IRB Introduction #3 "Killing Lincoln"

My third IRB is actually something my father recommended to me. The "Killing..." series, which features other influential people like JFK and Jesus, by Bill O'Reilly talks about how the lives of these people influenced the world and how their deaths influenced the world even more, or something like that from what I heard from my dad. O'Reilly supposedly goes after a lot of the conspiracies about Lincoln's life in "Killing Lincoln." I'm currently learning about Lincoln in APUSH so I'm really excited to see what this books got to deliver.

TOW #16 IRB Post "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond

I went into this book thinking that it was going to be about how the Europeans crushed and conquered the "less civilized" nations through guns, germs, and steel. To me, that was what the title of the book implied, but Guns, Germs, and Steel is about much more than muskets and conquistadors. It's about the differences in human civilizations all around the world and why things in human history happened a certain way. Through the use of pictures of people and an outline of numerous topics, Diamond argues that it is necessary to understand the people and societies of history and the world in order to further understand ourselves as humans and to further understand our futures.

One thing that really stands out in this book is its use of visual rhetoric that shows the human side of history and allows a better understanding of history than words can transfer. In sections of the book, Diamond inserts pictures of people. These people include a "Khoisan woman from the Kalahari Desert of Botswana", "Western European, former president Charles de Gaulle of France", "a Tingus woman from Siberia", and "Aboriginal Australians from Arnhem Land." The different faces, skincolor, facial structures, and attributes of all these people show a human side to history that is often left in most history textbooks and historical studies. Diamond uses these pictures to show that history is about the people in it and how they interacted to create the history we know today. He reminds us that it was people that developed this world and will continue to in the future.

Diamond also goes over many topics in the book, not just guns, germs, and steel as the title might suggest, in order to show the different aspects of history and the numerous reasons why history was shaped a certain way. Diamond talks about farming in "History's Haves and Have Nots" chapter, domestication in the "How to make an almond" chapter, writing systems in the "Blueprints and Borrowed Letters" chapter, and governmental systems in the "From Egalitarian to Kleptocracy chapter. By going over many topics, Diamond can prove that human civilizations are comprised of many different aspects. By knowing how these different elements created different societies, we can understand the differences in humans and our civilizations and better understand ourselves in our own unique societies and the path we are heading.

Our friend, Jared Diamond

TOW #15 Doritos Time Machine (Visual)

The Super Bowl is great. Not only does it come with an exciting game and family fun time, but also features some of the greatest commercials of all time. These commercials pay a lot of money to the station airing the Super Bowl due to the enormous viewership and work hard to make memorable and funny commercials that will sell their product the best. From the last Super Bowl in 2014, one commercial was particularly memorable. It was a commercial from Doritos. In the commercial, Doritos utilized the cuteness of the boy and his dog and humor to evoke an emotional response from its audience so that the audience would remember the commercial and remember to buy their product.

Most of the commercial was an overload of cuteness so that Doritos could grab the attention of its viewers and keep the audience hooked. The commercial depicted a cute little boy named Jimmy with blond hair and a cute golden retriever. Everybody loves cute kids. Everybody loves dogs. When the two things combine, there is an amount of cuteness that would make any average American Super Bowl viewer say, "Aww." There would not be the same effect if there was an angry looking teenage boy with his dog fighting pitbull to do the job. Doritos specifically chose Jimmy and his loyal golden retriever to grab its audience's attention, thus, allowing their product to by memorable, and in the end, sell their product.

Doritos also utilizes humor, like most commercials do, to make their commercial memorable and. ultimately, sell their product. After Mr. Smith goes in the time machine and Jimmy takes his Doritos, an old man comes out of his house and Jimmy and his dog to get off of his lawn. As Jimmy and his dog scurry away, Mr. Smith comes out of the time machine. When he comes out, he sees an old man and immediately assumes that the old man was Jimmy since he believes that he went into a real time machine. He says, "Jimmy? Your so old! It's the future!" The humor not only comes from Mr. Smith's hilarious assumption but also from the bewildered face of the old man as his face is being held by a man he doesn't know. This humor allows for an emotional response from the audience in laughter and makes the commercial memorable. And when a commercial is memorable it allows people to remember a brand and in the end, buy the brand. By using effective appeals to pathos, Doritos was able to capture its audience, keep its audience entertained, and make its brand more known and more loved.