SWA #4

“Ideas” is a blog written by David Friedman. Friedman’s strategy in his argument is to leave the opinion up to the reader. He doesn’t really assert that his idea is correct. More than anything else, he offers his idea up to the reader as something to think about. His argument is very short and to the point, and he speaks as though he is talking directly to the reader.
The target audience for his argument is people who live on their own and have to pay their own bills. This makes the most sense because people who aren’t paying an AC bill probably aren’t too concerned with how the house is kept cold as long as it gets done. I would be a part of the group that just wants the house to be kept cold. Even so, I’m not an idiot and I can think intelligently about what Friedman is saying. I think his argument makes a lot of sense. He has me convinced, even though at this time I don’t really care that much about how much it costs to keep the house cold.
David Friedman is the author of this blog. It’s difficult for me to write about him as I know almost nothing about him other than what is provided on his page. He claims to be an academic economist living in San Jose, CA. It is difficult to say that he has any qualification for giving advice on how to cool your home, and the idea that an economist would come up with an innovative way to air condition your home is a little strange to me.
I don’t see what constraints you could find in Friedman’s argument. It’s all pretty straightforward. I think the only people that could have any basis for an objection to his idea are architects. Architects would have a good idea of what it would take to set up a system like what Friedman is suggesting and I would trust an architect to determine its effectiveness.
The exigence of this argument is rising energy costs. Friedman is looking for a more efficient way to cool a house in order to use less energy and save money.
My friend Kotab has a note on his Facebook account about not procrastinating. I’d say that his text is in essence a short blog. He offers up his personal experience with procrastination in an attempt to deter the reader from making his mistakes.
His target is his peers. He wouldn’t write a blog about waiting till the last minute to do a paper for somebody who is already out of school. I’m definitely a part of his target audience and as I sit here writing this I wish I had taken his advice.
I know the author pretty well. I graduated with him. He’s a pretty credible source for this kind of thing. Overall he’s a fairly smart guy and an ok student. He’s a really slow worker though so it takes him a long time to complete assignments. I’m sure this on exacerbates his procrastination problem.
There are a few different constraints that could factor into this argument. Somebody who’s sitting up at almost 1 AM writing a short writing assignment on TRACE could feel like Kotab is really onto something here. Somebody who works best under pressure and really enjoys working at the last minute might not agree with him.
The exigence of this argument is that Kotab went to a concert on Saturday night. Sunday he was dead tired from Church but still had a three page paper to write. With time running out he was feeling pressured and unhappy with his decisions. He chose to waste more of his time by writing a note on Facebook in order to warn others of what can happen if you procrastinate.