Evaluation of Rhetorical Situations

This post will contain some analysis of texts from various sources, that are loosely related to space and Aerospace engineering, 4 in total.

Reynolds, Joshua. "A Portrait of Samuel Johnson" 3/30/2006 via wikimedia.
Public Domain.

First public speech act on Mars One: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Mars One (YouTube)

• Author/Speaker:

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: a well-known public figure in the astronomy field. He is an extremely credible person who has made many documentaries, and even hosted the reboot of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos."

• Audience:

Like most of his work, this speech was meant for people in the public. Maybe it was geared a little more toward people with a specific interest in space, but still just the general public.

• Context:

Tyson explains that maybe it is not a feasible goal. This is kind of what his job is. He tries to help the public understand the frontier of all things space-related. In this case he tries to keep the excitement down, because it is an exciting, cutting-edge prospect, but he explains that it is still just a bit ahead of its time.

Second, a Scientific American blog: Should Scientists and Engineers Resist taking Military Money?

• Author/Speaker:

John Horgan, a Fairly renowned writer for Scientific American, among other publications. Probably fairly credible, considering the number of published articles he's written. He is also the author of Cross-Check, which has "critical views of science in the news."

• Audience:

Again, mostly just the general public, slightly geared toward the scientifically-inclined, because that is the kind of person who would read articles on that site.

• Context:

Horgan is a self proclaimed peacenik, who ended u with the opportunity to take a government job for a short while. This gives him a unique perspective, because he dislikes the military, but has first hand experience with working for them. Thus he's gt some good authority on the subject. His job was a simple, anti-terrorism oriented task, so it would seem pretty harmless, even goo, because he helped fight terrorism. But at the same time, he has to consider that he helped fuel the fighting, which he didn't like.

Third, another Mars One text: Ex-Mars One candidate alleges entire project is a ridiculous scam

• Author/Speaker

Brad Reed, a news editor for BGR, and former worker for Network World, an IT website. In this case he is probably fairly credible, as he needs only to report on a statement by someone who has the original content.

• Audience:

Once again, it is directed to a fairly broad and general audience, as it's an online news article. BGR specializes in technology and consumer gadgets, but most people are interested in those things, so it doesn't really narrow down the audience much.

• Context:

A new, ambitious program, Mars One, seems too cool to be true, and,well, someone comes out saying it is; from the inside, nonetheless. Mars One is an exciting thing for many people, and for someone to come out, and maybe bring everyone back down to Earth can be a rough ride. Clearly, though, BGR thinks it's something that must be done.


Reflection:

In comparison to Mark's and Tyler's posts, I feel that mine seemed a bit thin on the analysis, but maybe good enough. I realized in reading their posts that I need to make sure that the rhetorical situation itself, and not just the content, is interesting. Of course the content being interesting can add to the complexity of the rhetoric, but there is more to it that I need to be aware of.

Also, thanks to Rose's comment on this post, I now have a far more complete version of the third article in my list, which I'll probably end up selecting:


The article is from medium.com, and is written by...

• Author: 

Elmo Keep, not a nobody, but at the same time, not a huge journalist; somewhere in between. Maybe there is some room to talk about the author's credibility here. Also, since it reports on a someone else's statements, it needs to quote a lot, so, to some extent, it uses the credibility of that person, Dr. Joseph Roche, who is very credible source, especially with first-hand experience within the Mars-One selection process.

• Audience

Keep's audience is both the general public and media outlet sources because of the purpose of what Roche's statements were: to expose the program as something entirely less amazing than how it had been portrayed in the media so far. Additionally, they also want the general public to know that, at least in their view, it's a rip-off, and to not get their hopes too high.

• Context: this is the same as it was for the other article.

Developing a Research Question

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Sudoneighm, Hobvias. "Ponder" 1/14/2008 via flickr.
Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence

In the field of Aerospace engineering, relatively few controversies arise. What ones there are include whether we should explore space in the first place (which is what I just spent 5 weeks researching), whether Mars One is a good thing, whether engineers should participate in making weaponry.

     Questions:

• Should Mars One really try to sent people one-way to mars?

This is really intriguing because on one hand, there are some who say it's a sketchy program, ubt on the other, it pushes the frontier of human exploration.

