Writing Unleashed: Reader

WRITING UNLEASHED: READER READER FOR ENGL110&ENGL120 Compiled by Sybil Priebe

NDSCS | OER

Writing Unleashed: Reader TABLE OF CONTENTS OPEN LICENSE .............................................................................................................................................................. 4 EXAMPLES OF STRATEGIES AND GENRES ....................................................................................................................... 6 NARRATIVE: THE RIBBON .............................................................................................................................................. 7 DESCRIPTION: ESSAY OF PLACE ..................................................................................................................................... 9 ILLUSTRATION: PUNCTUATION, MEMES, AND CHOICE ..................................................................................................12 PROCESS ANALYSIS: HOW TO WRITE A KICK@SS ESSAY WITH HALF THE STRESS .............................................................22 COMPARE AND CONTRAST: LONDON VS. WASHINGTON DC ..........................................................................................23 DIVISION AND CLASSIFICATION: ETHOS, PATHOS, AND LOGOS IN COMMERCIALS ..........................................................25 CAUSE AND EFFECT: EFFECTS OF VIDEO GAME ADDICTION ............................................................................................28 MEMOIR GENRE: GETTING LET GO ...............................................................................................................................30 PROFILE GENRE: MY DAD .............................................................................................................................................33 THE ESSAY GENRE ........................................................................................................................................................36 COLLECTION: FIVE SHORT ESSAYS .................................................................................................................................37 ESSAY: CRITICAL READING............................................................................................................................................40 ESSAY: MAKING CHOICES IN WRITING ..........................................................................................................................44 ESSAY: LANGUAGE MATTERS .......................................................................................................................................48 ESSAY: PERSONAL LITERACY AND ACADEMIC LEARNING ...............................................................................................56 THE STRATEGY OF ARGUMENT .....................................................................................................................................59 ARGUMENT: UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE COVERAGE IN THE UNITED STATES ....................................................................60 ARGUMENT: THE CASE FOR TORTURE...........................................................................................................................62 DEFINITION ARGUMENT: WHAT IS A “GEEK”? ...............................................................................................................65 ARGUMENT: TOOLS AND TASKS ...................................................................................................................................67 ARGUMENT: WHY WOMEN FROM ASIA ARE CONFRONTING U.S. FRACKING: OIL EXTRACTION EQUALS PLASTIC PRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................................................................71 ARGUMENT: WHICH FUTURE WOULD YOU CHOOSE? ....................................................................................................75 ARGUMENT: THE POLITICS OF FEAR: HOW IT MANIPULATES US INTO TRIBALISM ..........................................................77 ARGUMENT: TAKING THE NATIVE AMERICAN NARRIATIVE BEYOND RESERVATIONS ......................................................80 OTHER GENERAL READINGS .........................................................................................................................................88 READING: DEVELOPING A UNIVERSAL RELIGION ...........................................................................................................89

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READING: GAME ADDICTIONS ......................................................................................................................................95 READING: DETERMINING MORAL BEHAVIOR – PERSONAL FREEDOM ........................................................................... 101 READING: DETERMINING MORAL BEHAVIORS – KILLING ............................................................................................. 103 READING: PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE..................................................................................................................... 107 READING: INTRO TO GENDER ..................................................................................................................................... 112 READING: FEMINISM ................................................................................................................................................. 128 READING: GLOBAL ISSUES IN AUSTRIA & CZECH REPUBLIC WITH MIGRATION .............................................................. 134 READING: GOVERNMENT POLICIES TO REDUCE INCOME INEQUALITY .......................................................................... 139 A BIG BIT ABOUT BLOGGING ...................................................................................................................................... 145 BLOGS: HISTORY, TYPES, & RESEARCH ........................................................................................................................ 146

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OPEN LICENSE

You are free to: • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms: • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

• Non-Commercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

• Share-Alike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

• No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Please note that some pieces in this collection have a less restrictive license, meaning not all pieces in this collection are Non-Commercial or Share-Alike. Check footnotes for details.

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Readers become better writers.

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EXAMPLES OF STRATEGIES AND GENRES

Image titled “Laura Morgan” by While I was at Nottinghill Carnival. Flickr Creative Commons, CC-BY license.

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NARRATIVE: THE RIBBON

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She was beautiful in a strange, mysterious way. Her hair and her deep bottomless eyes were as black as the velvet ribbon around her neck. He planned to marry her before the next full moon rose in the autumn sky.

On their wedding, he watched her walked towards him up the long aisle. She was dressed in a white gown, a white veil, and carried a bouquet of white flowers. Even her face was ivory white. But below it, around the ivory neck, was the black velvet ribbon. He remembered staring at that ribbon as the strains of the wedding march brought his bride nearer to him. He remembered the curious and shocked looks on the faces of the wedding guests. But then his eyes met hers, and he was drowning in their bottomless darkness.

He didn’t think of the velvet ribbon during the rest of his wedding day. It was a joyous time, and if people thought his wife was a bit strange, they kept that to themselves. That night, when they were alone, he saw that the ribbon was still there, still circling her lovely neck.

“Don’t you ever take that ribbon from around your neck?” he asked, hoping his question was a needless one.

“You’ll be sorry if I do,” his wife answered, “so I won’t.”

Her answer disturbed him, but he did not question her further. There was plenty of time for her to change her ways Their life together fell into a pleasant pattern. They were happy, as most newly married couples are. He found her to be a perfect wife… well, nearly perfect. Although she had a great number of dresses and wore a different one every day, she never changed the black velvet ribbon. This ribbon began to be the test of their marriage. When he looked at her, his eyes would inevitably fall to her neck. When he kissed her, he could feel the ribbon tightening around his own throat.

“Won’t you please take that ribbon from around your neck?” he asked her time and time again.

“You’ll be sorry if I do, so I won’t.” This was always her answer. At first it teased him.

Then it began to grate on his nerves. Now it was beginning to infuriate him.

“You’ll be sorry if I do.”

“You’ll be sorry if I do.”

One day he tried to pull the ribbon off after she had repeated her answer, like a mechanical doll. It wouldn’t come loose from her neck. He realized then, for the first time, that

"How to Write an Essay/Free Response." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 2 Sep 2016, 21:20 UTC. 17 Sep 2019, 16:55 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=HowtoWriteanEssay/FreeResponse&oldid=3112781>. Licensed under CC-BY-SA. 1

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the ribbon had no beginning and no end. It circled her neck like a band of steel. He had drawn back from her in disgust that day. Things weren’t the same with them after that.

At the breakfast table, the black ribbon seemed to mock him as he drank his suddenly bitter coffee. In the afternoon, outside, the ribbon made a funeral out of the sunlight. But it was at night when it bothered him the most. He knew he could live with it no longer.

“Either take that ribbon off, or I will,” he said one night to his wife of only four weeks.

“You’ll be sorry if I do, so I won’t.” She smiled at him, and then fell off to sleep.

But he did not sleep. He lay there, staring at the hated ribbon. He had meant what he said. If she would not take off the ribbon, he would.

As she lay sleeping and unsuspecting, he crept out of bed and over to her sewing box.

He had seen a small, sharp scissors she kept there. It was thin enough, he knew, to slip between the velvet ribbon and her soft neck. Gripping the scissors in his trembling hands, he walked softly back to the bed. He came up to where she lay and stood over her. Her head was thrown back on the pillow, and her throat with the black velvet ribbon around it rose ever so slightly with her breathing.

He bent down, and with one swift movement, he forced the thin blade of the scissors under the ribbon. Then with a quick, triumphant snip, he severed the ribbon that had come between them.

The black velvet ribbon fell away from his wife’s neck… her head rolled off the bed and landed on the floor with a thump. She was muttering, “You’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry…”

Possible Assignments: •

Create your own narrative piece, with a surprise ending.

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DESCRIPTION: ESSAY OF PLACE The Lake Cabin2 It doesn’t seem like years have passed since I have been there, yet there is this plot of land I used to know that still holds a few truck-loads of my childhood memories. It holds, in its architectural grasp, many relaxed yesterdays that I hope to repeat at my own cabin one day.

My favorite place of retreat was my uncle Roger’s lake cabin. To me, being on a lake is the best pastime created – the most important end goal to have in life. There are outreaching trees, vast blue bodies of water, and roads that curve around hills, dip into valleys, and pull up alongside beaches. There are little creeks left undiscovered, sand castles still to be erected, and fish to be caught. Almost every memory out there was a great one.

My uncle has now modernized the plot more because he has retired from the Air Force.

Although he changed the cabin’s appearance, the memories are the same.

The area behind his garage was home to a few crazy kids long ago. We’d run around getting incredibly bit up digging for night crawlers to fish with and the boy cousins structuring their treehouse far up into the sky – accommodating to their bodies by adding a hose for their bathroom needs. The three-stall garage that sits opposite to the cabin across the road contains his prize possessions of a tiny red MG convertible and a 1952 Chevy truck (that is now in my father’s hands).

Walking tippy-toe on the hot blacktop road back to the cabin, any of us from the past can close our eyes and visualize his first cabin. The worn red wood holding two small bedrooms, his bar, a kitchen and bath, and the den-like area with a fireplace.

The “green” bedroom had two single bunk beds set up in the rafters with a ladder between that could be pulled up, so we wouldn’t fall the long way down. Many nights I stayed up there because I was the oldest. I would lie listening to the hail and rain hitting the roof only three feet from my head.

The small kitchen was the site to hamburgers, sloppy-joes, and hot dogs as has the bathroom to many statements like: “How did the sand get there?” or “Mom, I don’t wanna put on sunscreen (because all the other cousins were supposedly halfway to the middle of the lake)!” and “Who gets to sleep on the bunks THIS time?” The last question was typically from the little kids not realizing thirteen is bigger than two.

And around the corner lead to Roger’s bar. From behind it, one could stare straight at the lake. We would pretend to be bartenders making up dangerous shots of vermouth and

2 By Sybil Priebe. Written in an Intermediate Composition course: 16 Oct 1997 – Revised 30 Jan 2013: “The Lake Cabin.” Licensed under CC-BY.

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whiskey for imaginary customers. All this fun while the lake – Lake Melissa – sat there inviting us in. It begged us to jump off the dock & splash our least favorite siblings or cousins.

As one walked on the deck, underneath was Charlie’s home. Charlie was the friendliest chipmunk. As we ate outside on sunny summer days he’d peek out, and my uncle would feed him his entree of peanuts. The few rows of trees that stood before us in our journey to the water were most likely Charlie’s happy hunting grounds, but we also played many games of frisbee there.

Once on the hot sand, the sun would greet us with a penetrating warmth. In the city, people freak out about this warmth – sweating buckets, but this is the lake. The warmth is expected and required and on the itinerary. I can see us running quickly to the water’s edge and can remember the exact locations of all the sand castles I built. If I close my eyes, I can picture my earliest days on the beach with my siblings and cousins. My sister Alisa in her little blue bikini that never quite hid her baby belly, me in my ragged pink one, and both of us coated in SPF – smelling like five different types of coconuts.

If I glance back at the beginning of the 2x4s, which make the dock, I see our childhood bonfires of smores and red cheeks and giggles. I hear all the fights we endured – the big kids versus the little kids, for example – and our “so cool” comebacks and put-downs. Above that childhood chaos is the pole. Our uncle had placed a pole near the shore and put a bright orange windsock on top, so we could find our way home across the lake after much fishing or tubing. I can still recall when Robin climbed monkey-like up it to replace an old windsock, and how we cheered her on and took many pictures.

Jumping up onto the dock, careful not to get splinters, one could stroll down to the end of the 2x4s. In staring into the misty seaweeded water, I can spot minnows and small sunnies that Jed used to catch without bait. I saved two lives at that spot when I was younger. (Neither Robin or Jed were born with much balance apparently.) Peering over to other docks and boats, I turn right and remember the sunnie I caught at the landing next door. I was so excited and wanted to show our dad that I hastily ran over to show him but at the same time, I accidentally caught it in Alisa’s damp hair. She cried and my mom tried not to laugh.

If I were to dive off the dock into the cool water that comes up to my neck, I’d try to calculate the placement of the twenty-foot drop off. Way back then, I would’ve latched onto a tube and strategically climbed onto it (trying hard not to look too foolish). I’d remind myself, too, to not to go too far out or stay out on it too long and fall asleep – many of my sunburns have some from this situation before.

When we were young, and comfortably in the water, we’d scream to everyone that the water is warm “once you get used to it,” and our mom would grunt in opposition. Jed would run out and belly flop after rubbing sunscreen in large circles on his protruding stomach and back.

Later he would look alien-like with bright white and deep red skin in weird designs.

If time were to change while standing on that beach, the small cozy shack would be replaced with Roger’s design of an A-shaped home of great height. It encloses the many comforts of a true home; he has added a larger everything. The bar is more his style with Air Force memorabilia plastered on walls and in frames. He has used his old antique wood burning stove that once upon a time was used for drying extremely wet clothes, socks especially. Its major pipe leads all the way to the top of the thirty-foot ceiling; it’s hugged by enormous angular windows that encompass the whole wall of the lakeside of the cabin. The 10

area inside is mostly open except for a staircase that steers one up to a balcony of sorts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; three rooms are situated up there: a bath and two bedrooms. If one walks out of any of them, he/she would be in full view of the den, the lake peeping through the windows, and/or the kitchen.

The cabin and lakes, in general, have a tranquility to them unmastered, as far as I am concerned, by anywhere else.

A person can have a blast joking around with friends & family as a bonfire dies out, or take them down to a creek where the lakes meet and have them lose their jelly shoes. Or one can recline on sticky plastic chairs down on the beach and hope to catch a few rays to show off later in town during the week. The lakes are quiet serene gesture that opens its arms of sunshine and sand and invite you to the most peaceful heaven on earth. And still every time I think about wandering out to lakes country, to relax and take in nature, my mind ventures back to those scenes and conversations of cousins and sunscreen and smores.

Possible Assignments: â&#x20AC;˘

Compose your own descriptive essay, focusing on the senses of touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight.

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ILLUSTRATION: PUNCTUATION, MEMES, AND CHOICE

by Nikki Mantyla3 It’s okay to admit that punctuation use is a bit . . . overwhelming. There’s a lot of pressure knowing that our writing—and by extension, our intelligence—will be judged by our execution of said punctuation, as the meme so nicely informs us. Even worse, between text messaging, status updates, emails, assignments, and so on, our writing and its punctuation (or lack thereof) is constantly out there for others to see. Insert big gulp.

We might feel like Yoda is talking about us here:

Punctuation, Memes, and Choice by https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/punctuation-memes-andchoice/ Open English @ SLCC by SLCC English Department is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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The good news is that we live in the age of social media and its omnipresent, semi-helpful, ever-snarky memes. If we decipher them one by one, we might learn to understand their snide comments and avoid the traps they imply.

LESSON #1: PUNCTUATION IS POWERFUL Please note that punctuation isn’t as black and white as it is portrayed in some memes. Often there’s a lovely spectrum of available choices, and—as with other writing choices—what punctuation you decide to use affects how your words come across.

Think about the outrageous line shown in the meme: “A woman without her man is nothing.”

Punctuated one way, it belittles women; the other way, it belittles men. Left without punctuation, it confuses readers of any gender.

(Let me quickly say that I encourage neither gender-damning position—only the analysis of opposing effects.)

This first lesson is fundamental because when we recognize that punctuation is powerful we can anticipate how our markings lead to three possible outcomes: • emphasis • de-emphasis • confusion Many of us are already familiar with these effects in verbal conversations. People naturally give each other vocal or body-language signals to emphasize or de-emphasize what they’re saying. They might raise their voice or pause dramatically or make big gestures to convey importance, and they might shrug or snort or roll their eyes to imply something else is unimportant. If their signals are unclear, someone will express confusion: “Wait, what?” Then they’ll try again, slowing down and using a stronger tone so the emphasis isn’t lost this time.

Punctuation allows us to give those crucial cues in writing.

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Exclamation points and question marks are obvious examples, but many other written conventions are often overlooked—namely periods, paragraph breaks, semicolons, colons, parentheses, em dashes, and commas. Two of the best ways to stop overlooking them? Notice them and use them. Observe the punctuation in your textbook or your favorite novel (or this article, hint hint). Experiment with punctuation in your school papers and Facebook posts and texts.

Mastering punctuation’s power expands our repertoire for conveying meaning. The broader our repertoire, the more skillfully we can employ the most effective tools for each context. The better our skills, the more our personal style and voice can shine. (And the less the memes will gripe.)

LESSON #2: PERIODS AND PARAGRAPH BREAKS ARE PREFERRED Isn’t it funny how the most useful things get the least recognition because they’re so ordinary?

Periods and paragraph breaks make up the bulk of our convention’s arsenal—and for good reason! Imagine if all our sentences ended with exclamation points! Or with question marks?

No periods ever? And imagine if all the sentences were shoved together with no paragraph breaks! It would be chaos! Or at the very least, any emphasis would get lost pretty fast! So, should we use exclamation points and question marks sparingly? For sure!

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It’s crucial to stress that most of the time the period is where it’s at. A period emphasizes different (less shouty) way than an exclamation point. It’s essentially saying “the to each concept you describe.

in a end”

This also means that the longer you take to the period, the more emphasis gets lost the way. Readers pay the most attention to comes first (“Such an important-looking capital letter!”) and what comes last (“Why we stop here?”). Structure your sentences accordingly.

get to along what

Paragraph breaks function the same way with spacing instead of a mark. The extra space makes it so readers notice your paragraph’s beginning and ending the most.

Therefore, the shorter the paragraph, the it will stand out.

but

did

more

When your sentences or paragraphs go on for too long without any noticeable break in sight, readers start to wonder what point you’re making and why it’s taking so long to make it and how much longer before we can simply move on to the next idea already, since this one has been beaten to death without getting anywhere, other than winding through all the tangents with which you littered the ridiculously long and winding sentence. You run the risk of confusing the reader, and your emphasis is totally lost in the maze of way-too-many-words-and-too-few-stops you just spewed out in one big unorganized blob of utter madness.

It’s better to end your sentences and paragraphs more often to emphasize what you’re saying.

Don’t underestimate the power of simplicity.

That said, expectations for sentence length and paragraph size will vary by genre. More research-based, academic-level writing will typically have longer sentences and paragraphs, while writing that’s meant to be digested quickly, like news reports, will stick to short segments.

But unless you want to confuse your reader on purpose, avoid labyrinthine sentences and paragraphs in any genre. Get to the point.

LESSON #3: SEMICOLONS AND COLONS LIKE TO LINK Now that we’ve covered the basics (the stops), it’s time to move into less familiar territory: the middle marks. Punctuation that belongs mid-sentence can make a lot of people start to sweat.

But take a deep breath. We have memes here to help, like Ron Burgundy’s assurance: 15

How so? Because semicolons and colons can take the place of a period. You get to where the sentence could end, but then you decide to attach more. It’s a big deal because you get this awesome choice of hooking up your sentence with extra goodness.

Semicolons are the easiest ones, as the meme demonstrates.

Take two or more sentences; switch the period between them to a semicolon; now you’ve turned multiple sentences into one. That’s it.

The important consideration is why you would want to do that. Semicolons emphasize a connection between the statements. It’s subtle, but it makes the reader consider the reason for the link. Often there’s a compare/contrast situation, as in this case: 16

My mom loves brownies; my dad prefers pie.

Easy, right? Just make sure that each side could stand alone and that the connection is obvious.

What’s cool, too, is that semicolons could fix at least two of the world’s big problems. On a grammatical level, they absolve the blasphemy of unintended comma splices (two statements hitched together with just a comma). Replace the comma with a semicolon and voila!

On a more serious level, one group called Project Semicolon began promoting them in April 2013 for a surprising purpose: suicide prevention. The organization says, “A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you, and the sentence is your life.” Advocates draw or tattoo semicolons on their bodies as a tangible reminder to keep going; don’t end here; there’s still more life to live; continue on …

See? Told you punctuation is powerful.

And now that semicolons make sense, it’ll be easier to understand colons as well. Again, both of them replace a period, but here’s the thing: Semicolons are subtle; colons are blunt.

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Colons are like a drumroll: they loudly announce (with a big, dramatic pause) that you’re about to provide an explanation hinted at in the preceding statement. You could think of it like this: Statement filled with anticipation: delivery.

Unlike with semicolons, the second part of the sentence doesn’t have to be another full statement. There are lots of choices after a colon: a single word, a list, a quote. In each case, you make a statement suggesting more info to follow, place a colon where you could end with a period, and then deliver on the expectations by providing extra details: like this. It’s the same way a digital clock uses a colon to detail the minutes after stating the hour. Trust me: colons come in handy.

One last option is putting a noun in place of the anticipatory statement. You’re saying, “I’m about to explain this word.” We’re used to this structure thanks to Webster. Conclusion: it’s no big deal.

LESSON #4: PARENTHESES LOVE TO INTERRUPT If punctuation marks had personalities, they would be the kind of people who butt into the middle of conversations. Parentheses whisper tidbits in your ear.

We all know the household rule that any parentheses you open must be closed (unless you’re going for Most Interesting Man in the World, like the meme). We also know to use them at a logical point in the sentence or paragraph (when our tangent will make sense).

It’s also good to understand that parentheses de-emphasize. You place them around unimportant parts of the sentence that could be completely removed without changing the overall meaning. Anything that is crucial to the sentence should stay outside the parentheses (such as the period on the end). (Unless the whole sentence is in parentheses, like a long whisper.)

LESSON #5: COMMAS SAVE LIVES It’s time to address the most infamous punctuation meme of all: 18

Commas are punctuation heroes in more than one sense. Not only do they save the lives of everyone invited to dinner, they also fill in for a lot of their fellow punctuation marks to give the other guys a break. They’re the ultimate substitutes, ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. They also do their job humbly, deemphasizing the punctuation’s role in the sentence. We use them when we don’t want to call attention to the structure.

The hardest part is identifying which comma is doing what. They’re like little elves, small and identical and busy-at-work everywhere. At first, it’s tough to tell a clause elf from a parenthetical elf from a series elf from a quotation elf, so they are highlighted below to help you spot them.

The Clause Comma A clause comma substitutes for a period or semicolon, yet it needs a buddy. A semicolon would only imply a connection, but a clause comma spells out the connection using one of its FANBOYS. FANBOYS is an acronym for seven connector words you can choose from, and they are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. Comma + connector work as a team, so they’re strong enough to hold two statements together.

The Parenthetical Comma A parenthetical comma jumps in for (you guessed it!) parentheses. Use it when you don’t want to whisper or shout but instead talk in, like, a normal voice. These commas often come in pairs, like twins, the way parentheses do. You could think of them as handles on a tray to lift the removable interruption right out. However, sometimes the removable part will come at the beginning or end, as “however” does here, and then you only need one comma.

The Quotations Comma 19

A quotation comma can take the place of a formal intro with a colon. Think how stuffy we’d sound if we introduced every quote with a full statement and a colon like a butler with a calling card. Thanks to the quotation’s comma, we can move in and out of quotations more casually.

For example: “I have trouble,” the meme says, “with punctuation.” The comma pairs with any version of says (asked/joked, etc.) to clarify who is doing the talking.

The Series Comma A series comma replaces or precedes the word and in a list in order to separate the items. It’s a very organized sort of comma and likes to keep everybody straight. Sounds like a boring job, but it creates more options than you’d think. Notice the meme below, which demonstrates the potential confusion resulting from a missing serial comma.

The “extra” comma it needs is called an Oxford comma, which would clarify it’s a list, not a parenthetical description of your parents. But before you condemn those who dismiss the Oxford comma (like Vampire Weekend’s expletiveemphasized song line, “Who gives a [bleep] about an Oxford comma?”), let’s look at how our series-comma choices create various effects.

You could use a series comma + and to emphasize each item: • . . . take out the trash, and wash all the dishes, and finish the laundry, and mow the lawn, and clean your room.

You could omit all series commas to convey feeling rushed/overwhelmed: • . . . four essays and two tests and five classes and three labs and twenty hours of work this week!

You could alternate between a series comma vs. and to sort out groups: • . . . Kermit and Miss Piggy, Obama and Michelle and their girls, Oprah and Dr. Phil, George and Mary Bailey.

You could use only series commas to push the emphasis after the list: • . . . pearls, gourmet dinners, fancy parties, beautiful flowers—no good since she hates anything froufrou.

Again, isn’t it amazing how much power a little mark can have?

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One final series to be aware of is the complex series. It happens when you add details about the items in the list, such as what state each city is in, and the extra commas require semicolons to beef up the separation between the main items, as the meme shows: Got it?

If not, don’t be dismayed. It can take a while to tell these little guys apart. Once you know your commas*, you won’t have to guess anymore. You can decide where you need them, want them, or can get away without them.

CONCLUSION Now, after the several lessons the memes have taught today, the biggest choice that remains is how you will use this knowledge for good and not for evil. Do not troll social media for poor punctuation and lambast the unwitting souls who know no better. Instead, use your powers to create effective messages, effective memes, and effective emphasis. The end.

*Comma placement can vary somewhat by author preference. In the case of optional exceptions, play with inserting and removing the commas, reading your sentence with and without them, and then trust your gut.

Possible Assignments: • • •

Mimic the above piece and find your own memes in order to illustrate your own examples/stories about a topic of your choice.

Create original memes about punctuation.

What punctuation marks were not covered? Create an illustration piece of those, along with original memes, perhaps.

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PROCESS ANALYSIS: HOW TO WRITE A KICK@SS ESSAY WITH HALF THE STRESS These steps will aid you in creating an amazing rough draft for an essay assignment. So, follow them the best you can. Get a snack, put on some good music, and let’s do this!

Materials Needed: Your lovely brain, a pen or pencil, paper, and eventually a computer.

1. Find out what teacher wants: Get the assignment and break it down into parts; this breakdown becomes the skeleton of your project or paper – Spooky?!

2. Don't start with introduction; start with first body paragraph because your paper doesn't exist yet - it just leads to being stumped; you’re trying to write an intro for a paper that doesn’t exist yet!

3. Your awesome body paragraphs: Each paragraph should focus on one thing have examples and be descriptive; show don’t tell!

4. Conclusion paragraph: the conclusion is like the end of a 30-second commercial where they hold the product up and the end just in case you forgot you were watching a Hot Pockets commercial.

5. Intro paragraph: Now that you have some kickass body paragraph and a conclusion, rewrite your conclusion as an intro; Slap a badass thesis statement on the end of the intro!

6. Create a badass thesis statement: Remember that skeleton we made in STEP ONE? Get that out; Make a single sentence that talks about all those points.

7. Quotes are a great way to make yourself look credible and add length to your paper. a. You need to talk before and after a quote. b. Tell people who you’re quoting. c. Tell people why they should care.

8. Citations! Fun fact = MS Word’s citation maker is the scum of the earth. Never use it. Use citationmachine.net instead OR make your own (it takes the same amount of time).

9. Done! Go get yourself a milkshake because you have a rough draft, my friend; Be proud!

Possible Assignments: •

Compose your own process analysis piece, taking a “boring” topic and making it humorous.

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COMPARE AND CONTRAST: LONDON VS. WASHINGTON DC

By Scott McLean4 Both Washington, DC, and London are capital cities of English-speaking countries, and yet they offer vastly different experiences to their residents and visitors. Comparing and contrasting the two cities based on their history, their culture, and their residents show how different and similar the two are.

Both cities are rich in world and national history, though they developed on very different time lines. London, for example, has a history that dates back over two thousand years. It was part of the Roman Empire and known by the similar name, Londinium. It was not only one of the northernmost points of the Roman Empire but also the epicenter of the British Empire where it held significant global influence from the early sixteenth century on through the early twentieth century. Washington, DC, on the other hand, has only formally existed since the late eighteenth century. Though Native Americans inhabited the land several thousand years earlier, and settlers inhabited the land as early as the sixteenth century, the city did not become the capital of the United States until the 1790s. From that point onward to today, however, Washington, DC, has increasingly maintained significant global influence. Even though both cities have different histories, they have both held, and continue to hold, significant social influence in the economic and cultural global spheres.

Both Washington, DC, and London offer a wide array of museums that harbor many of the world’s most prized treasures. While Washington, DC, has the National Gallery of Art and several other Smithsonian galleries, London’s art scene and galleries have a definite edge in this category. From the Tate Modern to the British National Gallery, London’s art ranks among the world’s best. This difference and advantage has much to do with London and Britain’s historical depth compared to that of the United States. London has a much richer past than Washington, DC, and consequently has a lot more material to pull from when arranging its collections. Both cities have thriving theater districts, but again, London wins this comparison, too, both in quantity and quality of theater choices. With regard to other cultural places like restaurants, pubs, and bars, both cities are very comparable. Both have a wide selection of expensive, elegant restaurants as well as a similar amount of global and national chains. While

4 Provided by: Lumen Learning. “Comparing and Contrasting London and Washington, DC.” Authored by: Scott

McLean. Located at: http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/successful-writing/s14-07-comparison-andcontrast.html. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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London may be better known for its pubs and taste in beer, DC offers a different bar-going experience. With clubs and pubs that tend to stay open later than their British counterparts, the DC night life tend to be less reserved overall.

Both cities also share and differ in cultural diversity and cost of living. Both cities share a very expensive cost of living—both in terms of housing and shopping. A downtown one-bedroom apartment in DC can easily cost $1,800 per month, and a similar “flat” in London may double that amount. These high costs create socioeconomic disparity among the residents. Although both cities’ residents are predominantly wealthy, both have a significantly large population of poor and homeless. Perhaps the most significant difference between the resident demographics is the racial makeup. Washington, DC, is a “minority majority” city, which means the majority of its citizens are races other than white. In 2009, according to the US Census, 55 percent of DC residents were classified as “Black or African American” and 35 percent of its residents were classified as “white.” London, by contrast, has very few minorities—in 2006, 70 percent of its population was “white,” while only 10 percent was “black.” The racial demographic differences between the cities is drastic.

Even though Washington, DC, and London are major capital cities of English-speaking countries in the Western world, they have many differences along with their similarities. They have vastly different histories, art cultures, and racial demographics, but they remain similar in their cost of living and socioeconomic disparity.

Possible Assignments: •

Mimic the essay by comparing and contrasting two, or more, items that appear to have as many differences as they do similarities. o For example, if you have taken both online and face-to-face courses, how are they alike and how do they differ?

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DIVISION AND CLASSIFICATION: ETHOS, PATHOS, AND LOGOS IN COMMERCIALS

By Alexander Eberhart5 Production masterminds create television commercials to show consumers the variety of options available to them and to convince those same people that the products and services they see can improve their lives. Most Americans passively view commercials as an accepted part of television and might believe they are immune to the effects of these tricky advertisements. However, these advertisements may influence a television viewer later when that viewer is in, say, the grocery store without him or her realizing it. What mop is the viewer going to purchase without having done a lot of independent research? Perhaps, it will be one like Swiffer that has gotten a lot of air time and has an appealing message. Viewers can mitigate the impact of cunning advertising by actively engaging the messages and understanding the way commercials utilize the modes of persuasion—ethos, pathos, and logos—to push certain products.

According to the Excelsior College Online Writing Lab (OWL), the modes of persuasion are “ways of convincing your audience of something or at least getting your audience to listen to what you have to say,” and these modes can be used for many purposes, good or bad (or somewhere in between). All three modes appear in television commercials. The first category of commercial contains ethos, an appeal to the credibility of the author, speaker, or another party who has information on the topic (Excelsior College). Celebrity endorsements are one type of advertisement that frequently appeal to ethos by highlighting a person the public recognizes and, perhaps, likes. For example, L’Oreal showcases different actresses in their segments on hair products. In a recent clip, Lea Michele of Glee fame gives the viewer five reasons to “change shampoo” (876fashion). Lea Michele is a wealthy woman with access to all the best beauty products; she has great hair—long, silky, and full—and her character on Glee is pretty cool. A consumer might think all of these things and decide Lea Michele knows a thing or two about shampoo. The next time the consumer is at the store, L’Oreal Total Repair ends up in the cart. Professional-opinion ads are another class of ethos appeal. In these, the creators highlight a professional, or an actor playing a professional, talking about the product or service. One current Sensodyne toothpaste commercial begins with a dentist extrapolating the benefits of this brand: it is recommended by dentists, and it is “new, fresh, and exciting”

5

Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License. Found here: https://owl.excelsior.edu/rhetorical-styles/classification-and-divisionessay/classification-and-division-essay-see-it-in-practice/

25

(BowserHasSpikes). Consumers are bombarded with different products every day, so one recommendation from a person who appears to be an authority may be just enough to sway their decisions. The danger in ethos appeals on television, as in other mediums, is exploitation.

A company might conjure up the façade of objective authority by monetary means or by obscuring the fine print that reads “theatrical rendition.”

The second category is pathos advertisements, or appeals that utilize emotion. The Excelsior College OWL explains, “We are more often moved by our emotions than by logic or common sense, so pathos is a powerful mode of persuasion.” Companies that advertise know this and will often extort these emotional reactions. Cruelty commercials are one class of pathos appeals and include ads for the ASPCA, religious groups, and humanitarian missions. In one commercial for the ASPCA, singer Sarah McLachlan pleads with viewers to financially support the group while her ballad “Angel” plays and pictures of abused animals slowly fade in and out (Bofeld86). For any soft-hearted animal lover, this combination is excruciating, and many do not resist her plea. The pathos is effective.

Another type of pathos ad goes for sensation and shock, such as the string of “bad drug” commercials. In one of these, an intense male voice breaks the silence and demands, “Attention parents of boys who took Risperdal” (Pulaski Middleman). Any parent whose child has taken Risperdal or a similar medication is going to immediately be engaged. The voice then relays that some male patients have grown “female breasts” as a result of the drug, and their families have successfully sued the drug manufacturer. The announcement is forceful, fast (only thirty seconds), and meant to raise strong emotions of panic or distaste.

Logos commercials are the final category of persuasive ads. The Excelsior College OWL defines logos as “the facts we present in our writing and the logical manner in which we present our ideas.” Logos is logic, and logic is usually respected, which gives logos in advertising the potential to be the most effective and the most insidious. One type of logos argument seeks to convince viewers of a product’s ability to improve life. In the most recent line of Swiffer ads, the company presents a real family who has a cleaning conundrum. For example, Lee and Morty Kaufman are both ninety years old, and traditional cleaning has becomes dangerous for them. Swiffer then sends them a gift box. Suddenly, “the everyday effect” of the Swiffer extendable duster and Wet Jet mop have solved the only problem of this adorable couple (Swiffer). The ad ends with statistics on how much cleaner Swiffer products make the home. These products solve a logical problem, and it is, therefore, logical to use them instead of the old products. Logos is at work.

