The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design.
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One. Why does Sandel give us a litany of things we can buy?
Here’s the list: prison cell upgrade, car pool lane fast track, surrogate mother, citizenship, killing endangered animals, doctor’s cell phone.
Here’s the list of things we can sell: forehead ad space, body for experiments, mercenary in war-torn country, read a book, not watch TV, lose fourteen pounds in 4 months, life insurance of the near dead so you can collect their policy.
Sandel’s point is that market creep has wrapped its tentacles around us so that we don’t even know that buying and selling—consumerism—is the dominant feature of our lives.
If we grew up wrapped in the consumer cocoon, then we think it’s our normal. It is our normal, but it’s crazy. Why? Because in such a world there are no boundaries. Buying and selling becomes our religion. It is the only religion. It is the “Era of Market Triumphalism.”
In Market Triumphalism, we equate greed with "strong moral character." We say to the most ruthless successful person, "You are a hard worker. You must be mature, disciplined, focused, and strong. You are the kind of person I want to be."
In Market Triumphalism, we're just worshipping money and power for their own sake.
Two. What were the forces that led to Market Triumphalism?
The early 1980s ushered Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s conviction of free markets with no regulation. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair continued the legacy.
But in 2008 the Great Recession hit us and now Market Triumphalism has been replaced with doubt.
Three. What more than greed fueled Market Triumphalism?
Growing markets obliterated boundaries between moral and sacred spheres on one hand and market spheres on the other. When the spheres intersected, we entered into a protracted moral crisis.
We mixed the Sacred with the Profane:
Having a baby is a sacred act. Turing it into a business is a human degradation.
Proposing to your girlfriend is a sacred act. Having her post it on Twitter and Facebook for the ad revenue before you’ve even put the ring on her finger is a human degradation.
Putting people into prison is a form of societal punishment. Letting business run prison takes the moral component out of it and makes profit motive the thing that drives the agenda. That is a compromise of a society’s morality.
Pharmaceutical companies want to make money and this incentive clashes with promoting good health.
Health care is a business in our country when other countries say it should not be.
This expansion of the market into all parts of our lives is harmful for two reasons:
It fosters inequality and corruption.
Money buys political influence, medical care, education, safe neighborhoods, and healthy food, to name some.
Markets are also corrupt. For example, if prison and policing are a profit-incentive businesses, then there is incentive to arrest and imprison a quota of people regardless of crime rates.
College is too much of a business in this country and it's geared to the rich as we read here.
A woman hits about 40 because she's worked during that time, she has a lot of financial resources, and she realizes she's too old to bear a child, so she seeks a younger, less financially endowed woman.
The dynamic of power is someone with money buying someone's body and that body belongs to a someone of modest financial means.
An aside: Just like the documentary we saw on temporary work, whenever we're short on financial resources we find ourselves vulnerable to sacrificing our bodies to survive.
I'd rather be a surrogate mother than work in a chicken farm.
The total cost is $80,000, and this includes psychological evaluations. However, in India, the total cost is $10,000.
Two. What are the typical steps at attempting pregnancy?
First, the husband and wife have a doctor implant their embryo in a surrogate's womb.
If step one doesn't work, step two is combining the husband's sperm with a surrogate's egg (a donor egg) and implanting into another surrogate's womb.
In the case of Dr. Patel, she increases the chances of success by implanting "about five embryos at at time, aborting fetuses if they numbered more than two."
Essay Prompt:
In a 4-page typed, double-spaced essay with 3 sources in your MLA Works Cited page, develop a thesis that explains how "Market Triumphalism," discussed in Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals," helps explain the moral bankruptcy in Arlie Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb."
Sample Thesis:
Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals" explains the moral bankruptcy in Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb" evidenced by _________________, __________________, ___________________, and ___________________.
Some Points to Consider:
Market Triumphilism makes consumerism the apotheosis (highest point) of human existence resulting in the loss of moral concerns.
Market Triumphalism creates markets that cater to consumers who want to make exchanges that are disconnected from moral concerns.
Market Triumphalism confuses the sacred with the profane.
Market Triumphalism changes us from a market economy to a market society. We become saturated with consumerism resulting in blindness to moral concerns.
Your thesis is the one sentence in your essay that announces your argument to your reader.
Your thesis is your essay's central argument that can demonstrated with evidence and logic.
Your thesis is often debatable and allows you to address opposing views.
Your thesis is more than a general statement about your main idea. It needs to establish a clear position you will support with balanced proofs (logos, pathos, ethos). Use the checklist below to help you create a thesis.
Thesis Examples
Thesis That Supports Accepting Syrian Refugees
Americans should accept Syrian refugees because the intangible benefits outweigh the tangible risks.
The tangible risks are a lack of assimilation and financial burden on American tax payer and that some are ISIS recruits. However, to turn our backs on a humanitarian crisis makes us morally ugly and moral ugliness is not a legacy we want to pass down to our children. Moral ugliness is a disease that spreads evil. For two examples, America stood by during the Armenian genocide and stood by when European Jews were sent back to Europe as their ships waited for entry on America's coastline. Refugees from Honduras and El Salvador are being sent back to gang-ruled societies where children are forced to be foot soldiers for gang leaders.
Morally ugly societies rank low on the Happiness Index.
Another thesis example:
Even though we give lip service to having moral integrity, we find that none of us truly has moral integrity because our self-interest always compromises it evidenced by every day circumstances (cheating on a college test if you knew you could get away with it; finding millions of dollars of stolen money if you knew you would never get caught; finding a wallet, etc.)
The following section is adapted from Writing with a Thesis: A Rhetoric Reader by David Skwire and Sarah Skwire:
Make sure you avoid the following when creating your thesis:
A thesis is not a title: Homes and schools (title) vs. Parents ought to participate more in the education of their children (good thesis).
A thesis is not an announcement of the subject: My subject is the incompetence of the Supreme Court vs. The Supreme Court made a mistake when it ruled in favor of George W. Bush in the 2000 election.
A thesis is not a statement of absolute fact: Jane Austen is the author of Pride and Prejudice.
A thesis is not the whole essay: A thesis is your main idea/claim/refutation/problem-solution expressed in a single sentence or a combination of sentences.
Please note that according to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition, "A thesis statement is a single sentence that formulates both your topic and your point of view" (Gibaldi 42). However, if your paper is more complex and requires a thesis statement, your thesis may require a combination of sentences.
Quick Checklist for Your Thesis Statement:
_____ The thesis/claim follows the guidelines outlined above
_____ The thesis/claim matches the requirements and goals of the assignment
_____ The thesis/claim is clear and easily recognizable
_____ The thesis/claim seems supportable by good reasoning/data, emotional appeal
Successful Thesis Template Examples
McMahon's argument that we should embrace Syrian refugees is flawed evidenced by ____________, ______________, ______________, and ___________________.
McMahon's contention that as a general principle we do not have moral integrity is form of cheap cynicism that collapses under the weight of various fallacies, which include ______________, _____________, ____________, and __________________.
The New Jim Crow is a failed/successful analogy to the original Jim Crow because __________________, ________________, _____________________, and __________________.
While Alexander makes a compelling critique of the mass incarceration system, her analogy between Jim Crow and incarceration as "The New Jim Crow" collapses when we consider ______________, ______________, ___________, and ______________.
While through Alexander's own admission the analogy between Jim Crow and mass incarceration as "The New Jim Crow" is not a perfect one, we can make the case that those who would dismiss her analogy entirely are in grave error when we consider these major flaws in their thinking, which include ___________, ___________, _____________, and _______________.
Michelle Alexander has written a brilliant critique of mass incarceration in which she points out its moral bankruptcy in ways that are beyond dispute. However, her book is a failure because she squandered the opportunity to point out the real causes of this moral bankruptcy, which include __________, ___________, __________, and ____________.
The assertion that Alexander's book falls short because it fails to address the deeper problems caused by free market capitalism collapses when we consider ___________, __________, ___________, and ________________.
While Alexander's book is hardly perfect and contains some serious flaws, her overall argument is compelling when we consider ____________, ____________, __________, and _______________.
Avoid an Either/Or Thesis
Going to college is in your best interests because ___________, _____________, ______________, and ________________.
Use stipulation (show conditions or requirements) and nuance (showing subtle distinctions) to inform your thesis and give it appropriate sophistication for a complicated topic:
If you keep your costs down and major in something that utilizes your passions and has strong market value, getting a college degree, while not guaranteeing financial success, is your best play for entering the job market.
Use concession clause
While majors in the humanities would probably not be in your best financial interests, marketable majors such as finance, accounting, computer science, and engineering should give you upward economic mobility if you can keep your costs down.
While the job market is declining and while college costs continue to skyrocket, going to college is still your best play for upward economic mobility unless you are a tech or sales whiz.
Use refutation thesis
The argument of going to college or not is a false argument since there is overwhelming evidence that compels us to conclude that going to college is our best financial play. The real argument is WHAT kind of major do we pursue and at WHAT cost? In other words, the argument should focus on the ratio of financial potential to college costs.
The question isn't going to college or not; the real question is do I major in a "safe bet" and approach my career like a soulless mercenary or do I choose my major based on my passions and say the hell with making money?
We should not either major in a "safe bet" or a passion-based guarantee of lifelong poverty; rather, we should seek a balance.
Study the Templates of Argumentation
While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .
While the authors' supports make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
Sample Thesis:
The payment of women to borrow their bodies during a pregnancy is morally bankrupt when we consider ______________, _______________, ________________, and ___________________.
Sample Refutation of the Above Thesis
While in an ideal world I would be opposed to the surrogate womb business, in the real world surrogate motherhood is the lesser of two evils for poor women because ____________, ___________, ______________, and _______________.
Possible Supports for the Above
Paternalistic do-gooders shouldn't be able to tell the poor what they can and can not do with their bodies.
Payment for a womb rental may help a woman feed her starving family.
Payment for a womb rental may help a woman get an education and break free from her cycle of poverty.
Signal Phrases with present tense verb
Using Signal Phrases for putting citations in your essay.
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Sentence Fragment Exercises
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Essay Prompt:
In a 4-page typed, double-spaced essay with 3 sources in your MLA Works Cited page, develop a thesis that explains how "Market Triumphalism," discussed in Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals," helps explain the moral bankruptcy in Arlie Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb."
Sample Thesis:
Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals" explains the moral bankruptcy in Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb" evidenced by _________________, __________________, ___________________, and ___________________.
Writing Assignment modified from #5 Writing in our text Acting Out Culture:
"Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience," Asma declares," we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper" (27). Write a longer essay (1,000 words) in which you identify and evaluate the comparison Asma is making here. According to Asma, what are the key differences between the "religious sins"of the past and the "transgressions" that characterize everyday life today? And what larger point is he trying to make here about the way our understanding of "sin" has changed? Then take a closer look at each of the "transgressions" he lists here. To what extent, in your view, is it valid to feel "guilty" about each? Is it helpful, necessary, and/or right for these oversights to "plague our conscience"? Why or why not?
Option 2
Essay Topic for a Cause and Effect Analysis Thesis:
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: What are the causes behind the pathological relationship between celebrities and their admirers?
Sample Thesis
As "Faces in the Mirror" shows us, celebrity worship is a sick symbiotic relationship between celebrity and fanboy characterized by ____________, ____________, ___________, and _____________.
Thesis that disagrees with the above:
While there may be some fanboys who take their celebrity worship too far, celebrity culture is good for us since celebrities give us necessary distractions from our boring lives, they gives us beauty and fashion for which we can aspire, they give us glamour which points to a higher reality than the plain reality society tells us we have to live in, and they give us a shared interest which allows us "normal folk" to bond with one another.
Option 3:
Compare the themes in "The Faces in the Mirror" with the themes of celebrity in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's masterpiece film Birdman (2014).
Option 4:
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Ty Burr's "Faces in the Mirror" and Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals" complement the theme of human degradation and "moral vacancy" in an age of excessive marketing and pathological self-promotion.
Option 5:
Defend, refute, or complicate the assertion that critical patriotism, the kind that Dyson attributes to great African American thinkers, is a superior variety of patriotism to the white jingoism described in the essay.
Option 6:
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion, based on the context of Brooks' essay "People Like Us", that humans are hard-wired away from diversity and toward sameness.
Sample:
Brooks is accurate to say that we are hard-wired to live in our Same Tribe because we are a lazy people evidenced by _____________, _____________, ______________, and ____________________.
We should not denigrate ourselves for hanging out with people who are "just like us." We do so for survival reasons, which include _______________, _____________, ____________, and ______________.
Option 7
Develop a thesis that addresses the tribalism discussed in David Brooks' essay "People Like Us" and the "scientific racism" discussed in Debra J. Dickerson's "The Great White Way."
Option 8
Address “The Great White Way” by developing a thesis that analyzes how race is more of a social fantasy than it is an objective reality.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" makes the persuasive case that race is a canard and a social construction that has nothing to do with scientific reality and everything to do with privilege evidenced by __________, ____________, ______________, and ________________.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" and the Rachel Dolezal controversy both reinforce the idea that race is an arbitrary social construction, an insane fantasy, and an anti-humanitarian fiction designed to give a false order of things, to provide a rationale for exploitation, and to reinforce our base tendencies for tribalism.