• Should engineers participate with the military in creating weaponry?

This one goes into some ethical questions, and splits the demographic, because some engineers don't mind, while others have strong opinions toward human rights and efforts toward non-violence.

• What ethical concerns face aerospace engineers?

This question is pretty broad, because engineering produces a wide range of large advances in technology. But at the same time, people will use just about any technological advance as a weapon. So really, what are engineers who don't like that supposed to do?

Reflection on Project 1

Paragon. "Self Reflection" 8/15/2009 via flickr.
Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

This post is a reflection on five-week project we have all been painstakingly working on every Saturday night.

• My biggest challenge was the sheer amount of time it took me to do all the work. I dealt with this by telling myself I would have to do it all anyway, so right now is when I should. Apart from that, I went on a 3:00 am walk to clear my head, broke up the working time with other things, like gardening, video games, etc. Also, I had trouble keeping track of everything I had stated in different sections of the QRG, and I had to just read them all several times to see what I was about to repeat.
• Every week, my biggest success was being finished with the work. I got the work done by buckling down and doing it. 
• Definitely the more logical, straight-forward and analytical choices worked well in this project. After all, being analytical was the point of the project. Along that same idea, being concise and specific was definitely the way to go.
• I felt that, as I was writing, I kept wanting to object to one of the side's arguments, but I knew that that would show a whole lot of bias on my part, and I just felt... dirty, as if I were trying to cheat at convincing people of my view in a place where I'm only supposed to be explaining. That definitely would have been bad.
• This process was similar to school writing I've done in the past in that it had us do similar things, like analysis, and research, and a huge quantity of actual writing.
• It was different in that I've always just had a few big essays, rather than tons of little assignments focused on specific topics at a time. Also, I've never been on a blog, even outside of class.
• These skills probably aren't too applicable across my coursework, just because this class is the outlier in my schedule. Most of my classes are technical mathematics and science classes, though it did help me learn about researching topics, which I will likely need to do later in life.

Reflection

I read Tom's and Ann's blogs, and after doing so, I realized that I probably didn't give enough credit to what skills will be applicable to further coursework. Firstly, Ann's post made me realize that I got the opportunity to learn more about my major, which I would have had to do anyway, at the same time as doing English homework. Also, I now know about my major-specific citation style. Not to mention, as Tom pointed out in his blog, time management will be a huge skill that I'll probably use for the rest of my life.

Space Exploration: Yay or Nay?

No Author Given. “Space Shuttle Lift-Off Liftoff NASA Aerospace” 2011 via Pexels.

CC0 License.

Here is the final version of my quick reference guide to the space exploration debate.

Clarity, Part 2

Downing, Jenny. "Clarity and Brightness of Chablis Wine" 6/21/2008 via wikimedia.
Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

The following are short discussions on four more topics from the 'clarity' section in rules for writers.

Parallel ideas, page 116
I think I did a fairly good job at using parallelism. an example I have is "it’s opinions on what those facts mean, and how heavily they weigh." It keeps, in both parts, the same subject and tense, and both use a qualifying word and verb. This is a pretty common thing I do in my writing.

Active verbs, page 112
I found a few instances of passive sentences, one being "they will all be in favor of space exploration." I simply removed the "be in" and voila! active verb. It now reads: "they will all favor of space exploration." as the book says, this makes it a whole lot stronger.

Misplaced and dangling modifiers, page 127
I knew that the position of a modifier could change its meaning, but not exactly how it did so. Now I know what to look out for, and to make sure I keep it in mind. But really, a modifier can go just about anywhere in a sentence, which is unique, because not many words can do that.

Mixed constructions, page 123
After going through my draft, I am fairly sure that I didn't do this. I have seen it before, and it usually come from (for me, at least) when I change my mind of how I want to say something mid-sentence.  As long as I stay focused on what I am saying, it shouldn't be an issue.

Identifying Basic Grammar Patterns

Fleser, Casey. " Looking for Clues" 7/7/2009 via flickr.
Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

Here is a link to my longest paragraph in google docs.

After going through and identifying the different things that go in to a paragraph, I realized that I only used declarative sentences. This might be good, however, as the whole reason these sentences should be written is to explain ideas to people, and give information. I also think that I lack sentence structure variation in my writing, so maybe I should try to mix that up.