The Kaufman ad is also an example of another type of logos argument in television: oneupping ads. In these commercials, the company seeks to convince the viewer that their product is better than one the viewer is already using, even if the original product is not necessarily ineffective. Many technology ads use this approach. The Kindle Fire HDX ad demonstrates the superiority of the Kindle in terms of screen display, weight, and price when compared with the iPad (Kindle). With the exception of price, these are features the average consumer may not notice, but the ad points out the technological inferiority of the iPad point by 26

point. Logos now seems to say the Kindle is the better buy, even if there is nothing really problematic about the iPad. Whether or not viewers pay much attention to television commercials, the messages have an impact, subliminal or overt, on choices about products and service. Companies set out to persuade with these short clips, and they use the classic modes of persuasion—ethos, pathos, and logos—to get their audience’s attention. The modes of persuasion can take on different forms, as pathos does in cruelty commercials and sensation ads, but each is designed to convince the viewer of a certain position, whether honestly or dishonestly.

Works Cited Bofeld86. “ASPCA announcement w/ Sarah McLachlan.” Online video clip. YouTube.

YouTube, 12 Jan. 2008. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

BowserHasSpikes. “Sensodyne Toothpaste Commercial.” Online video clip. YouTube.

YouTube, 30 Mar. 2012. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

Excelsior College. “Modes of Persuasion.” Excelsior College OWL. Excelsior College. 2014.

Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

Kindle. “New Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 vs. iPad Air: Sharper, Lighter, For Less.” Online video clip.

YouTube. YouTube, 29 Nov. 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

Pulaski Middleman. “Risperdal Causes Abnormal Male Breast Growth.” Online video clip.

YouTube.

YouTube, 14 Aug. 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

Swiffer. “The Power of the Everyday Effect.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 2 July 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

876fashion. “Lea Michele Glee] New Commercial Loreal Total Repair 5 TV.” Online video clip.

YouTube. YouTube, 23 June 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

Possible Assignments: •

Compose your own essay dividing and classifying an issue into three or more categories. o For example, what can commercials be broken down into beyond their use of ethos, pathos, and logos? How about sexism, racism, and ageism?

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CAUSE AND EFFECT: EFFECTS OF VIDEO GAME ADDICTION

By Scott McLean6 Video game addition is a serious problem in many parts of the world today and deserves more attention. It is no secret that children and adults in many countries throughout the world, including Japan, China, and the United States, play video games every day. Most players are able to limit their usage in ways that do not interfere with their daily lives, but many others have developed an addiction to playing video games and suffer detrimental effects.

An addiction can be described in several ways, but generally speaking, addictions involve unhealthy attractions to substances or activities that ultimately disrupt the ability of a person to keep up with regular daily responsibilities. Video game addiction typically involves playing games uncontrollably for many hours at a time—some people will play only four hours at a time while others cannot stop for over twenty-four hours. Regardless of the severity of the addiction, many of the same effects will be experienced by all.

One common effect of video game addiction is isolation and withdrawal from social experiences. Video game players often hide in their homes or in Internet cafés for days at a time—only reemerging for the most pressing tasks and necessities. The effect of this isolation can lead to a breakdown of communication skills and often a loss in socialization. While it is true that many games, especially massive multiplayer online games, involve a very real form of e-based communication and coordination with others, and these virtual interactions often result in real communities that can be healthy for the players, these communities and forms of communication rarely translate to the types of valuable social interaction that humans need to maintain typical social functioning. As a result, the social networking in these online games often gives the users the impression that they are interacting socially, while their true social lives and personal relations may suffer.

Another unfortunate product of the isolation that often accompanies video game addiction is the disruption of the user’s career. While many players manage to enjoy video games and still hold their jobs without problems, others experience challenges at their workplace. Some may

6 Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution. “Effects of Video Game Addiction.” Authored by: Scott

McLean. Located at: http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/successful-writing/s19-09-cause-and-effectessay.html. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.

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only experience warnings or demerits as a result of poorer performance, or others may end up losing their jobs altogether. Playing video games for extended periods of time often involves sleep deprivation, and this tends to carry over to the workplace, reducing production and causing habitual tardiness.

Video game addiction may result in a decline in overall health and hygiene. Players who interact with video games for such significant amounts of time can go an entire day without eating and even longer without basic hygiene tasks, such as using the restroom or bathing.

The effects of this behavior pose significant danger to their overall health.

The causes of video game addiction are complex and can vary greatly, but the effects have the potential to be severe. Playing video games can and should be a fun activity for all to enjoy.

But just like everything else, the amount of time one spends playing video games needs to be balanced with personal and social responsibilities.

Possible Assignments: â&#x20AC;˘

Compose your own essay speaking to cause and effect in your own life. o For example: How does living in a fatphobic society affect oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mental health if they are naturally a larger person?

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MEMOIR GENRE: GETTING LET GO

7

"You should write a story about this." One of my professors says to me at the English Department workshop. She had asked the deadly question, "Where have you been since you graduated?" and I had responded with the following: +++ The classroom phone rings in the middle of my only freshman class, 5th period. A few students dare me to answer in a particular way, and since I figure it’s the main office with a question, I smile. Carol, the secretary, I think will get a kick out of it.

“Jack’s Pizza Palace, will this be delivery or carry-out?” My freshmen giggle.

“Sybil, this is Mr. Bichston,” my heart rate increases substantially. It’s the superintendent.

“Yes?” “I need to see you in my office this afternoon. To discuss next year’s schedule,” And with those words, my gut instinct kicks in. I am about to get “let go.” +++ When I graduated from college in 1999, I applied everywhere for a middle school or high school English teaching job. For weeks, I waited and waited. Finally, a call came from a small school in Minnesota. In a rich district.

I interviewed. I toured the facility. I was offered the job on the spot. I accepted without hesitation.

But, by the time I moved to the small town located an hour and half from Fargo in August, I was single again, yet ready to dive into teaching. I threw myself into preparations.

Decorating my huge classroom, learning the program that would put together the school’s yearbook, reading up on all the materials I would teach, as well as meeting new faces every day that I would eventually remember. I was naïve, that much is obvious, but I had high hopes for myself. I listened to everyone’s advice; I kept my mouth shut when gossip would arise. For that first year, I just tried to be the teacher I thought I was in my head.

The people who couldn't look me in the eyes were the ones who would end up determining my future. At the end of my first year, reflection for next year began and at about the same time that I thought of all my changes I was called into the superintendent's office for a "meeting." He (who had never stepped into my room for longer than a sneeze) proceeded to tell me, all the things I had done incorrectly while the principal sat there and said nothing. The principal, a stout fellow who had tried to retire a few times, had given me high marks in every evaluation.

He even had a list. Why didn’t I learn of these things sooner?

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Written by Sybil Priebe. Licensed under CC-BY.

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The list included, but was not limited to, my relationship with the students (I was "too friendly"), my attire (my clothing was respectable), and teaching style (allowing the students to think and feel instead of memorizing facts and how they should think and feel about the literature we were reading). I feel NO need to defend myself because I know that nothing I did was wrong - it was, simply put, different and that scared him. At most, I was a naĂŻve teacher, but, really, when was I going to learn exactly what was expected of me? They had no teacher orientation.

I probably scared a lot of people in that community. I am a young, female teacher that defends her beliefs and ways of doing things. Plus, I didn't want to date (long reasons why) in the community and so that was excessively taboo to them.

Luckily, I was allowed to come back and try to improve myself (which meant to be a little less me and more of someone else I wasn't). I was grateful to come back because of the students. That is the reason many teach. It's obviously not the pay, and it isn't the parents, and it isn't the administration. It IS the kids.

I spent most of the summer as far AWAY from the community as possible. This was the lake town I had fallen in love with at first glance, and I was spending the warm summer back in Fargo with my sister. I began to doubt myself and my teaching and I also thought many people were talking about me. My parents worried about me and my friends told me to leave the teaching position.

The next school year began easier than the first and like many schools in the area, we had another new batch of teachers coming in. Of all of them, I hit it off with three of the ladies, and we all started hanging out. Stress was alleviated with getting together to vent, and, yes, have a cocktail. I make no excuses for these activities because without them I would have probably killed myself or ended up in a mental facility. And these activities were not because of how the kids affected me, but because of the everyday chaos: parents who think their ideas are better and administration that appeared so shallow even the youngest students could see through their fake exteriors.

It was rough, but with every evaluation from this new principal, I got better and received high marks again. Out of all the bad things mentioned the May before, the outstanding thing I had managed to do was produce an excellent yearbook. So once again, we did.

Flashback to the dialogue at the beginning of this essay - in March of my second year there, I was informed of a meeting. That Wednesday afternoon, I headed to the same office from the May before. While walking through the Media Center, I took a huge deep breath and told myself that it was happening for a reason. An unknown reason to me at that time, but a reason, nonetheless.

He was blunt. My contract was not going to be renewed; the reason was that I didn't add up to "district standards," and that I should finish up the year "strong."

I sat there as they blabbed on about how "firing people" was not a fun part of their job, and I thought of beating them up. One has to understand, I am not a violent person and here I was with so much adrenaline inside of me that I could have exploded with fire. They made me doubt myself - that was what hurt the most.

In a daze, I returned to my room and emailed my family and close friends. I was still in shock as I told my friends throughout the evening, and they took me out because all of them 31

knew that deep down, I needed companions that night. I am still grateful for that and always, always will be.

The students wouldn't find out for a week because it had to be approved by the school board the following Tuesday, and I even sat in on the meeting to try to look into the eyes of the parents who had told me I was doing a great job throughout both years. They never looked up, and it was all taken care of in seconds. Again, I was utterly crushed.

Trying to teach class the next day and months to follow were difficult. I wrote out what I needed to say to them so I wouldn't choke up. Besides not being violent, I am also not one that ever wants/wanted to show my feelings to the students. They were either completely shocked, saddened, or mad. Many voices were raised in anger towards anything that had to do with it all. Some tried to convince me to stay as if it was my choice. I received hugs the entire day and frequently until the end of the year too. Heart-wrenching is not the word for it. I am still recovering.

I used many things to numb the pain from that day on. Denial, partying on the weekends, and various trips to see friends to simply get away and drown myself in my music while driving in my car. My decision as to what to do next, however, was made only hours after being "let go." I was going to Graduate School. I didn't want to deal with any school politics anymore. No one deserves to have to question themselves constantly, to doubt themselves, or to get such little respect.

On graduation night that May, the girl who spoke first on behalf of her class, Natalie, brought me to tears as soon as ones started to stream down her rosy cheeks. I finally cried, and it hurt. Yet, as she spoke of going onward on their paths through college and life, I realized that that pertained to me, too.

Possible Assignments: â&#x20AC;˘

Compose a piece like the one above, reflecting on a specific time in your life when you learned a big lesson.

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PROFILE GENRE: MY DAD

8

“It just doesn’t get any better than this.”

Most people would not like to admit that that phrase reminds them of their father, but I do for one reason. It makes me smile to think of him relaxing with a cold one because of the hard work he does to have them sit in the downstairs fridge. I don’t think I would have lived in the house I did or have the car I do now if my dad didn’t work his exhausting job. He is a construction worker. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him if it wasn’t for the dark rugged skin that wrinkles across his face and arms. He is small compared to his colleagues. At a mere five foot nine and at 160 pounds those machines could toss him around like baby sunfish. He has all these long hours under his small gut and yet fails to complain about it like I would. Why he does this for us I will never know.

The money aspect of his life is of no worry to him. He knows he has enough, and it shows as we shop for groceries. Mom is the one pulling out coupons; he, the one buying five different kinds of Little Debbie snacks for his lunch box. But when it comes to clothing, his jeans are of another matter. The patches he puts in them are of no fashion but are of great quality and productivity. And as for shopping, of all the places on earth to spend a day looking at items, his is Menards and Fleet Farm by far. Tools are my dad’s best friend.

He now shows signs of growing unfortunately old with odd back problems and constant chiropractic visits – a person who I once believed invincible to decay as he pulled us zooming through snowbanks or making his famous banana bread recipe. Even after those nights of Monopoly that Mom refused to play because we got so competitive (she lost all the time or claimed to lose all the time - some people just can’t handle the pressure), he would still be up at five, six, or seven a.m. ready to snowplow the white streets of Wahpeton or lay cement for a new apartment building. He would then return every night either late after a cocktail with other fellows in dirty bibs or early in time for dinner to tell us to do good in school even though he almost failed fourth grade. The winters, when he was laid off, were great when dad had his delicious brownies for us to come home to but also bad when he’d force us into doing chores (he taught me how to do laundry). Dad was occasionally goofy with us stepping on our feet as we watched television or pinning us down to tickle us for a year. Like a father, projects pile up and become his middle name. He has structured our deck and redone each room in the house at least seven times always wanting more outlets.

Vacations and holidays were spent at either family’s place but his side was the biggest and more laid back. Grandpa, his dad, would shake the presents to tease us and his mother

8

Written by Sybil Priebe in Intermediate Composition: 25 Sept 1997; edited in 2019 and licensed under CC-BY.

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had baked food and deserts bound to make you plump up. His siblings, once silly and having drank or not, had many stories on each other, enough to make Grandma blush with unknowingness. Like the one about him bringing beer to sell at his prom instead of going in to actually dance, the girl he had had a crush on, and the lies they told to go drag racing in town and then stopping at the basketball game to have a score for their parents to believe.

He entered the army after high school, and all he ever mentions related to that was that he found out many secrets that would cause him to have to kill you if he told you and some important German phrases (how much? I'll have a beer? Ain’t she cute!) that he still remembers and shouts at us to make us fearful, as if we weren’t already.

My parents met at a party of an acquaintance of both. He had brought some imported beer (or just liquor?) to share and she was the major share-ee of the night. Supposedly, three months later, he proposed, and I was on the way too. He was initiated into my mom’s family through a bar date with my mom’s dad and my uncle Roger, who drank both of them under the table that night. He is a funny dancer now so I wonder what his two-step was like then. The pictures show a very young long-haired hippie-looking boy with an equally young curvaceous blonde who was practically in a convent before she met him. One photo has him with all the older ladies, friends of my grandmother I assume, all giggling about. He must have been quite a hit.

Dad is a firm believer in Old Milwaukee beer as well as the Twins, Vikings, and the fact that money will never grow on trees and if it ever does he will shave of the gray scratchy beard he’s had since he was born. He drives each one of us kids personally nuts with phrases we could be rich with if we had a quarter every time he said them. From “I’ll kick you into next week” to “We’ll see” and “Jesus Martha” for the moments when a hammer would meet his thumb. Sometimes these fits of rage would carry away his thinking power and jumbles of words would pour out such as – “HOW MANY CHAIRS DOES A LEG HAVE!?”

Our personal relationship has had its ups and deep crevices. I grew up as a tomboy (part of me still is), and I find nothing wrong with it, but I am sure it came mostly from my dad’s influence. He and I, I think have the same “I am the oldest” responsibility trait as well as other close characteristics. Along with having his “sad” gray-green-blue eyes comes the difficulty of our stubbornness. I could always see his point but he had to see mine, which at my younger ages, just wouldn’t have been heard of. I can remember the fight we had over the fourth of July one summer. I had to illustrate my point but I had already failed in their eyes with my stupidity (which always got me into trouble). I also felt guilty for not having made it into the architecture program here (at NDSU). I thought I had let them down. Dad said I hadn’t, as he hugged me and asked me to stay the night and not run off in a state which he felt would not be good to drive in. I went into architecture when I first came here to college because I wanted to be like him and construct and create. Now when I call or when they call he wants to make sure I am okay but most of all, he wants to make sure the automobile is still running and isn’t out of oil.

Sometimes it is hard to believe that he and my mom still love me even after all the horrible teenage things I did to them. There are certain things I wish I had taken back, or should have said to tell them why I did it. Somehow, they forgive you and you have to forgive them because if it weren’t for them you wouldn’t be typing your composition paper on them just to remember everything they taught you or said to made you laugh or didn’t do to make you cry.

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I can still remember the scent of his cologne walking down the stairs before he and mom would go out, the feeling of his hug the night they found out how depressed I was and he said he had felt that way too, but I will never forget the day I graduated and he held me and said that he loved me. It felt good and strong and I knew I was going to be alright. Four kids, twenty-one married to mom years, and forty million sunburns later, he is still working in Wahpeton at Kost Brothers tinkering in his own work shed and sometimes driving his 1952 Chevy truck. He has what he told himself he had always wanted. A stable job, some crazy kids, and house that he will never be cold in “cuz HE SAYS SO.”

Possible Assignments: •

Compose your own profile of a person in your family. Make sure to “show” rather than “tell” the reader about the person’s personality, habits, likes and dislikes, ambitions as well as a helpful description of them as a human.

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THE ESSAY GENRE

“Kinetika Bloco, London Marathon 2015” by Paul Wilkinson taken 26apr15; Flickr Creative Commons; CC-BY license.

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COLLECTION: FIVE SHORT ESSAYS Karen Anderson9

Death of a Neighbor I am scanning the obituaries in the local paper when I see the name of a neighbor, someone who lived not far from me. I didn’t know she was ill, and I feel strangely empty and sad. We weren’t friends, really, but I knew her name and a little about her work and family.

This is a small town, and if you live here long enough, you run into a lot of people. She and I said hello occasionally at the grocery store or library.

But while I gaze at her picture and read her obituary, I recall that I didn’t like her. Which meant I would acknowledge her when we met but didn’t stop to talk. Didn’t make an effort to get better acquainted.

And when I try to remember why I didn’t like her, I cannot think of a single reason.

Whatever triggered my irritation was so insignificant, it has vanished. While the irritation remained. Now my sorrow about her death expands to include my own smallness, my petty grievances. I am ashamed to admit how these unexamined opinions linger—and limit my life.

Sometimes it’s too late to make amends. I close the newspaper and sip my cold coffee.

She was my neighbor and I never thought much about her until now. I can remember her jogging slowly down the street, her face flushed. A pretty woman.

Gradual Clearing Under a gray sky, we load the canoe onto the truck, choosing to believe the forecast: “becoming partly sunny.” But the gloomy weather suits my mood.

“You okay?” my husband asks.

“I feel sort of depressed,” I say.

The wind is sharp as we push off into the Manistee River and I wish I’d worn long underwear. On this late fall day, the water is low but the colors are high. Red and orange and yellow, the oaks and maples stand along the bluffs, shining with their own light.

“Let’s stop on that island for coffee,” Daniel says, and we sit on a birch log to open the thermos. I hold the steaming cup close to my face and munch a piece of molasses cookie.

“No sun yet,” I say.

Karen Anderson is a writer who lives in Traverse City, Michigan. Her 30-year writing career has included journalism and marketing. These essays, which she wrote and read on her weekly feature on Interlochen Public Radio, are published in her collection, Gradual Clearing: Weather Reports from the Heart, Arbutus Press, 2017. Six Short Essays by Karen Anderson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

9

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“I’m still glad we came,” he says.

Back in the canoe, I tie my bonnet under my chin. Around the next bend I see a brilliant red maple leaning far out over the river—the river that will eventually claim its life but now reflects its beauty. I want to have the courage to lean out over my death, I think. Over my life.

To risk believing I am valuable and I belong. Right here, right now.

It’s mostly cloudy when we end our trip four hours later. As I look up, searching for blue, I feel a pleasant ache in my shoulders.

“How are you doing?” my husband asks.

“Gradual clearing,” I say.

My Grandparents’ House When I can’t sleep, I go back to my grandparents’ house and open the front door. There was no vestibule so you walked right into the living room. The coat closet had a stained-glass window in blue and gold and violet.

I know that place by heart and can still stand in each room and picture the furnishings: the Victorian couch, the console radio, the four-poster twin beds upstairs. As a child, I often stayed overnight and it was a refuge from the confusions of my own home—my mother’s sadness, my father’s rage. Before I went to sleep, Nanna sat on the edge of the bed in her long nightgown and we talked awhile. “Are you warm enough?” she’d ask.

Looking back, I realize my grandparents’ house was modest in size but it seemed huge to me. Huge and calm and welcoming. In the living room, I sat beside Grandpa and listened to him read Longfellow’s poem, The Song of Hiawatha. I liked the way the words made music.

In the dining room, our family gathered for special meals, using the good dishes from the big mahogany breakfront. Nanna always told the grandchildren, “Don’t eat any more than you want.” Which meant you could take an extra biscuit and not finish it.

It meant you had permission to be yourself, something I didn’t feel anywhere else.

Permission to sit on the floor of the coat closet in the dark and feel safe—watching the light come through the colored glass.

Rental When I left my first marriage, I moved into a small rental house with my ten-year-old daughter. The floors creaked and the windows leaked and the oven door wouldn’t close—but I loved the place. It felt cozy and funky and just the right size for my downsized life.

Then, after I’d lived there about six months, my landlord stopped by to tell me he had a buyer for the house. “But I like it here,” I said, “and I’m in the middle of a divorce.”

Frederik and I sat on the grass in the back yard and talked awhile and finally he stood up. “I went through a divorce,” he said. “I won’t sell the house.”

I stayed for five years, and figured out how to keep the oven door closed with a hanger and a rubber band. Also, how to be a single mom, a single woman. I grappled with guilt and grief and unintended consequences—losing extended family, people taking sides. A rollercoaster, a slog.

And if something went wrong with the house, I called my landlord. When he had to retrieve my pantyhose from the bathtub drain, Frederik laughed and said, “Not hard enough.”

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When the birds in the attic turned out to be a battery in the smoke detector, he said, “Not hard enough.”

When a stray cat came to our back porch and my daughter wanted to keep it, he changed the rule about “No Pets.”

After we moved out, Frederik sold the house. I still drive by. There’s a stroller out front these days and a pot of red geraniums.

Togetherness The way my husband fixes his breakfast toast has begun to annoy me. “You could save time if you toasted the second two pieces while you’re buttering the first two,” I tell him.

“I’m not trying to save time,” he says.

He also uses too much jam. Who needs so much jam? And who is this shrew inside my head? Hearing her familiar voice, I know it is definitely time. In fact, it is past time for my husband and me to enjoy a few days apart.

Marriage is the hardest relationship in the world, I think. Being a parent isn’t easy but the whole goal is to separate, for the child to grow up and leave.

The goal of a marriage is to grow up and stay. But sometimes the secret of staying is leaving for a little while. That’s why I’m alert to the toast factor. When I start feeling annoyed by the way my husband eats his breakfast—or breathes in and out—I know it’s time for some space.

Fortunately, he is planning a trip. And almost as soon as he is out of the driveway, I can feel myself falling in love again. A feeling I want to enjoy by myself for a few days.

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ESSAY: CRITICAL READING10

by Jessie Szalay

Skimming is Not Enough.

You’ve probably heard teachers say that the best way to learn how to write is to read. I think that’s true. But what does that mean? Reading novels taught me about pacing and maintaining a reader’s interest; reading magazine articles taught me about starting pieces with attentiongrabbing anecdotes; reading newspapers taught me about objectivity, tone, and the importance of clarity.

But when teachers say that you can learn a lot about writing by reading, they’re talking about even deeper lessons. By being an engaged, critical, and inquisitive reader, you’ll become a more engaged, critical, and inquisitive writer.

In order to formulate the kind of complex, analytical arguments that college professors want, you need to train your mind to examine, question, analyze and evaluate things you encounter in the world. This is called critical thinking, and it applies to pretty much everything you encounter in life: statements you hear in person, media you consume, events and phenomena you witness … and texts you read. Annotating your readings will help you engage in critical reading and thinking practices.

The English department at Massey University identifies the following core elements of critical reading: • carefully considering and evaluating the reading • identifying the reading’s strengths and implications • identifying the reading’s weaknesses and flaws • looking at the ‘big picture’ and deciding how the reading fits into the greater academic and/or cultural and historical context Critical reading is important in college because you will be assigned readings in almost every class you take. You will also be asked, often, to find your own sources, read them, and use them in your papers. But it’s also important because even in our age of memes, TV, and podcasts, we still consume a very large amount of written material almost every day.

Critical Reading by https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/critical-reading/... Open English @ SLCC by SLCC English Department is licensed under a CC-BY-NC 4.0, except where otherwise noted.

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Plus, studies have shown that students who read actively and critically will better remember what they read (Mueller). Which means less time re-reading...

So how do you critically read?

Here are some strategies that will help you become an effective critical reader—which will help you become a better writer, and, I believe, a more informed citizen of the world.

Before You Read.

I know, you’re busy. You want to dive right into your reading, consume it, and move on. But taking a few minutes to survey the landscape in which the piece you’re reading lives will immensely help your understanding of the text. Plus, you’ll get a sense of what to expect from the text, which can help you estimate the amount of time and effort reading it will take.

Here are some features of a text to pay attention to: Preview the Text.

Check out the abstract, introduction, table of contents, headnotes, or other prefatory material. I resisted reading book introductions for years, but one day during my sophomore year of college I decided to check one out—and it helped the rest of the reading click into place.

Who’s This Writer, Anyway?

Find out who the author is. Check out their reputation, credentials, and look at the publication they are writing for. Sometimes the reading itself will include a biography or editor’s note. Other times, a Google search will tell you a lot.

Contextualize.

Look at the publication date. Do you know what was going on with the topic of the reading then? Placing a text in its historical, cultural, and biographical contexts can lead to better understanding and more insight. A piece about civil rights written in the 1960s has a different context and requires a different interpretation than a text about civil rights written in 2018.

Consider the Title and Subtitles.

This can tell you a lot about what to expect, and what to look for, in your reading. It’s especially true of scientific and social science studies.

While You Read.

Just because you’re probably sitting still while you read doesn’t mean you’re not being active.

A good, critical reader will be consistently engaged and alert, noticing, thinking, and questioning as they read.

Ask Questions.

As you read, don’t just let the words wash over you. Constantly ask yourself questions like: • Does this make sense?

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• • • • •

Why am I being asked to read this?

What does this mean?

Why is the writer drawing that conclusion?

How might the writer’s life have influenced this position or choice?

How might the cultural, historical, and societal context have contributed to the writer’s position on this?

These are general engagement and comprehension questions, but you will also have different questions to ask depending on your purpose and goals for reading.

Write down your questions, and your answers, if you have them. This gets to the next point . . .

Mark It Up. Get out a pen or pencil and start scrawling on the text. Whether it’s a print-out or a book, it’s okay to write on it (unless it’s from the library. This is why your professors will ask you to buy books or print out readings). Underline things. Margins are your friend!

Some things that you might want to write about in the margins of your readings: • Your emotional responses. If I loved a passage, I don’t just make a heart. I write a little note about what I loved about it. Same thing if I hated it.

• Explications, illustrations, or elaborations on the text’s theme.

• The text’s thesis, evidence, and arguments and your evaluations of them.

• Symbolism and figurative language.

• Questions you have. Something doesn’t make sense? Is one element of an argument left unconsidered? Not sure what the main point of a paragraph is? Not sure what a certain point has to do with the rest of the text? Unsure of what you’re supposed to get out of a passage? Write it down! This can help you come back it later.

• Challenges or affirmations of your beliefs.

• Patterns and repetitions. These might be recurring words, phrases, images, types of examples, types of evidence, or consistent ways of characterizing an issue or person.

Ask yourself why the writer chose to repeat these things.

As you can probably guess, to effectively mark up a text, it can be helpful to…

Read Slowly.

Take your time. Pause and go over a sentence or paragraph again if you don’t understand it, or just to make sure you do. Look up words you don’t know. Take a second and ask yourself the questions mentioned above. As with many tasks, doing reading well requires slower, intense concentration rather than speedy, superficial attention.

Summarize.

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If you’re unsure of what you read, try summarizing it on a separate piece of paper. This forces you to take apart the information and arguments of the text, examine it, and put it back together in your own words. You can’t do that well until you understand the text.

Keep an Open Mind.

Let’s say you got married at age 18 and are super happy—great for you! If you’re reading a scientific study showing that marriages among young people are more likely to end in divorce, resist resistance. Your perspective on this topic is valuable, but as you read, especially during your first reading, it is not your responsibility to rewrite the text. Rather, give the writer a fair chance to develop his or her ideas and read what is on the page, rather than what you wish was there.

Compare and Contrast Readings in This Class, Others, and Life.

Ask yourself why you’re reading this text now, at this point in the semester. What relationship—implicit or explicit—does it have with the other texts in the class? To the course goals? To your assignments?

Ask yourself if the reading changes the way you think about an issue you’ve heard about in your life. Why and how?

Ask yourself if there is a relationship to this reading and readings you’ve done in your other classes. One of the magical things about college is that your classes will sometimes speak to each other across campuses and semesters. The text you read for history class might help you see the text you read for economics in a totally new light. When that happens, you know you’ve learned something.

As you can see, critical reading is work. But it’s fundamental, and, if done right, very fulfilling work that will help you engage with texts both in college and for the rest of your life.

Bibliography “Critical Reading.” OWLL, Massey University, 23 Aug. 2016, owll.massey.ac.nz/studyskills/criticalreading.php.

Gilroy, Susan. “Interrogating Texts: Thinking Intensive Writing.” Harvard Library, Harvard University, 5 Sept. 2017, guides.library.harvard.edu/sixreadinghabits.

Mueller, Pam A., and Daniel M. Oppenheimer. “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard.

“Psychological Science, Association for Psychological Science, 23 Apr. 2014, journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797614524581.

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ESSAY: MAKING CHOICES IN WRITING

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by Jessie Szalay

Decisions, Decisions Are you going to wear a t-shirt or a sweater today? Answer your phone or let it go to voicemail? Eat an apple or a banana? Let your friend pick the show on Netflix or fight for your favorite? We make decisions all day every day, narrowing dozens of options down to a few, often without even noticing, and then selecting our chosen option fairly quickly. (After all, who says you need to wear a shirt at all? It might be a bathrobe day.)

Writing, and all communication, is no different. Deciding whether or not to answer your phone is a decision to engage—the same kind of decision you have to make when it comes to your composition class assignments. What are you going to write about? Each potential topic is like a ring on your phone: “Answer me! Pay attention to me!” But do you want to? Maybe that topic is like your dramatic relative who talks your ear off about old family grudges from the 1970s— too exhausting to think about and leaving you speechless. Or maybe that topic is like an automated phone survey, and you just can’t get interested in the issue. In order to produce the best writing you can—and not be miserable while you’re doing it—you’re going to want to pick a topic that really, truly interests you, with which you are excited to engage, about which you have the resources to learn, and about which you can envision having something to say. After all, writing is an action. By writing, you are entering into a conversation with your readers, with others who have written about the topic, and others who know and/or care about it. Is that a community you want to engage with? A conversation you want to be a part of?

All this thinking sounds like work, right? It is. And it’s just the first of many, many decisions you’re going to make while writing. But it’s necessary.

Making decisions is a fundamental part of writing. The decisions you make will determine the success of your writing. If you make them carelessly, you might end up with unintended consequences—a tone that doesn’t fit your medium or audience, logical fallacies, poor sources or overlooked important ones, or something else.

I’ve often thought of my own writing as a process of selecting. Rather than starting with an empty page, I sometimes feel like I’m starting with every possible phrase, thought, and a

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dozen dictionaries. There are so many stories I could tell, so many sources I could cite, so many arguments I could make to support my point! There are so many details I could include to make a description more vivid but using them all would turn my article into a novel. There are so many tones I could take. By making my article funny, maybe more people would read it.

But by making it serious, it might appear more trustworthy. What to do? My piece of writing could be so many things, and many of them might be good.

You might have heard the saying, attributed to Michelangelo, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” Each chip in the marble, each word on the page, is a choice to make one thing emerge instead of something else. It’s a selection. It’s up to you to select the best, most rhetorically effective, most interesting, and most beautiful option.

Where Do I Start?

Deciding on your topic is often the first choice you’ll make. Here you’ll find some more decisions you’ll need to make and some ways to think about them.

But first, a note on rhetorical situations. Your rhetorical situation will largely determine what choices you make, so make sure you understand it thoroughly. A rhetorical situation is the situation in which you are writing. It includes your message, your identity as an author, your audience, your purpose, and the context in which you are writing. You’ll read more about the rhetorical situation elsewhere.

These tips assume that you already know the elements of your rhetorical situation and focus on how to make good choices accordingly.

Genre.

Genre is the kind of writing you are doing. The term is often applied to art, film, music, etc., as well, such as the science fiction genre. In writing, genre can refer to the type of writing: an argumentative essay, a Facebook post, a memoir. Perhaps your genre will be chosen for you in your assignment, perhaps it won’t. Either way, you will have to make some choices. If you’ve been assigned an argumentative essay, you need to learn about the rules of the genre—and then decide how and to what extent you want to follow them.

Word Choice.

Something I love about English is that there are so many ways to say things. One of the myriad elements I adore in the English language is that there are thousands of options for phrasing the same idea. I think English is great because it gives you so many choices for how you want to say things. English rocks because you have a gazillion words and phrases for one idea.

Different words work with different tones and audiences and can be used to develop your voice and authority. Get out the thesaurus, but don’t always go for the biggest word. Instead, weigh your options and pick which one you like best and think is most effective.

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Sentence Structure and Punctuation.

As with word choice, the English language provides us with thousands of ways to present a single idea in a sentence or paragraph. It’s up to you to choose how you do it. I like to mix up long, complex sentences with multiple clauses and short, direct ones. I love semi-colons, but some people hate them. The same thing goes for em dashes. Some of the most famous authors, like Ernest Hemingway and Herman Melville, are known as much for their sentence structure and punctuation choices as their characters and plots.

Tone.

Tone is sometimes prescribed by the genre. For instance, your academic biology paper probably should not sound like you’re e-mailing a friend. But there are always choices to make.

Whether you sound knowledgeable or snobbish, warm or aloof, lighthearted or serious are matters of tonal choices.

Modes of Appeal.

You’ve probably heard that logos, pathos, and ethos should be in balance with each other, and that can be a good strategy. But you might decide that, for instance, you want to weigh your proposal more heavily toward logic, or your memoir more toward pathos. Think about which modes will most effectively convey what you want to say and reach your readers.

Length.

You professor likely gave you a word or page count, which can inform many other decisions you make. But what if there’s no length limit? In higher-level college classes, it’s fairly common to have a lot of leeway with length. Thinking about your purpose and audience can help you decide how long a piece should be. Will your audience want a lot of detail? Would they realistically only read a few pages? Remember that shorter length doesn’t necessarily mean an easier project because you’ll need to be more economical with your words, arguments, and evidence.

Organization and Structure.

