Journal Entry #10

In "A modest Proposal" Swift proposes that in order to help the starving people of Ireland, they should eat their own children. He says that the poor people should eat their children because they are being a burden to society. He structures his piece by setting up a scene to get the reader's attention. He shows a woman dressed in rags that has children following her down the street. He then gives his proposal that we should eat these poor children after they are one year old. After he states his solution, he gives his arguments as to why this would be effective to the country of Ireland. Before he concludes the piece, he states his 6 arguments or supporting evidence again and then give the piece closure. His supporting evidence is that these children are being a burden to society and therefore should be eaten. In turn, they would now help society. This would also prevent voluntary abortions and women killing their children because they can't be fed. This satire piece is effective because it sheds light on the situation that was going on in Ireland during this time which people seemed to be ignoring. It is also effective because it proposal is so absurd that the reader becomes very interested in the topic. He used words like boil and bake to describe cooking the children, which today we use only for animals. Swift uses a lot of reasoning in his proposal. In many cases he goes through in depth measures to explain why his solution is efficient. He uses math and research to prove his point by estimating the number of children born each year and when their would be an abundance of children. He even calculates how many pounds a child is when they have been fed for a year and how many families that it would be able to feed. The babies could also be used as gloves and boots for women. This satire is meant to mock the govt. because they were not doing anything to help the country of Ireland during this famine. I think this is different than the other pieces we have read so far because the proposal is so absurd. I like this piece because I was not bored when I was reading it and it served its purpose to shed light on the famine in Ireland.

Topic: Animal Testing

Why? i want to find out the negative aspects of it

In order to.. show my reader that there is a better solution to testing products on animals

1. How many animals are tested on each year?

2. How many animals are injured each year as a result to testing?

3. What is the cost to house and feed these animals?

4. How many companies use animal testing

5. What is the accuracy of animal testing?

Questions for solution

6. How long, on average are people on death row?

7.How much does it cost to keep people alive on death row?

8. Is there enough people to test these products on?

Journal Entry #9

http://dailyitem.com/0100_news/x1498156952/Keller-Let-s-shrink-House

This is an article that I found in my home-town newspaper. The speaker of the State House is looking for sponsors that would be in favor of his proposal of cutting back the size of PAs legislature. Many people had different views on the bill. In my opinion, I don't think they should cut back the number of PA representatives so severely. The proposal is to cut back 50 people, which is a large number. This would cause many people to lose their jobs. Also, Pennsylvania is a very diverse state. We have people to represent from very different backgrounds. It is good that we have so many representatives because I am sure people from my small community have different opinions than people from Philly or Pittsburgh.

http://www.standard-journal.com/articles/2011/03/19/news/doc4d82067439032918424489.txt

This article is about the debate over higher education. Tim Corbett suggested that the money be lent to students in the form of grants instead of subsidies. It is the biggest cut of higher education than any governor has proposed this year. I have two different opinions on this article. I know that because of our economic situation money has to be cut from somewhere so cutting it from higher education is seemingly a good proposal. However we need people to go to college so that they can have jobs in the future. With these cuts to education some people will be forced to not go to a regular 4 year college and our economy will suffer in the future. Secondly, schools need subsidies and their institutions benefit the public by research money.

http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/01/14/technology-aims-to-replace-animal-testing

This article is about how Hurel Corp. developed technology that would switch from animal testing to testing done with stem cells of the human body. They did this research with the help of funding from the L'Oreal cosmetic company. The tests done show that this will hopefully be in place next year, but rigorous tests have not been completed yet. This is obviously a controversial topic because stem cell research is a controversial topic. In my opinion, I would rather see testing done on the stem cells than to animals because the animals are already living. Also, in the future it will probably be more accurate to test on human stem cells than animal cells because we do not have to same genome as animals such as mice or guinea pigs. This product would also cut the cost of developing a new drug by 1 million dollars!