“The Flip Side of Internet Fame” has many things in common with Ty Burr’s “The Faces in the Mirror.” Identify some of those commonalities.
Essay Prompt
Compare our obsession with celebrity and our obsession with viral videos. What common pathologies can you identify that fuel these obsessions?
Both essays address the disparity between a real person and the public persona.
Both essays address our preference for public persona over reality.
Both essays suggest that there is something morally bankrupt and perhaps even insane about a culture that obsesses over false images at the expense of preserving the humanity of real people.
Both essays suggest that a certain kind of loneliness, disconnection, and lack of empathy inform the sick obsession with public or fake personas over reality.
Both essays tap into the toxic energy from the "mobocracy." A mobocracy is a mob that is so desperate for connection and unity that they will resort to irrational hatred of a scapegoat to achieve their goal.
Both essays show that the mobocracy is a pathological juggernaut evidenced by ____________, ____________, _____________, and _______________.
Option 10
Essay Prompt
In the context of "The Faces in the Mirror" and "The Flip Side of Internet Fame," what is the connection between how we view ourselves and how others view us? How does the Internet alter this dynamic?
Social media encourages what David Brooks calls "The Big Me," a state of self-aggrandizement that results in solipsism, narcissism, bipolar moodiness, and depression.
Option 11
Essay Prompt
Defend, refute, or complicate the notion that online shaming is so catastrophic and prevalent that we need to add free speech restrictions that would discourage online shaming. What would those restrictions be? How would we enforce those restrictions? Would those restrictions be justified? Explain.
While I agree with those who point out the catastrophes that ensue from online shaming, it would be impractical to draw free speech boundaries on the Internet because _____________, _____________, _______________, and _________________.
Option 12
Essay Prompt
Write a causal analysis of public shaming in the context of "The Flip Side of Internet Fame."
Option 13
Essay Option:
Defend or refute Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.” Here is how the assignment looks for a 4-page essay:
Write a 4-page critique of Peter Singer’s philosophy as rendered in “Unspeakable Conversation” (92). In your first page, explain Peter Singer’s philosophy and the methods he uses to defend it. Then in your next page, begin a thesis paragraph that defends or refutes Singer. You must use a Works Cited page that has no fewer than 3 sources.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis One:
While Singer’s argument for infanticide is consistent with his utilitarian worldview, his position collapses under the close eye of scrutiny in which we detect huge holes or flaws in his reasoning. These flaws include __________________________, ___________________________, ____________________________, and __________________________.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis Two:
If we accept Peter Singer's utilitarian argument as a just rationale for infanticide, then we are paving the way for genetic re-engineering as a tool to create a Super Baby that all parents will be forced to breed. This forced breeding of the Super Baby will result from ______________________, __________________________, ______________________, and ____________________________________.
Defense of Peter Singer: Thesis Three:
McMahon has treated Peter Singer’s infanticide argument with gross unfairness. While McMahon is correct that Singer needs to tidy up some of his vague definitions, Singer’s general argument can be ethically defended as actually helping the human race when we consider _________________________, _______________________, ___________________________, and _______________________________.
Option 14
Essay Option
Is Virginia Heffernan's attention-span myth a confirmation or challenge of Duhigg's thesis about the power of habit?
Sample Thesis
Heffernan's essay poses a weak challenge to Duhigg's because Heffernan fails to _____________, ____________, _______________, and __________________.
Option 15
Addressing "Should We Ditch the Idea of Privacy," develop an argumentative thesis about how we should change our attitudes toward privacy, or not, in a world of increasing digital connectivity.
Option 16
Comparing "The Flip Side of the Internet" and "#Me," develop a thesis that supports or refutes the authors' skepticism about the alleged benefits of social media. Develop counterarguments that you can address in the final part of your essay.
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
after although as because before even if even though if in order that
once provided that rather than since so that than that though unless
until when whenever where whereas wherever whether while why
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
“How Companies Learn Your Secrets” by Charles Duhigg
One. Why is Target keenly interested in knowing which of their customers are pregnant?
Baby time is when consumers are in a state of flux; they’re open to making significant consumer habit changes. We read that, “old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux.” As a result, “shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs.” When you're vulnerable, you're an open target. Retailers want you now more than ever.
Target accesses public records to find out who’s had babies, and then Target inundates these customers with ads and coupons.
To some, Target’s customer research seems invasive, like the work of private detectives or government surveillance.
In fact, we read that Target, like other retailers, collects vast amounts of data on its customers who have no clue that their personal information is being disclosed, mined, analyzed, and sold to the highest bidders who aren't afraid to dig into their pockets for "customer acquisition."
Most Target customers don’t know that Target “assigns each shopper a unique code—known internally as the Guest ID number—that keeps tabs on everything they buy.”
Linked to this Guest ID “is your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit.”
Additionally, we read that, “Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal, or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, and the number of cars you own.”
All of this data is further analyzed by a team of statisticians such as Andrew Pole who is discussed in the essay.
This particular job is called predictive analytics, which is “devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them.”
I did an Internet search and found that predictive analytics has an average salary of 112K. You have to get a Masters of Science in Predictive Analytics. If you want to make even more money, closer to 175K, you study risk assessment, which is related to actuarial mathematics.
All of this is part of “the golden age of market research,” and we read that Target is at the forefront.
Data collecting has become a growing field over the last 20 years. Former chief scientist at Amazon, Andreas Weigend, says, “It’s like an arms race to hire statisticians nowadays.”
Retailers cannot get enough of your personal information, and with you moving all over the Internet, you have never been so transparent.
Two. Why are retailers so hell-bent on collecting our data?
“One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day.” This suggests that we are more driven by emotion than reason almost half the time.
MIT researchers doing lab experiments with rats discovered that brain activity decreases with habit and increases when we are behaving outside of habit, which is using our critical thinking skills.
We are hard-wired to act on habits because habits reduce thinking and reduced thinking conserves energy. We are not lazy; we are simply hard-wired to conserve energy for survival reasons. Therefore, we are inclined toward habitual behavior.
The term for when the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routing is called “chunking.”
We are inclined to “chunking,” because limited brain strain conserves energy and we are hard-wired for energy conservation.
Or perhaps that’s a fancy way of saying we’re lazy?
Clearly, the more we behave out of habit, the more vulnerable we are to marketing and the more predictable we are in our behavior. Retailers can better control consumers who behave out of habit.
Three. What is the 3-Part Process of Chunking?
“First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.” Over time, this loop becomes more and more automatic.
In other words, MIT “discovered” what we’ve known all along: We’re creatures of habit.
We read, “Habits aren’t destiny—they can be ignored, changed, or replaced. But it’s also true that once the loop is established and a habit emerges, your brain stops fully participating in decision-making. So unless you deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new cues and rewards—the old pattern will unfold automatically.”
Four. How do exercise and Febreze habits emerge?
A study of 256 health-insurance members took classes “stressing the importance of exercise. Half the participants received an extra session on the theories of habit formation (the structure of the habit loop) and were asked to identify cues and rewards that might help them develop exercise routines.” Those who identified cues and rewards “spent twice as much time exercising as their peers.”
A simple cue for morning jobs is to put on your running shoes before breakfast or leave your running shoes next to your bed. Clear rewards consisted of midday treats or the pride resulting from logbook recordings. I find the midday treat questionable since the calories of that treat might be equal or more than the calories burned from the jog.
On a related issue the author Duhigg gained 8 pounds from snacking on chocolate chip cookies at work. He realized the cue was to socialize, so he started buying apples to snack on for his “social break” and he was able to break the loop.
With Febreze, sales didn’t go up until marketers made it part of the brain loop with trigger, routine, and reward. And to do this, they had to add a stronger perfume smell to their product.
Five. Why is it difficult to change consumers’ buying habits?
In addition to the strengths of old habits, it turns out that people’s “most mundane purchases, such as toiletries and cleaning products, are done with no decision making whatsoever. This means a new product promising greater performance may not change a consumer.
The real trick is in timing. Catch a consumer during major upheaval: graduating, getting a new house, having a baby, going through a divorce, and that consumer is vulnerable to consumer change.
Target workers like Pole find out who’s pregnant and send that woman, or high school student as we see in one case, a barrage of coupons for baby clothes and cribs. In fact, one father discovered his high school daughter was pregnant because of Target coupons sent to his home.
Target won’t talk about Pole or other employees who do his kind of work. But we do know that since Pole was hired, Target’s revenues have grown from 44 billion to 67 billion (2002-2010).
“The Attention-Span Myth” by Virginia Heffernan”
One. What is Heffernan questioning about our collective attention span?
She questions that there is a universal attention span. She claims some people have long attention spans and that others have short ones. We’re unfairly demonizing the Internet for shortening our attention spans.
She writes that Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and “Is Google Making Us Stupid” that he is exaggerating his claim about the Internet’s effect on our brains, which practically causes “brain damage.”
Two points: Is she twisting Carr’s argument by using the term “brain damage” and is she addressing the scientific brain studies Carr cites for brail altering due to Internet us?
Another criticism: Heffernan uses a child who prefers drums to reading the novel The Sun Also Rises. But is that example a specific refutation of the biological and scientific evidence that shows the brain has changed due to Internet use?
Heffernan is then arguing that we place too much admiration and emphasis on a long attention span. Why is it “humankind’s best moral and aesthetic asset”?
No one said it was, but what some are saying is that a compromised attention span is not good for learning and intelligence. Twice in two pages Heffernan has used the Straw Man logical fallacy, creating a false argument to counter-argue.
Essay Option
Is Virginia Heffernan's attention-span myth a confirmation or challenge of Duhigg's thesis about the power of habit?
Sample Thesis
Heffernan's essay poses a weak challenge to Duhigg's because Heffernan fails to _____________, ____________, _______________, and __________________.
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Parallelism
Correct the faulty parallelism by rewriting the sentences below.
One. Parenting toddlers is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that toddlers contradict everything you ask them to do; they have giant mood swings, and all-night tantrums.
Two. You should avoid all-you-can-eat buffets: They encourage gluttony; they feature fatty, over-salted foods and high sugar content.
Three. I prefer kettlebell training at home than the gym because of the increased privacy, the absence of loud “gym” music, and I’m able to concentrate more.
Four. To write a successful research paper you must adhere to the exact MLA format, employ a variety of paragraph transitions, and writing an intellectually rigorous thesis.
Five. The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that the rules are frequently being updated, the sheer abundance of rules you have to follow, and to integrate your research into your essay.
Six. You should avoid watching “reality shows” on TV because they encourage a depraved form of voyeurism; they distract you from your own problems, and their brain-dumbing effects.
Seven. I’m still fat even though I’ve tried the low-carb diet, the Paleo diet, the Rock-in-the-Mouth diet, and fasting every other day.
Eight. To write a successful thesis, you must have a compelling topic, a sophisticated take on that topic, and developing a thesis that elevates the reader’s consciousness to a higher level.
Nine. Getting enough sleep, exercising daily, and the importance of a positive attitude are essential for academic success.
Ten. My children never react to my calm commands or when I beg them to do things.
Grammar: Dangling Modifiers
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.
Writing Assignment modified from #5 Writing in our text Acting Out Culture:
"Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience," Asma declares," we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper" (27). Write a longer essay (1,000 words) in which you identify and evaluate the comparison Asma is making here. According to Asma, what are the key differences between the "religious sins"of the past and the "transgressions" that characterize everyday life today? And what larger point is he trying to make here about the way our understanding of "sin" has changed? Then take a closer look at each of the "transgressions" he lists here. To what extent, in your view, is it valid to feel "guilty" about each? Is it helpful, necessary, and/or right for these oversights to "plague our conscience"? Why or why not?
Option 2
Essay Topic for a Cause and Effect Analysis Thesis:
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: What are the causes behind the pathological relationship between celebrities and their admirers?
Sample Thesis
As "Faces in the Mirror" shows us, celebrity worship is a sick symbiotic relationship between celebrity and fanboy characterized by ____________, ____________, ___________, and _____________.
Thesis that disagrees with the above:
While there may be some fanboys who take their celebrity worship too far, celebrity culture is good for us since celebrities give us necessary distractions from our boring lives, they gives us beauty and fashion for which we can aspire, they give us glamour which points to a higher reality than the plain reality society tells us we have to live in, and they give us a shared interest which allows us "normal folk" to bond with one another.
Option 3:
Compare the themes in "The Faces in the Mirror" with the themes of celebrity in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's masterpiece film Birdman (2014).
Option 4:
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Ty Burr's "Faces in the Mirror" and Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals" complement the theme of human degradation and "moral vacancy" in an age of excessive marketing and pathological self-promotion.
Option 5:
Defend, refute, or complicate the assertion that critical patriotism, the kind that Dyson attributes to great African American thinkers, is a superior variety of patriotism to the white jingoism described in the essay.
Option 6:
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion, based on the context of Brooks' essay "People Like Us", that humans are hard-wired away from diversity and toward sameness.