Introduction with thesis, body with one argument or counterargument per paragraph, conclusion that restates arguments and thesis. This is the basic formula for academic essays, but it doesn’t mean it’s always the best. What if you put your thesis at the end, or somewhere in the middle? What if you organized your arguments according to their emotional appeal, or in the order the evidence was discovered, or some other way? The way you organize your writing will have a big effect on the way a reader experiences it. It could mean the difference between being engaged throughout and getting bored halfway through.

Detail, Metaphor and Simile, Imagery and Poetic Language.

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Creative writers know that anything in the world, even taxes, can be written about poetically.

But how much description and beautiful language do you want? The amount of figurative or poetic language you include will change the tone of the paper. It will signal to a reader that they should linger over the beauty of your writing—but not every piece of writing should be lingered over. You probably want the e-mail from your boss to be direct and to the point.

Background Information.

How much does your audience know about the topic, and what do they need to know to understand your writing? Do you want to provide them with the necessary background information or do you want to make them do the work of finding it? If you want to put in background information, where will it go? Do you want to front-load it at the beginning of your writing, or intersperse it throughout, point by point? Do you want to provide a quick sentence summary of the relevant background or a whole paragraph?

These are just some of the elements of writing that you need to make choices about as a writer. Some of them won’t require much internal debate—you’ll just know. Some of them will.

Don’t be afraid to sit with your decisions. Making good ones will help ensure your writing is successful.

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ESSAY: LANGUAGE MATTERS

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by Chris Blankenship and Justin Jory

Language matters.

Few would argue that this is a radical claim; in fact, it’s probably so obvious that most don’t stop to consider why or how it matters.

For instance, to call a person or group “radical” is to presume their beliefs are extreme and to ask others to as well. Or think about any building on your campus. It may seem like a strange place to go when talking about language, but that building is the product of language. E-mails led to proposals, proposals led to budgets, budgets led to plans, and plans led to the construction of the building. Or think about any resume for any job opening. Within that text is language that encourages readers to view the writer as educated, experienced, and skilled in particular ways that are suited to the job expectations. In other words, it’s language that allows the writer to be—or at least appear to be—the best candidate for the job.

In each example above, language is generative—it creates something. In one instance, it generates a way of understanding, and thus a way of interacting with an individual or group and their beliefs. In another, it facilitates collaboration that eventually creates a new space for teaching and learning. And in the last, it constructs a professional identity, which can lead to a new job and a better salary.

The fact that language is generative is why it’s worth paying attention to; it’s a resource we can use to do things, make things, and be things in the world. We will spend time exploring this perspective on language. Ultimately, we believe that by being more mindful of others’ language and more deliberate about your own, you can become a more effective communicator. And this is true whether you already consider yourself a strong writer or not.

RHETORIC: YOUR TOOLSET FOR UNDERSTANDING LANGUAGE Ask anyone who studies rhetoric what it is, and they’ll tell you it’s difficult to define. This is because rhetoric has been around as a discipline of study for over 2,500 years, and at different times people who study it have been interested in different things. Most basically,

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though, rhetoric is a discipline built on the notion that language matters. People who study rhetoric and those who practice it believe that what we say and how we say it is worthy of study, and they use concepts from the discipline to systematically research the impact of language in society. We’ll spare you the nitty-gritty details. What we want you to know about rhetoric here is that it provides a set of tools you can use to raise your awareness of language and to be more deliberate about your own language practices.

But how does it work?

Like any other discipline, rhetoric has a vocabulary that helps us think and talk about its subject matter: language. Three concepts that will help you think about language and texts in your writing classes are audience, purpose, and context. While these are by no means the only rhetorical concepts you’ll learn about, they provide a place to begin.

To think rhetorically about audience is to ask particular questions about the knowledge, beliefs, and values of the people whom texts are written for: • Who is the audience?

• What do they know or not know about the issue?

• What are their relevant experiences?

• What stance(s) might they hold?

• What’s the best way to reach this audience?

To think rhetorically about purpose is to ask particular questions about the motivations and goals that lead writers to produce texts: • What issues, events, or problems led the writer to take action?

• What is the writer’s response?

• How does the text support this response?

• What is the goal of this text?

• What does the writer want his audience to do, feel, or believe?

To think rhetorically about context is to ask particular questions about social, political, historical, ideological, institutional, and cultural factors that shape the way writers and audiences experience a text: • Has any action been taken on this issue recently?

• What laws or social norms may influence the perception of the text?

• What limitations might the context place upon the writer’s arguments, evidence, or medium of composition?

We believe a defining characteristic of effective writers is their ability to be flexible, to adapt to the demands of the task before them, and this requires an attention to language that rhetorical thinking makes possible. Mentioned above are examples of the questions that rhetorically savvy writers use to adapt their language in ways that achieve their goals for communication.

These questions can be useful in nearly every communication situation. The following scenarios represent different “everyday” situations where attention to language matters and 49

knowledge of rhetoric can assist writers in responding in ways that allow them to achieve their goals.

A RHETORICAL LOOK AT LANGUAGE IN THREE CONTEXTS Academic After graduating high school, Robbie finds a good job that pays well and is close to home. He works in this job for several years but after applying for a promotion he is told that the position requires a college degree. He decides that after investing so many years with the company he will take up the challenge and earn this degree. Robbie’s company specializes in growing organic produce, so he decides that biology might be a good major to help him advance in the company. He starts to investigate the biology program at the local college. On the biology department’s website, he finds this description of the major: The study of life is the study of chemical processes. A major in biology trains you in the experimental techniques used to probe the structures and functions of biologically important molecules. This degree provides students with a rigorous general background in the field of biology to prepare for graduate or professional school or science-related jobs requiring Bachelor’s-level training. Our students address basic biological principles using both plant and animal model systems. Much of a student’s work in our department is focused on answering physiologically relevant questions by using the latest cell and molecular-based biological approaches. The curricular requirements in chemistry, mathematics, and physics have been selected to optimize students’ future opportunities. The degree provides a rigorous background in fundamental biology and similar areas and prepares students for professional or researchoriented careers and graduate work in a selected area of biology.

After reading this description several times, Robbie still doesn’t have a good sense of what he would be learning in this major or how it might allow him to learn more about topics important to his company. He looks further on the website, but all he finds is a list of courses available; some, like BIO 2030: Animal Behavior, sound interesting, but others, like BIO 3400: Plant and Animal Model Systems, just seem confusing. Robbie really wants to attend this college because it is close to home and is affordable. However, based on this description, he’s not sure whether this is the right major for him or whether it is even the right college.

We argue that rhetoric can help Robbie find his answer. Rhetoric begins with observation. In this case, it is noticing things about the language that is leading Robbie to a feeling of uncertainty. Perhaps the most obvious observation about the text is the difficult, disciplinary language. For example, there are a number of terms and phrases that would be unfamiliar to someone like Robbie who is outside the field of biology: “plant and animal model systems,” “molecular-based biological approaches,” “physiologically relevant questions.” There are also terms and phrases that may not be unfamiliar but remain vague without specialized knowledge. For instance, what does it mean to “probe the structures and functions of biologically important molecules”? Or, what exactly is “fundamental biology” and what are the 50

“similar areas” that this degree provides a rigorous background in? Where does Robbie’s interest in organic produce fit in these descriptions?

From this careful attention to the language of the program description, we can see that there is a disconnect between Robbie’s knowledge and the knowledge necessary to understand this text.

Why does this disconnect exist in the first place? Thinking rhetorically about audience, purpose, and context can give us further insight into this rhetorical problem. For instance, many colleges across the United States do not expect students to declare a major until their second year; therefore, the specialized language in this description is likely intended for an audience of students who have already taken introductory courses in biology and will have more familiarity with the specialized terms. Therefore, the purpose of the program description is not to persuade people to join the major but to explain the degree to students who are already biology majors, perhaps helping them interpret and synthesize their experiences in the program.

By looking at this text in context, we can see that the gap is not a deficiency on Robbie’s part but exists because he is not the intended audience for the description. Robbie hasn’t started college yet and he is not a biology major. However, knowing this does not help Robbie answer his question about whether the biology major is right for him. To bridge this gap, Robbie would have to move from reading rhetorically to writing rhetorically by thinking about audience, purpose, and context as a writer would.

In this situation, a fitting response would be to write an e-mail requesting more information.

Many colleges have a faculty member who serves as an undergraduate advisor for their majors, who would be an appropriate audience for this purpose. Such a response could look like this: Dear Professor Smith, My name is Robert Jones, and I’m considering enrolling in Local College as a biology major next semester. I have worked at a local company specializing in organic foods for many years and have recently discovered that I need additional education to advance my career within the company. After reading through your department’s website, I’m not sure if the biology major at Local College is the right one to help me advance in my profession. Does this degree let me specialize in a way that would fit with my career goals? Any information that you can send me about your program would be helpful and very much appreciated.

Thank you for your time, Robert Jones We can see several rhetorically savvy language choices in this e-mail. It establishes credibility with the intended audience by showing that the writer has already begun an initial investigation of the major. By showing that he’s already done some research, it establishes that he needs new information, which is not readily available on the department’s website. The language of the e-mail is quite formal, which suggests the writer understands the professional context of the communication. Together, establishing credibility through research and using formal 51

language suggests that the writer is proactive and interested, and this demonstration of rhetorical awareness can help him build a relationship with a potential teacher and mentor, Professor Smith.

This is an example of how, with rhetorical thinking, you can make language work for you.

Personal Marcela recently graduated from high school and has just started her eighteen-month religious mission in South America. Every Monday afternoon Marcela and her fellow missionaries are encouraged to write letters and e-mails home to their friends and family. Marcela usually only has one chance a week to write correspondence and has to write to multiple people, leaving less time than she might like or need to think about and craft her correspondence. Marcela’s first e-mail is to her mother, her strongest supporter and the person she most wants to maintain contact with.

Hi Mom, We made it to Brazil in one piece! Everyone has been really nice and helpful. Our apartment is nice and me and Sister Jones have been working together a lot. The first couple of days were really tiring but a really great experience! Brazil is such a beautiful place, but I miss home a lot.

Is everyone doing okay? Say hi to Gizmo for me and give dad a kiss. I love you!

Love, Marcela The next day Marcela receives a response from her mother.

Hi Pumpkin, I’m so glad you made it safe and that everyone has been so nice and helpful! Where is Sister Jones from? I’m glad the experience has been great. What kinds of things have you been doing? Have you had any good conversations with locals? I know it’s early, but have you met with any investigators yet? I saw on the news there was an earthquake in Bolivia. It makes me worried about you!

Let us know how you’re doing.

Love, Mom When Marcela receives her mother’s response, she expects to get an update on what’s happening at home but instead finds only questions about what she’s been doing in South America instead. She loves hearing from her mom, but she doesn’t feel as connected to home as she wants because the e-mail from her mom was nothing but questions for Marcela. The next week when she starts to write her reply, she’s not sure whether to spend her limited time answering her mother’s questions or asking her own questions that will get her the updates that she needs to feel less homesick.

Thinking rhetorically can be a useful way for Marcela to understand this disconnect in communication. In her first e-mail, Marcela’s rhetorical purpose for writing is to give her mother 52

an update about her arrival in South America. Her mother’s response indicates a similar expectation from the e-mail but shows a desire for more specific detail in order to more deeply understand Marcela’s experiences. Context is equally important. In her mother’s response, there are questions about the mission itself and her success reaching others to talk about their faith. These human interactions are the key reason why these missionaries spend one-and-ahalf years of their lives away from their families.

Marcela’s reaction to her mom’s e-mail reveals that she also, as an audience, has expectations about what this weekly correspondence will accomplish. While she recognizes the importance of her mission, it’s the first time she’s been away from her family for this length of time. She wants these e-mails to be her link back to home so she can feel she’s still connected to her family, friends, and the place where she grew up. The response from her mother provides little information to help her to feel connected to home.

Thinking more intentionally about the different purposes and audiences in the correspondence can help Marcela write more effective e-mails home. Such an e-mail could look like this: Dear Mom, Things are going great here! We’re settled now and got to talk to two different families so far.

One of the daughter’s names is Mary, and she loved it when Sister Jones and I sat with her to read 3 Nephi 14:25 (I know you’ll know this one!). Sister Jones was in theater at her high school in Seattle, and she’s helping me get more comfortable talking to groups of people.

We’ve also been talking to people about the earthquake to start our conversations. It’s been all over the news, but we didn’t feel it here and some of the families thought it was funny we thought it was such a big deal. We’re going to see Mary’s family again next week, so maybe I’ll have some good news about her in the next e-mail!

Is everything good there? Is Jeff doing okay in school? I know he was worried about math this year without me to help him out. Have Mr. and Mrs. Gunderson found a new babysitter yet? I hope Sophia doesn’t miss me too much. Say hi to them for me when you see them at church!

Let me know how everyone’s doing! It makes me feel closer to home when I can hear all about what’s going on there.

Love, Marcela We can see that this e-mail includes much more detail than Marcela’s first e-mail. These details help both of the audiences (Marcela and her mom) get what they want and expect from the e-mail correspondence. She answers the direct questions her mother asked; for example, the sentence that mentions high school answers the question of who Sister Jones is while also providing details about how Marcela’s missionary work is unfolding. To give her audience cues about what she wants from the weekly correspondence, Marcela’s e-mail includes more explicit questions about people back at home and a direct request for more details. Through addressing both Marcela’s and her mother’s purposes for the correspondence, and the context of missionary work, this new response demonstrates greater rhetorical skill because it is responsive to audience expectations and needs.

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Civic Recently, on his way home from work, Jason noticed signs in his neighbors’ yards for Proposition 12.

• Don’t Regulate How We Recreate. Yes on 12.

• Just Say No to Prop 12.

Usually, he doesn’t pay attention to signs like this, but he’s noticed a lot of them. On his way to meet his friends for dinner he notices a group of protestors outside the courthouse downtown who are also holding signs about Proposition 12.

• • •

Don’t Regulate How We Recreate. Yes on 12.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire! Yes on Prop. 12.

Fight Crime, Not Fun. Vote for Prop 12!

• • •

Legalize Don’t Penalize. Prop 12 High there? High here! Vote yes on 12.

No Victim, No Crime. Make 12 happen.

The signs don’t tell Jason much about the proposition. His friends aren’t sure what it’s about either, so one of them pulls out a phone, does a quick search, and announces that Proposition 12 is a vote to legalize recreational marijuana in the state. Immediately, Jason’s friends are enthusiastic supporters, but Jason isn’t sure whether or how he should vote.

The immediate gap is in Jason’s understanding of the issue. While a quick internet search tells him that Prop 12 is about marijuana legalization, he still has very little information about why people would support or oppose legalization. Like Robbie and Marcela, Jason can develop a better sense of the situation by thinking rhetorically about the texts he’s seeing. At first glance, the signs simply seem to be supporting the proposition, but if we read them more critically we can see the values expressed through the language they use. For instance, “No Victim, No Crime” suggests the author of the sign wants the audience to think that activities that only affect the individual shouldn’t be considered crimes by the government. And, as another example, “Don’t Regulate How We Recreate” suggests the author wants the audience to view marijuana use as a form of normal personal recreation, which downplays any move to tie it to dangerous or deviant behavior. In both examples, the authors value individual rights over government regulation of those rights, particularly when there is no harm done to others.

However, in viewing this situation rhetorically, we can also see that all the texts so far present only one perspective on the issue-at-hand. Jason hasn’t noticed any signs that opposed Prop 12, and he therefore needs to research this perspective to be able to make an informed decision about his vote. Again, rhetorical thinking is a useful way to investigate topics of interest. Even a simple Google search, when done mindfully, can be rhetorical. For example, after thinking about the messages of the signs above, if Jason is most interested in the idea of individual rights, he could type “proposition 12 individual rights” or even “proposition 12 harm to 54

others” into a search engine. While looking through the results he could choose to read statements written by people who oppose the opposition that specifically address the issue of individual rights as it relates to Prop 12. This would help him get a sense of the rationale behind their objections, which can also give him a better understanding of the values that support their reasoning. While using online research to learn more about the issue, he might also notice the people and organizations who associate themselves with each position. He might also consider what he knows about his neighbors who have signs in their yards. This information provides another way for him to determine how to cast his vote.

Though Jason is not writing a response like Robbie or Marcela are, he is still using rhetoric to act. In his case, he’s thinking rhetorically in order to learn about a key issue in his state. When he meets with his friends next, he can fully participate in the conversation, contributing ideas and possibly even trying to persuade them of a different point of view. When he goes to cast his vote on a proposition that could lead to social and cultural change in his state, he can be confident that he’s making an educated choice.

CONCLUSION All three of these scenarios show how careful attention to language and the contexts that surround it can help individuals understand the communication challenges they experience and effectively respond to those challenges. We use rhetoric as a way to investigate, understand, and use language. Working with language is difficult and it’s messy. It’s a skill you have to learn and practice; rhetoric gives you a framework to make that process easier. It’s a method that you can use systematically as a way of revealing and handling the complexity of language. In short, rhetoric is a tool to make language work for you.

Though it may not always be apparent in your courses, rhetorical thinking transfers across contexts. You can use it to understand writing tasks in other college courses, on the job, and in your personal life. Where there’s language, there’s potential for rhetorical thinking. It’s the rhetorical thinking that we want you to take with you from these courses. And this is why rhetoric matters.

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ESSAY: PERSONAL LITERACY AND ACADEMIC LEARNING 13

by Marlena Stanford When we think of â&#x20AC;&#x153;literacy,â&#x20AC;? we generally think of the ability to read and write. In the twenty-first century, though, literacy means much more than reading and writing, although the ability to read and write is also critical. In the present age, to be literate means to be able to communicate through texts in ways that help you meet your needs and the needs of others.

And this communication happens in a variety of situations. You might participate in a club, organization, or group in which you regularly communicate through reading or writing, for example. You likely engage in several literate practices on the job, such as designing and delivering presentations or adapting to new technologies. You might read to your child each night before bedtime, or you might regularly use social media to keep in touch with family and friends.

These examples are illustrative of the many types of literacy we practice in our daily lives: computer literacy, work-based literacy, health literacy, academic literacy, and personal literacy, to name a few. These various literacies are much more than skills; they are practices: observable patterns of behavior that we enact over time as we work in particular knowledge frameworks and use particular technologies to communicate.

One of the literacies we develop over our lifespans is personal literacy, also called vernacular literacy. Personal literacies are the reading and writing practices individuals engage in during activities of their own choice and for personal satisfaction or to meet personal goals. Examples might include documenting your daily food intake with a smartphone app, keeping a journal, creating a weight-training plan and tracking your performance, or writing and playing music.

They are instrumental to how we learn and to our success in formal schooling. These personal literacies are closely tied to our development of academic literate practices that help us learn in formal school settings.

While some students move easily between personal literacies and academic literacies, others have more challenges as they move from the types of literate practices they participate in for personal fulfillment to the types of literate practices they must participate in to succeed as

Personal Literacy and Academic Learning by https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/personal-literacy-andacademic-learning/Open English @ SLCC by SLCC English Department is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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students in institutions of higher education. Once we become aware of the various personal literacies we practice in our lives, we can begin to see their connections to the academic literate practices we must develop to meet our academic goals.

Roz Ivanic, a researcher at Lancaster University, studies the ways people use personal literacies to learn in school. In one of her essays, she introduces us to Nadine, a young woman who has a passion for horoscopes. Nadine reads her horoscope daily and believes in the predictions. She recognizes some horoscopes are better written and more useful than others, so she reads them from a variety of media, including television, print-based texts such as newspapers and magazines, and websites. Nadine also keeps a diary of the events that happen to her and analyzes the patterns she sees in her life events and their relationships to the horoscope predictions.

Nadine’s personal literate practice is rich and varied, purposeful to her, and creative. It is a self-determined activity shaped by the context of Nadine’s life. In contrast, when Nadine encounters reading and writing tasks in school, they may seem more valuable to the teacher than to Nadine, more formal and repetitive, and less creative. When Nadine goes to college, the literacies she must engage in often look very different from the purposeful literate practices she engages in at home. It’s important that Nadine notices the differences and similarities between her personal and academic literate practices so that she may use her capabilities to enhance her success in school.

When we learn to transfer our personal literate practices to formal school settings, we engage in a process of contextualization. In other words, we make meaning of school content by connecting our personal lives to our school lives. In Nadine’s case, she might reflect on her practice of reading horoscopes and writing daily about her life and begin to see particular skills and ways of thinking that she can transfer to college. For example, she might notice she can make meaning of the things that happen to her by looking for patterns in her diary entries over time—an analytical process she most definitely can transfer to academic contexts. In fact, recognizing that she has already successfully used reading and writing to meet her needs can positively impact her confidence and determination as she faces new reading and writing situations in college.

Transitioning from the personal literate practices we engage in at home to the academic literate practices we engage in at school can be challenging, but we all bring valuable personal literacies with us into the classroom. We might think about how we can facilitate the process of contextualization while we’re in college in order to ease the transition and better use the skills and literate practices we bring with us to support our academic goals.

Bibliography Baynham, Mike and Mastin Prinsloo. “Introduction: The Future of Literacy Studies.” The Future of Literacy Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2009. 1-20.

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Brandt, Deborah. Literacy and Learning: Reflections on Writing, Reading, and Society. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Gee, James Paul. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. 4th Ed. London: Routledge, 2012.

Ivanic, Roz. “Bringing Literacy Studies into Research on Learning Across the Curriculum.” The Future of Literacy Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2009. 100–122.

Scribner, Sylvia and Michael Cole. The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.

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THE STRATEGY OF ARGUMENT

“Obama” by Johnny Silvercloud taken 9nov15; Flickr Creative Commons. Licensed CC-BY-SA.

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ARGUMENT: UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE COVERAGE IN THE UNITED STATES

By Scott McLean14 The United States is the only modernized Western nation that does not offer publicly funded health care to all its citizens; the costs of health care for the uninsured in the United States are prohibitive, and the practices of insurance companies are often more interested in profit margins than providing health care. These conditions are incompatible with US ideals and standards, and it is time for the US government to provide universal health care coverage for all its citizens. Like education, health care should be considered a fundamental right of all US citizens, not simply a privilege for the upper and middle classes.

One of the most common arguments against providing universal health care coverage (UHC) is that it will cost too much money. In other words, UHC would raise taxes too much. While providing health care for all US citizens would cost a lot of money for every tax-paying citizen, citizens need to examine exactly how much money it would cost, and more important, how much money is “too much” when it comes to opening up health care for all. Those who have health insurance already pay too much money, and those without coverage are charged unfathomable amounts. The cost of publicly funded health care versus the cost of current insurance premiums is unclear. In fact, some Americans, especially those in lower income brackets, could stand to pay less than their current premiums.

However, even if UHC would cost Americans a bit more money each year, we ought to reflect on what type of country we would like to live in, and what types of morals we represent if we are more willing to deny health care to others on the basis of saving a couple hundred dollars per year. In a system that privileges capitalism and rugged individualism, little room remains for compassion and love. It is time that Americans realize the amorality of US hospitals forced to turn away the sick and poor. UHC is a health care system that aligns more closely with the core values that so many Americans espouse and respect, and it is time to realize its potential.

Another common argument against UHC in the United States is that other comparable national health care systems, like that of England, France, or Canada, are bankrupt or rife with problems. UHC opponents claim that sick patients in these countries often wait in long lines or

14 Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution. “Successful Writing.” Authored by: Anonymous. Provided by:

Anonymous. Located at: http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/successful-writing/. License: CC BY-NC-SA: AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike

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long wait lists for basic health care. Opponents also commonly accuse these systems of being unable to pay for themselves, racking up huge deficits year after year. A fair amount of truth lies in these claims, but Americans must remember to put those problems in context with the problems of the current US system as well. It is true that people often wait to see a doctor in countries with UHC, but we in the United States wait as well, and we often schedule appointments weeks in advance, only to have onerous waits in the doctor’s “waiting rooms.”

Critical and urgent care abroad is always treated urgently, much the same as it is treated in the United States. The main difference there, however, is cost. Even health insurance policy holders are not safe from the costs of health care in the United States. Each day an American acquires a form of cancer, and the only effective treatment might be considered “experimental” by an insurance company and thus is not covered. Without medical coverage, the patient must pay for the treatment out of pocket. But these costs may be so prohibitive that the patient will either opt for a less effective, but covered, treatment; opt for no treatment at all; or attempt to pay the costs of treatment and experience unimaginable financial consequences. Medical bills in these cases can easily rise into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is enough to force even wealthy families out of their homes and into perpetual debt. Even though each American could someday face this unfortunate situation, many still choose to take the financial risk. Instead of gambling with health and financial welfare, US citizens should press their representatives to set up UHC, where their coverage will be guaranteed and affordable.

Despite the opponents’ claims against UHC, a universal system will save lives and encourage the health of all Americans. Why has public education been so easily accepted, but not public health care? It is time for Americans to start thinking socially about health in the same ways they think about education and police services: as rights of US citizens.

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ARGUMENT: THE CASE FOR TORTURE

By Michael Levin15 It is generally assumed that torture is impermissible, a throwback to a more brutal age.

Enlightened societies reject it outright, and regimes suspected of using it risk the wrath of the United States.

I believe this attitude is unwise. There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory. Moreover, these situations are moving from the realm of imagination to fact.

Death: Suppose a terrorist has hidden an atomic bomb on Manhattan Island which will detonate at noon on July 4 unless ... here follow the usual demands for money and release of his friends from jail. Suppose, further, that he is caught at 10 am on the fateful day, but preferring death to failure, won't disclose where the bomb is. What do we do? If we follow due process, wait for his lawyer, arraign him, millions of people will die. If the only way to save those lives is to subject the terrorist to the most excruciating possible pain, what grounds can there be for not doing so? I suggest there are none. In any case, I ask you to face the question with an open mind.

Torturing the terrorist is unconstitutional? Probably. But millions of lives surely outweigh constitutionality. Torture is barbaric? Mass murder is far more barbaric. Indeed, letting millions of innocents die in deference to one who flaunts his guilt is moral cowardice, an unwillingness to dirty one's hands. If you caught the terrorist, could you sleep nights knowing that millions died because you couldn't bring yourself to apply the electrodes?

Once you concede that torture is justified in extreme cases, you have admitted that the decision to use torture is a matter of balancing innocent lives against the means needed to save them. You must now face more realistic cases involving more modest numbers.

Someone plants a bomb on a jumbo jet. I He alone can disarm it, and his demands cannot be met (or they can, we refuse to set a precedent by yielding to his threats). Surely, we can, we must, do anything to the extortionist to save the passengers. How can we tell 300, or 100, or 10 people who never asked to be put in danger, "I'm sorry you'll have to die in agony, we just couldn't bring ourselves to . . . "

15

Linked to from Lumen Learning, http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/torture.html

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Here are the results of an informal poll about a third, hypothetical, case. Suppose a terrorist group kidnapped a newborn baby from a hospital. I asked four mothers if they would approve of torturing kidnappers if that were necessary to get their own newborns back. All said yes, the most "liberal" adding that she would like to administer it herself.

I am not advocating torture as punishment. Punishment is addressed to deeds irrevocably past. Rather, I am advocating torture as an acceptable measure for preventing future evils. So understood, it is far less objectionable than many extant punishments. Opponents of the death penalty, for example, are forever insisting that executing a murderer will not bring back his victim (as if the purpose of capital punishment were supposed to be resurrection, not deterrence or retribution). But torture, in the cases described, is intended not to bring anyone back but to keep innocents from being dispatched. The most powerful argument against using torture as a punishment or to secure confessions is that such practices disregard the rights of the individual. Well, if the individual is all that important, and he is, it is correspondingly important to protect the rights of individuals threatened by terrorists. If life is so valuable that it must never be taken, the lives of the innocents must be saved even at the price of hurting the one who endangers them.

Better precedents for torture are assassination and pre-emptive attack. No Allied leader would have flinched at assassinating Hitler, had that been possible. (The Allies did assassinate Heydrich.) Americans would be angered to learn that Roosevelt could have had Hitler killed in 1943, thereby shortening the war and saving millions of lives, but refused on moral grounds.

Similarly, if nation A learns that nation B is about to launch an unprovoked attack, A has a right to save itself by destroying B's military capability first. In the same way, if the police can by torture save those who would otherwise die at the hands of kidnappers or terrorists, they must.

Idealism: There is an important difference between terrorists and their victims that should mute talk of the terrorists' "rights." The terrorist's victims are at risk unintentionally, not having asked to be endangered. But the terrorist knowingly initiated his actions. Unlike his victims, he volunteered for the risks of his deed. By threatening to kill for profit or idealism, he renounces civilized standards, and he can have no complaint if civilization tries to thwart him by whatever means necessary.

Just as torture is justified only to save lives (not extort confessions or incantations), it is justifiably administered only to those known to hold innocent lives in their hands. Ah, but how call the authorities ever be sure they have the right malefactor? Isn't there a danger of error and abuse? won't "WE" turn into "THEM?" Questions like these are disingenuous in a world in which terrorists proclaim themselves and perform for television. The name of their game is public recognition. After all, you can't very well intimidate a government into releasing your freedom fighters unless you announce that it is your group that has seized its embassy. "Clear guilt" is difficult to define, but when 40 million people see a group of masked gunmen seize an airplane on the evening news, there is not much question about who the perpetrators are.

There will be hard cases where the situation is murkier. Nonetheless, a line demarcating the 63

legitimate use of torture can be drawn. Torture only the obviously guilty, and only for the sake of saving innocents, and the line between "US" and "THEM" will remain clear.

There is little danger that the Western democracies will lose their way if they choose to inflict pain as one way of preserving order. Paralysis in the face of evil is the greater danger.

Someday soon a terrorist will threaten tens of thousands of lives, and torture will be the only way to save them. We had better start thinking about this.

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DEFINITION ARGUMENT: WHAT IS A “GEEK”?

The Geeky Perspective on Things16 It’s really not hard to determine personally whether a person, yourself for example, is a geek or not. A person just KNOWS. Maybe it’s inborn, it’s genetic, but no matter what, it’s THERE. How it got into a person doesn’t really matter. What does matter is how to tell a “geek” apart from its usually synonyms, how to tell if one particular person is a specific type of “geek,” and how to deal with this type of person. The following covers those matters and then some while arguing that the definition has changed in a positive manner and, also, that there are some valuable differences within the word’s synonyms. What I’m saying is, to be a geek is the coolest thing; everyone should be one. Duh. First and foremost, one needs to look at the basic definition of a “geek.” Apparently, the word was originally meant for carnival folk. If one was a “geek” at a carnival, this meant “a guy who does really gross and disgusting things in the side show at a carnival.” In fact, “the classic act for the carnival geek was to bite the head off of a chicken.” The history of “geek” travelled from that definition, then, to “anyone who was gross or undesirable, be it through lack of hygiene, lack of social skills, or some other repulsiveness” which is what the Dictionary.com definition seems to connect to.

Beyond some background to the word, Dictionary.com also lists two of the more shortened definitions of this word that I don’t quite agree with: “a person regarded as foolish, inept, or clumsy” and “a person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.” Since I do consider myself to be a “geek,” those aren’t the definitions I would use.

I conclude with the fact that: The definition has changed.

The definition I found at the High Definition Dictionary (at Rox.com), along with their background to the word, takes into account this change I’ve determined. The definition I aim to dissect is this: “Recently it’s come to imply a certain bookishness or braininess as well, in keeping with the American anti-intellectual tradition. Opinions vary as to whether the braininess causes the repulsiveness or vice versa.” The High Definition Dictionary further states that: “In the 90s the repulsive connotation has receded, and the brainy factor has come to the fore. One often hears the word “geek” used in ironic and even complimentary fashion to connote knowledge-ability and expertise.” Even the question they pose connects to my aforementioned change in the definition, which may lead to a change in society’s connotation of intelligence altogether: “Does this signal the reversal of the aforementioned anti-intellectual strain in

16

By Sybil Priebe. Licensed under CC-BY.

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American culture?” It most certainly does; it’s getting to the point where geeks can... roam the world with the rest of us.

Yet... what about being a “nerd” or “dork”? What’s the difference?

With the coolness definition laid in concrete, I jump to my first matter: How to tell a “geek” apart from a “nerd” and “dork,” its closely-related synonyms, since comparisons help one to decipher one thing from another (we can only know “good” by knowing “bad” for example). The following basically shows us that geeks are the positive, socially-acceptable form of intelligent people.

In an amateur webpage (“Definition of Geek”) ranting on about the different parts, this person’s most interesting difference was social consciousness. “Dorks tend to be totally oblivious to the concept of social acceptability,” “Nerds” don’t care, and “Geeks tend to be much more socially aware than either ‘Nerds’ or ‘Dorks.’” As far as actual examples go, “geeks” are obsessed with elements such as sci-fi and computers but they take an “artistic” approach to them. “Geeks” can laugh at themselves and see the world as “more than just the point of view given by their interests.” “Nerds” tend to ignore people at parties, “dorks,” if they go to a party, will “most likely become defensive” when called a “dork,” and “geeks,” again, are more self-assured than their counterparts. In everyday situations, I easily refer to myself as a “geek,” and I do think I fit these examples spoken of. In one moment, I could be tripping over my own feet (Dork), talking about a teaching book with another teacher (Nerd), and laughing at how silly it is that I am talking to them about it at the bar (Geek).

The importance of this word and the differences between it and its synonyms take president over how to deal with a “geek.” My argument doesn’t include how to deal with “geeks” simply because there is no one perfect way that that would work. With “computer geeks,” like my brother, sometimes they just need time to do things. Then again, if one is alone with their computer for too long, they could turn into a “nerd.” With myself as an example, some days I want to be left alone to fill up on my “geekiness,” but there are those days when I need to get away, and I need someone to unglue me from my books. And there are those days, too, when I need to vent at someone in order to get the overfilling of “geek” out of me, so I don’t become a “nerd.”

While there is no one way to deal with “geeks,” I’d easily argue that there are specific elements that help those who are not geeky to see them coming. Usually, they know too much about one thing, yet they aren’t complete ‘know-it-alls’ – one has to get a geek talking about a subject to gather any knowledge from them since, as stated by the amateur webpage, geeks are much more socially aware than the typical “nerd” or “dork.”

And, if one does meet a “geek,” please realize that the definition has changed. They aren’t “gross” or “repulsive,” just really involved within certain parts of their lives. Perhaps there’s a geek brewing inside of YOU? Let it out!

