular news from here. I might have missed the sports part. Sports are really popular in US, but I just have less interest on sports news. A lot of times, I may skim some part of news when I had known some details already. I just want to get the most important part of the news. Reading New York Times also happens at lunch or dinner times so that reading the newspaper is one of my meal part.

Our classmates always share news and everyone would like to choose their favorite news to tell us and explain to us. We could get important information from the New York Times, the Internet and it helps us have an informational life.

From the article we read, some author mentions that the online reading make us become lazy and have bad reading habits, but I disagree with them on the online news part because I think online news provide more trustworthy and reliable information for us.

From the article of “The Pres Becomes the Press Sphere’, Jeff Jarvie talks about the press-centric. I agree with his ideas because in the future, the press is very important and popular because it relates a lot of things and tie people together.

He mentions that the press needs to be more organized and news can show a lot of expects such as discussions, stories ideas other thoughts. In my opinion, I think the news will change to more convenient for people to read in the future and provide most important and useful information for readers.