Precis #1

Nancy Gibb's online article entitled "Fending Off the Swine Flu", Gibbs begins the article explaining that even though Bush may have handed over a mess to Obama from his last administration, this time, Bush's mess may prove useful this one time. Gibbs makes a claim about how measures must be taken, and how measures have been taken, though a bit extreme. She supports this when she said that Obama helped to put the Americans on a high alert level and when numerous Texas children stayed home from school, missing out on a standardized test to be given that day. Gibbs also talks about how during Bush's Administration, he had a plan fund that was suppose to reach $7 million for the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, but that plan fund was never reached. As the article says, at least the plan for fending of this flu is "much more clear and cogent response than in the past" says Laurie Garrett a senior of Council on Foreign Relations.

Application Question:
Do you think it was necessary to make such extreme precautions for the swine flu?

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1949870_1949839_1949665,00.html

Frederick Douglass

In the Narrative of Frederic Douglass, I most immensely enjoyed the part where Frederick is being given knowledge, more specifically, for example, when he goes out with a piece of bread. He has this bread for these white children he encounters when he goes out each time. He trades the bread to these hungry little children in exchange for the real "knowledge of bread". This is one way in which he gained knowledge. Another important thing is revealed in this scene from the story between Frederick and the white children he gives bread to: that racism is a learned thing.

Chunk #1

In the first chunk of the Culture of Fear, pages 1-70, Glassner states the claim of how media like newspapers, reporters, and journalists uses a lot of statistics when in fact, they are simply abusing them, and not only that, but are using these statistic numbers to make a hype, to exaggerate a small situation into a big one. Worse, the people usually buy into these exaggerated reports. He supports this claim when he explains how on Oprah's show, she explains how many have been in dangerous road rage situations, and then Glassner says she backs this up with "an impressive but ultimately meaningless number". A statistic. Glassner is showing how media abuses facts, using them when reporting, but are usually just as he says “impressive but ultimately meaningless”. Another claim Glassner makes is how the not only media focuses and makes a hype of mere subject matters like road rage, but hardly focus on the subjects that truly matter. He supports this by stating how the media will continue to hype the silly road rage topic, but will hardly give the time of day to the discrimination and death of a disabled black man in Texas, or the gay discrimination towards the gay in Wyoming.


Application Question: Why does the media feel the need to use silly numbers to report things to us? More importantly, why is it that we fall for these silly numbers?