Works Cited “Geek.” Dictionary.com. Accessed 10 Jan 05. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/geek “Geek.” High Definition Dictionary at Rox.com. Updated 13 Nov 03. Accessed 10 Jan 05. http://www.rox.com/vocab/geek/ Wilde, Zillah. “Definition of Geek.” RedPill. Accessed 10 Jan 05.

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ARGUMENT: TOOLS AND TASKS Anonymous17 My town is losing a car repair shop. The gas station at the end of Main Street will continue to sell gas, but the garage attached to it is going to close. The mechanic, who has been there for twenty-five years, will have to find work elsewhere. He had a loyal following; a friend told me he once opened early on a Sunday to fix her tire.

The garage isn’t closing for lack of customers. Nor is it closing because of taxes, that ritual demon of the political Right. A major reason, the owner said, is technology, and the way manufacturers are making cars so complex. To fix them requires sophisticated computers that a small shop can’t afford. “There isn’t a car from the ’70s or ’80s that we can’t work on,” the owner told our local weekly. “But we’re not in the position to make the investment in all the electronics and computers. To make that transition would be cost prohibitive.”

He’s not the only one. Independent repair shops are going out of business all over the country.

In California, more than half the gas stations had repair shops as recently as ten years ago.

Now about 15% of them do. Part of that is because oil companies are forcing out independent owners and taking over the retail end themselves. (Have you noticed that prices are rising?)

But partly too it’s because the local shops can’t repair the new computerized cars.

This is a trend that bears more scrutiny than it has received. It goes to two of the central narratives of our economy — the conventional version at least. One is that virtue and hard work prevail, which in this case is not the case. Hard work and virtue have succumbed to corporate contrivance. You are shocked?

The other narrative is the one that casts technology as Savior. The word itself has become practically a synonym for “future.” Computers are portrayed as the ultimate instruments of democracy. They will put knowledge — and therefore power — on every desktop. They will cause hierarchies and bureaucracies to crumble. Every man and woman will be a king. “While the Industrial Revolution herded people into gigantic social institutions — big corporations, big

When someone finally writes the sequel to The Wealth of Nations, open systems and decentralized technologies will be, I think, a central theme. Perhaps a working title could be From the Wealth of Nations to the Well-Being of the People Involved. Tools and Tasks is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It was previously published on onthecommons.org.

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unions, big governments,” wrote Newt Gingrich in his book To Renew America, “the Information Revolution is breaking up these giants and leading us back to something that is — strangely enough — much more like de Tocqueville’s 1830s America.”

Brother Newton is a busy man, and maybe he just didn’t have time to consider the complications. For one thing, there’s the matter of agency. As David Noble observed in his book Forces of Production, technology is not an impersonal force. It does not have an inevitable evolutionary path. Technology is a projection of those who make it, including corporate interests and proprietary claims. This can lead to a lot of trouble.

Noble looks in particular at the machine tool industry, and how it evolved to enable top-down management control instead of autonomy on the shop floor. The technology could have gone either way; it was the corporate managers who made the call. Computers have followed a similar pattern. Potentially they can liberate the desktop, and sometimes do. But in practice they often do the opposite. Now the boss can monitor your every keystroke. At home corporations can plant little spies on your machine. The Feds can track your personal e-mail exchanges. You think the Department of Homeland Security might have a computer or two?

And so with the technology built into cars. It would seem possible to design it in a way that made cars simpler and less expensive to repair. I don’t really know, but it does seem reasonable. The problem is, would it fit the business plans of the corporations that make the cars? Why would General Motors want to put more capacity and control into the hands of independent garages like the one in my town? Wouldn’t it want to lock a customer into its own repair and dealer network, much the way computer printer manufacturers try to lock us into their expensive cartridges?

That seems to be what’s happening. Car repair used to be a “knowledge commons,” shared in driveways, urban curb sides, and voc. ed. classes. Get yourself some tools and you were ready to go for most routine repairs. The machines were open to the eye. There was little if any secret and proprietary code. Repair manuals could help with the more technical issues, but you’d probably go to a shop for those anyway.

Today, by contrast, high-tech is turning cars into black boxes, a little like Microsoft Windows.

Mechanics need fancy diagnostic tools, and the auto companies know that independent shops can’t afford them, let alone back yard tinkerers. That leaves dealers. I’m sure that some are good and honorable. But if someone out there has found dealers more reliable and economical than independent repair shops, would they please let us know? Last time I checked, the dealer would charge about 30%-50% more for repairs to my car; and they usually manage to find a few extra things to fix. (I’ll spare you my dealer stories, today at least.)

This is not the Every-One-Of-Us-A-King scenario of which Mr. Gingrich waxed so enthusiastic.

It looks more like one of his “gigantic social institutions” using technology and intellectual property to reassert a claim. Like the common fields and forests of 18th century England, the knowledge commons of car repair is being fenced and locked. The same is happening in other 68

realms of the Information Age, such as genetically modified seeds. (Technology that serves an urgent need such as fuel economy might get a pass, provided it is designed to be as open as possible.)

People like Newt — and there are lots of them — don’t consider how proprietary interest can warp the vectors of technology, and turn it to its own ends. They ignore also the ambiguous relationship between technology and well-being. More sophisticated and complex does not always mean better. To the contrary, as technology becomes more “advanced,” we who rely on it can become more helpless and dumb. My father took apart his first Model T — or maybe it was a Model A — and put it back together again. He took apart radios and toasters and fans and fixed them too. My son won’t be able to do any of that, even if he is so inclined.

Is this progress or regress? Does progress reside in the thing or in the user of the thing?

Which is more “advanced”: the technology that enables the user to fix the car herself, or the one that renders us helpless in the face of the black box? My wife grew up in a Third World country, and her father built their bamboo house with rusty old hand tools that could have been left over from a garage sale in the U.S. He started with a stand of trees and finished with a house. By contrast, when we moved into our current residence we just unloaded a truck. Who is more advanced, us or him? Which child is more advanced: the one who can make up games with a ball on a city sidewalk or the one that needs expensive video games to be amused?

I wonder if it is entirely coincidental that as technology has “progressed” in the industrial and post-industrial world, those subject to it have become more disconnected and depressed and less able to control their own impulses and moods. (Then we become yet more dependent on technology — in the form of pharmaceutical concoctions — for relief.) One evening after dinner my wife looked up from the paper and said, “What’s this word I keep seeing here — depression?” As a child she had no electricity, no television. Is there a connection?

I am not suggesting that we all go back to bamboo huts, though a few weeks might not be the worst thing now and then. I am just questioning the techno-romantics who think technology by its very nature is enlarging and fulfilling. Sometimes it does the opposite, and hollows us out.

Adam Smith actually had a glimmer of this, regarding the effect of the division of labor upon the workers involved. As each task becomes more specialized, Smith noted, it engages less of the person. Narrow work leads to human atrophy; it can make people “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” (Smith had a brooding cautionary side that is lacking among his acolytes today.)

What’s happening now is bigger and more endemic. It affects people not just as employees but as “consumers” even more (and consumption is the real work of our “economy” to begin with.)

This is a big topic, obviously, but a lot goes back to who is devising the technology and why.

Open technologies and open systems are less inclined to the unvirtuous cycle than closed ones are. There’s a built-in social dimension that engages us at more levels, as producers as well as just consumers. Open systems evolve to serve the needs of users rather than of those 69

who seek to use the users for their own ends. Compare, for example, traditional fairy tales with the kiddy entertainment today that has embedded products such as candy bars and colas.

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ARGUMENT: WHY WOMEN FROM ASIA ARE CONFRONTING U.S. FRACKING: OIL EXTRACTION EQUALS PLASTIC PRODUCTION Isabelle Morrison18 Heaps of plastic waste cover the shores of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Myrna Dominguez remembers when an abundance of fish inhabited its waters—locals would catch enough to feed their families and sell at the market. Today, she says, they are catching more plastic than fish.

“We’re very afraid that if this is not addressed, the bay, which 100,000 small fishers rely on, will no longer be viable for them,” Dominguez says.

In May, Dominguez and Indian labor organizer Lakshmi Narayan visited communities in the U.S. that are affected by pollution from oil extraction and plastic production, to show the effects that these processes have on communities overseas. The “Stopping Plastic Where It Starts Tour,” organized by #Breakfreefromplastic and Earthworks, is part of a project that aims to reduce plastic consumption and production by raising awareness about the impacts of plastic production on the communities at either end of its supply chain.

Dominguez and Narayan, representing communities in Asia experiencing the effects of plastic pollution, visited places in the U.S. experiencing the impacts of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) oil and gas production—an industry that is producing the raw materials to build plastic.

Dominguez is the policy and advocacy adviser of the Asia Pacific Network on Food Sovereignty, which campaigns to protect the rights of small food producers such as fishers and farmers, and to preserve fishing grounds and cultural lands of indigenous communities.

Narayan is the co-founder of Solid Waste and Collection Handling, a cooperative of wastepickers in Pune, India, who collect waste throughout the city and separate it into categories for proper disposal.

Isabelle Morrison is a solutions reporting intern for YES! where this article was originally published. Why Women From Asia Are Confronting U.S. Fracking: Oil Extraction Equals Plastic Production by Isabelle Morrison is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Both women represent groups from Asian countries that are dealing with the effects of plastic pollution—particularly plastic that is produced and distributed by U.S. companies.

“I’m hoping this tour will change American people’s views of how they live every day, and how it impacts poor countries like us,” Dominguez says. “If America gets a cold, the Philippines gets the flu. We’re very dependent on the U.S., so whatever happens here affects us too.”

The Philippines is the third largest ocean plastic polluter in the world—it also has the most persistent poverty rate in Southeast Asia. In 2017, the U.S. was the third largest plastic exporter in the world, exporting $6.8 billion worth of plastic items.

Single-use plastic products, such as straws and other utensils—and products packaged in plastic, including toiletries and food—are produced by transnational companies and marketed to people in places like the Philippines at low costs. The plastic waste from these products ends up in landfills or marine areas like Manila Bay. Plastic manufacturers are not responsible for the disposal of their products, so the burden is placed on people in the Philippines, who do not have the resources to properly dispose of all the waste, Dominguez says.

“People have realized there’s no easy technological solution to the problem of ocean plastic waste, and the only way to stop ocean plastic is to stop plastic,” says Jennifer Krill. Krill is the executive director of Earthworks, an environmental and social justice organization dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the impacts of mining and energy extraction.

“If we were to somehow recover all that waste from the ocean, we would still have to put it in a landfill or in an incinerator, and there would be significant environmental impacts from those solutions. The better solution would be to not make so much of it to begin with.”

That’s why Dominguez and Narayan traveled to the U.S., where the women visited communities affected by fracking. In the U.S., a fracking boom is helping fuel plastic production worldwide by providing a necessary building block of plastic: ethane. Dominguez and Narayan visited communities experiencing the impacts of fracking in Texas, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. They also visited Washington D.C. In 2017, the U.S. consumed around 1.2 million barrels of ethane per day.

In Texas, for example, a major fracking boom is underway. A new report by IHS Markit shows the Permian Basin in West Texas is expecting a surge in oil production—more than double by 2023—in large part because of fracking, which has made trapped oil and gas accessible.

Fracking involves pumping water, sand, and chemicals underground to release gas and oil from rock. The shale formations used for extracting oil and gas in the U.S. are high in ethane, which is wasted in the extraction process unless the industry has a way to bring it to market.

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“Currently what we’re seeing is a major build-out of new petrochemical manufacturing in order for the industry to recover that waste ethane and convert it into plastic, most of which is also going to become waste, but along the way they’ll make a lot of money manufacturing it into plastic,” Krill says.

In 2017, the U.S. consumed around 1.2 million barrels of ethane per day, and exported around 180,000 barrels per day to countries overseas.

Earthworks—one of the organizations that organized the tour—has recently introduced a Community Empowerment Project to provide communities near oil and gas facilities with data on methane and ethane pollution from nearby oil and gas extraction sites by using an optical gas imaging camera that makes invisible ethane—and methane—pollution from these sites visible.

Not only does methane and ethane pollution contribute to climate change, but it also causes health issues for people who live near oil and gas facilities—in the U.S., that’s more than 17 million people.

Residents who live near these facilities have reported experiencing respiratory problems such as asthma and coughing, eye, nose, and throat irritation, headaches, nausea, dizziness, trouble sleeping, and fatigue.

“If we are going to stop plastic we need to stop plastic where it starts.”

The organization has been taking the camera to oil and gas wells, pipelines, and compressor stations to show government regulators and companies that the methane and ethane pollution problem is real. Gas imaging videos are available on Earthworks’ YouTube channel for citizens to use as evidence when urging regulators in their states to require operators clean up the gas waste.

“It hasn’t stopped pollution—it hasn’t been as effective as we’d like it to be yet,” Krill says about the project. But she hopes it will be. “The industry likes to say ‘There’s no pollution, we’re very clean,’ and with this video evidence it’s hard to deny that there’s a serious problem with oil and gas extraction.”

On a global scale, the #Breakfreefromplastic movement, made up of 1,000 organizations worldwide, has been focused on creating “zero-waste cities” in Malaysia, India, and the Philippines—teaching communities about separating organic from inorganic waste, composting, and recycling.

Narayan, who represents the waste-pickers who collect and separate waste in Pune, India, says the process of recycling plastics into reusable materials is so expensive that the waste is often not recyclable at all.

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#Breakfreefromplastic also focuses on making the public aware of their consumption habits in hopes of reducing the use of one-use plastic products, and pushing for “corporate accountability,” says Jed Alegado, the Asia Pacific communications officer for #Breakfreefromplastic.

“Corporations that have the money to come up with these products should invest in more sustainable and ecological distribution systems for their products,” Alegado says. “They shouldn’t pass the burden to consumers and governments for the plastic waste they are creating.”

Growing up in the Philippines, Dominguez recalls using coconut shells as plates, and eating food with her bare hands—before large companies had convinced the world that plastic products are a necessity, she says.

Dominguez is optimistic that change can occur by educating and inspiring people to reduce their use of plastic products and become vocal about how the government handles waste.

“If we are going to stop plastic we need to stop plastic where it starts,” Krill says. “We can’t let greed get in the way of common sense and sustainability.”

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ARGUMENT: WHICH FUTURE WOULD YOU CHOOSE? Jay Walljaspar & Kim Klein19

Day at the Museum: Scenario 1 You stroll down the sidewalk and come to the corner right across from the museum. The light turns red. Cars zip past. You push the pedestrian button on the light pole, and soon the light changes so you can get across.

As you walk, you take a deep breath of the crisp fall air. You know downtown suffers air pollution problems, but today it seems clear and beautiful. The museum has free admission on Tuesday, and you are happy that you could rearrange your work schedule this week to take advantage of it. You climb the stairs and enter through the turnstile, but before heading off into the museum, you decide to use the bathroom. It is neat and clean, with environmentally friendly low-flow flush toilets. Coming out of the stall, you wash your hands at the sink with the soap and paper towels provided. Outside the restroom, you stop at the drinking fountain and then, refreshed, eagerly stroll in the direction of the exhibits.

Day at the Museum: Scenario 2 You step onto the sidewalk leading to the museum through a turnstile, flashing your FASTRAK card at a machine operated by a corporation that subcontracts with the city to maintain sidewalks in this part of town. A GPS monitor on your belt deducts $1 for every twenty blocks that you walk. (This monitor has the advantage of “keeping you safe,” according to the new marketing campaign, because if you fall or are the victim of a crime, you can press a button so that police or an ambulance can easily find you.) In well-traveled zip districts, like downtown, you pay an additional $2 surcharge to use the sidewalks. (“Prevents overcrowding,” say the FASTRAK ads.)

Jay Walljasper is Senior Fellow at On the Commons and editor of OnTheCommons.org. This essay is an excerpt from his book, All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons. Kim Klein is a trainer, speaker and author of five books on fundraising for nonprofits including Fundraising for Social Change. Which Future Would You Choose? by Jay Walljasper & Kim Klein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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You arrive at the corner right across from the museum and put a quarter in the meter, which activates the walk light. You have ten seconds to make it across the street before the roaring traffic resumes (25 cents more would get you twenty seconds). A few teenagers and a homeless woman cross without paying, alert for the private security guards that might arrest them.

Not everyone can afford the monthly FASTRAK card, so they sneak onto the sidewalk between turnstiles or walk in the road alongside speeding cars. Pedestrian fatalities have quadrupled since the city auctioned sidewalk rights to corporations two years ago.

People passing you wear oxygen masks with various brand names emblazoned in bright colors. So far, you have chosen not to buy “fresh air” in lightweight tanks that can be easily worn when you go outside. You are not convinced the free air is that dangerous. In fact, today it seems crisp and clear. The museum entry is half price on Tuesday, only $14 with special coupons you get when making a purchase at the Gap. But you have to put up with Gap advertising throughout the exhibit. There are fewer advertisements on the days when you pay full price.

Once inside the museum, you pay $3 to use the bathroom and another $1 for washing your hands with automatically premeasured units of water, soap, and paper towel. Had you planned ahead, you would have used the Porta-Potty on the street, which costs only $1.75 but with no sink, only a Handi-wipe dispenser costing another buck. You look for a drinking fountain, until realizing how futile that is. Bottled water sells for $6 from a vendor who also runs the bathroom concession. You’ve spent enough already, you decide, and, still thirsty, trudge off in the direction of the exhibits.

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ARGUMENT: THE POLITICS OF FEAR: HOW IT MANIPULATES US INTO TRIBALISM Arash Javanbakht 20 The cruel murder of 50 people in New Zealand was another tragic reminder of how humans are capable of heartlessly killing their own kind just based on what they believe, how they worship, and what race or nationality they belong to. There is a longstanding history of the fear of “the others” turning humans into illogical ruthless weapons, in service to an ideology.

Fear is arguably as old as life. It is deeply ingrained in the living organisms that have survived extinction through billions of years of evolution. Its roots are deep in our core psychological and biological being, and it is one of our most intimate feelings. Danger and war are as old as human history, and so are politics and religion.

Demagogues have always used fear for intimidation of the subordinates or enemies, and shepherding the tribe by the leaders. Fear is a very strong tool that can blur humans’ logic and change their behavior.

I am a psychiatrist and neuroscientist specializing in fear and trauma, and I have some evidence-based thoughts on how fear is abused in politics.

We learn fear from tribe mates.

Like other animals, we humans can learn fear from experience, such as being attacked by a predator. We also learn from observation, such as witnessing a predator attacking another human. And, we learn by instructions, such as being told there is a predator nearby.

Learning from our conspecifics – members of the same species – is an evolutionary advantage that has prevented us from repeating dangerous experiences of other humans. We have a tendency to trust our tribe mates and authorities, especially when it comes to danger. It is adaptive: Parents and wise old men told us not to eat a special plant, or not to go to an area in

Arash Javanbakht is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University. This essay originally appeared in The Conversation. The Politics of Fear: How It Manipulates Us to Tribalism by Arash Javanbakht is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

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the woods, or we would be hurt. By trusting them, we would not die like a great-grandfather who died eating that plant. This way we accumulated knowledge.

Tribalism has been an inherent part of the human history. There has always been competition between groups of humans in different ways and with different faces, from brutal wartime nationalism to a strong loyalty to a football team. Evidence from cultural neuroscience shows that our brains even respond differently at an unconscious level simply to the view of faces from other races or cultures.

At a tribal level, people are more emotional and consequently less logical: Fans of both teams pray for their team to win, hoping God will take sides in a game. On the other hand, we regress to tribalism when afraid. This is an evolutionary advantage that would lead to the group cohesion and help us fight the other tribes to survive.

Tribalism is the biological loophole that many politicians have banked on for a long time: tapping into our fears and tribal instincts. Some examples are Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, religious wars and the Dark Ages. The typical pattern is to give the other humans a different label than us, and say they are going to harm us or our resources, and to turn the other group into a concept. It does not have to necessarily be race or nationality, which are used very often. It can be any real or imaginary difference: liberals, conservatives, Middle Easterners, white men, the right, the left, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs. The list goes on and on.

When building tribal boundaries between “us” and “them,” some politicians have managed very well to create virtual groups of people that do not communicate and hate without even knowing each other: This is the human animal in action!

Fear is uninformed.

A soldier once told me: “It is much easier to kill someone you have never met, from distance.

When you look through the scope, you just see a red dot, not a human.” The less you know about them, the easier to fear them, and to hate them.

This human tendency and ability of destruction of what is unknown and unfamiliar is meat to the politicians who want to exploit fear: If you grew up only around people who look like you, only listened to one media outlet and heard from the old uncle that those who look or think differently hate you and are dangerous, the inherent fear and hatred toward those unseen people is an understandable (but flawed) result.

To win us, politicians, sometimes with the media’s help, do their best to keep us separated, to keep the real or imaginary “others” just a “concept.” Because if we spend time with others, talk to them and eat with them, we will learn that they are like us: humans with all the strengths and weaknesses that we possess. Some are strong, some are weak, some are funny, some are dumb, some are nice and some not too nice.

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Fear is illogical and often dumb.

Very often my patients with phobias start with: “I know it is stupid, but I am afraid of spiders.”

Or it may be dogs or cats, or something else. And I always reply: “It is not stupid, it is illogical.”

We humans have different functions in the brain, and fear oftentimes bypasses logic. There are several reasons. One is that logic is slow; fear is fast. In situations of danger, we ought to be fast: First run or kill, then think.

Politicians and the media very often use fear to circumvent our logic. I always say the U.S. media are disaster pornographers – they work too much on triggering their audiences’ emotions. They are kind of political reality shows, surprising to many from outside the U.S. When one person kills a few others in a city of millions, which is of course a tragedy, major networks’ coverage could lead one to perceive the whole city is under siege and unsafe. If one undocumented illegal immigrant murders a U.S. citizen, some politicians use fear with the hope that few will ask: “This is terrible, but how many people were murdered in this country by U.S. citizens just today?” Or: “I know several murders happen every week in this town, but now that this one is being showcased by the media?”

We do not ask these questions, because fear bypasses logic.

Fear can turn violent.

There is a reason that the response to fear is called the “fight or flight” response. That response has helped us survive the predators and other tribes that have wanted to kill us. But again, it is another loophole in our biology to be abused to turn on our aggression toward “the others,” whether in the form of vandalizing their temples or harassing them on the social media.

When ideologies manage to get hold of our fear circuitry, we often regress to illogical, tribal and aggressive human animals, becoming weapons ourselves – weapons that politicians use for their own agenda.

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ARGUMENT: TAKING THE NATIVE AMERICAN NARRIATIVE BEYOND RESERVATIONS Natasha Vizcarra21

“Sisters of War”. Jolene Nenibah Yazzie

Who in the U.S. could tell if a man sitting in a coffeeshop was Native American? At the comic book store, the two young women who were obviously into each other – who could tell they were Diné? Who would even know the Diné was another name for the Navajo Native American tribe, or consider the fact that Native Americans might be active members of society beyond casinos and reservations?

“Tiger Lily,” Jolene Nenibah Yazzie says, referring to a supporting character in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. “Don’t forget Tiger Lily.” Yazzie, a Denver-based artist and photographer, is Diné.

Princess Tiger Lily lives in Neverland with her tribe, the Piccaninny.

Natasha Vizcarra is a science writer based in Boulder, Colorado. She is the editor of Sensing Our Planet: NASA Earth Science Research Features, a freelance writer, and the author of several children’s books. Taking the Native American Narrative Beyond Reservations by Natasha Vizcarra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Why Barrie, who wrote the story as a play in 1904, chose a racial slur for dark-skinned children of African descent to name her tribe is telling. And Disney’s depiction of Tiger Lily 50 years after Barrie wrote the original play is even more so.

“That feather in the headband, a feather sticking out,” Yazzie says. “I don’t know any tribe who wears feathers like that, especially in our ancestral stories.” Sixty years after the Disney film’s release, Tiger Lily still wasn’t right and was played by Rooney Mara in the 2015 film Pan. (Most Native American characters have been played by white actors in Hollywood films).

This flippant and racist disregard to accuracy is typical of Native American stereotypes propagated by U.S. history, pop culture and mass media. The Native American is either the noble savage, the bloodthirsty savage, the despairing Indian on a reservation or simply invisible.

“There were always these stereotypes of what a Native American was, and it was always a bad guy,” says Yazzie, who devoured comics in her youth growing up on the Diné reservation in Tse Si Ani, also known as Lupton, Arizona. Known for its magnificent sandstone cliffs, the small town straddles the border between New Mexico and Arizona. “I just don’t like those types of characters, and they’re all men too,” she adds.

Decades older than Yazzie, writer Sherman Alexie of the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene tribe felt the same. In his 1998 Los Angeles Times essay “I Hated Tonto (Still Do),” he wrote: “In the movies, Indians are always accompanied by ominous music. And I’ve seen so many Indian movies that I feel like I’m constantly accompanied by ominous music. I always feel that something bad is about to happen.”

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To raise awareness among media about reporting Native American stories, Ahtone helped in the gamification of words to approach with caution. Photo courtesy of NAJA and High Country News

These stereotypes not only negatively affect Native Americansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; self-esteem, but they also radiate outward and influence institutions, such as mass media. Tristan Ahtone, a journalist and citizen of the Kiowa Nation, is exasperated by mainstream mediaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sloppy and stereotypical coverage of issues involving Native Americans and Indigenous peoples worldwide.

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“The point about challenging stereotypes about Native people is you just have to write about a real person,” he says. “It’s not that hard. It’s an incredibly low bar to write about somebody as a normal person, instead of, ‘Oh my God we’ve never seen anything like this!’ ” Why has this status quo been living for so long? Ahtone thinks it stems from an avoidance that has deep racial roots. “When it comes to these sorts of colonial practices in the U.S., we’re incredibly inconvenient to have around,” he says. “U.S. history provides ample evidence of genocidal policies. So, by having us around and talking about surviving, for instance, that’s a big issue.”

But while Alexie was coy about fighting stereotypes (“We Indians became so numb to the possibility of dissent,” he wrote), Ahtone and Yazzie are among many Native Americans unequivocally committed to changing their own narratives – and Native American narratives as a whole.

Yazzie uses graphic art to address gender and Indigenous issues in the U.S. Photo courtesy of Jolene Nenibah Yazzie.

Too Many Feathers for a Woman When Yazzie was only 4-years-old, she already knew she was different. “My parents knew it too. I always wanted to be with the boys and do things better than the boys,” she says. “Being gay and being a person of color – being Diné – it questions a lot of things.”

Of course, the inevitable happened. “I started competing against boys in powwows,” she recounts.

This was one of the first things Yazzie did to claim her narrative, and she did it despite being seen as disrespectful to their traditions. “People said to me, ‘You can’t dance in the boys’ category because you’re a girl.’ I have questioned that ever since.”

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Yazzie was even bullied in the powwow circle. But because her parents were always supportive, she has danced in boys’ and now men’s’ powwows ever since. She has met several men who dance in the women’s category, and she’s seen other women dance in the men’s category. “I don’t know if they’re still doing it,” she says. “I hope they are.”

Yazzie has also asserted a more authentic portrayal of Native American women through her paintings. Her comic book–style portraits of Native American women warriors raise elders’ eyebrows. In her mural “Sisters of War,” three women warriors wear hats adorned with feathers.

“Some of my own people question me because these hats are only worn by men. They say, ‘Women aren’t supposed to be warriors. They have too many feathers on their hats. That’s too many feathers for a woman.’

“But that was my interpretation of me stepping into gender,” she says. “I know there were women warriors, and there still are women warriors. They just face different wars, like domestic violence, rape, that kind of stuff.”

Over the past few years, Yazzie has added photojournalism to her storytelling tools. She has freelanced for Al Jazeera America, is currently finishing a journalism degree at the Metropolitan State University of Denver and will join High Country News as a photographer in July.

Yazzie is excited about a current project with a professor at Oklahoma State University. “She wants me to take photos of lesbians who have families,” Yazzie says. “I think it’s important because there is a lack of images of lesbian women, especially Diné or any other tribe, raising their own families.”

The project is close to Yazzie’s heart as she and her partner, who is part Diné, want to get married in a tribal ceremony. But, the Diné medicine men they have approached have all turned them away. Her desire for kids is difficult for her and her partner to imagine.

“I want to make [these images] more normal for other people, so they won’t look at [gay women] like that anymore,” Yazzie says. “Because even those little weird glances make you uncomfortable. It doesn’t make you feel that you’re a part of something. I want them to feel they are not alone, that there is a community for them.”

Every Space a Revolution It’s been about six years since Ahtone left general news reporting and to focus primarily on tribal affairs and Indigenous stories. He has worked for news outlets including NPR, Al Jazeera America, PBS NewsHour, Frontline and National Native News and won a few awards for his work. Now an associate editor for tribal affairs at High Country News, Ahtone works hard at making space for Native American voices in the national conversation.

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“There is no Indigenous voice in mainstream or legacy media,” Ahtone says. He feels these outlets just don’t hire enough Native reporters or editors, if they hire any at all. Their coverage of Indigenous issues also leaves much to be desired. “Some places will have a marijuana beat but they don’t have a beat covering the 567 tribal nations across the U.S.,” Ahtone says.

So, after several years of sticking it out in mainstream outlets, he left. He says, “It’s incredibly tiring to have to continue to try to convince an industry that prides itself on being very democratic and open to underrepresented voices that our voices matter.”

Ahtone was drawn to High Country News because they devoted resources and time to producing multi-faceted, high-quality coverage of Native Americans and their lands. Ahtone also worked for cable news channel Al Jazeera America, which was aiming to be the go-to network for underrepresented voices. Unfortunately it shut down in 2016 after only three years on the airwaves.

Most legacy outlets, Ahtone says, only want one-off reports or occasional ‘Indigenous Voices’ series. “These outlets routinely screw things up with Indigenous communities but also with most communities of color,” Ahtone says.

He attributes this to an underpinning concept of ownership: “The commodification of Native people – be it through land or through image – often plays a role in reporters thinking that they can do whatever they want in these communities.”

Ahtone thinks that journalists in legacy outlets might not even be conscious of this, and that this lack of self-awareness in turn keeps them from recognizing their reporting and correcting their behavior.

For Ahtone, publications such as The New York Times and Washington Post are most culpable as their influence and strong digital presence ensures they dominate news coverage and “take up a lot more space in the national conversation.”

As Ahtone digs into more investigative pieces for High Country News and builds his team of reporters and correspondents, he also keeps his eye on young Native American writers keen on becoming journalists.

Working with the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), Ahtone and his colleagues advocate to get more Native people into newsrooms, “because Indigenous peoples holding space is revolutionary,” he says. “We need to be holding these spaces.

“If you’re at a tribal outlet, if you’re in a mainstream outlet, it doesn’t matter. We need your voice. No matter where you are, we want you there.”

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The community of journalists such as himself might be small, but it is strong, he says.

Experienced Native American journalists are eager to mentor those who are younger and equip future generations with the skills to continue changing the narrative. â&#x20AC;&#x153;My hope is by starting to seed more people into news organizations early, with a different way of thinking, then in the future they will do a better job.â&#x20AC;?

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Readers become better writers.

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OTHER GENERAL READINGS

“More Street Wisdom from Teacher” by joey zanotti taken 22oct16; Flickr Creative Commons, under a CC-BY license.

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READING: DEVELOPING A UNIVERSAL RELIGION22 What would a universal religion look like? This chapter simply serves to illustrate how a “moral” direction might be deduced—a feat that will be more judiciously accomplished once a universal purpose has been defined. Thus, in that they serve only as examples, my derivations in this chapter are of limited practical application other than as a spring board for further discussion.

We set out from the beginning by restating the facts that form the basis of our current understanding of reality. The facts of life can be summarized as follows: • Life is a process whereby chemical complexes exploit their environments to obtain energy and resources. Living and exploiting are inseparable activities, present at the base level in all life forms. Replication is a secondary function that (if sexual, rather than simply division) facilitates diversity. Diversity helps life to survive in a changing environment. ● The elemental nature of life’s underlying process (chemical processes exploiting their environment) implies that it can, and will, arise anywhere, whenever suitable conditions exist. Once begun, life continues until all usable energy differences are exhausted; ceasing prior to this point would simply leave niches where new life could arise and evolve. ● Sporadic mutations that improve or have no negative effect on life’s ability to successfully exploit environmental resources are carried through into subsequent generations. ● Living organisms add new structures and cell processes to those they already possess, making entities more complex as time goes by. This creates an evolutionary trend toward intelligence because, to become beneficial, compounded body augmentations require more elaborate controlling abilities. Furthermore, since energy-exploitation becomes more difficult as energy resources are consumed, the very act of living creates conditions that necessitate enhanced problem-solving ability. That is, declining resources (and challenges of any kind) beget increased mental ability or intelligence. ● Life learns how to exploit and control its environment by perceiving, investigating, understanding, then utilizing the relationships that exist between objects and events.

This is possible because the universe is causally constructed.

22 "Developing A Universal Religion/Determining Moral Behaviors." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 30 Oct 2010, 14:56 UTC. 21 Nov 2018, 16:27 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Developing_A_Universal_Religion/Determining_Moral_Behaviors&oldid=196 2195>. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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● Causality’s chain seems to break, from an insider’s point-of-view, at the physical and temporal boundaries of our universe. Internal causality cannot be connected to anything external to this universe because the properties of that which lies beyond (if anything does exist outside) cannot be understood from a position within.

There are many other important aspects to the nature of life and the universe but those listed above will suffice for the purposes of this chapter.

One vitally important fact is missing from the above list: humans are not the whole of life.

With the meta-purpose we have chosen, it is our relationship to life itself that determines “moral” behavior. Thus, we must carefully examine what this relationship entails.

Humans are just one species, one twig of a giant tree, and this places us in a rather precarious position. As a twig, we are not only beset by the storms and upheavals that continuously affect and change our physical environment, we are further subjected to the demands that the tree itself places upon us.

Life is our father and mother. Life produced us. It nurtures us, and it will absorb us once we die. Life creates and maintains our support system and structures much of our playground. Life itself is the totality to which we owe allegiance, and to which we should be paying most attention. Living life—not some imaginary after-death life—is our true super system. Knowing this, I ask myself what subsystem behaviors might such a super system reward, and what might it punish?

To my way of thinking, the following statements are self-evident in the context of the super system “Life.” ● Subsystems (including humans) will be tolerated by their encompassing super system (Life) as long as they do not hinder its continuance. (For instance, plants will provide oxygen and convert sunlight into energy forms that we and other living entities can consume—as long as we do not eliminate them.) ● Life “punishes” entities that disrupt its existence or growth. (For instance, discharging pollutants diminishes the abundance and variety of food producers, eventually creating a future that becomes one of subsisting rather than of plenty.) ● Life “rewards” entities that foster its spread and development. (For instance, enlarging rain forest acreage increases the abundance and variety of food and other resources that it supplies.)