Sample:
Brooks is accurate to say that we are hard-wired to live in our Same Tribe because we are a lazy people evidenced by _____________, _____________, ______________, and ____________________.
We should not denigrate ourselves for hanging out with people who are "just like us." We do so for survival reasons, which include _______________, _____________, ____________, and ______________.
Option 7
Develop a thesis that addresses the tribalism discussed in David Brooks' essay "People Like Us" and the "scientific racism" discussed in Debra J. Dickerson's "The Great White Way."
Option 8
Address “The Great White Way” by developing a thesis that analyzes how race is more of a social fantasy than it is an objective reality.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" makes the persuasive case that race is a canard and a social construction that has nothing to do with scientific reality and everything to do with privilege evidenced by __________, ____________, ______________, and ________________.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" and the Rachel Dolezal controversy both reinforce the idea that race is an arbitrary social construction, an insane fantasy, and an anti-humanitarian fiction designed to give a false order of things, to provide a rationale for exploitation, and to reinforce our base tendencies for tribalism.
“The Flip Side of Internet Fame” has many things in common with Ty Burr’s “The Faces in the Mirror.” Identify some of those commonalities.
Essay Prompt
Compare our obsession with celebrity and our obsession with viral videos. What common pathologies can you identify that fuel these obsessions?
Both essays address the disparity between a real person and the public persona.
Both essays address our preference for public persona over reality.
Both essays suggest that there is something morally bankrupt and perhaps even insane about a culture that obsesses over false images at the expense of preserving the humanity of real people.
Both essays suggest that a certain kind of loneliness, disconnection, and lack of empathy inform the sick obsession with public or fake personas over reality.
Both essays tap into the toxic energy from the "mobocracy." A mobocracy is a mob that is so desperate for connection and unity that they will resort to irrational hatred of a scapegoat to achieve their goal.
Both essays show that the mobocracy is a pathological juggernaut evidenced by ____________, ____________, _____________, and _______________.
Option 10
Essay Prompt
In the context of "The Faces in the Mirror" and "The Flip Side of Internet Fame," what is the connection between how we view ourselves and how others view us? How does the Internet alter this dynamic?
Social media encourages what David Brooks calls "The Big Me," a state of self-aggrandizement that results in solipsism, narcissism, bipolar moodiness, and depression.
Option 11
Essay Prompt
Defend, refute, or complicate the notion that online shaming is so catastrophic and prevalent that we need to add free speech restrictions that would discourage online shaming. What would those restrictions be? How would we enforce those restrictions? Would those restrictions be justified? Explain.
While I agree with those who point out the catastrophes that ensue from online shaming, it would be impractical to draw free speech boundaries on the Internet because _____________, _____________, _______________, and _________________.
Option 12
Essay Prompt
Write a causal analysis of public shaming in the context of "The Flip Side of Internet Fame."
Option 13
Essay Option:
Defend or refute Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.” Here is how the assignment looks for a 4-page essay:
Write a 4-page critique of Peter Singer’s philosophy as rendered in “Unspeakable Conversation” (92). In your first page, explain Peter Singer’s philosophy and the methods he uses to defend it. Then in your next page, begin a thesis paragraph that defends or refutes Singer. You must use a Works Cited page that has no fewer than 3 sources.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis One:
While Singer’s argument for infanticide is consistent with his utilitarian worldview, his position collapses under the close eye of scrutiny in which we detect huge holes or flaws in his reasoning. These flaws include __________________________, ___________________________, ____________________________, and __________________________.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis Two:
If we accept Peter Singer's utilitarian argument as a just rationale for infanticide, then we are paving the way for genetic re-engineering as a tool to create a Super Baby that all parents will be forced to breed. This forced breeding of the Super Baby will result from ______________________, __________________________, ______________________, and ____________________________________.
Defense of Peter Singer: Thesis Three:
McMahon has treated Peter Singer’s infanticide argument with gross unfairness. While McMahon is correct that Singer needs to tidy up some of his vague definitions, Singer’s general argument can be ethically defended as actually helping the human race when we consider _________________________, _______________________, ___________________________, and _______________________________.
Option 14
Essay Option
Is Virginia Heffernan's attention-span myth a confirmation or challenge of Duhigg's thesis about the power of habit?
Sample Thesis
Heffernan's essay poses a weak challenge to Duhigg's because Heffernan fails to _____________, ____________, _______________, and __________________.
Option 15
Addressing "Should We Ditch the Idea of Privacy," develop an argumentative thesis about how we should change our attitudes toward privacy, or not, in a world of increasing digital connectivity.
Option 16
Comparing "The Flip Side of the Internet" and "#Me," develop a thesis that supports or refutes the authors' skepticism about the alleged benefits of social media. Develop counterarguments that you can address in the final part of your essay.
“How Companies Learn Your Secrets” by Charles Duhigg
One. Why is Target keenly interested in knowing which of their customers are pregnant?
Baby time is when consumers are in a state of flux; they’re open to making significant consumer habit changes. We read that, “old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux.” As a result, “shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs.” When you're vulnerable, you're an open target. Retailers want you now more than ever.
Target accesses public records to find out who’s had babies, and then Target inundates these customers with ads and coupons.
To some, Target’s customer research seems invasive, like the work of private detectives or government surveillance.
In fact, we read that Target, like other retailers, collects vast amounts of data on its customers who have no clue that their personal information is being disclosed, mined, analyzed, and sold to the highest bidders who aren't afraid to dig into their pockets for "customer acquisition."
Most Target customers don’t know that Target “assigns each shopper a unique code—known internally as the Guest ID number—that keeps tabs on everything they buy.”
Linked to this Guest ID “is your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet and what Web sites you visit.”
Additionally, we read that, “Target can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal, or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, and the number of cars you own.”
All of this data is further analyzed by a team of statisticians such as Andrew Pole who is discussed in the essay.
This particular job is called predictive analytics, which is “devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them.”
I did an Internet search and found that predictive analytics has an average salary of 112K. You have to get a Masters of Science in Predictive Analytics. If you want to make even more money, closer to 175K, you study risk assessment, which is related to actuarial mathematics.
All of this is part of “the golden age of market research,” and we read that Target is at the forefront.
Data collecting has become a growing field over the last 20 years. Former chief scientist at Amazon, Andreas Weigend, says, “It’s like an arms race to hire statisticians nowadays.”
Retailers cannot get enough of your personal information, and with you moving all over the Internet, you have never been so transparent.
Two. Why are retailers so hell-bent on collecting our data?
“One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day.” This suggests that we are more driven by emotion than reason almost half the time.
MIT researchers doing lab experiments with rats discovered that brain activity decreases with habit and increases when we are behaving outside of habit, which is using our critical thinking skills.
We are hard-wired to act on habits because habits reduce thinking and reduced thinking conserves energy. We are not lazy; we are simply hard-wired to conserve energy for survival reasons. Therefore, we are inclined toward habitual behavior.
The term for when the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routing is called “chunking.”
We are inclined to “chunking,” because limited brain strain conserves energy and we are hard-wired for energy conservation.
Or perhaps that’s a fancy way of saying we’re lazy?
Clearly, the more we behave out of habit, the more vulnerable we are to marketing and the more predictable we are in our behavior. Retailers can better control consumers who behave out of habit.
Three. What is the 3-Part Process of Chunking?
“First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.” Over time, this loop becomes more and more automatic.
In other words, MIT “discovered” what we’ve known all along: We’re creatures of habit.
We read, “Habits aren’t destiny—they can be ignored, changed, or replaced. But it’s also true that once the loop is established and a habit emerges, your brain stops fully participating in decision-making. So unless you deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new cues and rewards—the old pattern will unfold automatically.”
Four. How do exercise and Febreze habits emerge?
A study of 256 health-insurance members took classes “stressing the importance of exercise. Half the participants received an extra session on the theories of habit formation (the structure of the habit loop) and were asked to identify cues and rewards that might help them develop exercise routines.” Those who identified cues and rewards “spent twice as much time exercising as their peers.”
A simple cue for morning jobs is to put on your running shoes before breakfast or leave your running shoes next to your bed. Clear rewards consisted of midday treats or the pride resulting from logbook recordings. I find the midday treat questionable since the calories of that treat might be equal or more than the calories burned from the jog.
On a related issue the author Duhigg gained 8 pounds from snacking on chocolate chip cookies at work. He realized the cue was to socialize, so he started buying apples to snack on for his “social break” and he was able to break the loop.
With Febreze, sales didn’t go up until marketers made it part of the brain loop with trigger, routine, and reward. And to do this, they had to add a stronger perfume smell to their product.
Five. Why is it difficult to change consumers’ buying habits?
In addition to the strengths of old habits, it turns out that people’s “most mundane purchases, such as toiletries and cleaning products, are done with no decision making whatsoever. This means a new product promising greater performance may not change a consumer.
The real trick is in timing. Catch a consumer during major upheaval: graduating, getting a new house, having a baby, going through a divorce, and that consumer is vulnerable to consumer change.
Target workers like Pole find out who’s pregnant and send that woman, or high school student as we see in one case, a barrage of coupons for baby clothes and cribs. In fact, one father discovered his high school daughter was pregnant because of Target coupons sent to his home.
Target won’t talk about Pole or other employees who do his kind of work. But we do know that since Pole was hired, Target’s revenues have grown from 44 billion to 67 billion (2002-2010).
“The Attention-Span Myth” by Virginia Heffernan”
One. What is Heffernan questioning about our collective attention span?
She questions that there is a universal attention span. She claims some people have long attention spans and that others have short ones. We’re unfairly demonizing the Internet for shortening our attention spans.
She writes that Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and “Is Google Making Us Stupid” that he is exaggerating his claim about the Internet’s effect on our brains, which practically causes “brain damage.”
Two points: Is she twisting Carr’s argument by using the term “brain damage” and is she addressing the scientific brain studies Carr cites for brail altering due to Internet us?
Another criticism: Heffernan uses a child who prefers drums to reading the novel The Sun Also Rises. But is that example a specific refutation of the biological and scientific evidence that shows the brain has changed due to Internet use?
Heffernan is then arguing that we place too much admiration and emphasis on a long attention span. Why is it “humankind’s best moral and aesthetic asset”?
No one said it was, but what some are saying is that a compromised attention span is not good for learning and intelligence. Twice in two pages Heffernan has used the Straw Man logical fallacy, creating a false argument to counter-argue.
Essay Option
Is Virginia Heffernan's attention-span myth a confirmation or challenge of Duhigg's thesis about the power of habit?
Sample Thesis
Heffernan's essay poses a weak challenge to Duhigg's because Heffernan fails to _____________, ____________, _______________, and __________________.
“The Flip Side of Internet Fame” by Jessica Bennet
One. What is scary about a video, Facebook message, or tweet about you going viral?
For one, the information may be inaccurate.
For two, the information may be taken out of context.
For three, the infraction may be minor, so that the punishment is disproportionate to the infraction.
For four, a person may have manipulated or tricked you into “going public.”
For five, ubiquitous smart phones leave you vulnerable to be videotaped when you are unaware.
For six, you may have an enemy who enjoys cowardly hiding behind the anonymity of the web to lie about you, and if your enemy is clever enough his lie can gain traction and smear your reputation.
For seven, if you are a shaming victim, you will find you have little or no legal recourse. You would have to subpoena an anonymous IP address for starters. And cunning enemies can slip out of one IP address to another.
For eight, there is a new environment for shaming; it's called social media, and the social media community acts like a mob and too often goes into a feeding frenzy when it smells blood in the water.
For nine, it's easy to be a self-righteous lazy activist on Twitter since tweeting does not take an investment of time or energy.
For ten, tweeting can be impulsive with no filters and even if the accuser has regrets later, it's too late.
But even with all of the above conditions met, a viral video becomes a frenzied false kind of “truth” that defies reality.
This frenzied false kind of “truth” destroys your reputation, incites others to harass you, blacklists you from job opportunities, stigmatizes you in areas of romance, and generally paints you as a demon homunculus who may be forever incapable of redemption.
In the digital age, people are so eager to find connection through viral videos and tweets that they discard the moral component, empathy, to the target of the frenzy.
The speed of which this demonization can occur has no historical precedent. In less than a day, a life can be ruined.
Two. “The Flip Side of Internet Fame” has many things in common with Ty Burr’s “The Faces in the Mirror.” Identify some of those commonalities.
Both essays address the disparity between a real person and the public persona.
Both essays address our preference for public persona over reality.
Both essays suggest that there is something morally bankrupt and perhaps even insane about a culture that obsesses over false images at the expense of preserving the humanity of real people.
Both essays suggest that a certain kind of loneliness, disconnection, and lack of empathy inform the sick obsession with public or fake personas over reality.
Both essays tap into the toxic energy from the "mobocracy." A mobocracy is a mob that is so desperate for connection and unity that they will resort to irrational hatred of a scapegoat to achieve their goal.
Essay Prompt
Compare our obsession with celebrity and our obsession with viral videos. What common pathologies can you identify that fuel these obsessions?
Both essays show that the mobocracy is a pathological juggernaut evidenced by ____________, ____________, _____________, and _______________.
