Three dead ends Kline runs into: 

1. Starlee comes across a message board post of Chef Karl looking for Hans. The post said that Hans had not been in his address book for years and he is nowhere to be found online. She finds a Chef Karl in Houston and calls him up hoping he would know where to find him. Unfortunately, he had never ended up finding him. To get out of this dead end, Chef Karl directed Starlee to Bob Bland who may have been able to help her. 
2. Starlee goes to a chef’s meeting where she meets Bob Bland and learns that he was not actually Bob Six. This sets her back because she was so sure that he was indeed Bob Six all along. Starlee felt as though she was getting further away from one side of the buckle. She dealt with this by soon later meeting up with Hans where he explains to her that Bob Six was a friend of his who gave him the belt buckle. 
3. Chef Rene told Starlee that Hans may be at the chef’s meeting so she hoped to find him there. He ends up not being there- another dead end. Chef Rene then arranges Hans and Starlee to meet at his house where she would finally meet him. 

Three things Kline learns about:

1. If Starlee had never gone on the pursuit of solving this mystery, she would not have found out how Hans lost the buckle. His house had been broken into and he was robbed. Hans went to pawn shops looking for the belt buckle but obviously never found it. 
2. Another thing she learned was the story behind Bob Six. He had run Continental Airlines for fifty years and was married to Ethel Merman and then later to Audrey Meadows. His ancestors were pawnbrokers which led them to owning the largest collection of original Rembrandts in Europe after an artist pawned his work and never came back for it. 
3. Lastly, Starlee learned the relation between Hans and Six. Every summer the Continental would go on a retreat in Wyoming and Hans was always the chef for it. He would cook for almost 150 people all throughout the day and night. Hans did this for 10 years so when there was a farewell dinner, Six had given Hans the belt buckle as a gift of appreciation. 

The article “How Depression-Era Women Made Dresses Out of Chicken Feed ” by Rebecca Onion and the podcast “The Cost of Fast Fashion” by Stuff Your Mom Never Told You, both show research on fashion; however, they are two very different sources. Rebecca Onion has an expertise in what she has written about as she holds a Ph.D, an MA and a BA in American Studies. In her article she discusses how people in the past reused the fabric sacks as clothing. She uses a great amount of history and primary documents throughout and provides cited images along with a short background of what is being shown. At the end of her article she states that she was unable to find the provenance for certain images so she did not include them. This allows us to assume she is very serious about which sources she includes in her writing. 

The podcast “The Cost of Fast Fashion” by Stuff Your Mom Never Told You goes about their research and execution rather differently than Onion. The women on the podcast hold a very casual discussion on the fast fashion industry. They sometimes will briefly quote publications and experts. The expertise they bring is that they seem to be avid shoppers and are familiar with the industry, but have no formal education on the topic. This podcast is great to gain some general knowledge on fast fashion, but not as a legitimate source. 

Onion’s article is intended for an academic audience whereas the SMNTY podcast is for a general audience that is to not be taken all that serious. Being printed on the web encourages the writer to be more formal with their research because it is more obvious when written and not done well. A podcast allows the producers to be more lenient with their research because it is more casual and conversational. 

In the episode of Adam Ruins Everything, Adam Conover is responding to the myth that suburban neighborhood living is the perfect, ideal place to live. Conover punctures that myth with multiple pieces of research. The first of his research he discusses is the lawn. He explains that the grass requires a great amount of work and upkeep, including mowing, watering and fertillizating, which makes it not be “freedom grass.” The reasoning behind this is because Europeans loved creating paintings depicting perfect lawns. Also, if you do not keep up a beautiful lawn, your neighbors will dislike you and the HomeOwners Association can penalize you. The next thing he speaks of is cul de sacs. Essentially, they are inefficient and unsafe. You are unable to walk anywhere when you live these kinds of neighborhoods. Lastly, Conover covers the fact that suburban living mainly consists of caucasions. While many people see living in the suburban area as an ideal place, it actaully has a great amount of racist history, making it not so great. 

This form of research writing focused on undercutting commonly held assumptions is rather interesting and seems as though it would catch the attention of the audience more. The role of humor also helps catch the audience’s attention. Some of the information may have come off as boring for some viewers so adding humor makes it more pleasing to listen to. A new concept I learned from this was that there is a great amount of segregation when it comes to suburban living. Conover provides a great amount of evidence for this. There used to be racist policies that kept minorities from living in these areas and although these policies have been removed, the effects still linger. Caucasians were able to afford this living style whereas minorities were not and this is still in play.

The article “We Are All Confident Idiots” written by David Dunning was published by Pacific Standard Magazine on October 27, 2014.  This piece of writing is under the magazine’s Social Justice tag with the intended audience being the well-educated. In the article, the author is explaining the Dunning-Krugar effect which documents the fact that the incompetent are unable to recognize how incompetent they actually are. Many people who are knowledgeable of a topic or are just completely wrong about something, often show a great amount of confidence when conveying their responses. Humans tend to take pride in being correct and educated, so even when they are the complete opposite, they will put on a veil of confidence to hide their ignorance. Although one may think this theory does not apply to them, it most likely does as ignorance is not always recognized by oneself. Dunning provides some lighthearted evidence in the beginning from Jimmy Kimmel’s “Lie Witness News.” However, he then proceeds to explain research from more real world experiences, such as people’s statements during Obama’s presidency and other experiments held by both Krugar and Dunning. This source is relevant to the Writing and Communications course as it shows a well organized written piece that includes sufficient research to back up the argument. 

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

Hello, I’m Beth. I work in Public Relations and am from Sussex County, NJ. I love being creative and planning events. I’m passionate about the environment and keeping animals safe.