(To best appreciate these points, think of the long-term implications of any endeavor, human or otherwise, that impacts upon some part of the ecosystem, then imagine what might happen if the scope and depth of this impact were to be greatly increased. Projecting to the limit often clarifies what may well be happening, unnoticed, on a smaller scale or behind the scenes.)

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There are likely several other truths about the relationship between humans (or any species) and our super system that deserve to be uncovered and discussed, but those stated above are sufficient to move to the next step.

When I consider our relationship to the super system Life as we experience it on Earth, I find that Life is actually behaving very much in a traditional “god-like” manner. It is effectively “judging” what its subsystems—including humans—do, and it subsequently rewards or punishes their behavior. These rewards and punishments are meted out continuously, in various forms and locations, over short and long time-spans. Humans are learning to recognize these repercussions, but we still have a long way to go before we learn to respect— or even to expect—Life’s judgements.

However, we can choose to behave in a manner that allows us to benefit from our relationship to our super system Life. For instance, we can reduce the harm we inflict on our super system by ensuring our discharges are benign. This would precipitate the reward of having more resources—food and oxygen, for instance—made available as greater diversity (and numbers) of other life forms survive and thrive. Or, as another example, we can increase rather than decrease the world’s rain forest coverage, thus increasing the variety and number of benefitsto-life that accompany biological diversity. We can choose to behave in such ways (and many of us do), but the activities of numerous others, some for profit some simply to survive, are hastening the demise of significant portions of Life’s super system.

The reasons humans do not all act in ways that benefit Life are many and varied, but two are particularly significant to our discussions. First, as previously stated, we are only just recognizing, and do not yet fully comprehend, the fact that humans are simply a processing subsystem, subordinate to and dependent upon, a larger system. Second, failing to recognize our dependency, few of us value it appropriately.

There are also degrees of valuing. We can give a wary nod to an idea, or we can embrace it wholeheartedly. Thus, we could pay lip-service to the idea of Life being our super system and say, “sure, I think this idea is important,” but carry on as before—and nothing changes. Or we could say, “yes, the ecosystem is very important; I’ll be careful not to pollute,” and start, for example, participating in the community’s recycling program—producing a little change. Or we could say, “let me consider more fully this relationship between humans and Life,” then seek others already active in this area to investigate what can be done. In the latter situation, actions having greater impact might result. The degree to which we value the relationship between ourselves and Life affects the future that all life (not just our descendants) will experience on this planet. And while our effects on life’s future are typically minimal, the ramifications of humanity’s actions are increasingly far-reaching.

Subliminal Message of Global Warming?

Well, let’s think about what insights might be gained were we to recognize that our super system’s journey toward eventual possession of omnipotent abilities is the very same journey 91

that all species as subsystems are undertaking, albeit that each will travel only an infinitesimal part of the way.

If we were to regard Life’s continued evolution as an activity well worth supporting, and, particularly, if we were to use this “meta-purpose” to define the universal purpose that guides our moral decision making, then a whole new range of behaviors would become valued. We can use the ideas listed in section two above to deduce what these behaviors would be. We can even make moral judgements and infer what types of activities should be considered “right” and which should be considered “wrong” within the confines of such a value system.

Subliminal Message of Knowing Science?

When I attempt this, I find the following. ● It is right to learn, to support others’ learning, to try to understand how and why the universe and its contents are the way they are—because Life lives and advances by learning and by putting this knowledge to use. ● It is right to pass on this knowledge, to store it for future generations, to link knowledge together in theories, to find new avenues of thought—because Life has evolved intelligence as a helping mechanism, and knowledge is the food that nurtures capacity, intelligence and understanding.

Subliminal Message of Education’s Importance? ●

It is right to make use of this knowledge, to expand our limits, our control and our ability to exploit—because Life lives, grows, reproduces and becomes richer in every aspect, by using the energy and resources it has learned to extract from its environment. ● But it is equally right, and necessary, to control excessive exploitations—because these harm Life’s future. Determining where to draw the line between helpful exploitation and harmful excesses is, and always will be, a difficult undertaking, but one which must be made a priority if civilization is to continue.

Subliminal Message of Hunting/Overpopulation? ●

And, it is right to help other humans and other life forms—because Life’s progress may benefit from the contributions of others as much as, or even more than, it does from ours.

These behaviors (and many others, of course) would be “right” for any living entity in this universe to practice, simply because actions of this kind help Life to actualize its potential. In response, the super system “rewards” subsystems for supporting its operations. That such actions are also “right” for humans to practice because they help each of us attain our own potential is likely to be secondary to Life’s progress (although it usually is very important to our personal well-being).

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That which helps Life, helps us. The order of importance must be this way around, not the other, because humans are a subordinate system. What are to be considered “right” actions, in the logical system of morals we are developing, must always be determined by putting Life’s advancement, not human advancement, first.

With this process of reasoning in place, new behavioral boundaries (i.e., rights and wrongs) might be established. Some of those newly “recognized” above as being “right” to practice have been ignored or even discouraged within traditional religions, although others have always been important. For instance, before now there has not been a rational explanation of why teaching and learning are so important, such “right” functions. Furthermore, just as we can now clearly judge learning to be right, we can now immediately state why it is wrong to restrict knowledge, to burn books, to tell lies, to spread hatred, to prevent or limit the development of other life forms.

Subliminal Message of Censorship?

If, as a community, we were to adopt the practice of rationally deducing moral behavior from the purpose we elect to support, we would, after sustained effort, eventually be able to justify our morality to any intelligent being (including those beyond our planet). Our existing moral systems would probably become subsumed within the rational one, and some components of the former might in due time simply fade away.

Any rational being can deduce a moral code from a statement of desired purpose together with knowledge of the environment containing the criteria a successful solution must meet. If enough of humanity chose to value the living environment more than any possible dead one, then we could combine efforts to logically educe what behaviors should be called “morally wrong” or “morally right.” Given enough time, we should be able to formulate a set of moral statements, each element of which would be traceable back to its origins. This latter feature is important, as it ensures that each assertion is adjustable should new information or understanding make correction necessary. And we would know what is to be gained, both immediately and in the distant future, by acting in accordance with these values.

Until we reach this stage, our beliefs regarding which behaviors are “right” or “wrong” stem only from what we have been taught by our parents, teachers, or religion’s authorities. That is, until we embrace logically deduced moralities, there is no rational way to independently verify the truth of such statements, and no straight-forward method to incorporate changes resulting from improved knowledge. (Christians, for instance, accept the authority of the Commandments on faith. These cannot be modified even if circumstances should so merit.)

With a guiding universal purpose statement and its derived set of moral codes in place, it would no longer be necessary to separate religious thought from rational or scientific thought.

Causal links and logical deductions could be made in both domains, with the two becoming inter-dependent and mutually supporting. The data, their sources, the need to inquire, and the methods used when investigating, would become identical for science and religion, unifying 93

these two great endeavors. Effectively, they become one and the same search for reality’s truth.

Moreover, we would know that any intelligent living entity, anywhere in the universe, would be able to uncover rational reasons to value and support Life reaching its full potential, and thus develop the same ethical standards as we support. Rationality provides the means to develop a truly universal religion.

QUESTIONS: What pieces of this essay do you agree with wholeheartedly? Which pieces do you disagree with? Why? 2. As a human, do you “act in ways that benefit Life”? Explain your answer of Yes or No. 3. Comment on any of the subliminal messages from this essay.

1.

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READING: GAME ADDICTIONS23 While most of the public views game addiction in terms of video games, game addiction can take many forms. People can be addicted to board games, card games, game shows and other forms of games. Video games are the most visible because they are more relevant in pop culture and are having a greater impact on the younger generations, so much of our data and research will be dealing with that. However, these concepts can be applicable to games of any and all ways, shapes and forms.

HISTORY As long as there have been games, there have been addicts, much like with other addictive substances. One form of these addictions is caused by video/computer games. The term idea of video game addiction was first introduced to mainstream media in the early 80s. U.S. Surgeon General Everett Koop (the Life-Alert guy) released a statement on November 10, 1982 saying that video games might be hazardous to the health of young people, who, he said, are becoming addicted to the machines body and soul. At the time he had very little evidence to support his claim but he predicted that in a few years medical professionals would ascertain this evidence through research. Almost thirty years of research coupled with more advanced technology for gaming now shows that Dr. Koop was accurate with his claims. In July 2006, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first video game addiction clinic opened in Amsterdam. Since then other countries like the United States, Canada, China, and Korea have opened treatment centers. These treatment centers and the methods they implement to help video game addicts will be discussed in the Prevention and Correctional Programs section.

ADDICTION DEFINED Addiction is an emotionally charged word with negative connotations. It turns out to be much harder to define what it is than it might at first appear. While there is not a steadfast, undebatable definition in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual Volume IV (the "bible" of Medicine), there is a definition of the term "dependence". Dependence is defined as "Substance use history which includes the following: (1) substance abuse; (2) continuation of use despite related problems; (3) increase in tolerance; and (4) withdrawal symptoms."

23 "Lentis/Game Addictions." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 3 Nov 2017, 01:55 UTC. 21 Nov 2018, 17:37 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Lentis/Game_Addictions&oldid=3322706>. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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Addiction to computer games is often seen as a social problem. Addiction to sports or to games of skill such as chess are more rarely seen as being a problem. Why is this? When does a passion for an activity become an addiction? Looked at more objectively, addictions are activities that society in general does not approve of. A passion for football or for chess is something society as a whole can approve of, even when pursued to the detriment of other activities. They are less prone to being categorized as an addiction. In approved of and unapproved of activities we can analyze the elements that make the activity “addictive”, the cycles of reward, the emotional circuits that are being tapped into.

SYMPTOMS While video game and internet addiction are not actually classified in the DSM-IV, the American Medical Association is reviewing research to determine whether or not these terms should be included in the next update of the manual in 201024. As many as 10% of gamers exhibit addictive behaviors.

Game addiction can include any number of symptoms mentioned below: ● Preoccupation: person seems unusually concerned with the game, may seem irritable or distracted, will talk about gaming frequently to his peers ● Lack of control: the person feels as if they need to play the game in order to function.

The person cannot go for an extended period of time without playing the game. An example of this would be the YouTube sensation "The Greatest Freak Out Ever" from username wafflepwn. The teenager's reaction to the loss of his World of Warcraft account is a symptom of game addiction. ● Lying: fabrications of how much time is spent playing video games. The person may lie to his friends and family about playing video games in order to prevent intervention.

Many of the symptoms and causes of game addiction are similar to that of gambling addiction, or problem gambling. In fact, gambling addiction and game addiction experience a lot of overlap, especially in terms of card games and slot machines. Where they differ is in sports betting, which is not seen by the public as a game.

SIDE EFFECTS ●

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PHYSICAL Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: One of the most significant and costly physical effects of game addiction is carpal tunnel syndrome. Carpal tunnel syndrome is usually contracted

Yes, this is an “old” essay.

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from extensive use of computer keyboards. The In the case of carpal tunnel, the patient will usually require extensive surgery in order to repair the hand. ● Weight Gain: Another side effect of game addiction is weight gain. Many game addicts will form abnormal eating habits, due to their long streaks of playing video games.

Migraines: Game addicts will spend hours upon hours staring at a backlit screen. This concentration and the prolonged exposure to bright lights are known to bring on painful migraines.

SOCIAL There are many social consequences of game addiction. Here are the three most prevalent: ● Withdrawal: Game addicts, once at a certain point, will start to eschew 25 friends and family in order to devote more time to gaming. This can hurt relationships, work and has even resulted in divorce in cases around the world. ● Lose touch with reality: Many game addicts prefer to be in their game world than to be in the real world. This goes hand in hand with social withdrawal. The gamer will communicate with other people in the language of the game, and in some rare cases, will imagine that they are the character they play, while they in real life. ● Misuse of Money: One of the major consequences of game addiction is the cost of the upkeep of games and systems. Most online multiplayer games require a subscription to keep the servers up and running. Other expenses come from purchasing new games and updates for hardware and software. Game addicts will put priority on those investments over more legally binding ones like bills and such.

PROBLEM GAMES26 Some games that have been heavily targeted by organizations as being more addictive than others include the following: ● World of Warcraft: World of Warcraft has gotten the most scrutiny of all video games by far. Its role-playing aspects, large following and seemingly endless updates make it a prime target for game addiction. There is a lot more to read about World of Warcraft in our colleague's MMORPG page. ● The Halo Franchise: This is the World of Warcraft of console games. Halo is one of the most popular game franchises of all time. On its first day, Halo:Reach sold over $200 million worth of games. Its online multiplayer is massive and very popular for its simplicity: kill or be killed. The fan base for the Halo series is also very loyal. On April 15, 2010, Microsoft shut down their servers that supported the original Xbox games'

25 VERB: deliberately avoid using; abstain from.

26 Since this was written around 2010, one might ask if these games are still “Problem Games” or if others have taken their places, etc.

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online play. The way they kicked players off of the server was that whenever they logged off, they would not be allowed to log back on. Some Halo 2 players heard this news and made a pact to keep playing as long as possible. So, for days upon days, these players kept playing Halo 2. After 26 days, the last player, Apache N4SIR, was booted from the system ● Tetris: Tetris is heralded by many gaming authorities as one of the greatest games of all time. However, it is also very addictive. One of the primary reasons for this is the concept of the high score. Since there are no levels in Tetris, one could theoretically play the game forever, so success in Tetris is measured by the highest score. The portability and ease of the game has allowed Tetris to experience a rebirth in the age of cell phones and iPods. As of January 2010, more than 100 million copies of Tetris have been sold on cell phones alone.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS Action games that demand multitasking and rapid information processing can enhance a range of visual skills. One study reports that avid video game players experience faster reaction times in a variety of tasks including spatial cueing, inhibition of return, and flanker interference than non-video gamers. The research also showed that non-gamers who underwent action game training experienced a greater increase in reaction times than those who had been trained in control gaming. In another experiment by Green and Bavelier, people who typically played action video games for more than five hours a week were able to maintain target identification with distracters in closer proximity than non-game players. After given 30 hours of action game training, these non-video game players saw improvements in their visual acuity and were able to decrease their visual crowding threshold. These studies suggest the causal relationship between action games and heightened visual skills. Furthermore, in a Multiple Object Tracking task study by Sun et al, gamers that had ceased to excessive playing as much as two years prior, exhibited superior visuospatial abilities than a control group. Thus, not only can video games improve perceptual reaction times, visual targeting abilities, and selective attention, but their benefits can be potentially long term. In the future, action video games might play a rehabilitative role for people with poor eyesight.

CAUSES – WHO IS VULNERABLE? According to a survey conducted by USA Today, the average age of the typical gamer is 29, and men make up 59% of the gamer population. Adults that are not happy with their occupations or want more excitement in their lives may use video/computer games to gain satisfaction. A majority of younger game addicts include individuals who don't fit in or are not athletic in school. Others use computer and video games as a way to cope with social deficiencies.

CAUSES – HOW ARE GAMES MADE ADDICTIVE? The most common causes of video/computer game addiction are: ● Achievement Systems 98

â&#x2014;?

Player Control: The ability to escape real life and the ability to be anyone you want to be (especially for online games) â&#x2014;? Social Connections

ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEMS Many video game companies release new versions of their games annually, while most computer games are subscription based. This means it is beneficial for the companies to keep their customers entertained and playing their games. These companies implement certain strategies to ensure this happens.

Video and computer games give the players give the players a sense of achievement to get them hooked. This is analogous to the scenario of a lab hamster on a wheel. As long as the hamster continues to turn the wheel, he will be given food pellets. If the hamster stops running the pellets will be withheld. Most games implement this strategy by having short levels so it is quick and easy to reach some sense of achievement. The players usually get an adrenaline rush while playing, which is sometimes associated with the music in certain games during play.

However, as the players' achievements begin to build up their brains release small amounts of dopamine. Another aspect is that in most games the levels or space between checkpoints slowly get longer and more difficult the more that someone plays, making it harder to reach the same sense of achievement. This directly mimics the effect of most drugs, whereas the chronic users must take more of a drug to reach the same high as their bodies get used to the effects.

Another way achievement systems are used to get people to keep playing video or computer games is by implementing a play it or lose it strategy. This is similar to many games in which the player will lose achievements the longer they refrain from playing. Most players do not want to lose what they have work so hard to gain.

PLAYER CONTROL Many players gain a sense of control from playing video and computer games. They are able to escape from their own limitations in real life and become someone completely different in the game world. This leads to a greater sense of achievement and satisfaction when playing the game as opposed to real life.

SOCIAL CONNECTIONS Players are also attracted to the video games because of the social connections they can make with other players playing the game. This is true for both online and offline games.

Players can find common ground with other players in real life by discussing the game with friends, while online players can meet people from all over the world and immediately have a connection.

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Over the past ten years, a few treatment centers specializing in game addiction have emerged in Amsterdam, China, and the USA. These facilities, typically residential, tend to utilize family therapy and social skills training. While some clinics focus on abstinence, others believe that gaming behavior can be relearned. Cognitive Behavior Therapy has been used to help gamers recognize the emotional reasons behind their excessive game playing, and motivational interviewing techniques have been incorporated to aid in establishing positive goals and time management skills. In 2009, Cosette Rae and Hilary Cash founded one of America's first residential rehab centers in Fall City, Washington. For $15,500 guests can spend 45 days cut off from computers and integrated into a real family's home with chores and daily therapy sessions. The program, called ReStart, also requires mandatory downtime sessions to help game addiction victims learn to deal with boredom in order to prevent relapse in the future.

There are also many online forums for those affected by gaming addiction. One example, Elizabeth Wooley’s self-help site, Online Gamers Anonymous, provides message boards, online meeting places, and a 12-step recovery plan. These online websites attest to the serious withdrawal symptoms that game addicts in detox can experience including anxiety, irritability, restlessness, depression, disrupted sleep pattern, and violent mood swings.

New technologies have been developed offering parents more control over limiting excessive video game playing in children. In 2004, a universal video game controller that's operating time could be limited by parents was patented. The following year, parents could purchase the token-operated PlayLimit to indirectly control the operation time of televisions and video game consoles in their own homes. According to the website, this technology is beneficial because it forces kids to play a more active role in managing their playing time. By requiring children to put tokens in for 15 minutes of play time, this reward-based system might actually perpetuate the problem it attempts to solve.

LAW AND VIDEO GAMES As problematic excessive video gaming becomes more apparent, developers might be required to include warning labels on their products in the future. In October of 2009, a man named Craig Smallwood filed a lawsuit against NcSoft Corporation for emotional distress and misrepresentation. He claimed that the company failed to warn him about the potentially destructive addictive nature of their game Lineage II. While the charges of misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotional were dismissed by Judge Kay in April 2010, the company is still facing counts of defamation and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

QUESTIONS: 1.

2.

3.

This was written in 2010; what does gaming and gaming addiction look like now?

Do you know of anyone who is a gamer? Are they addicted, according to this essay?

What’s the difference between “addiction” and the happy sort of “obsession” some people get with their hobbies?

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READING: DETERMINING MORAL BEHAVIOR – PERSONAL FREEDOM27 Individuals have to be free to explore and exploit their environment if they are to maximize their ability to contribute to Life. This suggests that the freedom of individuals should not be restricted in any way (provided their actions are not restricting the ability of others to contribute, of course). And this implies that individuals should be free to act in ways that might harm themselves.

The over-riding necessity for individual freedom affects how a rational religion might view private activities. For instance, individuals abusing drugs may be acting irrationally, and they may eventually suffer for doing so, but our new religion would likely not consider this action morally “wrong.” Who knows what discoveries, what new insights and understandings, might be realized were a drug-induced state to open neural channels routinely by-passed in everyday thinking? (And there have been many instances when drugs have enhanced an artist’s creativity, and others now reap benefits from that individual’s experience.)

Many countries legislate against the recreational use of drugs. Clearly, we need laws that protect immature individuals from harm but legislation itself will not accomplish this end.

Declaring drug use to be illegal simply hands drug control (and its resulting profits) to criminal organizations. Their activities simply make matters worse, as prohibition tried to teach us.

Our new religion would state that individuals must have the freedom to experiment knowledgeably and to face the ensuing consequences. This is how every animal learns: they act, analyze the results of their action, then modify, cease, or repeat the action, learning and developing physical and mental skills as they do so. Education, not legislation, properly limits the harm that ill-considered experimentation can do. That occasionally people die through their own careless actions is distressing, but we cannot logically expect this to never happen, even were we able to foresee and forbid all possible harmful actions. We need to teach, for example, why wearing bicycle helmets and seat belts is important, not legislate then spend money, time and resources enforcing their use. Laws and their enforcement simply remove degrees of the self-responsibility that all individuals must possess if they are to mature.

27 "Developing A Universal Religion/Determining Moral Behaviours/Personal Freedom." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 30 Oct 2010, 14:11 UTC. 21 Nov 2018, 16:25 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Developing_A_Universal_Religion/Determining_Moral_Behaviours/Personal_ Freedom&oldid=1962160>. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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A great deal of this education can, and should, be performed by the primary authority figures in our lives, our parents. This assumes first that the parent figures have been trained in the traditional moral values and respect. In today's world, where social workers step in to direct children/parents in the art of creating respect, the parents must be provided the training and freedom to raise their offspring in a manner that is conducive to creating social harmony.

Within three generations we can start to move towards a society that fosters mutual respect, both within a society and internationally.

Creating laws that take away common freedoms, as opposed to major crimes, only create disharmony, fear and fat pockets for lawyers. Teaching self-responsibility for behavior towards others will quickly spread through a society and create peer pressure on those who would rule the world to conform to a higher moral order or be ex-communicated by their own society.

Questions: 1. Should individuals have the freedom to experiment? Why or why not?

2. Is education more important than laws, as the essay states?

3. Does the bulk of education fall on the shoulders of parents?

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READING: DETERMINING MORAL BEHAVIORS – KILLING28 The rationale for stating that it would be wrong to kill an individual is easy to state: any individual’s actions may contribute to the objective of supporting Life’s continued evolution, thus each life is valuable and should be preserved. Killing an individual prevents that individual from contributing (discounting the body’s store of nutrients and energy that inevitably recycle and do contribute). However, this seemingly simple premise hides a few surprises, the first stemming from how we define an individual.

Two separate cells, the sperm and ovum, before joining to form a zygote do not constitute an individual. They each contain part of the potential to form an individual, but they have not yet become an individual. Our new morality would therefore likely state that there is nothing “wrong” in killing these cells. And life routinely does exactly that—our bodies produce many more sperm and ova than are needed or used.

An embryo, then a fetus before birth, is also a “potential” individual, not yet able to contribute directly to Life’s evolution (although it may very well be inspiration for some of the contributions made by its parents). Thus, our rational new religion would probably rule that it is not wrong to kill developing embryos at any stage.

This may be its rational declaration, but human emotions would most often have it otherwise.

Few parents would want to harm or kill their children-to-be. It would feel emotionally wrong to do so.

Our new religion may even come to the same conclusion about killing infants, as well as those individuals that no longer possess the ability to contribute, by arguing along the following lines.

Newborns are potential individuals, not individuals as we typically understand fully developed adults to be. Newly born babies exist as separate beings, having wonderfully formed bodies but relatively empty minds. Empty, that is, of most of the stored memories, links and thoughts that will rapidly form to produce an individual in its own right. Our new rational religion would

28 "Developing A Universal Religion/Determining Moral Behaviours/Killing." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 30 Oct 2010, 14:09 UTC. 21 Nov 2018, 16:16 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Developing_A_Universal_Religion/Determining_Moral_Behaviours/Killing&ol did=1962156>. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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likely not call a physical body, mostly empty of mind, an individual, and would probably not state that it is “wrong” to kill such an entity. But, of course, we do state that it is wrong.

We denounce killing newborns for emotional, cultural, and legal reasons. It feels wrong to kill children of any age, and the law in recognition of this usually declares that newborns become individuals at birth. Clearly, we will continue to state that killing newborns is wrong, but it is possible that our new religion may not actually state that it is “morally wrong” to do so (for instance, if “potential to contribute” is given minimal weight by the religion’s developers).

A similar argument applies to the way we regard mature individuals. In the grand view of Life’s endeavor, the individual is everything and nothing. It is everything while it is contributing to Life’s journey; it is nothing when it has made its contribution. During our lifetime, we all, knowingly or unknowingly, strive to support Life’s journey. We all do our best to learn, to grow, to create, to procreate, to feel that we are living a productive and meaningful life. These are innate behaviors that are carried out daily—part and parcel of being a living entity. We may even accept them as responsibilities. But, as we end our days, with our physical and mental powers deteriorating, we become free of this duty to contribute. Our new moral code is likely to state that at this stage, those who so choose have every right to seek death when they are ready for it, be it self-awarded or assisted.

The same contention might well apply when a person’s brain becomes damaged or debilitated by disease or accident. As long as there is the slightest chance that the individual will recover, to be able to contribute once more, then our new moral system would probably rule that it is wrong to kill or to sanction suicide for that individual. But this ruling could change as conditions worsen, as death becomes imminent, or as living becomes unbearably painful. For such individuals who will never be further able to contribute, our new religion would probably state that euthanasia is not morally wrong. However, as we may know, even under such circumstances it is next to impossible to kill someone we love. Our emotions (quite apart from our laws) make it very hard to hasten their death. But our new religion would now possibly offer consolation, not condemnation, were we to do so.

Using similar arguments, our new religion would probably tell us that it is irrational to simply declare abortion or euthanasia wrong, and also that there are times when we may morally allow compassion to rule.

Thus, we begin to see that morality would likely differ from what it is now. Our new religion would clearly separate rational, emotional and legal arguments, allowing us to frankly examine the contribution each makes. It would open the way for our old, sometimes simplistic, sometimes cruel, laws to be reconsidered, and perhaps, if thought necessary, eventually modified. (Indeed, its construction would force us to reassess our understanding of what it is to be a thinking human).

On the surface, our new religion may seem hard and cold, ruling by logic first, and only allowing emotions to be considered second. But our proposed religion must be so constructed 104

because the universe is so constructed, and because life evolves in obedience to the laws of physics that govern and define the universe and all its contents. While animal behavior is largely emotionally governed—animalistic—because it has no other option, humans have gained the ability to be objective. Humans, in following their minds’ attempts to think rationally, also try to behave rationally, and the two foremost dimensions of humanity, emotion and logic, are often at war in the effort. Our new religion, if developed rationally, should allow us to separate, then balance, emotion and reason, giving us tools to assess both before making any decision. We would no longer be commanded by dogma, emotions or beliefs, but by logical rationality. Surely, this is what our modern minds are asking us to institute when they react against the occasional religious (or parental, legal, employment, or other) requirement that seems irrational.

There are other “wrongs” to consider, for instance, the rationale for stating that birth control is morally wrong. If circumstances dictate that additional progeny will harm, rather than help, Life’s continued evolution on this planet, then birth control would necessarily be considered by our new religion sensible and “right.” What value to Life would there be in saturating an overpopulated environment with individuals if nothing remains for them but an arduous search for nutrients and niches where precious few are to be found? When would such individuals ever find the time, or develop the ability, to contribute? Of course, there will always be many outstanding individuals who will do exactly that in any population. Perhaps one percent, or, say, five, would surmount their disadvantageous surrounding conditions. Birth control, some might contend, would have denied Life their contributions. But that argument ignores the possibility that, if this world was less densely and more equitably populated, then a great many more than one or five percent would be in a position to contribute. Of course, it is not simply a matter of quantity, it is more one of quality. But, again, there are many more opportunities for quality to emerge in an educated and liberated environment than there are in a povertystricken or hopelessly overcrowded one.

The overwhelming need for world population controls is one of the implications of a report written by Mathis Wackernagel (et al). This report discusses the compilation and findings of human “ecological footprint” statistics [the planetary acreage needed to sustain human life at its current rate of resource usage]. Two of its findings are particularly relevant to this discussion. First, that humans, on average, expend thirty per cent more than nature is able to sustain (and this figure is increasing rather than decreasing). And, second, that the resources of five more Earths would be needed for everyone to live at the average current North American rate. Clearly, the majority can never live as North Americans now live. But all could, should they so desire, were there fewer for the planet to nourish. One billion people is about this planet’s limit, if the North American way of life is universally accorded. However, the world’s population is currently over six billion, and could reach ten billion in thirty years.

Another issue to contemplate is capital punishment. As above, the criteria used to weigh the merits of this practice would need to be reconsidered. Under the rationality of our new religion, anyone able to “contribute” should be allowed to live. While we may want retribution for heinous crimes committed, this is an emotional, not reasoned, reaction. However, if an 105

individual was clearly unable to “contribute,” if serial killing (for example) was his or her sole motivating interest, then there may be no rational reason (nor religious, for our religion would be rational) to let that individual continue living. The problem then, as always, becomes one of judging whether or not enough is known to be certain about the true state of affairs.

Our proposed new religion tells us why individuals are important—because each individual has the potential to make a difference. He or she can uncover new facts, find new linkages and applications, discover new meanings, and perhaps augment Life’s ability to control. This is why each and every individual matters. Embryos and fetuses before birth cannot contribute in this manner, infants in their first few months, and some individuals, perhaps in the closing days of their life or if criminally insane, cannot contribute. In these circumstances our new religion would likely tell us that killing is not morally wrong (although it is unlikely to decree that it is morally right). Our new doctrine would probably conclude that such individuals are of no relevance as they are and offer no guidance at all.

Questions: 1. This essay covers abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment = all incredibly controversial topics. Did it change your mind about any of them?

2. Is our purpose as human to “contribute to Life”? Is so, why? If not, why not?

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READING: PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE29 Physician-assisted suicide in the United States is a controversial issue which has garnered much attention from medicine, law, and many social interest groups. The influence of technological change on social acceptance and opposition of assisted suicide will be examined in this chapter. Jack Kevorkian, or "Dr. Death" as he is commonly called, was responsible for elevating the issue of physician-assisted suicide to the national spotlight in the United States.

The career of this polarizing pioneer offers a valuable case study through which the issue will be explored.

SUICIDE CASE STUDIES THE BRITISH COAL-GAS STORY Throughout generations prior to the 1970s in Great Britain, families heated their homes with coal-gas furnaces. The gas, in its unburned form, released high levels of toxic carbon monoxide. Because of this, â&#x20AC;&#x153;sticking one's head in the oven,â&#x20AC;? as it was called, became a preferred method of suicide in England.

In the 1960s the British government began phasing out coal-gas in favor of the cleaner burning natural gas. By 1971, nearly 70% of the gas reaching consumer households was natural gas.

Furthermore, by 1975, the portion of carbon monoxide in the gas entering the average consumer's home was less than one percent. Throughout the 1960s, at the same time that the carbon monoxide was being reduced, the suicide rate dropped in Britain. By 1971, the overall suicide rate for men of all ages had dropped by about 16%.

Why is that removing one method of self-harm has such a profound rippling effect? Norman Kreitman, in his report on the coal-gas story published in 1976, writes that "There is no shortage of exits from this life; it would seem that anyone bent on self-destruction must eventually succeed, yet it is also quite possible...that a failed attempt serves as a catharsis leading to profound psychological change."

A TALE OF TWO BRIDGES

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The Duke Ellington Bridge and the Taft Bridge are two bridges in Washington D.C. which both cross over the Rock Creek gorge. In 1985, the Ellington Bridge accounted for four suicides each year, which was half of all jumping suicides in the city. The Taft Bridge averaged fewer than two suicides per year. This disparity was quite unexpected, considering two important similarities between the two bridges. First, both bridges stand at approximately 125 feet tall, essentially guaranteeing death as a result of jumping. This precludes the hypothesis that one bridge was more desirable due to an increased chance of death. Second, the bridges are located only several hundred yards from each other. Thus, neither was in a region of a higher general jumping suicide rate than the other.

On a particularly tragic 10-day period in 1985, three people committed suicide by jumping off the Ellington Bridge. Certain groups of citizens lobbied strongly for the construction of an antisuicide barrier on the bridge. Opposition groups like the National Trust for Historic Preservation claimed that such a barrier would be useless, founding their argument on the assumption that those people intent on committing suicide would simply go elsewhere. Their argument was strengthened by the fact that the Taft Bridge was just yards away. The barrier was constructed in January 1986 and completely eliminated suicides at the Ellington Bridge-four deaths per year to zero. The overall suicide rate in Washington dropped by a similar amount. Meanwhile, the suicide rate on the Taft Bridge saw only a slight increase, from 1.7 deaths per year to 2.

Experts attempted to determine the cause for this phenomenon. Why had the construction of a barrier on one bridge (of 330 total in Washington) nearly eliminated the four suicides per year for which it was formerly responsible? They concluded that the initially lower barrier (kneehigh) on the Ellington Bridge, relative to that on the Taft Bridge (chest-high), was the primary factor. Its lack of height offered potentially suicidal people the option to kill themselves quickly and easily in an impulsive moment. On the other hand, suicide on the Taft Bridge took more time and effort, significantly impeding impulsive suicides.

IMPLICATIONS Both the British coal gas story and the Washington D.C. bridges case imply that the availability of the means to commit suicide can profoundly influence a person's ultimate decision. Studies on other suicide methods have revealed similar implications. A 2005 international study found a strong correlation between the availability of firearms and firearm suicides. A similar effect was discovered in suicide by pesticide ingestion in developing countries.

LEGALITY OF PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE In the United States, physician-assisted-suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, and Montana.

The processes of applying for physician assisted suicide varies between in each state, and in some cases the steps can be quite arduous. In all three states, a physician may legally provide a patient with a lethal dose of prescription drugs which the patient is then responsible for taking independently. In this way, the physician is absolved from any liability and the case cannot be labeled as euthanasia.

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Oregon was the first state in the United States to legalize physician-assisted-suicide.

The Oregon Death with Dignity Act (ODWDA) was passed in 1994 amidst strong public support. Under ODWDA, upon first meeting a set of qualifying criteria, a patient may submit a request for a dose of a lethal prescription. The patient must also submit two oral requests to his physician at least 15 days apart from one another. The ODWDA has faced numerous legal battles since its enactment in 1994. In 2006, the ODWDA was upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court by a vote of 6-3.

The Washington Death with Dignity Act mirrors that of Oregon and has been active since 2009.

Unlike the cases of Oregon and Washington where public support led to the enactment of the Death with Dignity Acts, the legality of physician-assisted-suicide in Montana is based on the judicial resolution of a lawsuit, Baxter v. Montana. In this decision, a Montana judge ruled that the right to physician-assisted-suicide was protected by Montana's state constitution.

