Second Blog: Corn-Pone Opinions

Rhetorical Analysis                                                                                                         
          In Corn-Pone Opinions written by Mark Twain, a well-known novelist, who expresses his mindset on the society of the late nineteenth century and reveals how the world revolves around conformity. Throughout his piece, he uses a series of rhetorical devices to help effectively verify his argument, some of these being anecdotes and rhetorical answers to broad questions. Anecdotes can grab the reader's attention immediately and this is exactly what Twain did by including it right away in the beginning. He explains the ideas of his childhood friend and refute it with his own points that he created as he grew up. In a way this anecdote also shows his argument in a subtle way because his idea was not inspired by his own mind but because of another human being. This demonstrates that even Twain's ideas on conformity are not at all original and he is also self-dependent on everybody else. In addition, Twain also uses rhetorical answers in paragraph 12 where he responds to extremely complex questions with a simple answer. This helps persuade the reader of his point because it proves how such puzzling questions about humans can be easily resolved through a mere idea that Twain states in his work.

Opinion Piece
          In a way I do agree with Twain's ideas on conformity, but to a certain degree. I do agree that people have this natural instinct to be self-dependent on others ideas and always follow what the majority does. However, I don't think that everybody is incapable of thinking for oneself. I believe that there are two types of people in the world: the majority and the minority. Twain saw the world the way he did because it is something that practically 99% of the population did. I believe that ideas come to life because of the minority; someone out there sparked it and because a good amount of people agreed to that idea, eventually becoming the norm in society. That one person might not be recognize and remembered in history books, but he/she was still the first to utter the words that changed people's viewpoints on a particular idea.

First Blog-Speech

     

Animal testing is the use of animals in commercial or scientific experiments. These experiments ensure that the product tested is safe for human use. Although animal testing have vastly improve medical research and benefit humanity by keeping them safe, animal testing is often brutal and inhumane. Defenseless creatures are subjugated to mistreatment by people and worse cases more often than not lead to death. According to PETA, laboratory animals are forced to inhale toxic fumes, are immobilized in restraint devices, have holes drilled into their skulls, have their skin burned off, and spines crushed. Thus, animal testing is a painful experience that animals shouldn't need to face.

Others might argue that animal testing is critical to the help of medical advancement since without it, vaccines wouldn't have been made and the majority of children would have died young. However, there are flaws in the system and not everything that works on animals have the same effect as it does on humans. A painkiller called Zomax that was used in the early 1980s is an example of this. When the drug was tested on animals they showed no ill symptoms, but when humans used it, it caused 14 deaths and more than a hundred life-threatening allergies. Therefore, animal testing should not be allowed because while they can result in countless of medical breakthroughs, not all of them are necessarily safe.









Some of Zinsser's advice that I followed in the previous 2 paragraphs are sexism, mood changers, and little qualifiers. Instead of constantly writing he/she in my paragraphs I used more broader terms that can refer to anyone such as humanity, humans, people, others so it wouldn't be limited to a certain gender. In addition, I started with a mood changer, however, in my second paragraph which I think makes my sentence more stronger instead of just connecting however with the previous sentence, resulting into a run-on. I also tried not to use too many little qualifiers which I noticed occurred frequently when I'm writing. After I reread my paragraphs, I deleted the little qualifiers that I didn't need but still had and I felt like my overall argument sounded much stronger.








Work Cited:

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/
http://www.pcrm.org/research/healthcare-professionals/research-compendium/an-examination-of-animal-experiments
http://www.medicaldaily.com/animal-testing-long-unpretty-history-247217