Essay Prompt
What is the connection between how we view ourselves and how others view us? How does the Internet alter this dynamic?
Social media encourages what David Brooks calls "The Big Me," a state of self-aggrandizement that results in solipsism, narcissism, bipolar moodiness, and depression.
Essay Prompt
Defend, refute, or complicate the notion that online shaming is so catastrophic and prevalent that we need to add free speech restrictions that would discourage online shaming. What would those restrictions be? How would we enforce those restrictions? Would those restrictions be justified? Explain.
While I agree with those who point out the catastrophes that ensue from online shaming, it would be impractical to draw free speech boundaries on the Internet because _____________, _____________, _______________, and _________________.
Essay Prompt
Write a causal analysis of public shaming in the context of "The Flip Side of Internet Fame."
Whenever an instructor gives you a causal analysis assignment, she is asking you to analyze the causes for something. For example, a causal analysis of California's water shortage would focus on global warming, carbon emission, and lackluster water-saving measures.
When an instructor gives you causal analysis essay, either typed or in-class, you want to develop a clear strategy to explore the topic.
According to The St. Martin's Handbook, you need to match a series of questions for the type of essay you've been asked to write.
We read, "Originally developed by Aristotle, the following questions can help you explore a topic by carefully and systematically describing it:"
What is it? Public shaming
What caused it? Social media
What is it like or unlike? Public shaming moves so quickly that we have no cultural precedent.
What larger system is the topic a part of? Public shaming is part of a larger social pathology: bullying, cowardice (hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet), and the hunger for power ("look what I can do!").
What do people say about it? Many feel safe, but others, with good reason, feel vulnerable. Public shaming could happen to anyone.
When your instructor asks you to write an argumentative essay, you ask a series of different questions:
What claim are you making about your topic?
What good reasons support your claim?
What valid underlying assumptions support the reasons for your claim? In argument, the assumption is the logic you use to connect your support to your claim.
What backup evidence can you find for your claim?
What refutations of your claim should you anticipate?
In what ways should you qualify your claim? When you qualify a claim, you set conditions.
“Unspeakable Conversations” by Harriet McBryde Johnson
One. How does Johnson effectively get our attention in her essay’s introduction?
“He insists he doesn’t want to kill me.”
Two. What kind of hubris (excessive pride) and arrogance inform Singer’s philosophy to kill deformed babies?
He seems to know that the “suffering” disabled babies go through, and the parents’ suffering, justifies killing them.
Is there a definitive suffering scale, and even if there were, would such a scale justify the killing of certain kinds of babies?
Additionally, Singer argues that “individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that he doesn’t consider them persons” should not live.
Again, how do we definitively measure such perceived impairments, and even if such a measurement were available, could we justify this practice of killing people?
Again, his insanely mathematical formula used to justify infanticide is an oversimplification. As HMJ writes, “the presence or absence of a disability doesn’t predict quality of life.” Her brother Mac who is not disabled has flaws and gifts “that cannot be measured on the same scale.”
For Singer, a disabled baby is “worse off” than a healthy baby so the disabled baby should be killed. But what does it mean to say someone is “worse off”? What about a healthy baby who as a toddler proves that he is a sociopath who tortures cats and dogs? He gets to live?
At another point of debate, Singer says healthy children can have fun at the beach but disabled children cannot and therefore they should be put to death. Does this make sense? “You, child, are unable to have fun. Now die.”
I’m less shocked by the stupidity and evil of the argument (because there will always be madmen spewing made theories) than by the fact that Singer is a venerated philosopher who is a hired professor at Princeton.
Three. How does HBJ's appearance present challenges, some of which are for her insufferable?
People assume she needs pity.
They assume her life is horrible.
They assume she is in immense pain.
They assume she needs to be treated like a child or patronized like a slow person.
They don’t see her. They see stereotypes based on her appearance.
Lexicon of Terms Pertinent to Peter Singer’s Moral Philosophy.
One. Utilitarianism, the philosophy that we should sacrifice the individual for the greater good of the collective whole.
From Economy: Definition: Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy, generally operating on the principle that the utility (happiness or satisfaction) of different people can not only be measured but also meaningfully summed over people and that utility comparisons between people are meaningful. That makes it possible to achieve a well-defined societal optimum in allocations, production, and other decisions, and achieve the goal utilitarian British philosopher Jeremy Bentham described as "the greatest good for the greatest number."
This form of utilitarianism is thought of as extreme, now, partly because it is widely believed that there exists no generally acceptable way of summing utilities across people and comparing between them.
Two. “quality of life” argument: human life is only valuable if a certain “quality” can be achieved; otherwise life is better off destroyed.
Three. “normal children”: They can achieve a “quality of life” and should take priority over “abnormal children” who should be euthanized.
Four. “infants are replaceable”: we should replace abnormal infants with normal ones for the “greater good.” The moral imperative is that we are reducing suffering and adding more productive citizens to society as opposed to citizens who put a burden on society.
Five. Eugenicist, one who defends the idea that we should select what humans are desirable based on genetics and which ones should be replaced, that is euthanized, for the betterment of society. The eugenicist also develops the criteria for making these choices.
Six. Nebulous definition of “personhood.” The ability to imagine the future. What does that mean?
Seven. Intrinsic value of human life, called the sanctity of life vs. conditional value of human life based on “quality of life.”
Eight. Apologist for eugenics. An apologist takes controversial or unpopular ideas and makes them appealing by defending their validity and showing why those views are correct.
Nine. Peter Singer is an advocate for genetic re-engineering.
Ten. Market-driven and peer-pressure-driven forces for genetic re-engineering. The result will be a loss of diversity. Most women will like Salma Hayek and Beyonce while most men will look like Will Smith and Brad Pitt. See the New Eugenics.
Part Two. Peter Singer’s Major Arguments
One. Peter Singer’s quality of life argument for infanticide:
His stated reason, rather, is that such children have diminished prospects of eventually enjoying an adequate "quality of life", in his words, and to allow them to live would take away resources from what Singer calls "normal" children. He therefore advocates killing "disabled" infants, if the parents so choose, and replacing them with "normal" ones. The terminology of "replacement" is Singer's own; his philosophy "treats infants as replaceable", in his words (Practical Ethics p. 186).
Why, then, does Singer argue that infants born with this condition can justly be killed? Because they are "abnormal" and do not have "good prospects" (Rethinking p. 214).
This notion of "prospects" runs like a mantra through Singer's discussion of Down syndrome children: "the future prospects of life may be so bleak" (211), "the prospects are clouded" (213), and so forth. But what sort of prospects does he have in mind? On p. 213 of Rethinking he lists several activities which a person with Down syndrome will supposedly never be capable of: "to play the guitar, to develop an appreciation of science fiction, to learn a foreign language, to chat with us about the latest Woody Allen movie, or to be a respectable athlete, basketball player or tennis player."
This list reads like a parody of bourgeois myths of achievement, success, and respectability. To Singer, however, these are legitimate reasons for killing a newborn. After all, if you can't do your own financial planning, why should you be allowed to live?
Two. Peter Singer’s utilitarian argument for infanticide:
What counts as a "severe disability" for Singer? He intentionally leaves the term vague to allow for a broad range of parental discretion, but he has discussed a number of specific examples, both hypothetical as well as actual cases.
The conditions he has explicitly named as sufficient justification for active infanticide include Down syndrome, spina bifida, and hemophilia. Here is Singer's reasoning on the latter condition, taken from his popular textbook Practical Ethics (P. 186): "Suppose a woman planning to have two children has one normal child, then gives birth to a haemophiliac child. The burden of caring for that child may make it impossible for her to cope with a third child; but if the disabled child were to die, she would have another. . . . When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him."
Three. Peter Singer’s definition of a “person” or someone who is worthy of the label “personhood”:
a conscious being, a creature who has the capacity to imagine the future. This definition can apply to humans, animals, and creatures. A “person” should not be killed, but a human baby suffering severe retardation or some other handicap is not a “person.”
Four. Utilitarian Slippery Slope:
If we agree that we should aim for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people and that handicapped people burden the “greatest good,” at what point do we stop at defining who constitutes a “burden”? Smokers, the obese, criminals, the handicapped, the autistic? Where do we stop?
Five. Peter Singer’s “Worse Off” Argument:
Disability makes a person worse off and therefore that person should be killed. And Peter Singer is comfortable judging who’s “worse off” and who’s not, a very subjective condition. See page 97 and page 106 top.
Six. Peter Singer’s Eugenicist Position:
The eugenicist position endorses selection according to desirable and undesirable genetic traits, and favors the elimination of the latter. Singer's argument sorts people into two categories, "normal" and "abnormal", and declares the ostensibly abnormal ones fair game at birth. He doesn't even bother to try to provide "objective" grounds on which to classify some human physical or mental conditions as "defective" (a term he used in earlier editions of Practical Ethics) and contrast them with "healthy" ones. Instead he simply welcomes whatever arbitrary social norms happen to prevail, thus turning his argument into a vehicle for prejudice. But of course there is no perfect, flawless version of the human form against which putatively "inferior" specimens could be measured.
Seven. Harriet McBryde Johnson’s quality of life argument:
Studies show that the public underestimates the quality of life for most handicapped people based on stereotypes.
Essay Option:
Defend or refute Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.” Here is how the assignment looks for a 4-page essay:
Write a 4-page critique of Peter Singer’s philosophy as rendered in “Unspeakable Conversation” (92). In your first page, explain Peter Singer’s philosophy and the methods he uses to defend it. Then in your next page, begin a thesis paragraph that defends or refutes Singer. You must use a Works Cited page that has no fewer than 3 sources.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis One:
While Singer’s argument for infanticide is consistent with his utilitarian worldview, his position collapses under the close eye of scrutiny in which we detect huge holes or flaws in his reasoning. These flaws include __________________________, ___________________________, ____________________________, and __________________________.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis Two:
If we accept Peter Singer's utilitarian argument as a just rationale for infanticide, then we are paving the way for genetic re-engineering as a tool to create a Super Baby that all parents will be forced to breed. This forced breeding of the Super Baby will result from ______________________, __________________________, ______________________, and ____________________________________.
Defense of Peter Singer: Thesis Three:
McMahon has treated Peter Singer’s infanticide argument with gross unfairness. While McMahon is correct that Singer needs to tidy up some of his vague definitions, Singer’s general argument can be ethically defended as actually helping the human race when we consider _________________________, _______________________, ___________________________, and _______________________________.
Some Salient Titles
Must I Conform to Peter Singer's Definition of Happiness So I Can Live?
Be Happy Singer's Way . . . Or Die
Let Go of the Stale Past and Become New and Improved, Peter Singer Style
We Limit Ourselves By Dismissing Peter Singer So Quickly
McMahon Commentary on “Unspeakable Conversations”
Peter Singer’s theories of “selective infanticide” insulate him from the reality of flesh and blood:
His theories are abstractions and as he percolates his ideas behind the university walls, he loses touch with reality. Specifically, Singer does not see the human face of “disability” and this human face is Harriet McBryde Johnson. According to Singer’s theory of eugenics, HBJ’s parents had the right to kill her since someone with her disabilities could not lead a “quality of life” and as such she doesn’t deserve the title of “person.” Nor does she possess, to use Singer’s term, “personhood.”
To the contrary, HMJ has a lot of richness in her life that defies the stereotypes too many people have about people with disabilities. Part of HMJ’s gifted life is her intellect, which allows her to see the “bone-chilling” theories of Peter Singer for what they are: monstrous. For example, Singer believes in “selective infanticide” under the guise of “preference utilitarianism” (96), which states that disabled babies are disposable and that is preferable to replace them with healthy babies who have a better change for a flourishing existence.
One of the horrifying qualities of Peter Singer is that during his debate with HMJ he remains affable, lucid, and logical. We can infer that Singer has succumbed to his abstractions so fully that he has lost his humanity and his sanity. He is clearly an congenial monster, polite on the outside, roiling with his murder doctrine on the inside.
One of the striking inadequacies of Singer’s theory, we read on page 97, is his belief that someone like HMJ is “worse off” (106) as he projects condescending pity for the disabled based on his ignorance and stereotypical beliefs (104).
Avoid Dangling Modifiers
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
after although as because before even if even though if in order that
once provided that rather than since so that than that though unless
until when whenever where whereas wherever whether while why
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
Essay Topic for a Cause and Effect Analysis Thesis:
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: What are the causes behind the pathological relationship between celebrities and their admirers?
Sample Thesis
As "Faces in the Mirror" shows us, celebrity worship is a sick symbiotic relationship between celebrity and fanboy characterized by ____________, ____________, ___________, and _____________.
Thesis that disagrees with the above:
While there may be some fanboys who take their celebrity worship too far, celebrity culture is good for us since celebrities give us necessary distractions from our boring lives, they give us beauty and fashion for which we can aspire, they give us glamour, which points to a higher reality than the plain reality society tells us we have to live in, and they give us a shared interest which allows us "normal folk" to bond with one another.
Essay Option:
Compare the themes in "The Faces in the Mirror" with the themes of celebrity in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's masterpiece film Birdman (2014).
