Does it Look Like a Third Grader Would Get My Point?

Because That’s the Goal

                                  

Doyle Jones

English 1A

My cool little display thing is going to be set up in like a shoebox.  I am going to divide the box into halves with a barrier of sorts creating two separate cubicles in a way.  Then I am going to use these two halves to make my statement about bikes, the environment and your health.

So the first side I a m going to have look like a nice sunny day at what could possibly be a park.  I used green paper as the grass for both sides and I used blue paper on the background as my sky.  These were easy color choices because everyone knows that the sky is blue and the grass is green.  I have white clouds on the bike side and black clouds on the cars side.  These color differences are supposed to kinda get you to ponder as to why the cars side has black clouds.  Now as a little extra I added a bright yellow paper sun in the sky of my bikes side to show how it was just such a beautiful day.  For my person on the bikes side I used a clothespin that I added colored on clothes too to make him look like a fit healthy guy who has a dashing smile.  But in contrast on the cars side the person again is made of a clothespin but he has packed on a few extra pounds of play doh, mostly because he is lazy.  He can be seen outside his car with a frowny face.  I have used a toy bicycle as my bike because the very realistic bike immediately draws your attention unlike the bike I tried to make where you just end up guessing if it’s a bike or maybe a plane or it could even have been a house.  Now for the car I also used a car because I wanted to keep a balanced look on both sides but I wanted the sides to have major, major differences when you look at them.  And finally I have some dead tree branches being the car that look like they are dead trees and behind the bike there is a beautiful green tree that is just a branch with a lot of leaves that I borrowed for this project.

I was planning on this project being directed more towards kids than adults for a few reasons.  One kids are more impressionable and two, adults can figure this out for themselves.  So to help show how bikes can be better for us and better for the environment to a younger kid I went with the classic shoebox diorama project look.  I figured if I could fit in with them they would understand better. That is how I chose the majority of the materials I used.  I kept in mind the whole time that I was making this project that I wanted it to blend in if I were to set it in with a bunch of kid’s school projects.  So colored paper as the background and grass was an obvious choice.  I thought basic school stuff for the people in my project and it hit me. Clothespin! That would make the perfect person and if you just simply add play doh you have your fat guy.  Now like I said before I failed miserably at making a bike out of wire.  I held a pole among my friends to see if they could guess what it was and no one actually guessed bicycle so it was at that point that I decided to use a toy bike.  I felt a little guilty at first but then as my project got more and more finished I loved how it looked like it belonged in a little kids’ classroom.  To keep my project looking balanced I added the toy car so one side didn’t differ too much from the other except in the areas where I was wanting to prove my point.  Then the trees.  I didn’t want to use pipe cleaners or more paper for the trees so I decided I would just hot glue some little branched of real trees in there instead.

I am really hoping that this project will help get the message out there to kids that riding bikes is not only fun and enjoyable but also great for you and the environment.  By riding bikes there are less cars on the road and that in turn means less pollution.  Riding a bike can make you feel so much better too.  Also it can help you get into shape and riding a bike saves you money over driving a car.

            I feel like my display really closely relates to the one picture I used which was a picture of a car and a bike and above the bike it said, “this one runs on fat and saves you money” and above the car is says, “this one runs on money and makes you fat”.  This is really close to the message I’m trying to get across that one is better for you than the other one is.

I had a few challenges along the way one of which was trying to make my own bicycle.  That one ended up pretty badly.  Another challenge I had was trying to keep it looking like a kids project and not to go way to over the top and have it be completely obvious that I was the kid whose parents did the entire project for them.  But other than that I would say that the project went pretty well.

    

I was planning on having a shoe box diorama thingy that is divided into two sides. The first side was going to have a big bicycle to really stress that this is about cycling and its benefits.  That side is going to have green grass probably made of green turf stuff to she a healthy environment and i was planning on using a lego guy or play doh to make a happy person and that can show that it can be easy for people to change in many ways. The other side was going to be possibly in a city scene with a car puffing out smoke showing how it is bad for the environment and a fat person sitting on it possibly eating something unhealthy showing that cars can contribute to an unhealthy lifestyle.

2nd Essay

Doyle Jones

English 1A

Jen Fleischer

            In todays world there are many, many arguable topics of great concern to the general public. Some of these topics may include things such as, debts college students acquire by going to college, climate change or global warming, how todays kids are affected by violent video games, todays economy, oil and oil related issues, green energy and much more.  But for this essay I will be arguing about what could possibly be the biggest, most pressing issue known to date.  That issue is how riding bikes, bmx in particular, is good for you and makes you more awesome than the average person.  Now I know what you’re thinking, there is no way this guy is serious and that this has to be the dumbest thing you’ve ever hear of, or how could this possibly be an issue? But if you keep reading I will explain it all in detail.

