Journal 6

I think the Humane Society commercial was extremely effective in its use of pathos to translate its message to the audience. The creators of the ad knew that many households in America have pets that they care for very much, so it was not hard for them to build an audience. The images may have been the most effective part of the ad. To any animal lover, a picture of a dog beaten and dirty will bring about sadness and empathy. The creators also used pictures of cats and other types of animals so as to reach out to a wider audience. The music also brought about many emotions when I saw the ad. It was depressing, slow music that went along with the images very well. This visual and audio combination was hard to turn away from. Personally, it made me want to help or adopt each animal I saw because i felt so bad. It makes you think about how fortunate you are to be where you are, and it makes me feel bad whenever I spend money on something that really isn't necessary at all. This ad is one of the most effective I saw in class because it touches on something nearly everyone hates (abused/mistreated animals), and it reaches out to many different people.

Journal 5

I enjoyed this text because architecture is very artsy, and any form of art captures my attention. It also deals with societal issues such as race and socio-economic classes. These issues will continue to occur as long as there are different races on Earth and until we convert to communism. It is my opinion that a democratically elected communist leader could do great things for a country as long as there are checks on the government. But I digress...

Personally, I love technology, but when it comes to reading with technology it gets on my nerves. Give me a good old paper-back book and I'll be fine, but hand me a kindle and I'd probably toss it. Its cool that you can store so many books on such a small device, but I feel like it takes something away from the writing. I didn't mind the hypertext too much except that I'd rather read off a sheet of paper than a computer screen. After staring at a screen for a while it makes my head feel weird. The links throughout the hypertext didn't really bother me. To be honest, I didn't even notice them until I read the syllabus. It kind of reminded me of the Jesus game on wikipedia. I thought the incorporation of pictures was very cool, though. As I said, art captivates my mind, so throwing in a picture to go with the text helps expand my thoughts on the work.

Although I don't normally like reading texts using technology, I think the hypertext was a little bit more effective than the WR version. The pictures are a good addition, and I like the links because they didn't distract me, but I can go back and look into the issues discussed in the text with more depth and gain more background knowledge about the whole piece.