Barf Blog Blog (Blog)

           My criteria for evaluating blogs would probably be considered by most to be a bit too intense- as an avid reader of blogs of all kinds I have very high standards for their quality. As I evaluated “Barf Blog,” a blog on food safety maintained by a Kansas professor, I came to the conclusion that the blog is an effective dispatcher for food safety news but an unprofessional and ineffective source for consistent original content and interpretation of said news. Now, this judgment was not made without thorough consideration to my previously mentioned criteria- criteria which I will briefly summarize in order to give insight into my process.

            Firstly, given that the “About Us” section of Barf Blog indicated that the blog was meant to promote awareness about food safety through educated and well informed posts with research as evidence, I classified this blog as a “Professional” (information oriented) type. As such,  my evaluation is limited to a specific set of criteria applicable to that type.  A few general standards included in this criteria are credibility, visual appeal , organizational fluency, and interesting/meaningful topic coverage.

            Although the “About Us” section of the blog does do favors for the authors ethos as far as professional credibility goes- the authors mention that they are all doctors and that all the opinions they publish must be evidence based- the random 15 blog posts I read showed a consistent lack of professionalism and self gathered evidence to back up opinions. Many times a brief summary of a food safety event would be written, without any evident judgment making, and then the “reins” would be handed over to a random news source and the remainder of the blog post would be an extended quote from another published article. Personal anecdotes were often shared in context with topics that had seemingly no relation. For example, one author discussed his daughter’s boyfriend’s hair’s similarities to his own youthful mane. Curse words also frequently littered the blog posts, and while this gave an intimate and friendly tone preferable in a personal blog, the crass language detracts significantly from the credibility of a professional and information based blog. Additionally, some posts were not even vaguely related to food safety topics, including; “War Sucks But Sometimes Necessary: Anzac day in Australia” and “Soccer’s Suarez hit with 10-game ban for Ivanovic bite” which talked about Australian holidays and soccer, respectively. In the visual and organizational sense the presence of these random posts throws off the flow of the information and purpose of the blog as a whole.

Overall, Barf Blog seems to fall short of its stated goals as a professional food safety information source, leaning towards the informal and losing credibility and fluency due to this as well as inconsistent and confusing structure. Despite this negative conclusion, I would argue that this blog has a lot of appeal as a personal blog- vaguely oriented around the general topic of food safety but not purportedly dedicated to it. If I evaluated this blog with my criteria for personal blogs it would most likely perform favorably.

The Multitude of Milks - Revision

 For my family food has always been an impetus for order. Anytime we become -as a group or as individuals- too disjointed or chaotic, my family institutes some drastic changes in our eating-as if this will be a solution to all of our problems. It has been this way since I can remember. I can recall a time when I drank milk on the regular- now I am banned from the terrible liquid. Now, our fridge has a corner exclusively for almond milk; which is “Cordi’s drink.” Before almond milk it was rice milk. Before rice milk it was soy milk, and so on.

            When my brothers were little it seemed like maybe they would escape the brunt force of my parent’s “food meddling.” They didn’t. My youngest brother, Leo, had developed a penchant for vegetables and coffee at an early age, which was basically a formula for perpetual skinniness, something my dad and I envied - but was not healthy for a growing 7 year old boy. As for my middle brother Oliver, his appetite was only rivaled by his rising height- something which shocked my whole family (a family of short people) and had my mom rushing to the doctor's office when Oliver couldn’t get out of bed due to his legs literally growing so fast that he could feel immense pain in his knees. Every year the doctors would tell my mom the same thing; Leo-underweight, Oliver-overweight, Cordelia-average. So naturally my mother realized that cooking for all three of us as a unit was not going to work- we each had to be rehabilitated individually- through our diets, of course.

            For Leo it was a diet rich with candy and “healthy-unhealthy” snacks, by which I mean 1000 calories wrapped up in a package with more muted colours from Trader Joe’s, which apparently signaled (to my mother) that these foods were superior- organic and over expensive. For Oliver it was the sudden decision that he go gluten free. The fridge and pantry filled quickly with gluten free brownies, gluten free mini muffins, gluten free waffles, etc. It should be noted that just as I was never allergic to lactose, Oliver has never at any point been allergic to gluten.