JACK KEVORKIAN Dr. Jack Kevorkian was trained as a pathologist and publicly demonstrated an unusual interest in death throughout his career. He published and presented on controversial topics such as medical experimentation on willing capital punishment subjects, blood transfusion from cadavers, and the ethics of euthanasia. He was dismissed from his residency at the University of Michigan for his discordant opinions and research interests. Kevorkian is best known for his work as a right-to-die activist, assisting in the deaths of over 130 patients throughout the 1990s.

CONVICTED OF MURDER Thomas Youk was a patient of Kevorkian's who suffered from multiple sclerosis. In 1998, Kevorkian assisted in Youk's suicide. In this case, however, the patient was unable to administer the drugs himself, so Kevorkian administered the drugs to Youk. To complicate matters, Kevorkian filmed the entire procedure and sent it to 60 Minutes, taunting the authorities to try him and put him in jail. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to jail in 1999 and was not released until 2007. Kevorkian would later disclose that the Youk case was not the first in which he had caused the death of the patient rather than allowing the patient to perform the act on their own.

SUPPORT EXIT INTERNATIONAL Exit International is a registered non-profit group headquartered in Australia dedicated to advancing information and advocating for end-of-life choices. Exit's main goal is enacting legal reform to support physician-assisted-suicide. Exit believes that the Swiss model of PAS is the standard that should be sought after.

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DEATH WITH DIGNITY NATIONAL CENTER The Death with Dignity National Center is a non-profit organization committed to protecting and preserving the rights established by the Death with Dignity laws in the United States.

Additionally, their aim is to extend the Death with Dignity laws protected in Oregon and Washington to states throughout the country.

OPPOSITION RELIGIOUS GROUPS Many religious groups are opposed to physician-assisted suicide because they believe that it violates the sanctity of life. The Christian Medical and Dental Association's position statement conveys the generally pervasive view among conservative faith groups: "We, as Christian physicians and dentists, believe that human life is a gift from God and is sacred because it bears God's image. We oppose active intervention with the intent to produce death for the relief of pain, suffering, or economic considerations, or for the convenience of patient, family, or society." Religious groups also commonly propose that the authority of their respective religious figures trumps patient autonomy, disallowing physician-assisted suicide.

SLIPPERY SLOPE Opponents citing the "slippery slope" argument claim that allowing physician-assisted suicide provides doctors with less motivation to exhaust every alternative option before turning to death. Others say that there is little if no difference between physician-assisted-suicide and doctor-induced euthanasia. A more extreme proposition made by a journalist opposing legalization of physician-assisted suicide is that the procedures would "become routine" and that "comfort would make us want to extend the option to others who, in society's view, are suffering and leading purposeless lives."

IMPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY The bioethics principle of non-maleficence states that a healthcare provider has a duty to do no harm. The termination of a person's life to alleviate suffering prior to exhaustive assessment and treatment of the underlying causes of suffering is a violation of this principle. Reduction of a potential suicide subject's suffering to the point where death is no longer desired is clearly preferable over hasty suicide. This underlies the arguments of critics who contend that Kevorkian's seemingly swift process may have indicated a neglect for potentially beneficial non-suicide treatments. Those societies which accept physician-assisted suicide as an ethical medical practice generally do so subject to the condition that the cause of the patient's suffering is untreatable. In such a case, it is actually inaction which is considered to be malicious towards the patient. Physician-assisted suicide is justified as a means of reducing suffering in lieu of any other realistic option.

Suicide-enabling technology, including firearms, chemical toxins, and Kevorkian's inventions, has varied consequences, depending on the context of its use. For example, there may be a 110

case where extreme, incurable suffering renders suicide to be the least malignant course of action. If law allows physician-assisted suicide, painless suicide techniques clearly offer favorable alternatives to more brutal, potentially painful methods. However, the existence of more "advanced" suicide technologies can also enable egregious violations of nonmaleficence. As the British coal gas and D.C. bridges case studies showed, available technology can influence and even encourage suicidal behavior. Thus, the decision to opt for suicide may come hastily and in place of more beneficial treatments. In other words, the patient may not have chosen such a drastic end if the means were less attractive or available.

Although physician-assisted suicide technology can be beneficial in enabling an escape from suffering, it also has the potential to distort medical decision-making and, at its worst, encourage suicide.

Questions: 1. One might argue that since we have no control over our birth, why can’t we control our death?

2. Do you have a personal connection to this topic? Does it skew how you feel about it?

3. If you are “okay” with animal/pet euthanasia, do you feel the same about human euthanasia? Why or why not?

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READING: INTRO TO GENDER30 The speech today arose in a manner most Americans would find innocent enough, Jordin remarked as he began to speak to the assembled parents, kids and teachers. In his school class the previous month, his son, Junior, challenged inaccurate teachings common in American classrooms over the past 100 years. The teacher had said that boys have a penis and girls do not. Although Junior was only 7 years old, he grew up in a progressive, nonreligious household where his parents (both Native American biologists and activists by trade) encouraged him to ask questions, taught him all people were equal, and celebrated (rather than hiding) the human body by discussing it openly and embracing nudity at home. As a result, Junior tried to explain to his teacher that both Mommy and Daddy had penises – Mommy had an innie, Junior had an outie, and Daddy had an innie and an outie because he grew his own penis naturally when he was a teenager. The teacher was noticeably uncomfortable by what Junior said. (Junior described it to his father like this, “It looked like she wanted to yell at me, like when the Chicago Bears lose and Mommy gets loud.”) The teacher told Junior he was wrong and when he protested, the teacher sent him to the administration for discipline.

After relaying this story to the crowd, Jordin explained that as a child he had been born with a tiny “penis” that white American society – scientific or otherwise since the 1920’s through beginning in the late 1800's – would call a “clitoris.” He then explained that whether we call the same organ a “clitoris or a penis” is generally decided based on measurements created by biologists based on religious teachings common in the Western world. He further explained that this was similar to the ways many religious people will call a book “scriptures” instead of a “book” because they believe it is important to distinguish between the two even though there is no empirical difference between the two – each one contains written words created by people the same way that both a “clitoris” and a “penis” contain roughly the same genetic components. Then, he explained how as a child he, like many other people in the world, turned his “clitoris” into a “penis” by ingesting specific chemical compounds, in much the same way people have for centuries. Similarly, he explained how other people consumed other chemical compounds to shrink their “penises” into “clitori.” He further explained that this was similar other parts of the human body, like legs; the difference, of course, is that we

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don’t call “longer legs” by a new name, and we don’t call the legs of some people “legs” and the legs of other people “clegs.”

While Jordin offered many more examples of the ways we have created a mythology or religion called “sex” by naming or emphasizing this or that body part in certain ways, he further asked parents to imagine that their son or daughter suddenly became not a son or a daughter because a small group of people decided that only brown-eyed people could be sons and daughters, and their child did not have brown eyes. Using another example, he asked the audience to imagine if instead of ovaries or vaginas, we decided people were essentially different (e.g., “sexed”) based on whether or not they could roll their tongues, digest vegetables or meats, or any other of a million tiny biological variations throughout human existence that do not have to create social differences in our world. Finally, he asked the audience what "sex" males who lose or have no use of their penises would be and asked the same for females who are born without vaginal canals, ovaries, or other materials we decided matter. As Jordin illustrated, we still consider them members of the same "sex" categories even if they are missing what we say create the categories in the first place.

INTRODUCTION Why do some people continue to teach children and adults beliefs about human anatomy that do not align with empirical reality? Why did we create two names for the same genital organ, and why does it matter to people which name we use for which person? Why do we promote an inaccurate version of human biological variation in our classrooms and research centers?

By the same token, why do people – even many trained in critical inquiry and scientific traditions – believe in these social constructs and use them to explain so much of our world?

Why did we choose genital variations instead of eye colors, hair colors or other biological variations to segregate people into different religious and scientific categories? And finally, what consequences do our beliefs in sex – and by extension gender – have for individuals and the larger social world?

While social scientists have tackled these questions in many ways, the sex/gender system remains one of the most powerful belief systems in our world today among both religious and scientific populations.

GENDER VS. SEX Sociologists make a distinction between gender and sex. "Gender" refers to a person's perceived or projected social location within culturally established designations between masculine and feminine behaviors (e.g., gender refers to a person's attempt to signify a masculine or feminine self as well as a person's attempt to categorize someone else in terms of their presentation (intentional or otherwise) of masculine or feminine selfhood). Sex, however, refers to a person's assignment, usually by medical, religious, familial, and / or governmental authorities, into categories socially constructed on the basis of perceived genetic and biological factors (e.g., social elites place people into sex categories by interpreting genetic and biological components of said people).

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CIS VS. TRANS Sociologists further distinguish between cis sex/gender people and trans sex/ gender people.

Cis sex/gender people are those who conform to the existing notions of sex and gender within a given social, historical, cultural, political, and scientific context. A cissex male, for example, will be assigned male at birth (based on the interpretation of biological material), and will seek to remain male throughout the course of his life. Similarly, a cisgender male will be assigned male at birth (based on the interpretation of biological material), and then seek to learn and display the symbols, codes, and cues (based upon existing gender norms in his society) to be interpreted (by himself and others) as first a boy and later a man; he will thus follow the script set forth for males in his social world.

Trans sex/gender people are those who do not conform to the existing notions of sex and gender within a given social, historical, cultural, political, and scientific context. A transsex male (often referred to as a female-to-male transsexual), for example, will be assigned female at birth (based on the interpretation of biological material), but will seek to become male - via the use of hormones, bodily training, herbal mixtures, and/or surgeries - during the course of zir31 life. Similarly, a transgender male (sometimes this person will also be a transsexual and other times this person will have no desire to transition sex categories) will be assigned female at birth (based on the interpretation of biological material), but then seek to learn and display the symbols, codes, and cues (based upon existing gender norms in his society) to be interpreted (by himself and others) as first a boy and later a man or as a boy/man sometimes and a girl/woman at other times. In some societies and historical periods, trans sex/gender people are accepted, celebrated, and affirmed, but in other societies and historical periods, they are faced with constant scrutiny, harassment, and discrimination that has even been supported by scientific and religious institutions.

SEX Scientific communities (especially since the late 1800's) have divided many species of living things into two mutually reinforcing categories based upon dominant interpretations (political, religious, and scientifically established) of genetic materials, reproductive capabilities, and genital composition. Typically, these classification schemes have promoted the idea of two sexes: "male" and "female". Within these schemes, females are defined as the sex that produces larger gametes (i.e., reproductive cell) and which bears the offspring. These schemes have therefore been built to match reproductive functions that an individual may perform during life cycles. To establish these schemes, scientists simplified the empirical realities of human biology by formulating a typology of sex chromosomes labeled X and Y.

31 Ze and zir are gender neutral pronouns.

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Within this typology, they assigned females two X chromosomes, and males an XY chromosome. In fact, this socially constructed typology has become so well established that most people interpret and perceive "sex" as a dichotomous state.

As noted previously, however, human biology is far more complex than this typology allows, and as a result, there are many genetic variations that are left out of these classification schemes (see the article on Intersex here as well as the citation outlining intersex experience earlier in this text). Further, most people are not genetically examined at birth, and standards for assigning people to male and female sexes are not uniform across social, situational, or historical contexts - generally, a doctor makes the decision as to what sex the child is, and the child is listed as such regardless of what genetic testing or other biological criteria might reveal. Most clinical research and debates on the subject, for example, suggest that males are people born with a urethra at the tip of the phallus whereas females have it in the perineum, but in reality, people are born with urethral openings in a wide variety of locations between the phallus and perineum despite the fact that only a fraction of these births are labeled intersex (similar observations have been made concerning distinctions based on genital size, gamete size, chromosomal makeup, and other biological markers). While the socially constructed dichotomy (e.g., male v. female) mirrors capitalistic hierarchies embedded within many postindustrial societies, it does not in fact match the biological reality of people, and thus sociologists examine what role the "myth of distinct, dichotomous sexes" plays in social patterning and structure.

Alongside such complexity, human biology is incredibly susceptible to influence, mutation, and adjustment, and not surprisingly, "sex" is rather mutable. As a result, historians have documented "sex" transition or change throughout human history and noted the ability for one to transform and change "sex" in many different ways. Until the 1950's, for example, transitioning or changing "sex" categories was typically seen as a natural variation in human biology and experience in most of the world. In search of greater market share in the 1950's, however, American and European medical authorities defined transsexuality as a disorder that required intervention and treatment by licensed professionals and facilitated the classification of transsexuality as a psychological disorder that necessitated a specific narrative and therapeutic protocol prior to transition. As a result, support groups and community centers sprung up in the 1980's (forming a national Transgender movement in the 1990's) to (a) teach people the story they would need to tell to acquire transexual services and identities, and (b) lobby medical and psychological communities to remove these newly added (or newly socially constructed) "disorders" from the record books (this process has been somewhat successful as transsexuality has been reinterpreted repeatedly throughout the last two decades and in some countries gained legal recognition and protection).

At present, both intersex and transexuality are hotly debated topics within and between scientific communities. While many (especially in the biological, psychological and medical sciences) still promote the "two sexes" or "XX/XY" model, these perspectives are increasingly demonstrated to be ideological rather than scientifically based forms of knowledge (see Michel Foucault for discussion of the socially constructed and political nature of all human 115

knowledge). As a result, debates continue wherein biological, medical, and psychological sciences attempt to maintain their hold on rather lucrative models of sex while many scholars in these and other fields attempt to return scientific understandings of "sex" to an empirical rather than ideological basis.

GENDER Similar to "Sex," Gender is a socially constructed interpretation of human behavior patterns.

Specifically, gender refers to the ascription (by self or others) of differential social statuses based upon shared understandings of what constitutes masculine and/or feminine behavior.

As such, gender typically involves two interrelated components built upon the acceptance or rejection of societal norms concerning masculinities and femininities. First, gender may refer to an internal feeling that one is a male, female, both, neither, and/or somewhere in between or beyond these categories. Because gender is dependent upon behavioral expectations and norms, once individuals know those expectations and norms, the individual can adopt behaviors that project the gender he/she wishes to portray. One can think of this side of gender like a role in a theatrical play - there are specific behaviors and norms associated with genders just like there are lines and movements associated with each character in a play.

Adopting the behaviors and norms of a gender leads to the perception that someone belongs in that gender category.

Similar to a play, however, there is another component of gender - the audience. In a play, performances are determined to be believable or not based upon audience reaction, and audiences typically arrive at performances with a pre-established set of expectations and ideas about what they will be witnessing. Gender is thus also the external perception others develop of us (e.g., Do other people think and believe we are men and/or women?). Since gender - like a play - is ultimately a human created fiction (e.g., a performance of shared understandings), it can only exist as long as others believe and approve of the performance. As a result, people "do gender" throughout their lives by (a) aligning their actions to the preconceived gender beliefs of others, and (b) developing an awareness (consciously or otherwise) that everything they do may be interpreted as evidence (or lack thereof) of their position within a specific gender category. Gender is thus an ongoing production dependent upon the reactions of others.

Some examples may help illustrate the ways people learn to accomplish gender. Parents may socialize children into what is perceived as a traditionally masculine role, which includes characteristics like independence, courage, and aggressiveness while constantly reminding the child ze is supposed to be masculine by, for example, calling the child by gendered labels like "boy" or "son" and/or stopping the child when ze acts in non-masculine ways (e.g., boys don't do that). Likewise, parents may socialize children into what is perceived as a traditionally feminine role that includes characteristics like submissiveness, emotionality, and empathy while constantly reminding the child that it is supposed to be feminine through the same means noted above. Further, others in the child's environment (like siblings, strangers, and peers) will often reinforce these beliefs and social control mechanisms throughout the child's interactions.

Assuming both of the aforementioned children never question their placement into these 116

gender categories, the masculine child will learn to be a boy and a man and the feminine child will learn to be a girl and a woman by aligning their own behaviors to fit conventional gender norms over time. Such individuals will develop cisgender identities. For instance, the masculine child may play with toy soldiers, join athletic teams, and learn to prize appearing tough while the feminine child may play with dolls, bond with other feminine-behaving people, and learn that ze32 is rewarded for appearing to care.

TRADITIONAL GENDER TRAITS Feminine: Submissive, dependent, emotional, receptive, intuitive, timid, passive, sensitive Masculine: Dominant, independent, rational, assertive, analytical, brave, active, insensitive However, gender â&#x20AC;&#x201C; like sex â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is fluid and can change. This can be seen by continuing the above example. It is possible for the masculine-raised child to decide later in life - or without the parents knowledge earlier in life - to engage in feminine behaviors, and the same could happen with the feminine-raised child (in fact, many parents raise children in gender neutral ways that allow the children to make these decisions from the start). In so doing, the aforementioned children could adopt relatively varied behaviors that create an androgynous or gender-neutral self, or they could simply adopt the opposite (raised masculine, but decide to live feminine sometimes or all the time and vice versa) gender performances (see the image of drag queens for male people that adopt feminine expressions and behaviors sometimes).

Either change, however, would require (a) adopting different gender performances than those promoted and enforced by dominant social structures, and (b) risking ridicule, harassment, and discrimination at the hands of cisgender people (often referred to as cissexism or transphobia).

BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES While much of this chapter focuses on the socially constructed differences between men and women, it is also important to note there are some clear physiological differences between the two sexes. While it is as yet unknown how or why these differences develop, scholars typically attempt to explain the differences in one of two ways. Scientific disciplines tied more firmly to existing gender norms within a society, for example, typically argue that biological distinctions create these differences, and use these differences to argue that there are inherent differences between women and men (non cis-gender people are generally ignored completely by these fields and within their arguments). On the other hand, more progressive and diverse scientific communities generally argue that these differences reflect existing gender inequalities within a given society, and thus merely demonstrate that the social construction of sex and gender has biological (as well as social) consequences. While the emergence of bio-social mathematical models and critical examinations of scientific texts may shed light on this debate in the

32 Ze and zir are gender neutral pronouns.

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decades to come, at present the answers remain beyond empirical reach. As a result, the following paragraphs outline these differences while also noting the ways that social factors may cause or influence such differences. Keep in mind, however, that since these studies ignore trans sex/gender experience, we must limit our commentary to cisgender results only.

In addition to different sex organs and sex chromosomes, the average male is 10 percent taller, 20 percent heavier, and 35 percent stronger in the upper body than the average female.

Some researchers believe that these physiological differences may have been influenced by social/cultural decisions in our evolutionary past. Even so, when measured against their own body size, rather than on an absolute scale (e.g., how much females can carry relative to their body size versus how much males can carry relative to their body size), actual strength differences are minimal.

Females, for reasons still somewhat undetermined, tend to outlive males. Female life expectancy in the U.S. is 79.8 years; for males it is 74.4. Some believe this difference is due to the riskier lifestyles of males that identify as men (e.g., pursue masculine behaviors), especially earlier in life, combined with their typically more physically stressing occupations.

Others have noted the negative effects that stress and lack of emotional expression (a hallmark trait associated with masculinities) place on the body, and the tendency for females to seek help and treatment (traditionally feminine behaviors) as factors in this pattern.

Behaviorally, age of sitting, teething, and walking all occur at about the same time in females and males. However, males enter puberty on average two years later than females (it is important to note, however, that females have a clear sign (e.g., menarche) of puberty onset whereas males (and their parents) are generally uncertain of the exact onset of puberty, which could skew these interpretations). There are no significant differences in intelligence, happiness, or self-esteem between males and females. However, females are, statistically, twice as vulnerable to anxiety disorders and depression (possibly due to their experience as a subordinate or minority group within many societies), but only one-third as vulnerable to suicide and one-fifth as vulnerable to alcoholism (potentially due to traditional definitions of masculinities that link violence and substance abuse to masculinities). Females attempt suicide more often than males (mirroring patterns between other dominant and subordinate groups) but have lower rates of "success", because their preferred methods do not involve firearms, unlike males (potentially due to the association of violence with masculinities).

Females are also less likely to suffer hyperactivity or speech disorders as children or to display antisocial personalities as adults (potentially due to gender socialization wherein femininities are associated with social behaviors and communication skills). Finally, females have slightly more olfactory receptors on average and are more easily re-aroused immediately after orgasm (potentially due to traditional associations of femininities to the pursuit of sexual pleasure and intimacy in relation to masculine associations with sexual conquest and performance).

Much evidence has shown that there are differences in male and female brains. In fact, the temporal lobe, which is the part of the brain associated with language and emotion, develops up to 4 years earlier in females in comparison to boys (which mirrors patterns of gender socialization for femininities). On the other hand, the left parietal lobe, which is associated with 118

mathematical and spatial reasoning, is thought to develop up to 4 years earlier in males (which corresponds to masculine socialization in terms of rationality and noted encouragement favoring male students in the physical sciences). This difference could account for the fact that females are sometimes thought to be better when it comes to language and are more emotional (following their gender socialization requirements), while males are thought to be better in math (following their gender socialization requirements). As well, some say that females are better at hearing than males. A typical teenaged female in a society with high levels of gender inequality hears up to 7 times better than a typical teenaged male in the same society. This (along with masculine socialization emphasizing acting out, being loud, and avoiding being controlled) could possibly explain why males are diagnosed with ADHD more often (and may be the result of feminine socialization emphasizing the care-taking of others).

Lastly there is a difference between sight for young females and males. Females are able to see facial expressions / emotions better while males are able to see motion better (mirroring gender socialization emphasis on feminine care-taking and communication and masculine attention to action). Females use the p-cells in the retina, which are associated with texture and color, while males use m-cells, which are associated with motion.

SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES Gender differences (whether reflected in later physiology or not) typically vary by society, environment, historical context, and/or culture, indicating they are social constructions. For example, in work group situations in the U.S., men tend to focus on the task at hand whereas women tend to focus more on personal relationships, but studies of trans people have demonstrated that these differences are often the result of differential treatment women and men receive in the workplace (e.g., transmen report being encouraged to focus more on the task at hand after transition). When eating, women eating with men tend to eat fewer calories than when they are eating with women. Both of these differences in behavior vary by culture and are therefore believed to be socially constructed.

WORK AND OCCUPATIONS An often discussed and debated difference between men and women involves work and occupations. Women's participation in the workforce has varied significantly over time. Prior to the development of capitalism and factory-type work, women played a significant role in food production and household maintenance. With the advent of capitalism and labor outside of the home, women continued to play a significant role, though their participation in paid labor outside the home initially diminished. Also, women's participation in the labor force varied (and varies) depending on marital status and social class.

Current U.S. labor force statistics illustrate women's changing role in the labor force. For instance, since 1971, women's participation in the labor force has grown from 32 million (43.4% of the female population 16 and over) to 68 million (59.2% of the female population 16 and over). Women also make, on average, $17,000 less than do men. Women tend to be concentrated in less prestigious and lower paying occupations that are traditionally considered women's jobs (also referred to as pink collar jobs). Finally, women are not paid the same wages as men for similar work. This difference is often illustrated as a ratio, as shown in 119

the graph below. Women tend to make between 75% and 91% of what men make for comparable work, though it depends on how the comparison is made. For instance, college educated women between 26 and 45 earned 74.7 cents in hourly pay for every dollar men in the same group made in 2005. However, if you compare women and men with similar profiles and qualifications, the gap is smaller: women make about 91% of what men make, at least they have since the 1980s. In the 1970s, similarly qualified women made only 82% as much as their male counterparts.

However, at all educational and skill levels, women still make less than men, as illustrated in the figure below. That women earn less than men with equal qualifications helps explain why women are enrolling in college at higher rates than are men - they require a college education to make the same amount as men with a high school diploma.

The gap between men's and women's wages narrowed during the 1980s and mid 1990s, but that momentum has fallen off and the distance now appears to have stagnated. The gap in income between genders used to be similar between middle-class and affluent workers, but it is now widest among the most highly paid. A woman making in the 95th percentile in 2006 would earn about $95,000 per year; a man in the 95th earning percentile would make about $115,000, a 28% difference (and that's not including the highest earners, who are predominantly men). The narrowing of the gap in pay has also been called into question. While it appears there has been a narrowing of the gap in pay between men and women, Mulligan and Rubinstein show that much of the narrowing is actually the result of the most able women entering the workforce and not decreases in the pay gap between men and women. Thus, even the apparent narrowing of pay between the sexes likely overestimates the actual differences in pay.

It is quite difficult for women to climb to the top in the business world. For instance, only 3% of tech firms and just 1% of high-tech firms were founded by women and very few are headed by women. But the women who do climb to the top of the organizational ladder in business also experience both overt and covert discrimination. For instance, companies with women on the board of directors have lower stock evaluations than do companies with exclusively male boards. This is likely a reflection of the lack of shareholder trust in women. Women are also often put into leadership positions in corporations when companies are in a crisis and have little hope for recovery, resulting in poorer evaluations of women in leadership positions. The phenomenon of putting women into leadership positions when companies are in trouble is referred to as "the glass cliff" and is also observed in politics, as women are disproportionately chosen to run in elections when it is almost guaranteed that the incumbent male candidate will win.

The most common explanation for the wage gap between men and women is the finding that women pay a motherhood wage penalty, regardless of whether or not they are actually mothers. You can think about this from the perspective of a potential employer: If you have two equally qualified candidates for a position, both are in their mid-twenties, married, and straight out of college, but one is a male and the other is female, which would you choose? Many 120

employers choose men over women because women are "at risk" of having a child, even though they may not want to have children. And, of course, to the potential employer accommodating a pregnant woman and mother is more cumbersome than a male turned father (despite the obvious need for children to continue our species). Thus, women pay a penalty for their ability to give birth. Additionally, when women do have children, this often requires a period of time outside the workforce, whether it's six weeks or several months.

Employers take the time off into account when considering raises. The "Mommy track" often results in women making less money than equally qualified men who have been in the same job for the same amount of time because women take time off to have children and are often responsible for taking care of children while men rarely do so. Thus, women are often paid less despite having the same qualifications because they are (1) at risk of having children or (2) do have children and are penalized for doing so.

Another possible explanation for the wage gap between men and women has recently been proposed - customer bias towards white males. Hekman et al. (2009) found that customers who viewed videos featuring a black male, a white female, or a white male actor playing the role of an employee helping a customer were 19% more satisfied with the white male employee's performance and also were more satisfied with the store's cleanliness and appearance, despite the fact that all three actors performed identical, read the same script, and were in the exact same location with identical camera angles and lighting. They provide further evidence to support this claim by noting that white male doctors are rated as more approachable and competent than other doctors. They interpret their findings to suggest that employers are willing to pay more for white male employees because employers are customer driven and customers are happier with white male employees. They also suggest that what is required to solve the problem of wage inequality isn't necessarily paying women more but changing customer biases. Additional reasons for disparity in pay are discussed below.

Another factor that may contribute to the higher wages of white men is the number of job leads they receive. White men, particularly those in management positions, receive more job leads from friends and colleagues than do white women and Hispanic men and women. Black men and women receive about as many job leads and tips, but only for non-management jobs. As many jobs result from social networking, white males are advantaged by their higher number of job leads, potentially contributing to their higher salaries and more prestigious jobs.

EDUCATION Another often studied difference between men and women is educational attainment. For a long time, higher education (undergraduate and graduate education) was an exclusively male bastion. Women did eventually gain access to institutions of higher learning, but parity or equality on a number of levels has still not been achieved. One measure of educational attainment where women have made great inroads is in college attendance. In 1960, 37.9% of female high school graduates enrolled in college, compared with 54.0% of male high school graduates. In 2002, more female high school graduates were enrolling in college than males, 68.4% of females vs. 62.1% males. Women have, in fact, made significant progress in this respect. Women now earn more Bachelor and Master degrees than do men, and for the first 121

time in 2009, they earned more PhDs. Women have made significant inroads into some of the traditionally most prestigious professions as well: 40% of medical school graduates are women and women make up large percentages of law school students as well.

Despite the progress, there are still problems. While women are entering college at higher rates and even earning more degrees, the degrees are in less prestigious areas (e.g., social sciences and humanities compared to physical sciences) and women with degrees still earn less than do men with comparable degrees. For instance, in medicine, women tend to concentrate in lower paying specialties (e.g., dermatology and family medicine). The highest paid specialties are dominated by men and will be for decades to come, based on the pipeline of residents: 28% of radiology residents in 2004-5 were women, and only 10% of orthopedic surgery residents were.

At the primary and secondary levels, girls don't often do as well as boys, particularly in math and the sciences. One recent study offers a partial explanation for why this might be the case: highly math-anxious female teachers in elementary school pass their math-anxiety on to the girls in the classroom, but not to the boys. At the beginning of the class, there were no differences in math anxiety between the boys and girls, but in classes taught by female mathanxious teachers, girls developed math anxiety and boys did not. This anxiety led girls to believe boys were better at math than girls, though there is no evidence to suggest that is actually the case.

SEXISM Sexism is discrimination against people based on their perceived sex or gender. Sexism can refer to four subtly different beliefs or attitudes: ● The belief that there are only two sexes. ● The belief that one sex is superior to the others. ● The belief that men and women (as well as other genders) are very different and that this should be strongly reflected in society, language, the right to have sex, and the law. ● It can also refer to simple hatred of men (misandry) or women (misogyny) or trans people (transphobia).

Many peoples' beliefs on this topic range along a continuum. Some people believe that women should have equal access to all jobs. Others believe that while women are superior to men in a few aspects, in most aspects men are superior to women. Some believe that cisgender people are normal and better than transgender people while others do not even factor transgender people into their reasoning.

Sexist beliefs are an example of essentialist thought, which holds that individuals can be understood (and often judged) based on the characteristics of the group to which they belong; in this case, their sex group (male, female, or intersex). Essentialism assumes that all individuals clearly fit into the category of male or female, which is not the case. It also assumes characteristics are immutable, which is also not the case.

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A good example of sexism against women is a question that has been asked in numerous surveys over the years in the US, "Would you vote for a female candidate for president?" A 2005 Gallup poll found that 92% of Americans would vote for a female candidate, but follow-up research found that this percentage was the result of response bias. When you use research techniques that allow people to express how they really feel toward women, the actual percentage who would not vote for a female candidate because she is female is closer to 26%.

Intriguingly, it is not just men who feel that way, but some women, too. In short, nearly 1/4 of cisgender Americans maintain sexist attitudes against women (trans people are not counted in the surveys).

Recent research illustrates the pervasiveness of sexism in the media. Messner et al. found that sports coverage on major television networks focuses predominantly on men, despite the increase in female participation in sports since the passage of Title IX in 1972. In 1971, 294,000 high school girls played interscholastic sports, compared to 3.7 million boys. By 1989 that ratio changed substantially - 1.8 million girls played sports compared to 3.4 million boys.

By 2004 the ratio had changed even more - 2.9 million girls compared to 4.0 million boys. At the collegiate level, the change was also substantial. In 1972, the average college in the U.S. had two women's sports teams. In just the four years between 2000 and 2004, universities in the U.S. added 631 new women's teams.

Despite the increase in participation in sports, major network news coverage of women's sports has changed very little over the last 15 years. In 1989 women garnered only 5% of air time; in 1999 that increased to 9%, but it fell back to 6% by 2005. Sports highlights shows (e.g., ESPNS's Sports Center) are even less accommodating, giving only 2% to 3% of air time to women. What's more, the little amount of air time given to women often portrays women's sports as "novelties" or pseudo-sports and often includes gags, like the women's nude bungee jump in 1999. Additionally, much of the coverage of women in sports is sexualized, as attention is often only given to women deemed "attractive" by the news anchors (e.g., Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova). Whether this treatment of women in sport is intentional or not, it is a clear example of sexism in the media.

Another example of gender discrimination is the disparity in wealth between men and women.

Using biographical data published in magazines and books as well as IRS income reports, Tickamyer found: ● There are fewer wealthy women than there are wealthy men. ● It is not entirely clear as to whether sources of wealth differ, but it does appear that women are more likely than men to inherit their wealth (especially from husbands). ● The forms of women's holdings differ from men's; many women have their money in trusts, which is a safer form of investment than those used by men (e.g., stocks and bonds). ● Women are less likely to have control over their wealth than men and are less likely to be actively engaged in increasing their wealth through investments as, say, the head of a company is engaged in growing his wealth.

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The author attributed the differences in wealth distribution to historical instances of gender discrimination. Up until the 19th Century most women could not own property and women's participation in the paid labor force outside the home was limited. It is possible that wealth among the elite may be redistributed toward a more equal balance between the sexes with increasing numbers of women entering the workforce and moving toward more financially lucrative positions in major corporations.

Women in some organizations are suing their employers claiming gender discrimination. For instance, Wal-Mart has faced lawsuits by female employees who alleged gender discrimination. Part of the plaintiffs' argument rests on the fact that, while roughly 75% of intrastore department heads are women, only 20% of store managers (who make close to $100,000 per year) are women. It is difficult to prove discrimination in such cases. In fact, many researchers point out that there may and probably are other root causes, including: differences in gender socialization (men believe they need to support their families as the primary breadwinners, leading to greater job commitment) and emphasis by the government on equality in pay and opportunity between genders.

VIOLENCE Sexism can take many forms, including preventing women from attending college and paying women less than men for comparable work. Another common form of sexism is violence, especially violence toward women and trans people. In 2002, women were the victims of over 900,000 violent crimes and over 200,000 rapes or sexual assaults. Men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime, but far less likely to be the victims of rapes or sexual assaults.

Similarly, recent reports show steady patterns wherein trans people suffer more gender related violence than any other social group.

THEORIES OF GENDER DIFFERENCES GENDER SOCIALIZATION Sociologists and other social scientists generally attribute many of the differences between genders to socialization (note that even physiological differences mirror existing gender socialization processes). Socialization is the process of transferring norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors to future group members. In gender socialization, the groups people join are the gender categories, "cisgender women and men" and "transgender people". Thus, gender socialization is the process of educating and instructing potential males, females, and intersex children as to the norms, behaviors, values, and beliefs of group membership.

Preparations for gender socialization begin even before the birth of the child. One of the first questions people ask of expectant parents is the sex of the child. This is the beginning of a social categorization process that continues throughout life. Preparations for the birth often take the infant's perceived sex into consideration (e.g., painting the room blue if the child is a boy, pink for a girl). Many of the gender differences just described are attributed to differences in socialization, though it is possible that as yet undemonstrated genetic and biological factors 124

play some role. It is important to keep in mind that gender differences are a combination of social and biological forces; sometimes one or the other has a larger influence, but both play a role in dictating behavior.

