Are Today's Youth Really a Lost Generation?

    This article caught my eye because I am a part of today's youth and I was hoping that I was not thought of as lost by another person. But from further reading of the story, it became clear that the author was making a reference to the Lost Generation that came out of the Great Depression during the 1920's. I think the parallels between the two generations are sort of uncanny. I also completely agree with the author that there is not many ways a person in today's society can do anything significant with their lives without a higher education. Education is of great value to a person in Generations X, Y, and the Millennials.

   The author uses a lot of statistics to get their point across, that is that, education pays off more than anything else you can do to make quick money. There's even a lovely chart entitled "College Compared to Alternative Investments" at the end of the story. He also gives out neat and inarguable percentages like "The number of young Americans living with their parents, nearly 6 million, has increased by 25 percent in the last three years" to prove his point about how education is important. The author gets their point across clearly and "conclude[s] [the] column about poverty and income with a "stay in school" mantra", and it hopefully convinced people to listen to that same mantra.

The article: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/are-todays-youth-really-a-lost-generation/245524/

Facebook's Enraging Status Update

      What immediately caught my attention about this article was obviously the relevance to my life it has. Facebook's new format is indeed, in my opinion, sincerely annoying and unnecessary. I was interested to see what a person beyond my scope of the world thought about the new changes made to the widely used sight, and the author was rather blunt about his thoughts. I enjoyed the article and I found it to be well written with a nice touch of humour. The best line in the article was without a doubt "Is that where your sister will post the picture of the lewd nun?"

    The author certainly knew what a broad spectrum of audience he was addressing, as it seems everyone is on facebook in some form these days. The use of diction clearly potrays the author's thoughts on how he feels about the changes. Words like "...beyond irritating...", "...immediately annoyed..." and better yet a bold use of italics in "Facebook had changed its user interface, again." The author's ethos was strong, as they used the appeal of what everyone else thought as evidence for their main argument. Due to so many people most likely agreeing with the author, the article seems to almost be a well written rant about the new interface. It's unlikely that anyone would disagree with them though, because even with the new changes, we still haven't gotten that long asked for "Dislike" button.


Here's the article:http://www.salon.com/technology/facebook/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/09/21/facebook_annoys_users