“Markets and Morals” by Michael Sandel
One. Why does Sandel give us a litany of things we can buy?
Here’s the list: prison cell upgrade, car pool lane fast track, surrogate mother, citizenship, killing endangered animals, doctor’s cell phone.
Here’s the list of things we can sell: forehead ad space, body for experiments, mercenary in war-torn country, read a book, not watch TV, lose fourteen pounds in 4 months, life insurance of the near dead so you can collect their policy.
Sandel’s point is that market creep has wrapped its tentacles around us so that we don’t even know that buying and selling—consumerism—is the dominant feature of our lives.
If we grew up wrapped in the consumer cocoon, then we think it’s our normal. It is our normal, but it’s crazy. Why? Because in such a world there are no boundaries. Buying and selling becomes our religion. It is the only religion. It is the “Era of Market Triumphalism.”
In Market Triumphalism, we equate greed with "strong moral character." We say to the most ruthless successful person, "You are a hard worker. You must be mature, disciplined, focused, and strong. You are the kind of person I want to be."
In Market Triumphalism, we're just worshipping money and power for their own sake.
Two. What were the forces that led to Market Triumphalism?
The early 1980s ushered Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s conviction of free markets with no regulation. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair continued the legacy.
But in 2008 the Great Recession hit us and now Market Triumphalism has been replaced with doubt.
Three. What more than greed fueled Market Triumphalism?
Growing markets obliterated boundaries between moral and sacred spheres on one hand and market spheres on the other. When the spheres intersected, we entered into a protracted moral crisis.
We mixed the Sacred with the Profane:
Having a baby is a sacred act. Turing it into a business is a human degradation.
Proposing to your girlfriend is a sacred act. Having her post it on Twitter and Facebook for the ad revenue before you’ve even put the ring on her finger is a human degradation.
Putting people into prison is a form of societal punishment. Letting business run prison takes the moral component out of it and makes profit motive the thing that drives the agenda. That is a compromise of a society’s morality.
Pharmaceutical companies want to make money and this incentive clashes with promoting good health.
Health care is a business in our country when other countries say it should not be.
This expansion of the market into all parts of our lives is harmful for two reasons:
It fosters inequality and corruption.
Money buys political influence, medical care, education, safe neighborhoods, and healthy food, to name some.
Markets are also corrupt. For example, if prison and policing are a profit-incentive businesses, then there is incentive to arrest and imprison a quota of people regardless of crime rates.
College is too much of a business in this country and it's geared to the rich as we read here.
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Ty Burr's "Faces in the Mirror" and Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals" complement the theme of human degradation and "moral vacancy" in an age of excessive marketing and pathological self-promotion.
Sample Thesis
Reading “Faces in the Mirror” by Ty Burr and “Markets and Morals” by Michael Sandel, it is apparent that we live in an age of unchecked marketing that is to society’s detriment evidenced by a free market untethered by ethical concerns______________, ________________, _____________, and _________________.
“Understanding Black Patriotism” by Michael Eric Dyson
One. What is the difference between black patriotism and “lapel-pin nationalism”?
The history of black people is the history of struggle, to fight against slavery, Jim Crow, unfair incarceration laws, unequal income distribution, to name some, and this struggle for a better country through the struggle is far more in-depth and arduous than people spewing easy slogans and clichés.
If one is angry toward one’s country, then one has hope for change. True abandonment of one’s country is not expressed anger or outrage but apathy, and the percentage of people of all colors who stay at home on election days speaks to apathy.
In contrast, there is “My country, right or wrong,” which is a dogmatic credo of the ignorant peasant who subscribes, not to patriotism, but to jingoism, the act of cheerleading or being a fanboy for one’s country without doing the research or hard work concerning the relevant issues.
A jingoist is a Kool-Aid drinker or fanboy who blindly embraces all things that pertain to one’s country.
A true patriot, according to Dyson, is a critical thinker who wants an accurate diagnosis of America's ills in order to make a better America.
Two. What examples does Dyson provide regarding hypocrisy of patriotism?
Dyson points at the five deferments of Dick Cheney, hawkish on terrorism, who may have been hawkish when he was calling the shots, but when it came to him fighting he stayed home from the war five times. He really used those deferments but was eager to make others fight his war.
In contrast, African American critic of American racism Jeremiah Wright surrendered his student deferment and volunteered to join the Marines.
Essay Option
Defend, refute, or complicate the assertion that critical patriotism, the kind that Dyson attributes to great African American thinkers, is a superior variety of patriotism to the white jingoism described in the essay.
Sample Thesis
Pro Dyson Thesis
Those who attempt to dismiss the criticisms of great African American thinkers as being anti-American are engaging in the most vile form of tribalism and jingoism, and they would be well served to embrace these African American thinkers’ authentic patriotism, which is evidenced by __________, ___________, ___________, and ____________.
Pro Dyson Thesis
Attempts to label the great African American thinkers who have criticized US policy as anti-American collapse when we consider that these thinkers are the truest kind of patriot. This is evidenced by _____________, _______________, ________________, and ____________________.
Against Dyson Thesis
While I concede to Dyson’s point that we can criticize US policy and still be patriotic, Dyson’s examples are too extreme evidenced by _________________, _________________, ________________, and _______________________.
In the following video, we see Michael Eric Dyson make his point about true patriotism as he contrasts it with false patriotism:
False patriots apologize for abusers of civil rights.
False patriots white-wash the real narratives that define racism in America.
False patriots get defensive when truthful criticisms are put on the table.
A successful paragraph is like a mini essay. Instead of a thesis, it has a topic sentence. Instead of mapping components, the paragraph has supporting details.
An A paragraph contains the following:
Structurally, it contains a topic sentence, either explicit or implicit.
It has supporting concrete details.
Its supporting details logically follow the other, which give the paragraph coherence.
It contains transitions (avoid, if you can, elementary transitions such as first, second, third, and so on), which give the paragraph cohesiveness.
Rhetorically speaking, an A paragraph should be written in a passionate, distinctive voice. The language should be precise, lively, and colorful, reflecting the writer’s passion for the subject.
A successful paragraph has the following:
1. topic sentence (mini thesis)
2. supporting details
3. unity: all the supporting details are relevant to the topic sentence
4. cohesiveness: all the supporting details logically follow the other with the help of transitions. Advanced writers attempt to use transitions other than the familiar “first . . . second . . . third . . . Finally”
5. concluding sentence (optional)
Sample A Paragraph Response to the Question: How has the iPod degraded our listening of music?
The innovation of the iPod and its marriage partner, iTunes, have seemingly created Listening Paradise for the music lover. Now you can have thousands of songs at your fingertips and customize your own playlists, make ratings, burn your own CDs and in essence believe that it's you--not the recording artists--who is the “creative genius” for all your music. But in fact, you will most likely face the sad truth that as you amass thousands upon thousands of songs, you will reach a point in which your ability to appreciate music will actually diminish, not deepen, because having tens of thousands of songs and hundreds of playlists will degrade your music listening pleasure. The first thing you’ll notice is that you won’t even remember what songs you have and the treasures that used to give you so much joy become buried under a pile of newer and newer songs that muddle your memory. The second thing that will happen is that in your determination to listen to as much of your music as possible, you will create huge playlists and the music will play all day and night as you multi-task at your computer so that you’re not really focusing on music the way you used to. Your relationship with music has changed drastically to the point that it is now a form of “wallpaper,” a droning in the distance that swaths you with a feeling of security. But whatever security you gain from cocooning yourself in your music, you will lose from becoming more and more self-conscious about what kind of songs you own because you’ll become aware that you live in a culture in which your identity is judged largely on your playlists and “brand identity” as determined by your music tastes will become more important than actually enjoying music. Finally, when you have hundreds and hundreds of playlists, you will suffer from “choice anxiety.” Fretting over what to play and always worrying that you’re neglecting a huge chunk of your music will become a distraction that compromises your music-listening experience. Thus we are a culture with the technology capable of fitting 40,000 songs on an iPod, but our brains cannot embrace that much music without suffering some kind of permanent meltdown.
Another Example of an A Paragraph
A paragraph that explains why Octo-Mom stirs the hostility of so many (transitions underlined) :
The California woman who relied on the dubious practices of a fertility doctor to give birth to 14 children, has become a national demon who stirs our most primitive fears and hostilities and compels us to gather our pitchforks and torches and to chase her from our midst. Her demonic reputation exists in part because she has become a metaphor for the malignant parasite whose ravenous, pathological appetite to bear bus loads of children with legal and government sanction stirs the general public’s greatest Malthusian nightmare: Paying the hefty tax tab to cater to the wild irresponsible desire of an emotionally-arrested woman whose sole passions in life are to bear more children than she can take care of and to liken her image to celebrity goddess Angelina Jolie. Her reputation as a monster is reinforced by her very title, Octo-Mom, which suggests a malevolent invader who bears similarities to the pod creatures in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Finally, our resentment is vindicated when it is reported that she and her litter will live in luxury paid for by the generosity of others, thus making us feel like it is the grossly irresponsible in this world who are rewarded while the rest of us who play by the rules having nothing to look forward to in this life except for getting punked.
"In Defense of Single Motherhood" by Katie Roiphe
One. Do people say single mothers are bad or do people state the obvious, that there is a link between poverty and being a single mother?
Perhaps people don't demonize single mothers. People protest the poverty that results too often from being a single mother. In fact, 40% of single mothers live in poverty.
Poor single mothers are at higher risk for cycles of poverty, illness, imprisonment, etc. Roiphe, a privileged single mother, seems out of touch.
No one is "hating" on single mothers. It appears Roiphe is creating a fake controversy to attract attention to herself.
She's been irrelevant for decades. She appears desperate to be heard and is trying to be provocative for its own sake, a sign of neediness and intellectual dishonesty.
There is no "basic notion that single mothers are irresponsible and dangerous to the general order of things . . ." as she writes.
No one ever accused single mothers of being irresponsible.
In fact, most fair-minded people see the problem residing with dead-beat dads, men who abandon their families.
Develop a thesis that agrees or challenges the critiques we've seen against Katie Roiphe and support your thesis in a 4-5-page essay.
"People Like Us,” by David Brooks
One. What explains our hunger for sameness in terms of the people we surround ourselves with?
We’re anxious and alienated from “people who aren’t like us.” We’d rather feel connection and comfort from being with “members of our tribe,” be it in education, politics, class aspirations, etc. We want to be around people who share our values and our way of seeing the world.
Such tribalism is both comforting and effective in making us happy.
Here’s the killer fact we don’t want to confront: We’re happier by remaining in our tribe. We don’t want to be around people who don’t share our values.
Why?
Because we are hard-wired to be self-segregating based on interests and values.
If we’re hipsters, we want to live in a community of hipsters.
If we’re suburban consumers, we want to be around suburban consumers.
If we’re creative, we want to be around a community of artists.
People who shop at Trader Joe’s are of a certain educated and political ilk.
People who shop at Whole Foods are of a certain educated and political ilk.
People who don’t vaccinate their children hang out with other likeminded parents.
People who watch Fox News hang out with Fox News viewers.
People who watch MSNBC hang with MSNBC viewers.
People who like luxury watches create online watch communities.
The Internet with its millions of blogs is all about consolidating people of common interests. The same can be said with YouTube and its over 500 million channels.
If you’re a college graduate the chances are your friends will be college graduates.
If you’re not college educated, the chances are your friends won’t be either.
If you’re fat, your friends probably are also.
If you’re skinny, your friends probably are also.
If you're beautiful, your friends probably also enjoy a fair amount of pulchritude.
If you’re an MMA fighter or enthusiast, your friends probably are also.
If you’re a vegan, so are your friends.
If you’re sympathetic to civil rights and equal justice, you probably don’t have friends who harbor racist views.
If you’re against guns, you probably don’t hang out with outspoken members of the NRA.
If you’re an atheist, especially an outspoken one, you probably don’t have a lot of Christian friends.
If you think skinny jeans on men look stupid, you probably don’t have a lot of male friends who wear skinny jeans.
Foodies hang out with foodies.
Coffee connoisseurs hang out with coffee connoisseurs.
Gamers hang out with gamers.
Sommeliers hang out with sommeliers.
If you're a gourmand who gorges on camembert, you probably hang out with other gourmands who wallow in camembert.
If you're a member of the cognoscenti, you probably hang out exclusively with other members of the cognoscenti.
If you're a Morrissey freak, you probably hang out with other Morrissey freaks.
We want to live in a bubble with people just like us. We feel comfortable being insulated from the “outside world.”
So let’s get real: There is no diversity. There’s only sameness.
Writing Response
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion, based on the context of Brooks' essay, that humans are hard-wired away from diversity and toward sameness.
Sample:
Brooks is accurate to say that we are hard-wired to live in our Same Tribe because we are a lazy people evidenced by _____________, _____________, ______________, and ____________________.
We should not denigrate ourselves for hanging out with people who are "just like us." We do so for survival reasons, which include _______________, _____________, ____________, and ______________.