One illustration of early life gender socialization can be seen in preschool classrooms. Children in preschool classrooms where teachers were told to emphasize gender differences saw an increase in stereotyped views of what activities are appropriate for boys and girls, while children with teachers who did not emphasize gender showed no increase. This study supports the idea that subtle cues that surround us in our everyday lives strongly influence gender socialization.

Research finds that gender differences in work and occupations begin with adolescents' first jobs: ● first jobs are significantly segregated by sex ● girls work fewer hours per week than boys ● girls earn less per hour than boys ● hourly wages are higher in job types dominated by males ● girls are assigned more housework than are boys Researchers attribute these differences to gender socialization and differential opportunities for boys and girls.

Another example of research finding differences in behavior between genders can be seen in the differences in self-ratings of attractiveness. Using fifty-five Johns Hopkins University undergraduates (24 females), the authors had the students fill out questionnaires they designed as self-appraisals of attractiveness. The authors then used a panel to rate the attractiveness of the participants (an objective measure). The researchers found that females are fairly accurate in their assessments of their attractiveness but males are not. They explained their findings by discussing the salience of attractiveness for females, a characteristic learned through socialization: Attractiveness is a more important component of femininities. This is seen in the disparity between females and males in the number of cosmetic surgeries they undergo. Of the 11.5 million cosmetic surgeries performed in 2005, women accounted for 85% to 90% of them. Because attractiveness is so important for females, they are more attuned to their actual attractiveness than are males.

OTHER IMPORTANT TERMS PATRIARCHY Patriarchy is a social system that is (1) male dominated (e.g., the primary positions of power are occupied by and/or encouraged for males rather than others), (2) male identified (e.g., what is defined as valuable or normative in society is associated with men and masculinities), and (3) male centered (e.g., the cultural focus of attention, whether media, scientific, religious, or political based, is on men and the things men do). This does not mean that all men in a patriarchal society will be or feel powerful throughout their lives or necessarily possess power 125

over women and trans people. Rather, it means that the primary social focus in a given social context favors males and those perceived to be men while granting all men - regardless of their intentions or their recognition of this fact - unearned privileges within and between existing social institutions.

INTERSECTIONALITY Intersectionality is the interrelation and intersection of multiple, interlocking systems of oppression and privilege within and between societies. Central to this perspective is the recognition that systems of inequality, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and age, ultimately rely upon and reproduce one another at all levels of society. As a result, social justice requires an examination of the foundations and interconnections that make existing and past inequalities possible as well as the ways these systems influence the contemporary and future developments of social, political, scientific, religious, and cultural systems of knowledge and power.

RESEARCH EXAMPLES A powerful example of how gender affects everyday life comes from the recently published research of Kristen Schilt on female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals in the workplace. Schilt interviewed FTM transsexuals after they had undergone their sex changes and found that, following their change to a male identity, two-thirds of the FTM transsexuals saw increased benefits in the workplace, including receiving greater rewards for doing less work. They were also treated differently. They found that their opinions had greater authority and received more recognition for their work. The FTMs who did not experience these benefits tended to be smaller and minorities. In short, white males are privileged in the workplace, even when those "white males" were formerly white females. The lesson: Perceived gender has a powerful influence on everyday social interaction.

Another interesting example of gender's influence on social organization comes from the recently published research of J. Edward Sumerau on gay Christian men's attempts to construct masculine selves within the context of a gay-friendly religious organization. Sumerau spent over 3 years observing the ways gay Christian males signified themselves as men and sought to claim privileges typically associated with masculinity. Ze 33 found that the gay Christian males drew upon existing notions of masculinity, such as beliefs that men are breadwinners and leaders, emotionally controlled and rational, and dominants within relationships. This was done to demonstrate their "masculine" selves to one another and convince themselves of their "rightful" place as church and community leaders. The lesson:

33 Ze and zir are gender neutral pronouns.

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Masculinities may be constructed via the use of everyday assumptions and beliefs built into the gender norms of a given society.

Questions: Do you feel you are forced to conform to a specific gender based on how you were socialized, or do you willingly â&#x20AC;&#x153;accomplishâ&#x20AC;? your gender and its socialized attributes?

2. What evidence exists to demonstrate that we live in a patriarchy?

3. Everybody has lots of identities and gender identity is only one of them. What are your identities? Which ones are most important to you? How would it feel to know you wanted to change your sex in order to affirm your gender identity?

1.

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READING: FEMINISM34 Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies, largely motivated by or concerning the experiences of women, especially in terms of their social, political, and economic situation. As a social movement, feminism largely focuses on limiting or eradicating gender inequality and promoting women's rights, interests, and issues in society.

Some feminist scholars consider the essence of feminism as broader than male and female relations. It has been posited that the hierarchies in businesses and government and all organizations need to be done away with and replaced with a decentralized ultra-democracy.

Some argue that the concept of having any central leader in any organization is a concept derived from the male-centric family structure (and therefore in need of reform and replacement). (Feel free to look up more on: Anarcha-feminism and Post-structuralism.)

Feminist scholarship is interdisciplinary, drawing on fields of study such as anthropology, legal theory, sociology, history, literature and media studies among others. Feminist Studies, Women's Studies, or Gender Studies may be their own academic departments at some universities, while at others courses that use a feminist analysis may be taught through other departments, such as any of those listed above or another department with an explicitly political bent, such as Ethnic Studies, LGBT Studies, or Queer Studies. There is an ongoing debate as to whether or not the needs of students and of the field are best served by teaching about women's issues, racism, homophobia, and other interconnected issues in departments specifically devoted to such study or as single courses through a variety of more traditional departments such as Literature, History, etc.

Feminist political activists often campaign on issues such as reproductive rights, violence within a domestic partnership, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual harassment, discrimination, and sexual violence. Themes explored in feminism include patriarchy, stereotyping, objectification, sexual objectification, and oppression.

In the 1960s and 1970s, much of feminism and feminist theory largely represented, and was concerned with, problems faced by Western, white, heterosexual, middle-class women while at

34 "Feminism/Introduction." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 2 Aug 2009, 15:53 UTC. 21 Nov 2018, 20:38 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Feminism/Introduction&oldid=1598305>. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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the same time claiming to represent all women through a theory of universal patriarchy and worldwide sisterhood. Since that time, many feminist theorists have challenged the assumption that "women" constitute a homogeneous group of individuals with identical interests. Feminist activists emerge from within diverse communities, and feminist theorists have begun to focus on the intersection between gender and sexuality with other social identities, such as race and class. Many feminists today argue that feminism is a grassroots movement that seeks to cross boundaries based on social class, race, culture, and religion. Feminisms are culturally specific and addresses issues relevant to the women of each society, such as female circumcision in Sudan, or the glass ceiling in developed economies. There is an ongoing debate about the extent to which certain issues, such as rape, incest, and mothering, are universal, and under what circumstances feminists can and should intervene in other countries and form alliances with activists from other backgrounds, in light of histories of colonialism and globalization that can render forming truly helpful international projects rather difficult.

Over the years a number of feminist political parties have been formed. Although negative stereotypes about feminists are still quite common, feminism and women's rights are often subject of mainstream or even conservative political rhetoric, as when Laura Bush used the concept of women's rights in a critique of the Middle East in 2005.

The history of feminism35 reaches far back before the 18th century, but the seeds of the feminist movement were planted during the latter portion of that century. The earliest works on the so-called "woman question" criticized the restrictive role of women, without necessarily claiming that women were disadvantaged or that men were to blame.

PRIOR TO 1850 Feminist thought began during The Enlightenment with such thinkers as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Marquis de Condorcet championing women's education. The first scientific society for women was founded in Middleberg, a city in the south of the Dutch republic, in 1785. Journals for women which focused on issues like science became popular during this period as well. Mary Wollstonecraft's â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Vindication of the Rights of Womanâ&#x20AC;? (1792) is one of the first works that can unambiguously be called feminist, although by modern standards her comparison of women to the nobility, the elite of society, coddled, fragile, and in danger of intellectual and moral sloth, does not sound like a feminist argument. Wollstonecraft believed

35 "Feminism/History." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 13 May 2017, 10:55 UTC. 21 Nov 2018, 20:38 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Feminism/History&oldid=3218659>. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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that both sexes contributed to this situation and took it for granted that women had considerable power over men.

LATE 19th CENTURY The movement is generally said to have begun in the 18th century as people increasingly came to believe that women were treated unfairly under the law. The feminist movement is rooted in the West and especially in the reform movement of the 19th century. The organized movement is dated from the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

Emmeline Pankhurst was one of the founders of the suffragette movement and aimed to reveal the institutional sexism in British society, forming the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Often the repeated jailing for forms of activism that broke the law, particularly property destruction, inspired members to go on hunger strikes. As a result of the resultant force-feeding that was the practice, these members became very ill, serving to draw attention to the brutality of the legal system at the time and to further their cause. In an attempt to solve this the government introduced a bill that became known as the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed women to be released when they starved themselves to dangerous levels, then to be re-arrested later.

The Feminist movement in the Arab world saw Egyptian jurist Qasim Amin, the author of the 1899 pioneering book Women's Liberation (Tahrir al-Mar'a), as the father of Arab Feminist Movement. In his work Amin criticized some of the practices prevalent in his society at the time, such as polygamy, the veil, or women's segregation, and condemned them as un-Islamic, and contradicting the true spirit of Islam. His work had an enormous influence on women's political movements throughout the Islamic and Arab world and is read and cited today. Less known, however, are the women who preceded Amin in their feminist critique of their societies.

The women's press in Egypt started voicing such concerns since its very first issues in 1892.

Egyptian, Syrian and Lebanese women and men had been reading European feminist magazines even a decade earlier and discussed their relevance to the Middle East in the general press.

20th CENTURY Many countries began to grant women the vote in the early years of the 20th century, especially in the final years of the First World War and the first years after the war. The reasons for this varied but included a desire to recognize the contributions of women during the war and were also influenced by rhetoric used by both sides at the time to justify their war efforts. For example, since Wilson's â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fourteen Pointsâ&#x20AC;? recognized self-determination as a vital component of society, the hypocrisy of denying half the population of modern nations the vote became difficult for men to ignore. (See: Women's suffrage.)

The 1920s were an important time for women, who, in addition to gaining the vote also gained legal recognition in many countries. However, in many countries, women lost the jobs they had 130

gained during the war. In fact, women who had held jobs prior to the war were sometimes compelled to give up their jobs to returning soldiers, partly due to a conservative backlash, and partially through societal pressure to reward the soldiers. Many women continued to work in blue collar jobs, on farms, and traditionally female occupations. Women did make strides in some fields such as nursing.

In both World Wars, manpower shortages brought women into traditionally male occupations, ranging from munitions manufacturing and mechanical work to a female baseball league. By demonstrating that women could do "men's work", and highlighting society's dependence on their labor, this shift encouraged women to strive for equality. In World War II, the popular icon Rosie the Riveter became a symbol for a generation of working women.

The rise of socialism and communism advanced the rights of women to economic parity with men in some countries. Women were often encouraged to take their place as equals in these societies, although they rarely enjoyed the same level of political power as men, and still often faced very different social expectations.

In some areas, regimes actively discouraged feminism and women's liberations. In Nazi Germany, a very hierarchical society was idealized where women maintained a position largely subordinate to men. Women's activism was very difficult there, and in other societies that deliberately set out to restrict women's, and men's, gender roles, such as Italy, and much later Afghanistan.

Early feminists and primary feminist movements are often called the first wave and feminists after about 1960 the second wave. Second wave feminists were concerned with gaining full social and economic equality, having already gained almost full legal equality in many western nations. One of the main fields of interest to these women was in gaining the right to contraception and birth control, which were almost universally restricted until the 1960s. With the development of the birth control pill feminists hoped to make it as available as possible.

Many hoped that this would free women from the perceived burden of mothering children they did not want; they felt that control of reproduction was necessary for full economic independence from men. Access to abortion was also widely demanded, but this was much more difficult to secure because of the deep societal divisions that existed over the issue. To this day, abortion remains controversial in many parts of the world.

Many feminists also fought to change perceptions of female sexual behavior. Since it was often considered more acceptable for men to have multiple sexual partners, many feminists encouraged women into "sexual liberation" and having sex for pleasure with multiple partners.

The extent to which most women in fact changed their behavior, first of all because many women had already slept with multiple partners, and secondly because most women still remained in mainly monogamous relationships, is debatable. However, it seems clear that women becoming sexually active since the 1980s are relatively more sexually active than previous generations. (See: Sexual revolution.)

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These developments in sexual behavior have not gone without criticism by some feminists.

They see the sexual revolution primarily as a tool used by men to gain easy access to sex without the obligations entailed by marriage and traditional social norms. They see the relaxation of social attitudes towards sex in general, and the increased availability of pornography without stigma, as leading towards greater sexual objectification of women by men. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin gained notoriety in the 1980s by attempting to classify pornography as a violation of women's civil rights.

There is a so called third wave, but feminists disagree as to its necessity, its benefits, and its ideas.

RECENT ACTIVITIES In many areas of the world women are still paid less than men for equivalent work, hold much less political and economic power, and are often the subject of intense social pressure to conform to relatively traditional gender expectations. Feminists continue to fight these conditions. The most high-profile work is done in the field of pay-equity, reproductive rights, and encouraging women to become engaged in politics, both as candidates and as voters. In some areas feminists also fight for legislation guaranteeing equitable divorce laws and protections against rape and sexual harassment. Radical feminism was a significant development in second wave feminism, viewing women's oppression as a fundamental element in human society and seeks to challenge that standard by broadly inverting perceived gender roles along with promoting lesbian and gay rights.

In the Arab and Islamic world, feminist movements face very different challenges. In Morocco and Iran, for example, it is the application of Islamic personal status laws that are the target of feminist activity. According to Islamic law, for example, a woman who remarries may lose custody over her children; divorce is an unqualified male privilege; in certain countries polygamy is still legal. While not attacking Islamic law itself, these women and men in different Islamic countries offer modern, feminist, egalitarian readings of religious texts. In Egypt feminist gynecologist Nawal al-Sa'dawi centers her critique on the still-prevalent custom of female genital mutilation. Feminist groups in other African countries have targeted the practice as well.

One problem feminists have encountered in the late 20th century is a strong backlash against perceived zealotry on their part. This backlash may be due to the visibility of some radical feminist activism that has been inaccurately perceived as representing the feminist movement as a whole. Many people have become reluctant to be identified as feminists for this reason.

Outside of the West, feminism is often associated with Western colonialism and Western cultural influence and is therefore often de-legitimized. Feminist groups might then to refer to themselves as "women's organizations" and refrain from labeling themselves feminists.

Questions: 1. How many philosophers, famous writers, etc. that are taught in classrooms are women?

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2. If feminism is focused on â&#x20AC;&#x153;eradicating gender inequality,â&#x20AC;? why do so many detest the word/label?

3. Why is polygamy considered anti-feminist?

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READING: GLOBAL ISSUES IN AUSTRIA & CZECH REPUBLIC WITH MIGRATION36 Current Issues with Migration, Immigration, and Human Trafficking in Austria and the Czech Republic Overview The movement of people into, out of, and through nations takes place in different forms that have become global issues today. Migration, immigration, and human trafficking are current issues in Austria and the Czech Republic that have global significance because of the push and pull factors related to globalization, a phenomenon that is rapidly shaping our world.

Migration, the movement of people through, into, and out of a specified area, is the term used to describe the overall movement of people. This includes immigration and human trafficking, among other migratory terms. Immigration is the movement of people into a specified area, whether of their own free will, or as refugees from conflict in their homelands. Human trafficking is the movement of people through coercion or force, wherein the people being moved are bought and sold as slaves with no free will or human rights. Each of these three phenomena, migration, immigration, and human trafficking, are very important global issues affecting both Austria and the Czech Republic as a direct result of globalization.

AUSTRIA Since 1995, Austriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s joining of the EU and the Schengen agreement has allowed free movement into and out of the country to other member states. As a country bordered by 8 others, Austria has been a country of immigration in recent history, though officially it does not claim the status of an immigration country.

Until very recently in 2008, Austriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s border with Hungary was closed and illegal immigration was an issue that called for military assistance. Since Hungary joined the EU Shengen Area, however, the border controls have ceased to exist, and free movement from Hungary into Austria is allowed by EU mandate.

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This freedom of movement from the east is a cause for concern for the Austrian government because of Hungary’s status as a transit country for illegal immigrants from non-EU countries in Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia. Austria’s concern is that Hungary does not have laws in place, nor the power to enforce such laws, that can control the influx of illegal immigrants and criminal trafficking into EU territory, and ultimately into Austria. This issue has been brought up by Austria’s conservative politicians during the past two years.

Immigrants and their descendants are called “guest workers,” and consist of recognized minority groups in Austria. Ethnic immigrant groups in Austria include Turks, former Yugoslavs, Albanians, Polish, Hungarians, Romanians, Arabs, Slovenes, Slovaks, Czechs, Persians, Italians, Russians, French, Chinese, Spanish, and Bulgarians. The Gypsy-Sinti are also migrants who are a recognized ethnic minority in Austria. Though the minority groups are recognized officially, there is still dispute among Austrian civilians and officials about minority and migrant rights, especially concerning workers’ rights.

Austria’s net migration rate is 1.83 migrants/1000 population according to the 2010 CIA World Fact Book. While over 91% of Austria’s population is ethnically Austrian, the highest percentage of migrants include former Yugoslavs, at 4%, and Turks at 1.6%. Turks make up the largest ethnic minority in Austria, however, because many have become nationalized. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Turks reside in Austria today.

An outstanding current issue Austria faces with immigration is concern over the large Turkish population. Turks were hired as “guest workers” in 1964 for the construction and export industries, and later came to Austria as refugees during the 1970s. In 1973 the first efforts to curb the influx of Turkish immigrants took shape in Austrian government, resulting in the end of the campaign to hire Turkish workers for industry and the beginning of restrictive immigration law.

Several policies have been implemented by the Austrian government to restrict immigration.

The first was the 1975 Aliens Employment Act, which set work permit quotas. The Residence Act of 1992 placed further restrictions, stipulating quotas for residency permits without the right to work. More restrictions were put into place in 1997, and the most recent restrictions were made in 2006.

Aside from legal restrictions, there are social issues related to the immigrant Turkish population. In the past decade, intolerance of Turkish people and culture has gained momentum, largely due to the terrorist acts committed against Western countries by Islamic radicals. Further Austrian intolerance of the Turks in general is evidenced by the Austrian government’s actions in 2005 to unsuccessfully block the start of Turkish negotiations to join the EU. Social discrimination continues today, but the Austrian government has made efforts since 2005 to help Turkish immigrants and their descendants gain rights equal to those of naturally 135

born, ethnic Austrians. The 2004 law for Equal Treatment in Employment was adopted by all provincial governments in 2006 to help with this.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING Austria is both a transit country and a country of destination for human trafficking because of its central European location and its high economic development. All forms of human trafficking occur here, including mostly trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced domestic labor, and child trafficking.

Most trafficked people coming into Austria come from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Women account for those who are trafficked primarily for sexual slavery, while men are trafficked primarily for forced labor, which occurs in the service sectors, as well as in the agriculture and construction industries. Forced begging uses trafficked children from primarily Eastern Europe and Roma (Gypsy) communities.

Sex trafficking has seen an increase due to traffickers abuse of the prostitution laws, wherein criminals use the law to keep trafficking victims in the country to work as prostitutes. There has been no government action so far to persecute these criminals, or to change the prostitution laws to prevent trafficking in sex slaves.

To prevent forced work in the service industry, Austria made new regulations stating that newcomers must appear in person before the Austrian immigration officials in order to be educated about forced labor, and what they should do to get help if they become victims. The government also held a meeting with all foreign embassies to notify them of this new requirement.

In 2004, Austriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Foreign Ministry set up a Human Trafficking Task Force to combat all types of human trafficking within its borders. The task force wrote a plan of action against human trafficking for the Austrian government in 2007, and a second plan was written for the years 2009-2011 to try and prevent trafficking in humans, protect victims of trafficking, and prosecute criminals associated with trafficking in humans. This new protocol is in direct line with international efforts to streamline the fight against human trafficking, which outlines the three measures of prevention, protection, and prosecution. In 2009, the first report on combating human trafficking in Austria was published in accordance with international efforts to unify the global approach to stopping trafficking in persons.

Austria also works with governments in origin countries for human trafficking, especially with southeastern European countries that see large numbers of emigrants leaving for the EU every year. Recognizing that combating human trafficking will take a unified international effort, Austria also works with other EU member countries in accordance with the international Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons. Additionally, Austria will participate in the new Stockholm Programme, which calls for more cooperation between government Justice systems in order to better target, capture, and prosecute traffickers.

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CZECH REPUBLIC The Czech Republic, only an independent nation since 1989, went from a country of emigration to one of immigration in a short span of time. Since joining the EU and Shengen in 2004, the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s increasing socioeconomic status draws migrants from Eastern Europe and as far away as Mongolia and Vietnam. The Czech Republic is also a transit country for migrants coming from Eastern territories to Western Europe and the US. Because of its status as a young country, migration policies are still being shaped by Czech Government. Current issues with migration are made more difficult by the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newly acquired EU membership because of the need to quickly develop effective migration protocol.

Illegal immigration and human trafficking are two large issues under the umbrella of migration that the Czech government is currently trying to solve.

Currently, the Czech Republic faces migration issues such as confronting illegal immigration, providing adequate assistance to refugees and asylum seekers, drawing in highly skilled immigrants for development, and criminal trafficking of humans and drugs.

The Czech Republic has an immigration rate of 0.97 migrants/1,000 population according to the 2010 CIA World Fact Book. The number of illegal immigrants is estimated at 300,000 to 340,000. This is largely due to the Czech governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts to increase the population through liberal migration legislation following the divorce from Slovakia in 1993. Hundreds of thousands flooded into the Czech Republic from the East in search of better economic conditions in Western Europe. Even though most of these immigrants were in transit to countries further west, many stayed in the Czech Republic.

Because of the large influx of foreigners, and the developing immigration laws, the government now faces issues with employment of immigrants without work permits. It is an increasing problem that illegal immigrants can easily find jobs in the Czech Republic, and the government is working with the office of the IOM in Prague to try and resettle illegals back to their country of origin.

The main countries of origin for migrants to the Czech Republic are the Ukraine, Slovakia, Vietnam, Poland, Russia, Germany, Bulgaria, and Moldova. Immigrants from theses countries typically go to work in the service sector or labor industries. There are immigrants from Western countries, but these are usually temporary migrants who take prestigious jobs in governments or schools in large cities, especially Prague.

The biggest issue the Czech Republic faces with its immigration policy is that the still developing policy must continue to meet with EU standards, especially in the context of illegal immigration and illegal migrant workers. Because the Czech economy is supported by a large number of foreign workers, many of whom are in the country illegally, the government must find a way to make its immigration policy more effective while at the same time not compromising its economy. The need to do this is an increasing concern among the EU and 137

Czech citizens, but elite government officials have yet to stress concern over immigration issues.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING The Czech Republic is a transit, destination, and origin country for human trafficking, especially in women for the sex trade. Trafficking victims come from the Eastern European countries, Vietnam, Brazil, and Mongolia. Roma, (Gypsy) women are also trafficking within the country for the sex trade. Trafficking for forced labor also takes place here, especially in men and women from far Eastern Europe, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Thailand. Additionally, Czech nationals are trafficked to Western European countries for forced labor and forced prostitution.

Though the Czech government complies fully with the international protocol to end trafficking in persons, the conviction rates of trafficking criminals remains low, and punishment for convicted criminals does not meet sufficient periods of incarceration for the crime. Even so, the Czech police force has increased training to inform officers of how to detect traffickers and their victims.

The Czech government places protection of victims in NGO authority, giving money to the organizations in Czech Republic who provide assistance to trafficking victims. In 2009, the government provided $213,000 to various NGOs who aid victims of trafficking, which was less than in 2008. Though monetary assistance is down, NGOs have continued to provide assistance to just as many victims in 2009 as they did in 2008.

Government efforts to prevent trafficking are partnered with the IOM office in Prague through the Ministry of the Interior. Among these efforts are education for foreign workers and their children who are more likely to become victims of trafficking because of their socioeconomic status. This includes immigrants and nationals in the Mongolian and Vietnamese communities.

In addition, the education of foreign tourists about human trafficking in the sex industry is aimed at decreasing the demand for prostitution, which draws many Western European tourists to the Czech Republic year-round.

The governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ministry of the Interior continues to cooperate with NGOs such as the IOM to fund research about human trafficking in Czech Republic. Ongoing efforts to prevent trafficking, protect victims, and prosecute criminals include policy advocacy from NGOs like the IOM, who use their research to inform the government of the best strategies for combating human trafficking.

Questions: 1. What is the difference between a migrant, an immigrant, and a refugee?

2. What is the difference between emigration and immigration?

3. What are some countriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; laws/rules on seeking asylum?

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READING: GOVERNMENT POLICIES TO REDUCE INCOME INEQUALITY37 By the end of this section, you will be able to: ● Explain the arguments for and against government intervention in a market economy ● Identify beneficial ways to reduce the economic inequality in a society ● Show the tradeoff between incentives and income equality No society should expect or desire complete equality of income at a given point in time, for a number of reasons. First, most workers receive relatively low earnings in their first few jobs, higher earnings as they reach middle age, and then lower earnings after retirement. Thus, a society with people of varying ages will have a certain amount of income inequality. Second, people’s preferences and desires differ. Some are willing to work long hours to have income for large houses, fast cars and computers, luxury vacations, and the ability to support children and grandchildren.

These factors all imply that a snapshot of inequality in a given year does not provide an accurate picture of how people’s incomes rise and fall over time. Even if some degree of economic inequality is expected at any point in time, how much inequality should there be?

How do you measure wealth versus income inequality? Income is a flow of money received, often measured on a monthly or an annual basis; wealth is the sum of the value of all assets, including money in bank accounts, financial investments, a pension fund, and the value of a home. In calculating wealth all debts must be subtracted, such as debt owed on a home mortgage and on credit cards. A retired person, for example, may have relatively little income in a given year, other than a pension or Social Security. However, if that person has saved and invested over time, the person’s accumulated wealth can be quite substantial.

In the United States, the wealth distribution is more unequal than the income distribution, because differences in income can accumulate over time to make even larger differences in wealth. However, the degree of inequality in the wealth distribution can be measured with the same tools we use to measure the inequality in the income distribution, like quintile

37 "Principles of Microeconomics/Government Policies to Reduce Income Inequality." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 3 Sep 2017, 16:28 UTC. 21 Nov 2018, 21:09 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Principles_of_Microeconomics/Government_Policies_to_Reduce_Income_Ine quality&oldid=3289004>. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

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measurements. Data on wealth are collected once every three years in the Survey of Consumer Finance.

Even if they cannot answer the question of how much inequality is too much, economists can still play an important role in spelling out policy options and tradeoffs. If a society decides to reduce the level of economic inequality, it has three main sets of tools: redistribution from those with high incomes to those with low incomes; trying to assure that a ladder of opportunity is widely available; and a tax on inheritance.

REDISTRIBUTION Redistribution means taking income from those with higher incomes and providing income to those with lower incomes. Earlier in this chapter, we considered some of the key government policies that provide support for the poor: the welfare program TANF, the earned income tax credit, SNAP, and Medicaid. If a reduction in inequality is desired, these programs could receive additional funding.

The programs are paid for through the federal income tax, which is a progressive tax system designed in such a way that the rich pay a higher percent in income taxes than the poor. Data from household income tax returns in 2009 shows that the top 1% of households had an average income of $1,219,700 per year in pre-tax income and paid an average federal tax rate of 28.9%. The effective income tax, which is total taxes paid divided by total income (all sources of income such as wages, profits, interest, rental income, and government transfers such as veteransâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; benefits), was much lower. The effective tax paid by the top 1% of householders was 20.4%, while the bottom two quintiles actually paid negative effective income taxes, because of provisions like the earned income tax credit. News stories occasionally report on a high-income person who has managed to pay very little in taxes, but while such individual cases exist, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the typical pattern is that people with higher incomes pay a higher average share of their income in federal income taxes.

Of course, the fact that some degree of redistribution occurs now through the federal income tax and government antipoverty programs does not settle the questions of how much redistribution is appropriate, and whether more redistribution should occur.

THE LADDER OF OPPORTUNITY Economic inequality is perhaps most troubling when it is not the result of effort or talent, but instead is determined by the circumstances under which a child grows up. One child attends a well-run grade school and high school and heads on to college, while parents help out by supporting education and other interests, paying for college, a first car, and a first house, and offering work connections that lead to internships and jobs. Another child attends a poorly run grade school, barely makes it through a low-quality high school, does not go to college, and lacks family and peer support. These two children may be similar in their underlying talents and in the effort they put forth, but their economic outcomes are likely to be quite different.

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Public policy can attempt to build a ladder of opportunities so that, even though all children will never come from identical families and attend identical schools, each child has a reasonable opportunity to attain an economic niche in society based on their interests, desires, talents, and efforts.

The United States has often been called a land of opportunity. Although the general idea of a ladder of opportunity for all citizens continues to exert a powerful attraction, specifics are often quite controversial. Society can experiment with a wide variety of proposals for building a ladder of opportunity, especially for those who otherwise seem likely to start their lives in a disadvantaged position. Such policy experiments need to be carried out in a spirit of openmindedness, because some will succeed while others will not show positive results or will cost too much to enact on a widespread basis.

INHERITANCE TAXES There is always a debate about inheritance taxes. It goes like this: On the one hand, why should people who have worked hard all their lives and saved up a substantial nest egg not be able to give their money and possessions to their children and grandchildren? In particular, it would seem un-American if children were unable to inherit a family business or a family home.

On the other hand, many Americans are far more comfortable with inequality resulting from high-income people who earned their money by starting innovative new companies than they are with inequality resulting from high-income people who have inherited money from rich parents.

The United States does have an estate taxâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that is, a tax imposed on the value of an inheritanceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which suggests a willingness to limit how much wealth can be passed on as an inheritance. However, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in 2015 the estate tax applied only to those leaving inheritances of more than $5.43 million and thus applies to only a tiny percentage of those with high levels of wealth.

THE TRADEOFF Government policies to reduce poverty or to encourage economic equality, if carried to extremes, can injure incentives for economic output. The poverty trap, for example, defines a situation where guaranteeing a certain level of income can eliminate or reduce the incentive to work. An extremely high degree of redistribution, with very high taxes on the rich, would be likely to discourage work and entrepreneurship. Thus, it is common to draw the tradeoff between economic output and equality. In this formulation, if society wishes a high level of economic output, it must also accept a high degree of inequality. Conversely, if society wants a high level of equality, it must accept a lower level of economic output because of reduced incentives for production.

This view of the tradeoff between economic output and equality may be too pessimistic and presents an alternate vision. Here, the tradeoff between economic output and equality first slopes up, suggesting that certain programs might increase both output and economic equality.

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For example, the policy of providing free public education has an element of redistribution, since the value of the public schooling received by children of low-income families is clearly higher than what low-income families pay in taxes. A well-educated population, however, is also an enormously powerful factor in providing the skilled workers of tomorrow and helping the economy to grow and expand. In this case, equality and economic growth may complement each other.

Moreover, policies to diminish inequality and soften the hardship of poverty may sustain political support for a market economy. After all, if society does not make some effort toward reducing inequality and poverty, the alternative might be that people would rebel against market forces. Citizens might seek economic security by demanding that their legislators pass laws forbidding employers from ever laying off workers or reducing wages, or laws that would impose price floors and price ceilings and shut off international trade. From this viewpoint, policies to reduce inequality may help economic output by building social support for allowing markets to operate.

The tradeoff then flattens out which reflects the pattern that a number of countries that provide similar levels of income to their citizens—the United States, Canada, the nations of the European Union, Japan, Australia—have different levels of inequality. The pattern suggests that countries in this range could choose a greater or a lesser degree of inequality without much impact on economic output. Only if these countries push for a much higher level of equality will they experience the diminished incentives that lead to lower levels of economic output. In this view, while a danger always exists that an agenda to reduce poverty or inequality can be poorly designed or pushed too far, it is also possible to discover and design policies that improve equality and do not injure incentives for economic output by very much— or even improve such incentives.

OCCUPY WALL STREET The Occupy movement took on a life of its own over the last few months of 2011, bringing to light issues faced by many people on the lower end of the income distribution. The contents of this chapter indicate that there is a significant amount of income inequality in the United States.

The question is: What should be done about it?

The Great Recession of 2008–2009 caused unemployment to rise and incomes to fall. Many people attribute the recession to mismanagement of the financial system by bankers and financial managers—those in the 1% of the income distribution—but those in lower quintiles bore the greater burden of the recession through unemployment. This seemed to present the picture of inequality in a different light: the group that seemed responsible for the recession was not the group that seemed to bear the burden of the decline in output. A burden shared can bring a society closer together; a burden pushed off onto others can polarize it.

On one level, the problem with trying to reduce income inequality comes down to whether you still believe in the American Dream. If you believe that one day you will have your American Dream—a large income, large house, happy family, or whatever else you would like to have in 142

life—then you do not necessarily want to prevent anyone else from living out their dream. You certainly would not want to run the risk that someone would want to take part of your dream away from you. So, there is some reluctance to engage in a redistributive policy to reduce inequality.

However, when those for whom the likelihood of living the American Dream is very small are considered, there are sound arguments in favor of trying to create greater balance. As the text indicated, a little more income equality, gained through long-term programs like increased education and job training, can increase overall economic output. Then everyone is made better off. And the 1% will not seem like such a small group any more.

Self-Check Questions and Answers ● Here is one hypothesis: A well-funded social safety net can increase economic equality but will reduce economic output. Explain why this might be so and sketch a production possibility curve that shows this tradeoff. o A very strong push for economic equality might include extremely high taxes on high-wage earners to pay for extremely large government social payments for the poor. Such a policy could limit incentives for the high-wage workers, lock the poor into a poverty trap, and thus reduce output. The PPF in this case will have the standard appearance: it will be downward sloping. ● Here is a second hypothesis: A well-funded social safety net may lead to less regulation of the market economy. Explain why this might be so and sketch a production possibility curve that shows this tradeoff. o For the second hypothesis, a well-funded social safety net might make people feel that even if their company goes bankrupt or they need to change jobs or industries, they will have some degree of protection. As a result, people may be more willing to allow markets to work without interference, and not to lobby as hard for rules that would prevent layoffs, set price controls, or block foreign trade.

