Student 67

The object that connects with this prompt is the YouTube video produced by the New York Times (NYT) and Johnny Harris (an independent journalist). This video is an opinionated editorial about why Donald Trump had many opportunities to enforce substantial measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, however, he chose not to implement those measures at the right time. I came across this video on YouTube during the time it was released in Sept. 2020, which was a few months after President Trump had implemented some policies to hamper the spread of COVID-19.

In this video, Harris uses evidence (knowledge) from the charts, graphs, and an interview of a Pulitzer-winning journalist who gave insight on how previous US presidents prepared for a future pandemic as a safety measure. This was used to justify his argument (opinion) that when President Trump was in office, his timing of policies was instrumental in the mishandling of the pandemic. This object comes under the AOK of Natural and Human Sciences because Johnny Harris speaks about pandemics and Pres. Trump’s behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This object is an excellent example to use for this prompt because this video contains both aspects of knowledge and opinion. Without using evidence to substantiate his claims, Harris would not be able to justify his opinion of how the former president handled the spread of Coronavirus. To easily distinguish between what is knowledge or an opinion, Harris used different camera types of camera shots. For example, when presenting evidence, Harris usually would cut to a shot of a physical copy of the document referenced, insert screenshots of the PDF itself, or place images or videos of it during post-production. On the other hand, when Harris presents his opinions in the form of commentary or assertions, there would be a medium shot of Harris remarking on the issue at hand.

The object that best answers this prompt is a book, written by David Bianchi, called “Blue Chip Kids: What every child should know about money, investing, and the stock market” with “and parent” inserted between the words “child” and “should”. When some family friends visited my family 5 years ago, they bought me this book. Earlier, we had a conversation on the phone about money and finances and they thought this book would be useful for me to expand my knowledge about the financial world. When I got this book, I read it in my spare time, bookmarking pages I thought were the most important and even added some sticky notes on the margins with annotations; it was to make sure that I can have immediate access to very important financial knowledge when needing to reference this book.

As mentioned before, this book contains knowledge that comes from a former financial advisor (David Bianchi himself) and is organized into different categories regarding banking to the stock market (in the US specifically). The book contains simple drawings of stick figures, which means that Bianchi is operating on the belief that children would read this book. In the title, he adds the phrase “and parents” because he believes that children would read this book along with their parents. He elaborates further on his belief in the book’s preface that many adults do not have adequate financial knowledge and have the responsibility to read his book along with their children. To distinguish the text from the illustrations, Bianchi added a note at the beginning that his nephew drew those illustrations.

The reason why this book must be included in this discussion of distinguishing between knowledge, belief, and opinion is that Bianchi’s guide to financial literacy contains both knowledge and operates on the belief that children should learn about money and finance, given that he wanted to include illustrations of examples that were straightforward and concise.

On my first day of school in junior year, my mom inserted this envelope into my backpack as I was heading out. The front side of the envelope has a picture of “Plenty of Blessings, Sri Kāmātchi Amman” written in Tamizh. Although my mom gave the envelope to me under the belief that it would protect me from the negative energy I may pick up from school, flipping the envelope to the other side shows the Kalyan Jewelers logo, the address of Kalyan Jewelers, and the number you can call if you need to contact the business in any manner.

This object connects to the optional theme of religion. For example, the side that shows all the information about ways to contact Kalyan jewelers is an example of knowledge because it displays all of that information using readable text. Since this envelope is sold by Kalyan Jewelers, they wanted to include a picture of Sri Kāmātchi Amman. It can be interpreted that this will make customers associate their brand with gods and religion. Since religion, especially Hinduism, is an important institution in contemporary Indian society, the company used it to advertise its business of selling jewelry, making customers tacitly connect gold with gods and goddesses.

This object should be included as an example of knowledge, belief, and opinion because the company that designed and sold this envelope used direct and indirect ways to distinguish between knowledge, belief, and opinion. As already mentioned, Kalyan Jewelers use legible text except for the logo to give knowledge to customers on how to contact their business. On the front side of the envelope, it can be surmised that Kalyan operated under the belief that people will buy gold for religious worship given the fact that the envelope displayed one of the most prominent goddesses in India in full color and splendor.