Affluenz The All Consuming Epidemic By John De Graaf

The author sets the stage of his article by talking about the upcoming Super Bowl. He uses distinct adjectives to create imagery that in turn sets the mood for the rest of the writing. Keating goes on to describe how America is the only country to play football and tells that only the best two teams out of thirty-two play in this Super Bowl for the title of “world champion” (1). Football is described as played on a ninety-one meter field involving “two large teams of large men wearing large amounts of protective padding ...while their opponents attempt to knock them to the ground with maximum force” (Keating 1). While the actual playing time is only about eleven minutes, the game usually lasts as long as three hours. It is usually taken up by many advertising commercials and replays. The author explains that the players begin playing at an early age and work their way up. Women are only seen as cheerleaders and dancers in this masculine dominated sport. In his conclusion, Keating demonstrates how businesses get involved by spending millions of dollars in their hopes to show their latest brands.

In this paper I will be talking about the book “ When Plague Strikes the Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS by James Cross Giblin.” I will also talk about how I think it connects to what we have learned this school year.

"The Coming of the Plague" by Weldon Kees is about relationships ending and how there are many signs. Literally, the poem is about a disease and the signs that the disease is coming. Figuratively, the poem is about when a relationship is about to end and the many signs that the end is coming.

I resonated with Diana Kendall’s, “Framing Class, Vicarious Living and Consumption” article. This author’s choice of language had a huge impact on me. It helped convey the message of the article in a much smoother way. The media has people thinking they can be rich and famous like the people in the television shows. With her language and choice of words, she was able to eloquently portray that TV shows make us feel as if we need to have what the celebrities have, so we buy into what they sell and we feel like we are living a life just like theirs. Living like this only makes us acquire debt, because we are spending money we do not have in prevalence. It does the exact opposite we will only end up being poor and not reach the same status as

Just as Lombardi affected the early Super Bowls with his coaching style and character, the Super Bowl, itself, has attained a greater-than-life presence influencing the world today. With NBC and CBS being the only two television stations broadcasting the first game, there are now an uncountable number of stations showing the Super Bowl today. The advertisements are talked about just as much, if not more, than the game itself. Of all viewers that tune in during the game, eight percent are only watching to see the commercials; the average cost for a thirty second commercial has gone from $42,000 for Super Bowl I to most recently three million dollars for Super Bowl XLV (“NFL Super Bowl”). Even though the big game is only played once a year and lasts for

At a whopping price of $5 million for a 30-second time slot during the Super Bowl, advertisers were tripping over themselves to reserve one of the coveted spots.

In Gary Shteyngart’s novel, Super Sad True Love Story, consumerism and the need to purchase shapes how the people of the fictional America live. Juliet Schor, author for the Boston Review, describes one way of spending in the real-world America as “competitive consumption”, meaning that American’s purchase items as a way of characterizing rank within the influence of a group they wish to be like. This in turn drives American’s compete toward a similar status of a specific group of people, also known as an “aspiration group”, which was once the individuals in your neighborhood, but has become the glamorous individuals observed in the omnipotent media. These aspiration groups consist of the affluent and beautiful, of which the American’s of the

In the TGM, Johnson includes scientific evidence and tangents to enrich the story of the cholera epidemic on London. Johnson tries to get a “bird’s eye view” of seeing how cholera spread through London. In that way Johnson tries to get the reader to not only see individual stories of people who contracted cholera but to produce information on how it came about, what it is, and give as much background and insight to get the reader to see information they usually wouldn’t. Johnson also uses these scientific tangents to show modern era readers that based on what happened in London it forever affects us today. Johnson gives information on what happens and then he goes on a tangent explaining how essential the specific information plays a role in the development of London. He tries to bring the information of what happened two centuries ago to relate to modern readers. It was essential that Johnson gave extra information because it helped to further develop the story. Adding in these details answers the readers’ questions and gives an explanation on why something took place while reassuring the reader by giving factual research. It doesn’t take away from the story nor distract the reader from the central idea of the story. It adds more information to benefit the story as a whole by enriching the reading by giving factual evidence.