“The Great White Way” by Debra J. Dickerson
One. In the first paragraph, Dickerson writes that the president will struggle to explain what race is to space aliens. She suggests that no one knows what race is, yet it is the “central drama” of America.
Why is race, which is such a vague and confusing term, our nation’s obsession?
Because people of color have traditionally been excluded from the American Dream and there is a history of genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow (segregation and racism), human rights violations that were rooted in the idea of race.
Genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow were justified by white people who, intoxicated by the doctrine of White Supremacy, felt entitled to treat others in the horrid manner of racism and all its resulting evils.
In our contemporary society, we enslave migrant workers in tents up and down the agricultural worksites of California and elsewhere.
In the United States, we imprison black and brown men for the same crimes as whites at a ratio of 10:1.
So race, even in its vague definition, is still a hot-button issue and points to a crisis of injustice and moral bankruptcy.
Two. What does Dickerson mean when she writes that “race is an arbitrary system for establishing hierarchy and privilege”?
The creators of White Supremacy, who escaped the tyranny of European kings knew the value of freedom. But they loved money more than freedom and they only valued freedom for themselves, not others.
White profiteering sociopaths who were envious of the profits slave traders were making in Britain, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere, wanted a piece of the action, but they knew the white Christian peasants and farmers were too religious and too caught up in the command "Love thy neighbor as thyself" to embrace slavery, so the white sociopath conmen insidiously put White Supremacy, the belief that God and Jesus are white and that the world was made for white people, into the white peasants' Bibles and soon enough the peasants and farmers drank enough of this White Supremacy or "evil Kool-Aid," as I'm fond of calling it, and they were on board with the white conmen.
Here's an important point: The white conmen were too clever to be fooled by race. They knew that race doesn't exist, that race is a canard and they used race as a canard to fool the white peasants.
The white peasants actually believed in the Kool-Aid the conmen gave them.
I don't know if there's a Hell, but if there is one with descending levels of torment, it would seem the conmen who knew race was a canard all along would go in the deepest part of Hell.
The peasants would still go to Hell because there's no excuse for their "complicit ignorance," as I like to call it, but they're not as diabolical as the white sociopaths who invented White Supremacy for their own profit.
Review of White Supremacy
White Supremacy is an evil religion, a hybrid of Christianity and white superiority narratives, which states whites were put on Earth lord over everyone else in any manner they saw fit.
The Inventors of White Supremacy Didn't Believe in It Themselves But Created It to get poor Christian farmers to "get on board" with slavery.
The creators of White Supremacy didn’t even believe in it. They were cynics who created a false religion because they knew the masses of white people would “drink the Kool-Aid” and become converts to White Supremacy as slavery became a powerful economic engine that made America into a super power.
In the United States, there was no such thing as "race" until slavery came along.
Before the false religion of White Supremacy, people did not have a consciousness of race or skin color. Race and skin color were inventions, or if you will, an elaborate fiction or fairy tale designed to justify genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow.
White farmers and slave owners drank the Kool-Aid and saw themselves as “good Christians” even as they exacted cruelty upon people of color. They were able to use White Supremacy (“I’m just doing what the good Lord ordained me to do.”) to assuage their conscience and perform heinous acts, which constituted the most depraved human rights violations.
Three. What attitudes did white Americans feel toward European immigrants from Ireland to Greece?
They were looked upon as subhumans that would takeover America as “mongrel hordes” unless the white Americans started breeding more.
There was a racial hierarchy with Anglo Europeans at the top, Italians, Slavs, Greeks, and Irish at the middle, and brown and black people relegated to the bottom.
Hostility was so bad against non-Anglo Europeans that 11 Italians were lynched in Louisiana in 1891.
The Anglo whites wanted to assimilate the southern Europeans into more jobs and get their votes, so they “promoted Southern Europeans to whiteness,” whiteness being equivalent to the gold card of freedom, respect, and privilege.
This privilege gave “fascist-leaning Italians” full respect while patriotic Japanese were put into internment camps.
One of the horrid things about southern Italians becoming full white Americans was in sharing white Americans’ hate and disdain for people of color. For example, we read that Italian Americans took delight in beating up black people.
This was their sick rite of passage into “being fully white.”
Four. How was FDR’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal a sort of affirmative action for whites only?
The states could decide who got the New Deal money and it always went to poor whites, never to blacks. White liberals in the north allowed southern states to do with the New Deal as they liked, state by state. There was no federal enforcement so that all people benefited.
During the Depression, relief only went to poor whites. Poor blacks received nothing.
Blacks were not eligible for Social Security until the 1950s.
These injustices, which happened 70 years ago, give weight to the argument for affirmative action, Dickerson argues.
We did have affirmative action for the poor, Dickerson reminds us, but 70 years ago, it was only the white poor who received it.
Essay Options
Develop a thesis that addresses the tribalism discussed in David Brooks' essay "People Like Us" and the "scientific racism" discussed in Debra J. Dickerson's "The Great White Way."
Sample Thesis
Brooks' and Dickerson's essays show that tribalism is a double-edged sword that brings out both our best and worst traits evidenced by ______________, ______________, _______________, and _____________________.
Sample Thesis
Brooks' and Dickerson's essay compel us to be cautious of tribalism because it inclines us to _____________, _____________, _____________, and _________________.
Brooks' and Dickerson's essay compel us to suppress our tribalistic tendencies because _____________, ____________, _____________, and ________________.
While Dickerson's essay reveals the evil injustice that too often results from tribalism, Brooks' essay shows that tribalism can be a force for good evidenced by ___________, ___________, __________, and ________________.
Another Essay Option
Address “The Great White Way” by developing a thesis that analyzes how race is more of a social fantasy than it is an objective reality.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" makes the persuasive case that race is a canard and a social construction that has nothing to do with scientific reality and everything to do with privilege evidenced by __________, ____________, ______________, and ________________.
Sample Thesis
"The Great White Way" and the Rachel Dolezal controversy both reinforce the idea that race is an arbitrary social construction, an insane fantasy, and an anti-humanitarian fiction designed to give a false order of things, to provide a rationale for exploitation, and to reinforce our base tendencies for tribalism.
Defining race has been in the national news since fraud Rachel Dolezal has been exposed for the mountebank and pathological narcissist that she is.
Essay Prompt
In a 4-5-page essay with 3 sources, defend or refute the proposition that Rachel Dolezal's racial identity is not authentic self-expression but the pathology of a confused fraud.
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
after although as because before even if even though if in order that
once provided that rather than since so that than that though unless
until when whenever where whereas wherever whether while why
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
“The Restoration of Faith” by Amitava Kumar
One. What is restorative justice?
After a crime has been committed, even a homicide, the emphasis isn’t on punishment but on how the person who committed the crime how he or she must address the needs of the victims.
Writing Option
Support, refute, or complicate the notion that restorative justice brings more real justice to victims of crimes than conventional forms of justice.
A full-bodied red wine compliments the Pasta Pomodoro.
Compliment is a to say something nice about someone.
Complement is to complete or match well with something.
The BMW salesman excepted my counteroffer of 55K for the sports sedan.
The word should be accepted.
Kryptonite effects Superman in such a way that he loses his powers.
Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb, so it should be the following:
Kryptonite affects Superman in a such a way that he loses his powers.
There superpowers were compromised by the Gamma rays.
We need to use the possessive plural pronoun their.
Two. Missing comma after an introductory phrase or clause
Terrified of slimy foods, Robert hid behind the restaurant’s dumpster.
In spite of my aversion to rollercoasters, I attended the carnival with my family.
Three. Incomplete documentation
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness.”
It should read:
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness” (277).
Four. Vague Pronoun Reference
Focusing on the pecs during your Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts is a way of giving you more time to work on your quads and glutes and specializing on the way they’re used in different exercises.
Before Jennifer screamed at Brittany, she came to the conclusion that she was justified in stealing her boyfriend.
Five. Spelling (including homonyms, words that have same spelling but different meanings)
No one came forward to bare witness to the crime.
No one came forward to bear witness to the crime.
Every where we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Everywhere we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Love is a disease. It’s sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Its sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Six. Mechanical error with a quotation
In his best-selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure”.
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.”
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure” (18).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love”, Michael Manderlin writes (22).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love,” Michael Manderlin writes (22).
Seven . Unnecessary comma
I need to workout when at home, and while taking vacations.
You do however use a comma if the comma is between two independent clauses:
I need to workout at home, and when I go on vacations, I bring my yoga mat to hotels.
I need to workout every day, because I’m addicted to the exercise-induced dopamine.
You do however use a comma after a dependent clause beginning with because:
Because I’m addicted to exercise-induced dopamine, I need to workout everyday.
Peaches, that are green, taste hideous.
The above is an example of an independent clause with a essential information or restrictive information. Not all peaches taste hideous, only green ones. The meaning of the entire sentence needs the dependent clause so there are no commas.
However, if the clause is additional information, the clause is called nonessential or nonrestrictive, and we do use commas:
Peaches, which are on sale at Whole Foods, are my favorite fruit.
Eight. Unnecessary or missing capitalization
Some Traditional Chinese Medicines containing Ephedra remain legal.
We only use capital letters for proper nouns, proper adjectives, first words of sentences, important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships.
Nine. Missing word
The site foreman discriminated women and promoted men with less experience.
The site foreman discriminated against women and promoted men with less experience.
Chris’ behavior becomes bizarre that his family asks for help.
Chris’ behavior becomes so bizarre that his family asks for help.
Ten. Faulty sentence structure
The information which high school athletes are presented with mainly includes information on what credits needed to graduate and thinking about the college which athletes are trying to play for, and apply.
A sentence that starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind can confuse readers. Make sure that each sentence contains a subject and a verb, that subjects and predicates make sense together, and that comparisons have clear meanings. When you join elements (such as subjects or verb phrases) with a coordinating conjunction, make sure that the elements have parallel structures.
The reason I prefer yoga at home to the gym is because I prefer privacy.
I prefer yoga at home to the gym because of privacy.
11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element
Marina who was the president of the club was the first to speak.
The clause who was the president of the club does not affect the basic meaning of the sentence: Marina was the first to speak.
A nonrestrictive element gives information not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence. Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element.
12. Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense
Priya was watching the great blue heron. Then she slips and falls into the swamp.
Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.
13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence
Meredith waited for Samir and her sister grew impatient.
Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Meredith waited for both Samir and her sister.
A compound sentence consists of two or more parts that could each stand alone as a sentence. When the parts are joined by a coordinating conjunction, use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.
14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's)
Overambitious parents can be very harmful to a childs well-being.
The car is lying on it's side in the ditch. Its a white 2004 Passat.
To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's book) or an apostrophe alone (the boys' gym). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Useits to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has.
15. Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
16. Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
17. Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
18. Poorly Integrated Quotation
A 1970s study of what makes food appetizing "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
Corrected
In a 1970s study about what makes food appetizing, we read, "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life" (Eighner 383). Finding edible food is especially tricky.
Corrected
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life," we read in Eighner's book (383). One of the drawbacks is that finding food can be especially difficult.
Quotations should fit smoothly into the surrounding sentence structure. They should be linked clearly to the writing around them (usually with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.
19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen
This paper looks at fictional and real life examples.
A compound adjective modifying a noun that follows it requires a hyphen.
The buyers want to fix-up the house and resell it.
A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. A compound adjective that appears before a noun needs a hyphen. However, be careful not to hyphenate two-word verbs or word groups that serve as subject complements.
20. Sentence Fragment
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Comma splices are two complete sentences joined with a comma when they should be separated by a period.
Comma Splice
Football is America’s number one sport, however parents are discouraging their children from playing it.
Corrected
Football is America’s number one sport. However, parents are discouraging their children from playing it.
Run-On (joining two sentences without appropriate punctuation)
Because football causes head trauma, parents don’t want their children to play this sport instead they want their children to go into martial arts, wrestling, and other “tough” sports that don’t result in as many concussive events.
Corrected
Because football causes head trauma, parents don’t want their children to play this sport. Instead, they want their children to go into martial arts, wrestling, and other “tough” sports that don’t result in as many concussive events.
Comma Splice
Football is an inherently violent sport that demands brutal collisions, in contrast, basketball focuses more on finesse and agility.
Corrected
Football is an inherently violent sport that demands brutal collisions. In contrast, basketball focuses more on finesse and agility.
Comma Splice
On the one hand, I have fond memories of watching football with my father, on the other hand I wince with the guilt of deriving entertainment from a sport that leads to the players’ brain damage.
Corrected
On the one hand, I have fond memories of watching football with my father. On the other hand, I wince with the guilt of deriving entertainment from a sport that leads to the players’ brain damage.
Sentence Fragments
Sentence fragments are phrases or clauses that writers confuse with complete sentences.
Fragment
I am eager to watch the new NFL season. Although, I am weary of my own participation in a sport that is brutally violent.
Corrected
Corrected
I am eager to watch the new NFL season although I am weary of my own participation in a sport that is brutally violent.
Corrected
I am eager to watch the new NFL season. However, I am weary of my own participation in a sport that is brutally violent.
