17. High Anxiety: How Worrying About Math Hurts Your Brain

http://healthland.time.com/2012/11/08/high-anxiety-how-worrying-about-math-hurts-your-brain/

                According to researchers, when someone feels embarrassed because of their lackluster mathematical skills, it could be more than simply embarrassment.  Apparently, when anxious about anything to do with math, the part of your brain that reacts when a person feels physical pain is stimulated.  “Many math-phobics go out of their way to avoid math-related tasks or thinking about math problems, and this reaction led the scientists to wonder whether something more than dislike was involved,” said Olivia B. Waxman, they author of this article.  A test with 28 participants, half anxious, the other half   not, revealed that the more anxious of the groups had a harder time solving math problems.

                This article, like many others, was informative rather than entertaining or challenging.  It was a good read and very educational, I suppose.  Olivia B. Waxman did a splendid job in presenting her purpose with not only statistics, but quotes and research to back up her claims.

16. How Mutant Mosquitoes Are Fighting Dengue Fever

http://healthland.time.com/2012/11/09/how-mutant-mosquitoes-are-fighting-dengue-fever/

                With 50-100 people infected each year, dengue fever is one of the fastest growing mosquito born diseases.  Scientists in Brazil know that, being carried about by mosquitoes, killing out dengue fever is almost impossible, so they have decided to modify the mosquitoes’ eggs rather than try to kill them all.  These lab-bred male mosquitoes receive and gene so that when they mate with a female in the wild, either it prevents the female from having offspring, or causes the next generation to have shorter life spans, hopefully short enough that they cannot spread dengue fever.

                This article was short, yet effective in its message.  Many people over in Brazil, or in any of the other countries that are threatened by dengue fever, should be interested.  Author Alexandra Sifferlin did an excellent job on this essay, as usual, bringing up statistics and quotes to support her reasoning. 

16. Deadly Myanmar Quake Destroys Bridge and Mine

In this article, the Associated Press writes about the earthquake that hit Hyanmar. In the introduction, the writer gets the readers' attention by giving a brief description about the earthquake. It was a strong earthquake that struck northern Myanmar on Sunday, collapsing bridges and mines. Then it goes on by describing the earthquake more deeply. The major cities did not have a major damage, but the underdeveloped smaller towns closer to the quake's epicenter did. According to many towns, 6 people were reported dead and 64 injured. Also near the earthquake's epicenter,  on the Irrawaddy River, 6 people were reported dead and 11 people injured. Besides these, other towns and places reported more deaths and injuries. Then the writer ends the article by informing the readers that the earthquake hit Hyanmar one week before Pesident Obama was going to visit, who was going be the first president to visit. 

The purpose of this article is to inform the readers about a strong earthquake that hit Hyanmar since many people are not aware of it. It was not big enough for the whole world to know, however, it  killed many people and injured many, and destroyed many towns. One of the biggest problems was that it caused more damage on the smaller towns that are underdeveloped, destroying the mines which their economy is based on. Besides that, after describing everything, the writer also wants to inform that Obama would have been in danger if his visit was 1 week earlier than it was actually scheduled. 

16. "Yale Graduates Seek a Hip-Hop Degree"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/fashion/yale-graduates-seek-a-degree-in-hip-hop.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&ref=technology&adxnnlx=1352653701-2nC0SI4Qyr6S7JdW/p4YHw

Joshua Brustein wrote an article on November 9, 2012 about Yale graduates going after a hip-hop degree. It started in 2009, when one of the graduates, Tom Lehman, did not understand a lyric in a rap song called "Family Ties". His friend, Mahbod Moghadam, guessed that the part of the lyric "jamaican clothes" signified the poor people in Jamaica. Although his guess was wrong, it was enough to inspire both of them to start a site, Rap Genius, in which explains lyrics. This site also works a little like Wikipedia  anyone can add what they want to say, pictures, or videos. This site has 2 million viewers a month and a capitalist from Silicon Valley has even invested $15 million into the site. One problem this site deals with is race and authenticity. Lehman, 28, is very grammatical and wears a different pair of sunglasses everyday with the money he received. Moghadam, 29, is always trying to show off his muscles and brags a lot about meeting Gucci Mane or Big Boi. Zechory, 28, says that his friends are pretending to be someone they are not. He said "I have never seen them break character." The thing that made this site big is the fact that famous rappers have gone on the site themselves to explain their lyrics. The site has been accused of providing the wrong description though.

