SOAPS Precis : Week of December 21st

"Branded A Cheat" by James Surowiecki discusses both the history of the athlete endorsement industry as well as the effect that personal affairs can have on the damage of a athlete as a brand. Surowiecki discusses both the creating of athletes as an entire brand, especially that of Michael Jordan, and; more recently, Tiger Woods. Athletes are created first as a brand of the team, and the more widely recognized the athlete is the more big businesses would like them to represent their companies. Micheal Jordan's brand of Air Jordan sneakers and other endorsements including Gatorade and Hanes has reshaped the athletic endorsement industry. However, the controversy discussed by Surowiecki is between that of the athlete as a brand the athletes personal life. An athlete is seen as a brand, a widely recognized person who should both exhibit and practice in representation of the company who is using him/her to get their product out. So it is relative that when an athlete damages his reputation or brand with legal toils or marital scandals then the companies that they represent would want to remove them from their brand. Athletes such as Kobe Bryant lost endorsement deals because of his legal woes almost five years ago, and has since recovered but has not been able to obtain as many endorsement deals as he had accumulated five years ago. It goes without saying that when you are "branded a cheat" or declared the spoiled apple of company that you represent, you, as the brand, must be a perfect well represented individual or your money will become a lot less plentiful.

Stiff Chunk 1 Precis

Stiff by Mary Roach discusses the use of cadavers in the medical world once they have become deceased. The first chunk of reading discusses how cadavers are used in the medical world for cosmetology practice, surgical practice, also as crash test dummies. Roach further goes on to discuss how the cadavers are respected just as other human bodies are respected, and most medical institutes that use cadavers have a memorial service in honor of them. The biggest issue that Roach discusses in this paragraph is the lack of surgical practice in the medical world. The use of cadavers for medical practice is so controversial because many people choose when they die not donate their bodies to medical science when medicine really could use the bodies for studies and surgical practice among other things. If there were more cadavers donated for medical use then there would be less inexperienced surgeons preforming surgery on live humans because they would have had sufficient practice on dead humans. Additionally, cadavers are used for medical research on how much impact and force a body can take before it combusts. Though it may seem grotesque in nature it is actually beneficial for scientists to know so that they can deliver the information to automotive engineers among other things. If more cadavers were donated for such research about the strength of the body and its reaction to force then there could possibly be more survivors of car crashes and safer automobiles on the market. The use of the cadavers may seem very gross in nature, but it is actually for the future of the living human beings to use the cadavers for as much research as possible. Roach further argues that cadavers, though dead, are essentially the future of the world and because of that more people should consider donation.

Application: Some religions argue that preservation of the human body after death instead of donating it to science is the best choice. However, they fail to realize that cadaver studies can actually be beneficial to their lives. How could you effectively convince religious people that donatiing their body is a good option as well? What arguement would you use?

Style: In what ways does Mary Roach appeal to the emotion of the reader about the cadavers having no soul and how the students feel about the bodies? What rhetorical devices or phrasing does she use to get this message across?

Frederick Douglass Personal Response

My reading of the Narrative of Frederick Douglass has been the most insightful experience yet in syntactical structure. My favorite scene in the narrative of Frederick Douglass is when Frederick tells the story of how the slave meets his master on the road and is not aware that is this master. The slave tells the man that he is not completely satisfied with his master, and he is not aware its his master that he is talking about. Frederick later describes that the same slave that had the encounter with his master was sold off to Georgia slave traders. Frederick used this image to justify why all slaves would lie about the conditions in which they were kept in order to keep from getting sold. If I could read the narrative again I would probably pay more attention to detail because there were a lot of little puns that I did not realize until they were pointed out to me.