Sunday, November 11, 2012

Genre Analysis: What Earthquakes can teach us about elections


            This story caught my attention because I think it is truly one of a kind. I was intrigued on how earthquakes are related to United States presidential elections considering we just re-elected our president not even a week ago.
            The author, Shankar Vedantam, does not start off his report with a typical introduction. Instead, he starts off the report by introducing the political historian, Allan Lichtman, and what makes him a credible source when it comes to every presidential election. Vedantam discusses how Lichtman has predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1984. As the report continues, Vedantam gets more into depth with Lichtmans methods. Lichtman has had conversations with geophysicists about earthquakes and that is how he came to the idea of applying that method to politics.
            At this point, the story continues to go into more depth of how earthquakes are related to elections. The author analyzes the method by comparing earthquakes and elections while incorporating words from Lichtman. Lichtman said that “he decided to test the idea that elections follow earthquake principles: You either have stability or you have upheaval” (Verdantam Par 7).  
            For my project three assignment, I will be discussing how the modern student plans out how they will achieve their bachelor’s degree at ASU. I will be interviewing a student about how they plan to travel down their road to success and will compare it to what experts say a student should do in order to obtain the particular degree. I would also like to find and interview a graduate that obtained the same degree that the student is pursuing in order to analyze what happens in reality with that degree. Finally, I plan on evaluating the students plan to see if their road to success will be a failure or an accomplishment.



http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/11/09/164711093/what-earthquakes-can-teach-us-about-elections

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