Brustein does a good job on providing information of this site and how it began. He uses many quotes in how the site has had some racial problems, providing the reader with examples that happened. Brustein also gives a little history as to the minds behind this soon to be famous site, more than it already is.

16. After Sandy, thousands left to freeze in public housing

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/after_sandy_thousands_left_to_freeze_in_public_housing/

On November 9th, Laura Gottesdiener wrote an article about some of the results after the Hurricane Sandy's disaster. The first paragraph of the article introduced the topic by describing a descriptive scene where thousands of Northeast residents are locked inside buildings with no way of getting out, while state authorities struggled to repair destroyed infrastuctures as well as other damage. In the next section, Gottesdiener gave a shocking statistic of trapped residents and further explained people's living conditions in the freezing weather as winter approaches, and how they were surviving without the basic and essential needs for living (electricity, heat, and even running water). By stating that despite doctors and volunteers are going around giving checkups and writing prescriptions and many said no one came to check on them, the author gives an idea of how many people are living in rough conditions.

The author's purpose for the article was to inform the general public about the effects and the intensity of destruction of Hurricane Sandy after it swept through the Northeast. She provided statistics and a quote from the Brooklyn City Councilman Stephen Levin to support her arguments with credible information. In addition, the author's tone could be best described as serious and informative because she does not add any humor to the article, but rather explains the conditions in different places like Rockaways, Queens, Lower East Side, Chinatown in Manhattan, and others. Her article was effective in the way that her descriptions of places made the reader both shocked and concerned.

17. Palm Reading

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/technology/biometric-data-gathering-sets-off-a-privacy-debate.html?hpw&_r=0

              Natasha Singer, the author of "When a Palm Reader Knows More than Your Life Line," discusses a very interesting topic. The author starts out by sharing one of his personal experiences in a hospital in New York where she was asked to put her hand in a palm scanner so that they could gather data from her veins and then create a patient identification profile which would help against identification theft and eventually make medical care much more efficient. The author retells this experience as if sharing a simple story of someone who went to the hospital and was hesitant and reluctant to expose her privacy so deeply. In general, the author talks about how there are so many "conveniences" which require people's identity and privacy to be exposed and may seem to be convenient but are actually pretty harmful.
             The author uses several strategies to achieve her purpose of informing and persuading the reader to rethink about how they are exposing their privacy. The author starts with first person personal experience to retell her story in a hospital; she was reluctant to scan her palm for patient identification. She then proceeds to talk about Facebook and how some apps use face recognition for sharing photos and tagging photos. She also mentions Apple's Siri, and how it uses voice recognition and how many schools in the United States are using palm recognition for E-Z pass; in other words, biometric data is being used extensively but consumers pay that with their own privacy. The author takes a critical stance on the idea of privacy being lost because of apparent "convenience."

16. Why I Can't Say I Voted

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/why-you-cant-say-i-voted-in-chinese-at-least-in-china/265059/

            James Fallows is the author of the article "Why You Can't Say 'I Voted' in Chinese - at Least in China." The author tries to show in his writing the reasons why anyone cannot say they voted in China in Chinese. The author starts out his article with the cause: he showed a piquet sticker with the message "I voted" in multiple languages and how that was prohibited in mainland China but okay in America. The author then proceeds to show a whole letter written by a Chinese stating the problem and possible reasons. The main reason seems to be that the words I Voted seem to portray much democratic elections and therefore contradicts the standards of Chinese socialism/communism.
            Fallows uses several techniques to achieve his purpose. The purpose seems to be informative; it tries to explain the reasons behind why the words I Voted are not very welcome in China. The author states the problem in the first paragraph and right after he transcribes the whole letter written by a Chinese person. The author uses first person to show much of his personal experience with the contradiction. He also uses subjective phrases and opinions to support his thinking: "Everyone knows that Americans get to vote, but there's something truly poignant about seeing the words in chinese...the dream is still alive, and one day, we will all have a voice; we will all have the right to choose how we are governed."The author seems to take a stance and critical view on the Chinese government.