            To help you non-believers, disgruntled critics of bicycles, and whoever may think that I am taking this essay as a joke, which I may be slightly, I have found and used two articles and two pictures to help prove my point.  To start things off I’m going to jump right into giving you some examples I found in an academic article titled, Do the Benefits of Cycling Outweigh the Risks? Written by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science.  Now let me tell you, these guys know what they are talking about.  Four people, who were from the University of Utrecht, the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, conducted these studies.  Now you may be questioning if these studies apply to us here in the glorious United States of America.  That is a valid question that I will thwart by now telling you that they compared their studies to studies done in the glorious United States along with other countries including China and other various European countries. 

This article is written in a no nonsense format with main headings for the various aspects they looked at, including the assessment of pollution, traffic and the affects on health and the physical well being of people.  The tone is straight to the point with information and statistics backing up what they are stating and using charts of their evidence.  They provide evidence that they collected such as the change in emissions and people’s physical well being.  This article seems to be written for everyone in general but specifically for those who are concerned with this topic.  The main argument that they are trying to get at is that the shift from cars to bicycles as the main mode of transportation could dramatically shift the pollution to much healthier levels and actually make the population as a whole much healthier for several reasons.  The reasons they state are general well being, becoming more physically fit and in the long term you would actually be breathing healthier air because emission levels would be lower.  The purpose the article was written for was to show how we could directly affect the world by choosing bicycles as the main mode of transportation for reasonable distances and how the general population would become healthier.

My next source was an article taken from about.com, and written by David Fiedler.  Now David has been published in many articles, newspapers and has written four books on cycling and its affects.  Now you, like I did, may be thinking well this guy just writes articles and we all know that means nothing. Anyone with a computer can type something about what they think they know and seem credible-ish.  But their lack of experience in the field of which they are writing may cause them to leave out something so simply overlooked yet so important.  So in David’s credibility defense he is also a retired cyclist racer who is tied with Lance Armstrong for Tour De France wins.  That there should have you convinced on his credibility and have you on the edge of your seat waiting to hear what he wrote about.  Having established his credibility, his article is written in a different fashion than the academic article.  He states in a list form how bicycling is good for you and how it can affect you and your community.  He states how, obviously, cycling affects your health, your state of mind as cycling can be a stress reliever, and how it is obviously cheaper than driving a car.  He also tells us how it affects the community by taking one car off the road, helping with traffic and pollution.  This article is definitely directed towards the more average person in hopes of possibly convincing them to ride bicycles more often. David seems to write with and encouraging and factual tone to help his argument that anyone can become healthier by just simply riding a bike.

Alright now onto the last two pieces of evidence I have.  These are two pictures, which I will try to attach to the bottom of this immaculately crafted essay.  The first has a picture of a car and a bicycle, with a quote above the bike saying, “This one runs on fat and saves you money” and the quote above the car says, “This one runs on money and makes you fat”.  Now the creator of this has definitely made his message clear by saying that one is good for you and the other isn’t as good for you.  By stating which one makes you fat and what one runs on fat he clearly knows that riding bikes is good for your health and by telling us that one saves us money and the other costs money.  He must have some sort of superior insight and knowledge and is sharing it with us by letting us know that bikes are cheaper to maintain and believe it or not do not need gas to move.  I know it’s crazy, but just go with me on this one.  The next one is a picture of a guy riding a bmx bike with, what could probably be the single most true truthful quote know to mankind today saying, “Studies have shown that riding a bmx bike everyday makes you more awesome than the general population”.  The genius-ness of this quote couldn’t be stated more accurately.  The maker of this clearly knows how cool bmx riders really are and that, once again, bikes are good for your health.  Both of these pictures are made for anyone and everyone to show that bicycling is good for you! There seems to be a reoccurring theme in these findings I have here.

Now all of these texts seem pretty convincing in stating the benefits of riding a bike whenever possible.  The academic article has tons of evidence and statistics to help back it up which is very effective in making it persuasive.  Any critic of this topic would have a hard time arguing the practically set in stone facts they have stated.  The other article plays more to how you feel while riding bike, and the money it will save you in the long run. 

