Response to Jeremy Rifkin's "A Change of Heart About Animals"

Jeremy Rifkin writes a both moving and informative article about a very important question that many people may have, can animals experience some of the same emotions that we as humans do?

In this article Rifkin does a great job at providing readers with plenty of evidence to support his claim such as facts, examples, and statistics. One of the many facts Rifkin provides us with is, “Studies on pigs’ social behavior…have found that they crave affection and are easily depressed if isolated or denied playtime with each other.” This provides some awareness to the people and show them that pigs along with other animals can have feelings. Such as elephants, whom after the death of one of their family members will stay by their side and mourn their death (Rifkin). Even more impressive is an experiment that was conducted on two birds, Betty and Abel, Betty “ fashioned a hook out of the wire nine out of 10 times.” This experiment proves that like humans, Betty, has exceptional cognitive abilities.

Rifkin not only includes a lot of great and credible information in his text but he also was very selective in the evidence he picked to include in his text. He only used evidence that shows to a great extent how animals can experience the same emotions and feelings as humans. These strategies are very effective because it opens the eyes of the public to hopefully call them to action in doing something about the way animals are being treated.

Response to “Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?” by Nicholas Kristof

        In Kristof’s short text “Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?” he goes into detail on why gun laws and regulations should be stricter. I believe that Kristof’s main claims are that he believes that making guns harder to obtain by regular civilians can reduce the rates of people dying due to being shot.  Kristof takes evidence and uses it in his favor to support a lot of the claims he makes in his text. He writes, “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has five pages of regulations about ladders, … Ladders kill around 300 Americans a year, and guns 30,000.” This statement shows a fact that laws on gun regulations aren't as strict as those imposed on ladders even though guns kill one hundred times more people that ladders do. Statistics is also used in Kristof’s text he writes, “In Australia in 1996, a mass killing of 35 people galvanized the nation’s conservative prime minister to ban certain rapid-fire long guns…The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of firearms in private hands by one-fifth, The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent…” Kristof not only uses facts and statistics to support his claim but he is also very selective of the evidence he puts in his text. He only uses evidence that will gravitate the reader to be in agreement with his claim which is a very effective strategy because he can easily persuade anyone who is reading the text. 

I am currently pursuing a bachelors degree in Computer Engineering and I have previously used the terms “claim” and “evidence” in my Expository Reading and Writing Composition class my senior year of high school. In this class we would use the term “evidence” either support or prove a statement that we had written down and the term “claim” was just referred to as what an author stated. I usually do not enjoy any form of writing but one exception I do have is Twitter. Most of the statements that are posted on my twitter account are about things I have observed around me or quotes about my favorite television shows although I am starting not to use my account as much because I have been very busy lately. One of the main reasons on why I do not participate in any other form of writing activities is because I feel that I am not very good at it compared to others but I am always looking at ways to improve on my weaknesses.