Fragment
Because my conscience dictates that I find other entertainments that don’t involve the brutality of grown men who are doomed to die on average between the ages of 55 and 59 and live a life of dotage and senility.
Corrected
Because my conscience dictates that I find other entertainments that don’t involve the brutality of grown men who are doomed to die on average between the ages of 55 and 59 and live a life of dotage and senility, I have decided that I will no longer watch football.
Fragment
Because my conscience dictates that I find other entertainments that don’t involve the brutality of grown men who are doomed to die on average between the ages of 55 and 59 and live a life of dotage and senility, I have decided that I will no longer watch football. Unless I'm at my father-in-law's house.
Corrected
Because my conscience dictates that I find other entertainments that don’t involve the brutality of grown men who are doomed to die on average between the ages of 55 and 59 and live a life of dotage and senility, I have decided that I will no longer watch football, unless I'm at my father-in-law's house.
Fragment
If I continue to watch a sport that brutalizes its athletes, treating them like fighting dogs in an illegal fighting pit and are doomed to suffer permanent injury, pain, and general misery.
Corrected
If I continue to watch a sport that brutalizes its athletes, treating them like fighting dogs in an illegal fighting pit and are doomed to a life of crippling misery, my conscience will plague me to my dying days.
"Why Do We Read and Write Essays? They're Just Someone's Opinions. Aren't All Opinions Alike? "
Some people say after reading an essay, “Well, it’s just an opinion.” But are all opinions alike?
Robert Atwan in his American Now textbook writes six major types of opinions.
As you will see, some are more appropriate for the kind of critical thinking an essay deserves than others.
One. Inherited opinions: These are opinions that are imprinted on us during our childhood. They come from “family, culture, traditions, customs, regions, social institutions, or religion.”
People’s views on religion, race, education, and humanity come from their family.
Inherited opinions come from cultural and social norms.
In some cultures, it's okay to tell others your income. It's a taboo in America.
We are averse to eating dogs in America because eating dogs is contrary to America’s cultural and social norms. However, other countries eat dogs without any stigma.
We are also averse to eating insects in America when in some countries grubs are a delicacy.
We think it's normal to slaughter trees every year as part of our celebration of Christmas.
We eat until we're so stuffed we cannot walk in America; in contrast, in Japan they follow the rule of hara hachi bu, which means they stop at 80% fullness.
Peanut butter in America represents Mom's Love; in France and Brazil, however, peanut butter is trash and an insult to place in front of someone.
In America, we put dry cereal into a bowl and then pour milk over it. That is not practiced in a lot of other countries.
In America when a woman says yes to a man's date proposal, the man, Louis C.K. tells us, will shake his fist like a tennis champion and scream, "Yeah!" We admire this behavior because we grow up seeing it.
We soak up these types of opinions through a sort of osmosis and a lot of these beliefs are unconscious.
Two. Involuntary opinions: These are the opinions that result from direct indoctrination and inculcation (learning through repetition). If we grow up in a family that teaches us that eating pork is evil, then we won’t eat at other people’s homes that serve that porcine dish.
Or we may, as a result if our religious training, abjure rated R movies.
Or we may have strong feelings, one way or another, regarding gay marriage based on the doctrines we’ve learned over time.
We may have strong feelings about immigration policy based on what we learn from our family, friends, and institutions.
We may have strong feelings about the police and the prison system based on what we learn from family, friends, and institutions.
Three. Adaptive opinions: We adapt opinions to help us conform to groups we wish to belong to. We are often so eager to belong to this or that group that we sacrifice our critical thinking skills and engage in Groupthink to please the majority.
A student from China back in the 1940s or 1950s was raised in the country. He went to a city school and the richest boy made a sculpture of a butterfly. Everyone loved the butterfly but my student. He explained that a butterfly had 4 wings, not 2. He was sent to the "dunce corner" for the whole day.
He should have kept his mouth shut or pretended that butterflies have 2 wings. That's an example of Groupthink.
Atwan writes that “Adaptive opinions are often weakly held and readily changed . . . But over time they can become habitual and turn into convictions.”
For example, it’s easy for one to be against guns in Santa Monica. However, those views might be less “adaptive” in rural parts of Kentucky or Tennessee.
It's easy to be a vegan in Southern California, but you'll have more challenges being a vegan in certain parts of Texas, Kansas, and the Carolinas where barbecue is king.
Four. Concealed opinions. Sometimes we have strong opinions that are contrary to the group we belong to so we keep our mouths shut to avoid persecution. You might not want to proclaim your atheism, for example, if you were attending a Christian college.
Five. Linked opinions. Atwan writes, “Unlike adaptive opinions, which are usually stimulated by convenience and an incentive to conform, these are opinions we derived from an enthusiastic and dedicated affiliation with certain groups, institutions, or parties.”
For example, the modern “Tea Party” people or self-proclaimed Patriots embrace a series of linked opinions: Obama is not American. Obama is a socialist. Obama is helping terrorists get across the boarder. Terrorists helped elect Obama. Obama wants to strip Americans of their right to own guns so that the government and/or terrorists can move in and take Americans’ freedoms.
As you can see, all these opinions are linked to each other. Believing in one of the above opinions encourages belief in the other.
Six. Considered opinions. Atwan writes, “These are opinions we have formed as a result of firsthand experience, reading, discussion and debate, or independent thinking and reasoning. These opinions are formed from direct knowledge and often from exposure and considering other opinions.”
Often considered opinions result in examining mythologies or fake narratives that are drilled down our throats and we deconstruct these false narratives so that we can see the truth behind them.
There are many fake narratives:
Columbus “discovering” America.
The European pilgrims “sharing” with the American Indians.
White slave owners “blessing” Africans with Christianity.
The pharmaceutical industry making our health job one.
Mexican workers in America "stealing" jobs from Americans.
Poor people "choose" to be poor.
Poor people deserve to be poor because they're bad, morally flawed human beings.
Obese people got fat from being morally flawed such as being selfish and gluttonous.
Developing critical thinking skills means being able to pick apart a false narrative and examine the true narrative behind it.
Some would define literacy as developing critical thinking skills and that failure to do so is to remain a mindless consumer, an obedient child to the parental authorities of market trends and advertising.
It's your choice: You can either swallow the blue pill (blissful ignorance) or the red pill (uncomfortable, often painful truth).
One. What kind of outrage does the author’s son express in the first paragraph?
“Don’t you love the earth?” becomes a way of making two statements: One’s allegiance to a cause or a special tribe and self-righteous scolding of someone whose behavior doesn’t conform to the tribe.
These scoldings or admonishments reinforce group cohesion and tribal identity.
Two. What does our need for guilt say about us?
We seem to have some neurosis that makes us feel empty unless we’re on a “guilt trip.”
Guilt seems to be the glue that tells people we’re “fighting on the same team” and if you deviate from the game plan you’re a reprobate, a sinner, an outcast, or even a pariah.
We also love to shame others as we feel elevated, intoxicated, and aggrandized by our self-righteous posturing.
Three. The author writes that behind our guilt is a pervading sense of worthlessness and shame? What is behind these feelings?
He writes that “internalized self-loathing” is a mechanism designed to help us be more civilized. Otherwise we’d live in a Hobbesian nightmare (anarchy).
Self-loathing helps us repress our Id (raw, uncontrollable desire) or our tendencies for self-abandonment and indulgence. By repressing our desires collectively, we protect the interest of the many.
How big of a blanket do I spread out on the beach? How loud do I play my boombox while I'm slopping coconut tanning butter on my tanned torso. How reckless do I fling the Frisbee to my beach buddy, allowing the Frisbee to hit nearby beach visitors? Do I pick up my dog's mess at the dog beach? Do I control my dog's incessant barking? How loud do I laugh at the movie theater? How loud is my eating and slurping while watching the movie?
Self-loathing also represses our aggression.
For example, I loathe myself when I’m driving and I lose my temper. Self-loathing represses my road rage temper tantrums. But that repression requires energy, so that when I’m a “nice and courteous drive” I come home exhausted; after all, for a guy like me being nice requires enormous amounts of energy (repression requires energy after all).
Not eating all the food I want—burgers, pizzas, cakes, pies, etc.—requires even more self-loathing that results in repression and of course the end effect is exhaustion.
“Being me is a full-time job.”
Adding to our neurosis, when we suppress our aggression, as evidenced in the road rage example above, we turn our aggression inward, Asma writes, and this results in “self-cruelty."
Rather than hate the world, we hate ourselves. And this self-hatred serves civilization, that is, until some of us blow up, as we read about all too often in the news.
Four. According to Asma, how did our psychology create a guilt-infused religion?
Asma writes we have always used guilt, repression, and self-loathing as ways to live and cooperate in a civilized society. Rather than psychoanalyze ourselves, we poured out our unconscious guilt and other toxic emotions into religious doctrines that would externalize that guilt and shame by calling us “sinners.” Religion, according to Nietzsche, allows us to be cruel to ourselves.
We can infer from this essay that according to Asma religion is a whip that we use to exact cruelty upon ourselves.
Five. Do guilt and self-loathing exist in secular, urban hipster cultures?
Yes, they do, but they take another form of religion: environmentalism: Asma writes that now “we have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper.”
Asma adds, brilliantly I might say, that we have other secular avenues for self-inflicted cruelty and guilt: We punish our indulgent eating habits with crazy diets and cleanses and running on treadmills for hours upon hours until we want to die.
Writing Assignment modified from #5 Writing in our text Acting Out Culture:
"Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience," Asma declares," we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper" (27). Write a longer essay (1,000 words) in which you identify and evaluate the comparison Asma is making here. According to Asma, what are the key differences between the "religious sins"of the past and the "transgressions" that characterize everyday life today? And what larger point is he trying to make here about the way our understanding of "sin" has changed? Then take a closer look at each of the "transgressions" he lists here. To what extent, in your view, is it valid to feel "guilty" about each? Is it helpful, necessary, and/or right for these oversights to "plague our conscience"? Why or why not?
Breaking Down the Essay Assignment Into Its Parts
"Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience," Asma declares," we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper" (27). Write a longer essay (1,000 words) in which you identify and evaluate the comparison Asma is making here.
It appears Asma is comparing religious and secular "sin" as mechanisms that allow selfish creatures, a.k.a. human beings, to co-exist and create societies without mutilating and killing each other.
He may be wrong. Perhaps a tribe's notion of sin empowers it with the belief that it is entitled to kill other tribes who have different religious codes. People kill "Los Otros" in the name of their faith.
Or maybe the sense of sin and repression cause BOTH peace and war depending on the circumstances.
Perhaps as we read in The Emptiness blog, "sin" is an invention of those in power to keep the rest of us in control, to make us powerless slaves:
Asma goes wrong however when he attempts to explain why people in Western civilization have this “need” as he sees it to flagellate themselves with guilt. In fact, his argument itself is a form of self-attack. Its almost as if he is apologizing to his left/liberal friends for breaking orthodoxy in his next argument.
All this internalized self-loathing is the cost we pay for being civilized.
Asma’s idea is that people need guilt in order to restrain themselves from attacking others. He claims that without his own residual “self-loathing” he would not hesitate to attack people at Starbucks that annoy him by ordering pretentious sounding drinks. This reveals far more about Asma’s personal psychology than it does about the tendency of people in western cultures to be violent and anti-social. Internally western countries are remarkably peaceful and orderly by global standards.
So why do people cling to these guilt based moral systems? Well, how are people raised? If almost everyone in a culture exhibits a certain trait in common, is it because that trait is “natural”? Is it “natural” to be a Muslim, and that is why everyone in Muslim countries grows up to be a Muslim? Or is it that children in these countries learn very young that they must conform to the beliefs and prejudices of the adults that control society? The same principle is at work in our culture. Even if we think the modern West is secular and progressive, it is still built on a foundation of shared Judeo-Christian slave morality that persists even as the modern man can no longer bring himself to believe in invisible men in the clouds. Environmentalism is just Christianity 2.0.
Slave morality has always been a power strategy for the priestly class. But the old priestly class has been ebbing in power for centuries now, and the field is open for new players to enter the game. Environmentalists, Climate scientists, diet puritans and other lifestyle scolds are all vying to take their place and be the ones to save your soul by selling you indulgences in the form of carbon credits and raw food shakes. As long as our society is built on a foundation of slave morals people will continue to go for it.
According to Asma, what are the key differences between the "religious sins"of the past and the "transgressions" that characterize everyday life today?
And what larger point is he trying to make here about the way our understanding of "sin" has changed?
He seems to be saying that now that we have a psychological understanding of sin, we are less reliant on religion to provide guilt, shame, and repression; however, because we still depend on these forms of self-cruelty to cooperate in a society we create secular religions to do shame's bidding.
Then take a closer look at each of the "transgressions" he lists here. To what extent, in your view, is it valid to feel "guilty" about each?
You're either arguing that guilt is a helpful behavior tool or a slave tool for the "power priests," secular or otherwise.
Or to complicate the matter, you might argue that guilt is both good and bad as a behavior tool.
Is it helpful, necessary, and/or right for these oversights to "plague our conscience"? Why or why not?