Now you, or the prompt, may be wondering what one of these was the most effective in getting the message across and which one was the least effective.  Well to answer that question, the pictures were definitely more effective.  They are so straightforward and easy to read. You don’t have to read an entire article to get the message you just have to read a short quote.  The one comparing and contrasting cars to bikes was affective because in todays society everyone want to be fit, so why not ride a bike to get you your goal and your destination?  On top of the fitness part it brings up the other obvious upside to riding a bike, its way cheaper.  Now this is great news for college students and just about everyone.    The other picture stating that riding a bike makes you awesome was very affective.  I mean who wouldn’t want to be awesome, especially when it can easily be achieved by riding a bmx bike and being able to bust out cool tricks.  I have been racing bmx for 6 years and have 5 sponsors, and I can do my fair share of sweet tricks, which does indeed make you more awesome than the general population and it always impresses the ladies.  As for the least effective one, that was hands down the academic article in my opinion.  I mean who wants to read pages on pages of statistics and wordy paragraphs that in the end just tell you that riding a bike is good for you and the environment.

All of the texts I used are from completely different genres, which is clearly apparent if you were to read the texts, but since you wont actually see the texts I will try my best to explain the differences between them and why I think they were written in such a fashion.  Now, the academic article was written in its wordy, factual, and excessively statistic using form because if they were to simply state bikes are good for you because they just are, the academic paper reader people would tell them they are absolute garbage and should write children’s books, which would be quite the blow to the writers self-esteem.  Therefore they had to provide astronomical amounts of evidence and statistics and write in such a way that they seem intelligent and what not.  The article David the cyclist wrote was just a here you go these are some fun facts kinds article, so he was able to write with a much more general tone and style.  He just wants to get the word out that bikes are good for us and the environment, and he’s not writing to some fancy pants academic people but the general population.  As for the pictures, they could be designed as some deep philosophical message that should cause us to contemplate and ponder their message for hours upon hours, or it is just a quick simple message meant for whoever stumbles upon it.  The quick easy to read message is mainly meant to be like, “Hey dumbass go ride a bike its good for you.”  This kind of message is most likely aimed at the younger population because it is written on a picture, because everyone knows nothing is worth reading if it doesn’t have cool pictures.

This goes to say that the types of materials we read do directly affects who we are and how we read and write.  If I were to read nothing but academic articles I’m sure my writing style would be much less sarcastic and mildly humorous, and more factual based, get to the point and use big words while doing it based.  I’m sure that if that’s all I ever read I wouldn’t have gotten so bored as quickly and probably would have skimmed a lot lot lot less.  If all I read was quotes on pictures I would be great a game shows involving quote guessing, but I probably wouldn’t do so hot in some other field that actually requires reading something that is boring and containing information of relevance and importance.  This almost directly plays into today’s society that is bombarded with the stupid “meme” things that are completely retarted 95% of the time, and how it seems that our general population is becoming dumber and dumber.  In my opinion there seems to be a direct correlation between these two items.  Now obviously I haven’t conducted a study on this or written a long-winded paper to explain my findings, but that’s my observation on this situation.  Ill leave all that work to the professional guys who really care about such pressing matters.

Fiedler, David. "Top 5 Reasons to Ride a Bike." About.com Bicycling. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. http://bicycling.about.com/od/thebikelife/a/why_ride_2.htm

“Do the Health Benefits of Cycling Outweigh the Risks?” Environ Health Perspect. Web. 30 June 2010. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920084/

I recently watched a documentary on concussions.  I don't know who the author or director was unfortunately.  I chose to watch this documentary out of pure boredom and it seemed interesting.  The entire documentary was about concussions and the affects of them on your health in the years to come.  They told us how concussions actually kill brain cells and create a plaque of sorts on the brain.  After years of this plaque build up it actually starts to affect you mentally.  It can cause severe depression and drive you insane and can possibly lead to you committing suicide.  But unfortunately no one can give you a definition of what a concussion is.  It can be what i always thought it was when you knocked yourself out, don't remember it and you pupils are extremely dilated, or it can be anytime you hit your head and hear a ringing noise, see stars or something like that.  So this means no-one can know exactly how many concussions they have.  This directly relates to my life because i have always thought i have had 5 concussions, like to where i blacked out and don't remember, but this documentary says i could have way more.  I watch stuff like this occasionally, but i dont normally watch tv.  I feel like this could be criticized because some of it was very vague, like there not actually being a definition for what a concussion is.  But they argued their points very well and provided evidence to back it up.