Blog 6 – Paraphase and Quatation of “Radical But Right”

Paraphrase example:
DeGrazia (2002) asserts that five billion birds and 1000 million mammals are killed in United States factory farms each year, and this is only one small category of animals that must endure cruelty (DeGrazia, 2002, p. 71).

The writer chose to present her research material using paraphrase because the content is simply a statement of fact, concerning nothing with authorities. Moreover this fact does not need to be presented as exactly as the original one otherwise cannot be explained clearly. Besides, paraphrase provides more flexible space for writers to rearrange sentences’ structure in order to highlight the keystone. As for this sentence, the writer particularly shows the numbers to address directly how excessively animals have been killed.

This paraphrase is applied as a detail support on the issue of cruel treatment to animals. This striking fact alerts us to protect animals and keep them from cruelty which is the main topic of the cited paragraph and one of the main points of the article.

Quotation example:
All varieties of birds are eaten, and as writer and critic Jeffries describes in his article “Food City” (2004), “dogs are bred to be eaten” (Jeffries, 2004, para. 10) and monkey brains are considered a “delicacy” in some parts of the world (Jeffries, 2004, para. 20).

The writer chose to present her research material using quotation because the cited words are so descriptive, depicting the exact picture of human being’s unlimited slaughter and attacking those who hide themselves from all the guilty of killing creatures.

This quotation completely reveals the “redeeming characteristics” (Wells, para. 4) of human beings. The writer adopts this quotation to call for human’s consciousness on confessing their guilty and respecting animal rights, which is the same as what the thesis mentions.

Blog 5

Winners rule the world both its present and its future. We are absorbing the marrow of our heroes’ spirit, learning and passing down our ancestors’ legacy. The world praises for their courage, acclaim for their faith, compliment on their noble thoughts because we acknowledge their historical achievements based on the unshakable history they have written. So how about the losers? What is their history? We seldom pay the equal attention to the losers as we pay to the winners.

Even though winners are irreversible and history reveals truth, we can still learn a more objective aspect of both the winners and the losers from the history written by losers. Li Yu, as is known to all Chinese, is the last emperor of Southern Tang Kingdom from 961 to 975. Song Dynasty armies invaded afterward and held Li Yu captive. Southern Tang collapsed as a consequence of Li Yu’s lack of dedication to his country. He was given over to in his interest: art and poem, preferring these to governance of the country, leaving all affairs to the ministers. These are what the Song’ s history tells us, a typical evil emperor like all the kings who destroy their own countries, caring nothing about his people and his country. However, one who has read the biography of Li Yu must know how unwilling he was to carry on the name of Emperor, forsaking his dream of becoming an artist and involving in policy which he has zero passion in it. His God-given talent of writing poems and drawing has been totally overwhelmed by the chose he was compelled to make. He wrote about how grievous when he lost his country, however, since Li Yu had no potential of ruling a country, Southern Tang fell beyond his control. Li Yu was just born in wrong time, being compelled to choose wrong future of his own. If Li Yu were the one to write this period of history, there would be more sympathy coming out from the readers rather than accuses like the present.

Exaggerating their significance to omit their rivals’ merits, winners tend to present self-serving statements to show how holy they are and how deteriorated their enemies are. Definitely nothing needs to be blamed since we all have the tendency to show the best of ourselves. However, this kind of exaggeration clouds some part of the real history and rivals' nobilities just fade away without notice. That will be really a pity since we will lose opportunities to learn from them.