Sample Thesis Statements
"Green Guilt" makes a powerful argument that we must accept the afflictions of guilt and sin, whether that sin be religious or secular, in order that we get along in a cooperative society.
We must conclude after reading Stephen Asma's brilliant "Green Guilt" that human happiness must be compromised in the service of guilt and self-induced "sin" in order that we suppress our selfish drives, cooperate with one another, and hone our conscience in a constantly Darwinian universe.
Stephen Asma's cogent and insightful "Green Guilt" delivers a bombshell to the human race: Absolute happiness is a farce that must take back seat to guilt and misery in order to promote a cooperative society.
Even though it appears Stephen Asma is not religious in any orthodox sense, it is of note that his secular explanation of sin does not conflict at all with my religious sense of it. In fact, my religious sense of sin is compatible with Stephen Asma's secular version when we consider __________, _____________, ____________, and _____________.
"Green Guilt" is just a pathetic excuse for the "slave morality" that allows the power brokers or One Percent to exact control upon the rest of us.
Stephen Asma's attempt to universalize sin as a secular affliction collapses when we consider the affliction he refers to is not universal at all but rather confined to privileged liberals who have created a code of behavior that requires shaming in order to make others conform to their ways.
Developing PEEL Paragraphs (PEEL equals Point, Evidence or Example, Elaboration or Explanation, and Links)
When writing a research paper, it’s very important in the evidence or example section to use a quote from the text.
Paragraph Example (I've underlined the links or transitions)
"Green Guilt" makes a powerful argument that we must accept the afflictions of guilt and sin, whether that guilt be caused by religious or secular forces, in order that we survive and thrive in a cooperative society. As we read in Asma’s essay, “All this internalized self-loathing is the cost we pay for being civilized. In a very well organized society that protects the interests of many, we have to refrain from our natural instincts.” Indeed, our natural instincts, if left unchecked, would create a barbaric world where no kind of viable or even pleasing society could flourish. A second curse of selfish desires unbridled by a sense of guilt and sin would be the moral dissolution that would ensue as hordes of people would become numb to pleasures resulting in frustration and increased violence. We see evidence of such mayhem and grand displays of nihilism in hedonistic societies right before they crumble such as the Fall of Rome. Finally, let us not neglect to point out that a sense of sin can prompt us to be more disciplined so that we maximize the success of our personal goals rather than squandering our life on the foolish errands prompted by our unharnessed desires. To conclude, Asma convincingly shows us that it is in our best interests to repress our base passions by swallowing the Sin Pill in order to fulfill our potential as individuals and as a society.
“The Faces in the Mirror”
One. Why do we want to hype the stars and make them gods who would defy the banal existence that might accurately define them?
Time investment justification:
We need to justify all the money and attention we spend on them so we don’t feel like idiots. We have to believe they’re special and exist on a higher plane than we do.
Celebrities are like Greek gods who entertain us:
We’re also bored and we assuage our boredom by believing in "the magic of celebrity" even though a deep part of us knows this magic is not true. Behind the celebrities' clown masks are aged faces wrinkled with emptiness and despair.
Emotional children crave celebrity hype:
Perhaps this need to believe in magic is evidence that we’re still tiny children emotionally.
We live vicariously through the stars.
Bored with our banal existence, we live vicariously through the stars. We wish our own lives were full of grand moments but in truth as The Wire's Lester Freamon tells his friend McNulty: "There are no grand moments. Life is the ____that happens to you while you wait for the [grand] moments that never come."
Two. What is problematic about the “relationship between persona and person”?
As we see in the Robin Williams example in which he knows someone sees the celebrity but not the real man, the persona always kills our connection to person.
The persona is the fake tyrant that consumes us.
The persona is the hype that dehumanizes us.
The persona is the glitter that diminishes us.
The persona is the fantasy that degrades us.
Why?
Because celebrity, money, power, and beauty are all drugs: The fanboy (or fangirl) who gawks over celebrity, money, power, or beauty becomes drugged by this false god and the false god becomes drugged by being perceived as a false god. As a result, both parties go insane.
I knew a guy who was so good looking, girls used to look at him and start crying. He moved to Tahiti where he became worshipped as a god complete with velvet paintings and statues in front of restaurants.
This insanity is rendered in the 2014 film Birdman.
Robin Williams is sick of being looked at as a false god.
Having experienced the degradation many times, Robin Williams’ eyes went dead and he could not connect with the author Ty Burr.
Another problem is our paradoxical relationship with the stars. On one hand, we worship them as gods; on the other, we resent them for “their presumption to set themselves up as gods when our egos told us we were the ones deserving of attention.”
The dark side of worshipping false gods is that deep down we resent idols that loom over us as superior beings:
Fanboys and fangirls hunger for tabloids and celebrity gossip to see their gods fall into drug rehab and scandal.
Mobs tear their clothing “as if to simultaneously absorb and obliterate the object of affection.”
Essay Topic for a Cause and Effect Analysis Thesis:
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: What are the causes behind the pathological relationship between celebrities and their admirers?
Sample Thesis
As "Faces in the Mirror" shows us, celebrity worship is a sick symbiotic relationship between celebrity and fanboy characterized by ____________, ____________, ___________, and _____________.
Thesis that disagrees with the above:
While there may be some fanboys who take their celebrity worship too far, celebrity culture is good for us since celebrities give us necessary distractions from our boring lives, they gives us beauty and fashion for which we can aspire, they give us glamour which points to a higher reality than the plain reality society tells us we have to live in, and they give us a shared interest which allows us "normal folk" to bond with one another.
Essay Option:
Compare the themes in "The Faces in the Mirror" with the themes of celebrity in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's masterpiece film Birdman (2014).
“Markets and Morals” by Michael Sandel
One. Why does Sandel give us a litany of things we can buy?
Here’s the list: prison cell upgrade, car pool lane fast track, surrogate mother, citizenship, killing endangered animals, doctor’s cell phone.
Here’s the list of things we can sell: forehead ad space, body for experiments, mercenary in war-torn country, read a book, not watch TV, lose fourteen pounds in 4 months, life insurance of the near dead so you can collect their policy.
Sandel’s point is that market creep has wrapped its tentacles around us so that we don’t even know that buying and selling—consumerism—is the dominant feature of our lives.
If we grew up wrapped in the consumer cocoon, then we think it’s our normal. It is our normal, but it’s crazy. Why? Because in such a world there are no boundaries. Buying and selling becomes our religion. It is the only religion. It is the “Era of Market Triumphalism.”
In Market Triumphalism, we equate greed with "strong moral character." We say to the most ruthless successful person, "You are a hard worker. You must be mature, disciplined, focused, and strong. You are the kind of person I want to be."
In Market Triumphalism, we're just worshipping money and power for their own sake.
Two. What were the forces that led to Market Triumphalism?
The early 1980s ushered Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s conviction of free markets with no regulation. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair continued the legacy.
But in 2008 the Great Recession hit us and now Market Triumphalism has been replaced with doubt.
Three. What more than greed fueled Market Triumphalism?
Growing markets obliterated boundaries between moral and sacred spheres on one hand and market spheres on the other. When the spheres intersected, we entered into a protracted moral crisis.
We mixed the Sacred with the Profane:
Having a baby is a sacred act. Turing it into a business is a human degradation.
Proposing to your girlfriend is a sacred act. Having her post it on Twitter and Facebook for the ad revenue before you’ve even put the ring on her finger is a human degradation.
Putting people into prison is a form of societal punishment. Letting business run prison takes the moral component out of it and makes profit motive the thing that drives the agenda. That is a compromise of a society’s morality.
Pharmaceutical companies want to make money and this incentive clashes with promoting good health.
Health care is a business in our country when other countries say it should not be.
This expansion of the market into all parts of our lives is harmful for two reasons:
It fosters inequality and corruption.
Money buys political influence, medical care, education, safe neighborhoods, and healthy food, to name some.
Markets are also corrupt. For example, if prison and policing are a profit-incentive businesses, then there is incentive to arrest and imprison a quota of people regardless of crime rates.
College is too much of a business in this country and it's geared to the rich as we read here.
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Ty Burr's "Faces in the Mirror" and Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals" complement the theme of human degradation and "moral vacancy" in an age of excessive marketing and pathological self-promotion.
Sample Thesis
Reading “Faces in the Mirror” by Ty Burr and “Markets and Morals” by Michael Sandel, it is apparent that we live in an age of unchecked marketing that is to society’s detriment evidenced by a free market untethered by ethical concerns______________, ________________, _____________, and _________________.
“Understanding Black Patriotism” by Michael Eric Dyson
One. What is the difference between black patriotism and “lapel-pin nationalism”?
The history of black people is the history of struggle, to fight against slavery, Jim Crow, unfair incarceration laws, unequal income distribution, to name some, and this struggle for a better country through the struggle is far more in-depth and arduous than people spewing easy slogans and clichés.
If one is angry toward one’s country, then one has hope for change. True abandonment of one’s country is not expressed anger or outrage but apathy, and the percentage of people of all colors who stay at home on election days speaks to apathy.
In contrast, there is “My country, right or wrong,” which is a dogmatic credo of the ignorant peasant who subscribes, not to patriotism, but to jingoism, the act of cheerleading or being a fanboy for one’s country without doing the research or hard work concerning the relevant issues.
A jingoist is a Kool-Aid drinker or fanboy who blindly embraces all things that pertain to one’s country.
A true patriot, according to Dyson, is a critical thinker who wants an accurate diagnosis of America's ills in order to make a better America.
Two. What examples does Dyson provide regarding hypocrisy of patriotism?
Dyson points at the five deferments of Dick Cheney, hawkish on terrorism, who may have been hawkish when he was calling the shots, but when it came to him fighting he stayed home from the war five times. He really used those deferments but was eager to make others fight his war.
In contrast, African American critic of American racism Jeremiah Wright surrendered his student deferment and volunteered to join the Marines.
Essay Option
Defend, refute, or complicate the assertion that critical patriotism, the kind that Dyson attributes to great African American thinkers, is a superior variety of patriotism to the white jingoism described in the essay.
Sample Thesis
Pro Dyson Thesis
Those who attempt to dismiss the criticisms of great African American thinkers as being anti-American are engaging in the most vile form of tribalism and jingoism, and they would be well served to embrace these African American thinkers’ authentic patriotism, which is evidenced by __________, ___________, ___________, and ____________.
Pro Dyson Thesis
Attempts to label the great African American thinkers who have criticized US policy as anti-American collapse when we consider that these thinkers are the truest kind of patriot. This is evidenced by _____________, _______________, ________________, and ____________________.
Against Dyson Thesis
While I concede to Dyson’s point that we can criticize US policy and still be patriotic, Dyson’s examples are too extreme evidenced by _________________, _________________, ________________, and _______________________.
In the following video, we see Michael Eric Dyson make his point about true patriotism as he contrasts it with false patriotism:
False patriots apologize for abusers of civil rights.
False patriots white-wash the real narratives that define racism in America.
False patriots get defensive when truthful criticisms are put on the table.
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Essential and Nonessential Clauses
Circle the relative clause and indicate if it’s essential with a capital E or nonessential with a capital N. Then use commas where necessary.
One. I’m looking for a sugar substitute that doesn’t have dangerous side effects.
Two. Sugar substitutes which often contain additives can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous system.
Three. The man who trains in the gym every day for five hours is setting himself up for a serious muscle injury.
Four. Cars that operate on small turbo engines don’t last as long as non-turbo automobiles.
Five. Tuna which contains high amounts of mercury should only be eaten once or twice a week.
Six. The store manager who took your order has been arrested for fraud.
Seven. The store manager Ron Cousins who is now seventy-five years old is contemplating retirement.
Eight. Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts which is my favorite novel was runner up for the Booker Prize.
Nine. Parenthood which is a sort of priesthood for which there is no pay or appreciation raises stress and cortisol levels.
Ten. I need to find a college that specializes in my actuarial math major.
Eleven. UCLA which has a strong actuarial math program is my first choice.
Twelve. My first choice of car is the Lexus which was awarded top overall quality honors from Consumer Reports.
Thirteen. Mangoes which sometimes cause a rash on my lips and chin area are my favorite fruit.
Fourteen. A strange man whom I’ve never known came up to me and offered to give me his brand new Mercedes.
Fifteen. My girlfriend who was showing off her brand new red dress arrived two hours late to the birthday party.
Sixteen. Students who meticulously follow the MLA format rules have a greater chance at success.
Seventeen. The student who tormented himself with the thesis lesson for six hours found himself more confused than before he started.
Eighteen. There are several distinctions between an analytical and argumentative thesis which we need to familiarize ourselves with before we embark on the essay assignment.
Nineteen. The peach that has a worm burrowing through its rotted skin should probably be tossed in the garbage.
Twenty. Peaches, which I love to eat by the bucketful are on sale at the farmer’s market.
Twenty-one. Baseball which used to be America’s pastime is declining in popularity.
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
after although as because before even if even though if in order that
once provided that rather than since so that than that though unless
until when whenever where whereas wherever whether while why
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
Grammar: Dangling Modifiers
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.