            I was told, as a girl who was still growing (actually I wasn’t, the doctor had said that I was done growing forever) to eat plenty of protein. While I took that as a light suggestion, one to be followed at my own discretion, my parents interpreted it differently. I regularly hear cries of; “Protein! You need to eat some protein with that!”, ringing through the house. No joke, I hear it when I sleep. My parents were not content with average. I began to develop the discreet suspicion that they were trying to fatten me up for some sort of experiment of the most evil kind. (I still have that suspicion)

            But alas- I discovered something far more calculated lurking under my parent’s food revivalist attitude. Upon contemplation of the strange patterns of diet, I noticed that all changes in food roughly coincided with changes in our lives. For Oliver, entering middle school was the catalyst for his sudden gluten free lifestyle. For Leo, it was his struggles in school and his anguish once he could grasp the concept of “adopted.” For me; it was a little more complicated. The many changes could be connected to many things, but the most significant ones started taking place in sophomore year when I was finally feeling the stress of challenging coursework, college plans, and an unclear future. I was pissy and reclusive (I still am, but in an okay way) and my parents were not prepared to deal with a hormonal teenage girl at the emotional level. Those mood swings... lets just say I’m glad I’m not a parent. Anyway, my parents way of dealing with that was to decrease the amount of “agitating” foods in my diet. I was restricted from foods with corn syrup because my mom once read somewhere that it caused aggression. I was also given more protein and more iron because a homeopath told my parents that this would reduce my stress levels and my constant fatigue.

            The worst part is that they were right. My parents food meddling, no matter how irritating, actually helped me in significant ways. I increased the protein and iron in my diet and I found myself with more energy to get through the day. I decreased the hydrogenated corn syrup filled foods in my diet (aka candy) and I felt much less irritable. And even if I stole over to friends houses on the regular to eat Lucky Charms and Poptarts, I felt a constant reminder of my parents love whenever I thought of my food restrictions- which were really just a subtle guiding hand, symbolic of the care of my parents.

I still drink normal milk on the sly though.

10 Line Rhetorical Analysis

JUSTICE KAGAN: (...the State's principal) interest in marriage is in regulating procreation. Is that basically correct?

MR. COOPER: I — Your Honor, that's the essential thrust of our — our position, yes.

JUSTICE KAGAN: Is — is there — so you have sort of a reason for not including same-sex couples. Is there any reason that you have for excluding them? In other words, you're saying, well, if we allow same-sex couples to marry, it doesn't serve the State's interest. But do you go further and say that it harms any State interest?

Justice Kagan employs several interesting rhetorical techniques in order to make her point. Her natural rhetorical device is ethos and is relative to the setting- the very fact that this case is being heard in the Supreme Court and that she is one of the respected sitting Justices establishes the credibility of the hearing and her opinions. The Justice acknowledges her audience; her fellow justices, the people testifying for the case, and the american public. She appeals to her audience by using clearly framed questions in order to guide and establish the point she is making, first asking Cooper if her summary of his point is "basically correct?" When he answers in the affirmative (using ethos by referring to the opinion being held by "we"), she continues to challenge him clearly on that point, assured that her audience is following her line of thinking.  She successfully uses the Respondent Mr.Cooper as a bounce board for her argument, leading him with questions in order to trap him in a possible logical fallacy. By conceding to him that maybe he has established a reason not to include same-sex couples in the classification, she then pushes his argument to an area of moral and logical innacurac by asking him wether he is then implying that gay-couples must be "excluded." The use of the words "excluded" and "harms" to refer to the legality of Gay-Marriage is also a calculated rhetorical technique. Kagan uses words that inspire a negative image and create pathos. She makes Coopers basic claim seem like it is accusatory and excluding, rather than neutral and logical like she had initially allowed him to frame it. Her audience, following her line of direct questioning, would recognize the trap that Mr.Cooper was stuck in- he could not answer without making a moral judgement- claiming that allowing gay couples to marry would actually harm the states interest- instead of just being irrelevant to it. This logical fallacy can be classified as circular cause and consequence; Cooper implies that because Gay-Marriage does not serve the states interest it is not legalized, but it does not follow that its legalization would actually harm the states interest. Just because it does not "serve" the interest it does not guarantee that it "harms" the interest, so what reason is there from preventing the legalization if it has virtually no effect? Cooper would be hard pressed to answer this question without making a moral judgement or logical fallacy- Kagan has succesfully trapped him by questioning the logos of his own argument.