Born Into Coal response

Born into coal was a very interesting documentary. I’ve always known that coal mining was a very big deal in west Virginia. It was interesting to see other things that are a big deal in west Virginia, like pageants, and how the two things correlate.  One thing that the documentary touched on was the mining tragedy of 2010, where 29 miners were killed in a west Virginia coal mine. The documentary changed moods a lot, like how at the beginning it focused on Arianna’s pageant life, and how she didn’t want to seem like just another dumb small town pageant girl. Her mother was talking about how she didn’t choose to be born into a coal mining family, she just was. I think that families of coal miners are very close because that is such a  dangerous job, and they can’t take a single day for granted because they might loose their family member any day, as the tragedy of 2010 prove.  I liked how in the background the person speaking would just be talking and then it would show the person just sitting, or show her hands stained with coal.  Since my part of the project for my group is to put together a storyboard, I paid extra attention to how the scenes were all put together. It started out with pageants, then went into coal mining and all the positive and negative things about it. Then it went back to pageants and showed the dad at the pageant. It just really showed how close these coal mining families are, and how they all support eachother.

Websites and Rhetorical Choices

Most people these days spend a lot of time on the internet, especially college students. Whether they are on blackboard or webassign doing homework, on twitter or Facebook stalking someone they like or dislike, or watching netflix in the little free time they have, the internet is a must have in 2014. For me, then websites i visit most frequently are twitter and Facebook. They are structured very similarly, you can add friends or follow people. You can post pictures and videos. You can post statuses and tweets. Both are good ways to get your words or thoughts out there to many people. This can be a good and bad thing, because you have to make sure what you are saying won't get you in trouble. These websites have many purposes. Twitter to me, is a place where people can be funny and post random things that would be helpful to other people. Facebook used to be that way, but now i use it mainly to post. You can also create groups on Facebook, which is what my sorority pictures from college that my parents and family can see so they know that i am doing well uses to communicate, which is very helpful. Both websites are social networking but have slightly different purposes. Both companies are pretty credible because there are millions of users on each website. You can definitely tell that they are somewhat competing, because they have similar features. You can “like” a status or picture on facebook, and on twitter you can “retweet” or “Favorite” someone’s tweet. Some people actually like what you have to post, other people use it as a form of flirting. I consider facebook to be more of a website for older more professional people, and twitter to be more for high school and college students. This may be because facebook has been around longer than twitter has, and times have changed. With facebook you can essentially DO more things instead of fitting one small post into 140 words. But with twitter you are least likely to post something bad by mistake because you have less room to. Both websites make good and bad rhetorical choices, but the good ones always overpower the bad because both websites are very popular and frequently used.

Death row articles

Both of these articles about the last meals before being executed helped define the use of visual rhetoric for me. Sometimes when you are trying to convey an idea, visuals make or break people's interpretations. What i noticed in both articles is that some people want a huge substantial meal before their death, others might pick their favorite food, and some are probably too worried about that fact that their life is ending, and don't even have an appetite.
I think that the second article "Last Meals" is more compelling because the audience gets to see the look on the victim's face and compare it to their meal. I also think that the portraits that are in black and white are very compelling, because when i think colorful i think happy, and death is not happy so the black and white effect carries a message. A thought i had while looking through all these pictures was that maybe people's meal choices say something about their personality. For example if you chose a big hearty meal, you probably cared about yourself and your health a little bit more than they people who just chose to eat an olive, or a cup of coffee, or just a bowl of ice cream.
Also, some people appeared to put a lot of thought into their last meal, for example Ronnie Lee Gardner wanted to read Lord of the Rings while he ate. I know i probably wouldn't be thinking about books when i was awaiting my death sentence. The first article was more colorful and clear, and i didn't really feel as sad looking through it as i felt when i looked at the second article. Just seeing the bad quality pictures of these people, and seeing all the terror in their eyes made me feel depressed. Both articles are compelling visually, and really make you think.