Ok. Here are five grammatical errors in my opinion editorial.

1. According to the 2010 US Census, 15.9 million people between the ages of 18 and 24 did not vote in the 2008 presidential election.

I did not put periods after the acronym "U.S."

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 15.9 million people between the ages of 18 and 24 did not vote in the 2008 presidential election.

2. This is a tougher statistic to quantify and measure but is invaluable to the function of democracy.

There should be a comma before "but."

This is a tougher statistic to quantify and measure, but is invaluable to the function of democracy.

3&4. The process takes less than 15 minutes and is promptly submitted to the proper county clerk for approval.

There are two in this sentence, "15" should be written out, and there should be a comma before "and."

The process takes less than fifteen minutes, and is promptly submitted to the proper county clerk for approval.

5. But when it comes down to it, 16 million voices represent a significant portion of America, and without their votes, less than half the people are left to shape the future for everyone else.

This sentence starts with a conjunction, which is technically not grammatically correct, but I'm leaving it for voice. The thing that I am correcting in this sentence is the writing of 16 with numbers instead of spelled out, as it should be.

But when it comes down to it, sixteen million voices represent a significant portion of America, and without their votes, less than half the people are left to shape the future for everyone else.

Great! Now that's done, and on to my feelings about peer review of papers. I haven't seen how my peers have reviewed my paper yet, but I am excited to see their suggestions and corrections. I think peer review is great and can really help us all improve as writers and learn from each other. I wish we would not have had to include five comments on every page; sometimes I just didn't have five things to say. I think the half-page response at the end was a much more effective way to convey thoughts about the paper, and that focusing on that as the main component of the review being supported by comments throughout the paper as needed would be a good improvement.

Well, that's all. Special thanks goes to my new friend Melissa for helping me find the grammatical errors in my essay.

Adios!

Blog Post #1

Part #1

When I was looking for an example of a fallacy I could blog about, I looked and looked but couldn't find anything. Then I remembered politics! Watch this ad for Ron Paul and look for the fallacies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUNIeOB0whI

Several fallacies are committed, including but not limited to: straw people, stacking the deck, and lots of unsubstantiated claims and assertions. It is only a one-minute commercial which makes it tough, but political discussion and campaigning seems to be so full of rhetorical fallacy that it is not a good time trying to decide what candidates really stand for and believe and will do vs. what they are just saying to try and get elected.

Part #2

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

Well, for my rhetorical analysis of this excerpt from Henry V, I decided to color-code different lines to show ethos, logos, and pathos. Yellow highlighting signifies ethos. In these passages, King Henry is building his credibility by making it seem like he has the power to save or destroy the town. He also speaks of himself as being all that stands between the town and the "licentious wickedness" of blood-thirsty soldiers, making his demand for their surrender sound like an offer of mercy.

Red highlighting shows the parts of the speech where Henry uses pathos. His graphic descriptions of the violence that will happen are intended to intimidate the townspeople into surrender. No one wants those things to happen to them or their neighbors.

Blue highlighting is used on the parts of this speech where logos is present. Henry twists logic to shift the responsibility of potential destruction and bloodshed from himself to the people of the town with words like "when you yourselves are the cause..." This logic is based on his earlier assertion that he is there to offer the people mercy and implies that if they choose to keep fighting, anything bad that happens will be their fault. He also tells them that if they are going to accept his offer of surrender, they need to do it quickly because he will not be able to keep back his soldiers for long. This logic makes sense in the context of his speech, where he has framed the issues at hand (for example, the destruction of the town and his control of the soldiers) in a way that makes it make sense. The assumptions that his logic is based on are very subjective though.

All About Me

Hi everyone! My name is Alex Rasmussen. I am from right here in Utah. I was born up in Salt Lake and lived in Murray (a suburb of Salt Lake) until I was 11, and then I moved to Lehi with my family. I have two brothers and a sister and they are all younger. We are close and love spending time as a family. I served a mission in San Jose, California and I loved it. I don't know where or who I would be without the experiences and friends that I had on my mission.

There is not much in this world that I love more than sports. Soccer is the only one I've played competitively, but I have never played a sport I didn't like. My favorite class this semester is ice hockey. Did you know we could take an ice hockey class here at BYU? It is so much fun and a good break from my more difficult classes. Along with team sports, I love to snowboard in the winter. I think that sports have a lot of value in society, not for their own sake, but because we can learn so many important life skills from them. Self-control, communication and cooperation, and mental focus are just a few.

I like to have fun. I can't stand being bored or doing something boring. Luckily, I believe that just about anything can be made fun with a friend and the right attitude. I love doing anything with friends. One of the worst things I could imagine would be spending any extended period of time completely alone. Hopefully that never happens.

Well, that about sums it up. Good to meet you!