It costs about one million dollars per ad aired during a college football playoffs game and about $4.5 million per ad to air during the Super Bowl (CNN Money). Although the Super Bowl makes more money per ad, there are three college football playoff games compared to the one super bowl game, but despite the fact that there are more playoff games, the super bowl has four times the viewers (Salaga). In spite of the fact that there are more viewers during the Super Bowl, there will be more teams in the playoffs, and more games will join the existing ones, giving sponsors a chance for more advertising time for their

The sport was initially glamourized with fireworks and celebrity’s singing the national anthem and halftime performance by big celebrities and extravagant performances. The super bowl has created an illusion of having great value which is why the firm’s and brands pay large amounts, this however does increase their sales and the economy does boost after the super bowl encouraging the advertisers to continue to do so. The commercials aired are to such an extent they make up for half of the three-hour game, the game time is an hour for football even when the ball isn’t in play, this allows the commercials to be played while the game is on, it leads to twenty commercials breaks with over a hundred advertisements. The action with the ball was calculated to be only eleven minutes, this is the extent to which the game is

While reading the novel Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker, one might ask the question, “Why as this book chosen for the New York Times Best Seller’s list?” Well, they might come to the conclusion that it is a properly structured book, and is additionally enriched with knowledge. It is a fairly simple book to read, due to the fact that, often times it is as if the author is speaking to you. Several readers may enjoy that it is full of various kinds of accounts of how the drugs changed a person’s life, mostly in the wrong way. Also, Whitaker included frequent different views of the psychiatrists from around the world and how they felt about the medications. Years of research went into writing this novel, including the task of interviewing over 60 people in order to get all the correct information. Overall, it is an excellent written book

I am in England in the worst time. I am here during the Great Plague. Everyone looks horrible and the city is disgusting. The city is infested with rats which is not making the situation any better. The people rarely bath and when they do they bath in dirty river water. The smell here is vile. I am with a doctor, he gave me a mask to put over my face to help me from getting sick. It is super thin so I don't think it is doing much help. This little boy came up and threw up on my foot. I didn't know who it was at first and screamed at him. When I realized it was a boy not much older than 8 i felt bad. He didn't know any better. He is sick and most likely is not going to live to next month. I wanted to hold him while rubbing this back and telling

As it has been stated in several different publications and studies, influenza virus pandemics and increased mortality due to secondary bacterial infections, seem to be strongly correlated. Already since the 19th century influenza virus infections have been associated with bacterial infections. Many sources refer to the 1918 influenza pandemic, causing around 50 million deaths worldwide, which were presumably associated with secondary bacterial infections, primarily with Gram-positive

The Plague by Albert Camus is a novel that forms themes around human suffering, greed, and religion. Although, most of the cultural points in this novel are based off of the authors own traditions and culture, the major things to focus on are the differences between history, culture, and religious beliefs between the novel and Oran, Algeria. In Camus’s story, the community of Oran is thrown into panic due to a plague spreading throughout the city, compared to how Algeria actually functioned in the 1940’s. The cultural approach in ‘The Plague’ is based more off of how the author lived his life, rather than what the culture aspects of Oran, Algeria really are. As well as how the religion in the novel is different than what is majorly of Oran’s citizens practice in real life during in this country. Another big focus is the symbolism Albert creates within his plot that compares to German-Nazism during the 1940’s.

Millions of fans every year await for the arrival of one of the biggest annual sporting events in history: the Super Bowl. The first Super Bowl championship game was between the NFL (Green Bay Packers) and AFL (Kansas City Chiefs) champions at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. While the excitement and hype over the Super Bowl has increased in recent years, so has the economic benefits for the surrounding communities. Even large-scale companies use the opportunity to advertise during the Super Bowl game due to such large viewings on multimedia. In the same way, the profit for the Super Bowl rises, costs in attending the Super Bowl live also leave deep holes in an average American’s pocket. With many people anticipating the Big Game, they do not realize the economic components that popularize the event.