In this case, safety net programs that increase equality could also allow the market to work more freely in a way that could increase output. In this case, at least some portion of the PPF between equality and economic output would slope up. ● Which set of policies is more likely to cause a tradeoff between economic output and equality: policies of redistribution or policies aimed at the ladder of opportunity? Explain how the production possibility frontier trade-off between economic equality and output might look in each case. o Pure redistribution is more likely to cause a sharp tradeoff between economic output and equality than policies aimed at the ladder of opportunity. A production possibility frontier showing a strict tradeoff between economic output and equality will be downward sloping. A PPF showing that it is possible to increase equality, at least to some extent, while either increasing output or at least not diminishing it would have a PPF that first rises, perhaps has a flat area, and then falls.

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● Why is there reluctance on the part of some in the United States to redistribute income so that greater equality can be achieved? o Many view the redistribution of income to achieve greater equality as taking away from the rich to pay the poor, or as a “zero sum” game. By taking taxes from one group of people and redistributing them to another, the tax system is robbing some of the American Dream.

Review Questions 1.

2.

Identify some public policies that can reduce the level of economic inequality.

Describe how a push for economic equality might reduce incentives to work and produce output. Then describe how a push for economic inequality might not have such effects.

Critical Thinking Questions 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

What do you think is more important to focus on when considering inequality: income inequality or wealth inequality?

To reduce income inequality, should the marginal tax rates on the top 1% be increased?

Redistribution of income occurs through the federal income tax and government antipoverty programs. Explain whether or not this level of redistribution is appropriate and whether more redistribution should occur.

How does a society or a country make the decision about the tradeoff between equality and economic output?

1. Hint: Think about the political system.

Explain what the long- and short-term consequences are of not promoting equality or working to reduce poverty.

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A BIG BIT ABOUT BLOGGING

“Fail Fast and Change Things” by Ben Andrews taken 10aug11; Flickr Creative Commons. Licensed CC-BY.

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BLOGS: HISTORY, TYPES, & RESEARCH Definition: A journal-style web site that lists the posts backwards with a timestamp. Some blogs are collaborative, and some are kept up by one individual.

Blogs are used in teaching, the corporate world, the land of politics; they might be utilized to showcase daily outfits in a fashion blog or recipes in a cooking blog or share inspirational stories in a blog about parenthood; if a person has a passion, and wants to openly journal about it, he/she should consider starting a blog.

THE HISTORY OF BLOGGING38 While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it.

1983–1993 At this time Usenet was the primary serial medium included in the original definition of the Internet. It featured moderated newsgroup which allowed all posting in a newsgroup to be under the control of an individual or small group.

1994–2001 The modern blog itself evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. The first weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. […]

The term "weblog" was first-used by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The (“more popular”) short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms.

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2001–2004 By 2001, blogging was enough of a phenomenon that how-to manuals began to appear, primarily focusing on technique. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) increased rapidly. Established schools of journalism began researching blogging and noting the differences between journalism and blogging. Since 2002, blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning news stories.

2004–PRESENT In 2004 Merriam-Webster voted Blog the "Word of the Year." By 2010 about 8.4% of the German internet users had their own blog. Worldwide there were about 200 million blogs.

Blogs are easy to create. All it takes is one idea.

Anyone can do it. Your “diary” could be shared with everyone.

HOW DO BLOGS WORK?39 Blogs are created via blog hosting websites such as Blogger, Wordpress, or Edublogs.

Typically, a user registers a username and password, picks a blog title and URL, and then can immediately begin his or her first post, or entry.

A post can include a combination or writing, photos, videos, links, and other embedded materials. Once the post is ready, the author can instantly publish it to the blog. Other people are then able to view the post (depending on settings--a blogger can choose to make his or her blog private, public, or shared with certain people).

Readers can subscribe to the blog and receive updates in their e-mail or RSS reader. Posts can be shared via social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Bloggers can also enable commenting, which means readers can write responses to blog posts that will appear along with the post for other readers to see.

All it takes is one click to post or respond to another person’s blog.

HOW BLOGGING CAN BE USED IN EDUCATION

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Teachers can use blogs to communicate with students and parents. Teachers can use their blog to give detailed information on what students are doing in the classroom, post homework assignments for absent students, and allow a comment section for specific questions that students or parents might have.

Blogging engages students in active learning, increases student and teacher relationships, increases higher-order thinking skills, and improves flexibility in teaching and learning (Ferdig & Roehler, 2003). Classroom blogging sites provide students with opportunities to share their viewpoints, and a supportive environment for reading and writing (Huffaker, 2005).

Blogging is one way to communicate in a social context through the medium of technology.

Larson and Marsh (2005) say that the practice of blogging in the classroom identifies the child as an active member of a constantly changing community of learners in which knowledge constructs and is constructed by a larger cultural system. From this point of view, conceptualizing learning creates a shift from the traditional teacher-centered classroom to one that is learner-centered. Larson and Marsh (2005), says in this type of classroom learning occurs through participation in social, cultural, and historical contexts that are intervened by instruction.

Some teachers choose to have a class blog. There are several uses for a class blog: ● Teachers post a homework question and require students to respond to the question and other classmate responses. ● Students post questions they have that can be discussed during the next class period. ● Students can post their work to the class blog and allow others to leave feedback. ● One student can take notes for the class and post them on the class blog. ● Students, teachers, or parents comment on individual or class work on the class blog.

Other uses of a classroom blog could include: ● Posting classroom rules, procedures, calendars, schedules, teacher email and school phone number. ● Posting links for online books or supplemental materials, i.e. videos, podcasts, and websites. ● Uploading digital photos or videos of class projects. ● Using a recording software program upload audio files of students narrating their favorite stories or stories they have written. ● Posting reviews, by individual students, of their favorite or recently read books. ● Creating and posting of creative or reflective writing. ● Posting minutes or records of meetings for class council, clubs, PTA… ● Inviting people from around the world to describe their day to learning of cultural differences. ● Listing topics for a research project. ● Reflecting and self-assessing by teachers on a personal blog about their daily lessons, then creating suggestions or finding alternatives for future lessons.

THE PROS OF USING BLOGS IN THE CLASSROOM 148

There are many pros of using blogs in education. ● Can promote critical thinking ● Can promote creativity ● Can promote social interaction ● Allows exposure to quality information ● Allows individuality ● Blogging can be done from home computers or school computers ● Allows students to practice and better reading and writing skills ● Can be used as a student portfolio ● Allows for discussion ● Gives students a real audience for their work, as well as feedback that will help them to become better writers. ● Assigning "blogging buddies" in a classroom ensures that all students will receive comments on their posts.

THE CONS OF USING BLOGS IN THE CLASSROOM There are several cons when it comes to using blogs in the classroom ● Blogs can be viewed publicly by anyone if security settings are not set properly ● Students must be aware of not being defamatory or libelous ● School networks may block blogs ● All blogs are not factual ● It is not a replacement to real conversation since there can be a time lapse in postings and replies ● Not all students have a home computer ● Access to computer labs in schools may be limited ● Students in a class may only post comments to their friends

BLOGGING CATEGORIES40 In addition to Class Blogs or Teacher Blogs – mentioned previously – here are other specific sorts of blogs: •

Political Blogs: These blogs are often tied to a large media or news corporation, such as "The Caucus" (affiliated with The New York Times), "CNN Political Ticker", and the National Review's "The Corner."

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•

•

•

•

Gossip Blogs: These blogs can greatly be attributed to the popularity of Perez Hilton, a celebrity and entertainment media gossip blogger. His blog posts contain tabloid photographs of celebrities, accompanied by captions and comments. Web traffic to the often controversial and raunchy Perez Hilton site skyrocketed in 2005, prompting similar gossip blogs, such as TMZ.com, Jezebel, and the Superficial, to gain popularity.

Food Blogs: These blogs allow foodies and aspiring chefs alike to share recipes, cooking techniques, and food porn, for others to enjoy. Food blogs serve as a sort of online cookbook for followers, often containing restaurant critiques, product reviews, and step-by-step photography for recipes.

Fashion Blogs: These blogs became their own larger than life sub-community following the explosive growth of the blogosphere. Besides fashion news blogs, street style blogs have also become exceedingly popular. Many Bloggers consider updating their blog a full-time job. These style mavens are able to earn considerable livings through advertising, selling their photos and even providing their services as photographers, stylists, and guest designers.

Health Blogs: These blogs cover health topics, events and/or related content of the health industry and the general community. They can cover diverse health related concerns such as nutrition and diet, fitness, weight control, diseases, disease management, societal trends affecting health, analysis about health, business of health and health research.

A BLOGGING TERM: THE BLOGOSPHERE41 The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions. Since the term has been coined, it has been referenced in a number of media and is also used to refer to the Internet. There is no Study that can show a global view over the whole blogosphere.

A BLOGGING TERM: MICROBLOGS Microblogs are a relatively new phenomenon and are a special form of blogging. The most famous microblog is Twitter, but also alternatives like Tumblr or Google Buzz exist. The main idea behind a microblog is to restrict the size of a message to 140 characters. This comes from its original connection to texting (SMS). In today’s society with its general tendency toward information overflow this is a welcome trend. This is also why it is very popular with mobile devices.

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Microblogging is essentially a broadcast medium, meaning you write a message, which then will be broadcast to all your followers. It is not unusual that you also follow your followers. It can not only be used to exchange textual messages, but also links, images and videos.

In our class we will use it to primarily communicate class announcements.

CRITICISM OF BLOGS ● Critics say that the majority of micro-posts being sent only contain dull, meaningless messages documenting people eating, waiting, etc. But opposing this argument, it’s not every bit of information sent through these channels that is important, but the potential it has in general. For example, it is the fastest way to spread news nowadays. In recent events there occurred several natural catastrophes and the first reports about what’s happening always reached people via twitter being posted by random people experiencing said events at the very moment. And that’s long before news stations were able to produce and publish/send their first reports. ● Those in academia, at times, have claimed that blog posts – specifically ones kept by students or novice writers – don’t contain the complexity journal articles do.

THE PROVEN COMPLEXITY OF BLOGS This next chunk contains HOW I (your instructor) studied blogging for my master’s thesis42. In using participatory action-based research, I could easily participate in the study and work on my skills as an online community host. The section following the outline of participatory actionbased research is a description of who participated and when the studies were conducted.

Participatory Action-Based Research Since I knew that I would be a part of this study (I needed to write on The BisonBlog in order to get others to do so as well), I utilized research methods entitled Participatory Action-based Research (PAR). In doing so, I could gather information from my participants while being a part of the study (as the host) as well.

According to John Creswell’s book, Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research: Action research: encourages change in schools, fosters a democratic approach to education, empowers individuals through collaboration on projects, positions teachers and other educators as learners who seek to narrow the gap between practice and

42 Written by Sybil Priebe; this chunk comes from her Master’s thesis; CC-BY-SA.

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their vision of education, encourages educators to reflect on their practices, [and] promotes a process of testing new ideas. (604) Participatory action-based research allows educators “to gather information about — and subsequently improve — the ways their particular educational setting operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn” (603).

In wanting to investigate how students write online, I used participatory action-based research, like mentioned above, to “narrow the gap between practice and [...] vision.” According to PAR, The BisonBlog was created so that it could be the part I "look" at. This phase consists of collecting data such as observation or interviews or surveys (Creswell 610).

The first cycle of participatory action-based research, completed beforehand, required that I "look," first, through other online communities to see how they had attracted quality discussions online. The online community, I knew and learned, needed to be successful in order to bring in those high-quality postings, conversations, and content.

After looking at both online campuses and classroom blogs, I then "thought," another stage of the first cycle, about how to incorporate a small-scale online campus community for NDSU: one where the host would not be the only one blogging on the first page, one where the template would be simple, and one with easy access. Through the next stage, I “acted” in receiving IRB approval and in creating The BisonBlog. The action itself included the actual putting together of The BisonBlog online through Blogger.com, putting up posters around campus advertising The BisonBlog, writing an article for The Spectrum (the NDSU campus newspaper) about The BisonBlog, and sending out an email via the NDSU student and faculty listserv.

In a second cycle of PAR, to be completed during and after each one-month study, the process of research started with what I had ended with: "Act.” Through this second “act” as The BisonBlog host, I implemented community-building strategies such as: gaining valuable content with open-ended questions and daily topics, promoting events and rituals like giving dates when the BisonBloggers could meet each other, identifying my role as host, discussing accessible tools such as how to use the Comments feature or get their weblog added to the list along the side of the screen.

From acting, I stepped back and "thought" again by gathering quantitative and qualitative data from participants as well as conducting analysis of what was/is on the screen.

Data Collection This study is based on an analysis of all the postings within one month’s (4 weeks exactly) time. These postings were collected from February 1, 2004 to February 28, 2004 and from October 3, 2004 to October 30, 2004. All postings were included in the study, whether the posting was substantial (50+ words) or not (less than 5 words). The only exclusion from The BisonBlog study for both month-studies was comments to postings. These were not analyzed 152

simply because the comments feature on Blogger.com (used for the February study) was not as accessible nor as widely used as the comments feature found in Drupal (the software used on the NDSU server for the October study). This would have led to a very biased report regarding comments to community weblogs in general, and this study wishes to look specifically at weblog postings, not at how participants responded to one another.

To become a participant or member of The BisonBlog for the February study, NDSU students heard of The BisonBlog from an NDSU listserv email I sent out or they received information from posters I had put up on campus. From there, I sent them an invitation to The BisonBlog as well as the IRB information on becoming a part of my thesis study. On a weekly basis, and right before the study, I emailed participants to inform them of upcoming topics and events occurring on The BisonBlog just as a host of an online community would. Guidelines were laid out insofar as claiming that The BisonBlog remain a â&#x20AC;&#x153;friendly community.â&#x20AC;? Participants posted as often as they wished.

Over the summer of 2004, a plan was devised to move The BisonBlog to an NDSU server to make it even more a part of the campus community. Also, Drupal (a weblog software) was used and the same advertising was used as before. Having The BisonBlog on an NDSU server allowed for less work on my part. Students wishing to participate simply went to the site and signed themselves up, accepting my IRB terms in the submission process. Topics and events were emailed just as I had completed for the February study.

All BisonBlog participants were or are current NDSU students and faculty members. Of those participants, 30 were members for the February study while 8 (excluding the host) participated actively (posted at least once a week), and 93 were members during the October study while 25 (excluding the host) participated actively.

Both one-month studies saw about the same percentage of participation no matter how many total participants were signed up as a BisonBlogger. In February of 2004, the percentage of active participants was at 26.6%, and in October of 2004, the percentage was nearly the same with 25.8%.

Statistics based on gender or race are not considered in this study since I wish to investigate whether students, in general, are writing complex postings. However, for further information, of the 8 participants in the February study, 5 were women, and 3 were men. In the October study, 11 were women, and 14 were men. Both studies show a fairly balanced representation of both genders. There may have been additional participants who commented on the blog postings of either study, but as previously mentioned, this study specifically analyzes the blog postings of The BisonBlog, not its comments.

Throughout both studies, I, as the host, implemented many of the community-building strategies that had worked for Derek Powazek. In order to gain high quality content, I started off the first week of both month-long studies with open-ended questions. One such question in the February study dealt with how to deal with a racist friend, and another such questions used 153

in the October study asked: “What do you do with a friend who won’t vote?” or “Should we be in Iraq?” These questions usually lead to elaborate answers in paragraph form.

During the second week, I implemented a sort of “Sweeps Week” by creating some fun topic for each day hoping to lure in more participants by offering topics that may not be considered as “tough” to write on as the open-ended questions posed during the first week. These topics ranged from “Ticked Off Tuesday” (a participant favorite) to “Thankful Thursday” to “Web Site Wednesday.” As expected, “Ticked Off Tuesday” led to more lists in postings and “Web Site Wednesday” led to more postings with links to other sites, weblogs, etc. In comparison to the open-ended questions at the beginning of both studies, the Sweeps Week did bring in more participants and smaller postings. These postings, however, were not more or less complex than the paragraph-filled postings earlier in the month or later on.

Analysis Just as Herring and her team analyzed blog samples in “Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs,” I used various ways of analysis to identify the content of the postings to The BisonBlog. The categories analyzed were determined through multiple means such as analysis of: ● use of subordinate clauses ● use of topic sentences supported by follow-up statements ● number of high-order entries ● comparison of filter entries to journal entries ● list of grammatical conventions that mark a posting’s sloppiness, and ● instances of community building between participants.

Subordinate Clauses First of all, research by Naomi Baron has shown that subordinate clauses show up more in writing than in speech. When the writer, or weblogger in this case, has a posting which contains many subordinate clauses, they are writing something more complex than how they would speak. Therefore, the percentage of complex statements was calculated by checking to see if the weblogger had used a subordinate clause in their posting. What also goes along with complex postings, besides the amount of subordinate clauses, would also be the average amount of words per posting and the average length of each statement since the longer the statement, the more complex the thought that goes into that statement.

Topic Sentences Secondly, Richard Braddock’s research, conducted in 1975 (“The Frequency and Placement of Topic Sentences in Expository Prose”), found that sometimes “a major topic sentence and a topic sentence occurred in the same paragraph, and sometimes several paragraphs seemed devoted to the presentation of one topic sentence” (36). Because of this, I looked for what Braddock would label an “inferred topic sentence” as well as obvious topic sentences. An inferred topic sentence is one where “the reader thinks the writer has implied [a topic] even though the reader can not construct it by quoting phrases from the original passage” (35).

While Braddock’s findings within 673 paragraphs/25 essays only came up with 47% of the 154

paragraphs containing topic sentences, he still states: “In my opinion, often the writing in the 25 essays would have been clearer and more comfortable to read if the paragraphs had presented more explicit topic sentences” (39). Therefore, from a first-year compositionist’s perspective, seeing many topic sentences come first in weblog entries as well as being followed by back-up statements would lead one to suggest that students are learning to develop and focus their topics within weblog postings.

High Order Entries Next, I wanted to analyze how many participants used developed/high order thought by responding to a prompt with more than one statement. Since many compositionists see writing online as oral communication, I wanted to see if webloggers are exercising their academic writing skills by weblogging high order postings with, for example, a topic sentence followed by back-up statements or research. Posting which could, as laid out in Chapter One’s definitions section, be linked to use of the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, like Evaluation and Synthesis, would also be considered high order. Postings which just answer a question and move onto to some other topic, for instance, would not be postings considered showing high order thought; in other words, postings that contained high order thought contained not just understanding or basic knowledge, but synthesis and evaluation as well.

Filters Fourth on the list was investigating whether the lists or filters/links found on weblogs were more or less complex than entries containing paragraphs. With open-ended questions, the postings were usually in paragraph form and with the Sweeps Week daily topics, more postings were in list-form. Does this matter when determining complexity? For example, Herring’s team found that weblogs were not the linking genre they assumed to be.

Also, in order for a filter to be considered a high order filter, it needed to contain evidence of the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy such as evaluation or analysis. For example, if a BisonBlogger elaborated on two sites he/she filtered, then that would be a demonstration of the higher order quality. If a web site was just placed in an entry without explanation (i.e. “I love this site.”) then it would not demonstrate the levels of high order thought.

Grammatical Conventions Then I looked for the number of fragments, misspellings, slang, and missed capitalization.

Obviously, seeing these sorts of problems in a posting would lead to thinking that these online postings really aren’t as complex or full of critical thoughts. Analysis of the high order as well as looking for items that contain a lack of formality (misspellings, fragments, etc) was called for in this analysis. In the investigation of The BisonBlog, the frequent occurrence of errors may suggest sloppiness whereas relatively few errors would suggest the opposite and perhaps lead one to assume that, indeed, webloggers are careful, committed writers who revise and edit to some extent.

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Community Building Lastly, community building analysis will be looked at. Aside from viewing The BisonBlog as a place for quality communication to take place, it is also a community. Students who do not respond to others in the community or are not responded to may feel left out, not leave quality postings, or just simply fade away. I want to show how and why The BisonBlog was a successful online campus community. This will be shown through the analysis of how many participants responded to each other or responded to a prompt. If student webloggers are recognizing each other as a particular audience and responding appropriately in certain situations, this may give further evidence to compositionists to see the relevance of weblogs in their classrooms or in their research.

Originally, I wanted to analyze how many times participants on The BisonBlog used each other’s names or used greetings and closings, but a few differences in each study kept me from that analysis. First off, screen names could be chosen for the Drupal program (October 2004) so one may not know the webloggers actual name. Secondly, like previously mentioned, the Comments feature during the October study was easier to use, and therefore, used to comment more directly to each participant, so greeting someone by using their name was unnecessary. Lastly, Drupal allows for an automatic closing on a participant’s posting, so those numbers would have been skewed.

Before getting chin-deep in analysis, one should know how The BisonBlog works on a weekly basis. Usually (as of the spring of 2005), a few student bloggers will log into the community and write postings that contain any of the following: how things are going with their studies and classes, how their personal lives are running (Some ask for advice or pose questions, and, usually, a few students will respond within a few day’s time.), and/or a response to the daily topics which are laid out on the screen’s left side. Currently, those topics are “Music Mood” Monday, “Ticked Off” Tuesday, “Web Site” Wednesday, “Top Ten” Thursday, and “Funky Title” Friday. On a daily basis, the number of BisonBloggers who log in, post, or just read the site ranges anywhere from 1 to 50 students. As the host, I used to have to post on a regular basis, but now, since The BisonBlog has taken off fairly well since moving to an NDSU server and having much easier access to logging on, I usually read students’ postings and comment on what they write. This may be better than posting my own thoughts simply because it encourages the bloggers to continue to post. When one has a direct audience, he/she is more likely to communicate with others as well as post his/her own thoughts.

The results of the investigation into The BisonBlog support the possibility that these postings to an online campus community are complex in thought and written expression. The results also move away from the notion that online postings are filled with writing errors such as misspellings, lack of capitalization, comma splices, fragments, run-ons, and what some call “netspeak.” What I refer to in using the term “netspeak” is the type of writing you would see in a chat room or with an Instant Messenger conversation: words being spelled as they sound, many slang words, many smileys, and acronyms (ttys= talk to you soon).

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In this section, I will present quantitative summaries as well as charts and percentages of the results of the analysis, as an empirical look at the postings from The BisonBlog’s two onemonth studies. Please note that these percentages and amounts reflect what the participants wrote/blogged, and not what I, the host, wrote.

Complexity of Postings In looking at the complexity of blog postings, showing the complexity of the post would mean showing how they contain the same items that are found in writing, not speech. Here, I employ Baron’s claim that those items are subordinate clauses, disjunctions (e.g. “however,” “in contrast,” etc.), and a low number of contractions. When blog postings contain these items, they are more closely related to writing than speech, according to Baron’s findings. Besides being more closely related to writing, subordinate clauses also show cause and effect relationships: e.g. Because I am tired, I did not complete my homework.

Subordinate Clauses In analyzing the subordinate clauses in both one-month studies, I simply used Microsoft Word’s function “Find” to find all the varieties of subordinate conjunctions such as “although,” “because,” “if,” “whereas,” “even though,” and so on. (For a complete listing of the subordinate conjunctions I looked for, see Larry Behrens’ Sentence Craft web site). After finding these subordinate conjunctions, I used my knowledge as an English composition teacher and writer to decide whether the subordinate conjunction was part of a subordinate clause by checking to see if a subject and verb followed the subordinate conjunction. Not all subordinate conjunctions lead to subordinate clauses (e.g. “Its now 3:27 … Phish is on though”). If a statement contained more than one subordinate clause (and this was a frequent occurrence) the statement itself was counted as complex. I did not count subordinate clauses, just the statements that contained them.

The percentage of complex statements, statements with subordinate clauses, was at 30% for The BisonBlog’s February study. That percentage dropped to 20% for The BisonBlog’s October study. One possible reason for this drop could be the increase in the amount of participants for the October study. Also, many conversations during the October study took place in the Comments section, whereas February’s study did not have a widely used Comments feature. The postings in February usually contained responses to others, and the postings in October started conversations only to continue them in the Comments link/section.

Some examples of statements from The BisonBlog (both from February and October) with subordinate clauses are found in Figures 8 and 9. Some of these very same statements, or others contained in the same blog posting, contain disjunctions which will be discussed in the up-coming category of analysis.

2.26.2004 Thank you to God for allowing me the chance to exist and live my life. Thank you to my parents, for being the best parents in the world. Thank you to my friends, because without them, I would be empty and incomplete. Thank you to teachers who drop the lowest grade you 157

get. Thank you to the inventor of breath mints, because my breath is horrible. Thank you to the people who positively criticize me because it helps me become a better person. Thanks to the people who ever made me think outside the lines, or ever made me truly question something.

And thank you to anyone who has ever read anything i've wrote, or ever listened to me. I truly appreciate it. this entry posted by Charles : 9:06 PM Figure 8. A BisonBlog posting showing complexity in the February study.

Stress Submitted by Shannon on Thu, 10/21/2004 - 14:46.

Is anyone feeling the most stress you've ever felt now than ever before? I'm a freshman here so I don't know if this stress level is normal, is it just me or is everyone feeling it? Let me know if you have any ideas how to control the high levels of stress so I don't flip out on some random person. ~Shannon » Shannon's blog | 4 comments Figure 9. A BisonBlog posting showing complexity in the October study.

As one can see in the blog posting examples above, the complexity sometimes shows up in a less than profound manner. Charles’ posting contains examples of subordinate clauses that are examples of cause and effect which would definitely connect to the higher, more complex verbs used at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Shannon’s examples of complexity through subordinate clauses, on the opposite spectrum, are not as profound or “serious,” perhaps, but she does qualify her complexity with “I don’t know” or “let me know,” and Shannon also asks for advice which could be loosely interpreted as evaluation. While Charles’ complexity shows up in a more serious tone and is more closely connected to the high order content teachers would be looking for, Shannon’s are still somewhat complex even if they are not at the same level of complexity as Charles’ posting.

Disjunctions According to Merriam-Webster Online, a disjunction is “a compound sentence in logic formed by joining two simple statements by or.” These types of statements are often used in logic or math, and for this study, add to the complexity of the statements found. Besides searching for statements with an “or” in them, I also looked for, as Baron suggests, the word “however” and the phrase “in contrast” (Baron 153). Out of the 423 statements found in February’s study, 27 of those statements contained disjunctions. For October’s study, statements with disjunctions came in totaling 34 out of its total of 623.

Charles’ posting (Figure 8) contains two examples of a disjunction when he states: “Thanks to the people who ever made me think outside the lines, or ever made me truly question something,” and “And thank you to anyone who has ever read anything i've wrote, or ever listened to me.” In Shannon’s posting from October, another disjunction is evident: “I'm a freshman here so I don't know if this stress level is normal, is it just me or is everyone feeling 158

it?” Two more examples of disjunctions used in both February’s and October’s studies are found in Figures 10 and 11.

Disjunctions easily add complexity to a statement by referring to the opposite of the statement’s meaning, or by giving another example of what the writer is trying to communicate.

As previously mentioned, these complex items, like subordinate clauses, can and do appear in sentences and topics that, to some, may seem less serious or profound. For example, Helene’s posting is generally about daily life, yet she used a disjunction to add humor and also show her synthesizing/evaluating what is supposed to happen in a particular situation. For example, should Helene feel reassured or faint in this given situation; she is considering and evaluating both possibilities. Gunnar’s posting is geared more toward a bigger issue—belief system—and even the subject to his posting has a disjunction in it! While his posting is much longer, allowing for more disjunctions to be created, his topic has more distinctive examples of evaluation and synthesis. Some items he evaluates are people who believe in God or do not, why people believe in God, and whether people are Pro-Life or Pro-Choice based on yet further evaluation of whether they are any of the three mentioned due to what their family thinks or what they have decided for themselves. Once again, these two examples show the levels of complexity one may find in a collection of students’ online postings to a community site.

2.17.2004 Oohhh a lot of people have ticked me off today already.

1- My neighbors: why do they drink so much and then yell at each other night? They bth must be in their late 40s early 50s, they drink and yell, in the meantime I am awake...

2- phlebotomist: ok first he tried the right arm, "hmmm", then tried the left arm, "hmmmmm you got small veins"... Is that supposed to reassure me or do you want me to faint right then?

3- Hummer: not the car but my co-worker, she hums all the time. Usually I am a little annoyed nothing bad, but today I could have strangled her. This is what makes people go nuts and bring a gun to work!

Thats all for now but it is only 4.20...I think I should go home early and make pancakes. I'll try the blog/hour tomorrow, I'll have to take notes as I doubt my boss will enjoy seeing me on the computer every hour :). this entry posted by Helene : 4:17 PM Figure 10. A blog posting from February’s study showing disjunctions.

Is this your opinion or what you were led to believe?

Submitted by Gunnar on Fri, 10/08/2004 - 12:49.

I often wonder why people think that we should not be in a war against terrorists. So I stopped wondering and asked a few people whenever the time was right.

They were all saying this and that, but none of the opinions they had were their point of view and only led to believe what others thought were right.

MiddleEastern culture is different than ours and that consideration should be given when demanding peace between us and the terrorists. So people, really carefully consider whether 159

the opinions you have are your own and you would be willing to back it up or if you are just following in others steps clueless as to what you have on your mind.

When I was growing up I thought I was a Christian. I do share a lot of views on Christianity, but I was only into it because my parents were. This is the case for many of us. Now that we are adults, we really should think for ourselves and know a little more before blindly following others.

Do you know why you believe in God? If you truly do, that is good for you, but if you question it every now and then, build your faith by questioning and finding answers on why you believe in your God (s).

Are you Pro-Life or Pro-Choice? Well, don't be one or the other because your friends are and your religion says so. Consider all the social influences as well as value of choices. Personally, I would rather spend all the energy and money that we spend on abortion and no abortion in our country to orphans, hungry children in our country and foreign countries out there. We shed blood and sweat and useless effort on fighting abortion and choice, but there are other actions that could be taken at this time to save children that are alive and not well that needs more help than fetuses and gametes. They are dying out there daily. Why not save the one's that are dying first?

There are so many others that I could bring up and you know yourselves that you are questioning life as you know it. This is a place of learning. Now that you are adults, you should seperate your views from what your parents built into you growing up. Think for yourselves, and we can really change a lot.

Thanks for reading my extra long blog. » Gunnar's blog | 2 comments Figure 11. A blog posting from October’s study showing disjunctions.

Average Words/Average Length Baron’s computer-mediated discourse touched on the importance of word count, but Herring’s research regarding the length of such computer-mediated postings lead to specifics. Her team (in “Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs”) found that “at 210.4 words, the average blog entry is somewhat shorter than an email posting” and Cho, a researcher in one of Herring’s edited collections, found that “at 13.2 words” per sentence, the average sentence in blogs “are three words shorter than those of private email exchanged in a university setting [16.2 words per sentence]” (9).

The biggest difference between this research and mine is the fact that The BisonBlog has a community of writers rather than just one blogger like the weblogs that Herring and her colleagues observed. While The BisonBlog averaged only 138 words per posting during the February study (versus her average of 210.4 words in her weblog postings), the average number of words per statement was consistent with Cho’s email statistic of 16.2 words by acquiring 16 words per statement. So, while the postings to The BisonBlog were shorter than 160

what was found by Herring’s team, the amount of words per sentence were above what Cho discovered for weblogs. The BisonBlog contained shorter postings with longer statements in February.

During the October study, the average blog posting decreased a tad to 130 words per posting, and the average amount of words per statement decreased one word, to 15 words per sentence. A college community could be an important element in gaining short quality postings since The BisonBlog’s average words per statement as well as amount of subordinate clauses show that while the posts were smaller than Herring’s findings, the complexity of statements and postings was still evident. What I mean by this is in comparison to an academic discussion list or email (where the email entries were written by academics who probably should write longer statements than the average college student), the BisonBloggers were busy students only getting on the community weblog periodically through the week. The postings may have been short because of this, but their complexity is still evident in the length of their statements as well as the percentage of those statements that contained complex items.

Also, if one were to view this average statement length from a first-year composition teacher’s perspective, one would agree that most of these student bloggers must be combining sentences to gain an average length of 16 words or more — a goal of a first-year writing program at many colleges. Dr. Kristi Siegel of Mount Mary College gives the following advice regarding sentence length: In general--and this type of analysis is very tenuous--an average sentence length well below 14 words per sentence may indicate that you use too many short sentences and you need to learn how to combine and/or subordinate ideas. If your average sentence length is well above 22 words a sentence, you may be piling too much freight on your sentences and have a prose style that is dense and tangled. If your average word length falls between 14 and 22, you need to look at your sentences to see if there is some variety or if they are all about the same length.

For further research, then, one could analyze the sentence variety since The BisonBlog’s average length falls into the “average” length, according to her research.

High Order/Follow-Up Statements Most compositionists would claim that good writing includes topic sentences with back-up statements provided in the body afterward. As found by Braddock, topic sentences do not always come at the beginning of the paragraph, yet topic sentences do help writers develop a main idea or claim for their paragraphs, and, perhaps most importantly, they help these writers stay focused and keep paragraphs manageable. So, as I investigated, I searched for both inferred topics as well as those that simply came first in the paragraph and lead into developed statements concerning the topic.

A few researchers have viewed blog postings as irrelevant statements here and there, with the possibility of linking to a specific web site. In Steven D. Krause’s article, he found his “ ‘openended’ non-assignment translated into ‘vagueness’” in his students’ postings. Beyond that, 161

Krause also found that “more often than not, the posts were short, merely links to other documents, or text that was ‘cut and pasted’ from another source.” Now, I will say that to a certain extent, blog postings do contain just these elements at times; however, The BisonBlog is an exception simply because of the community aspect that was encouraged from the beginning. Rarely, student bloggers on The BisonBlog do just post a link to an interesting site; however, those postings usually occurred on “Web Site Wednesday” during the October study.

Many students would simply post thoughts, questions, or develop a new topic for others to comment on.

As previously mentioned, Herring found little linkage in blogs, and The BisonBlog was no exception during its one-month studies; therefore, Krause’s claim that he found short postings with links to other documents does not pertain to the contents in The BisonBlog. Furthermore, since The BisonBlog showed little evidence that students associated blogs with links, this gives hope to the possibility that students will utilize weblogs as places for brainstorming and free writing rather than only for linking to sites which pertain to their research or paper topics.

Perhaps, this is a good thing for composition teachers to note rather than be discouraged by.

The BisonBlog’s two one-month studies contained many back-up statements to various topic sentences which, then, took away from the “vagueness” that Krause kept seeing in his class’ postings.

Whether the back-up statements were found in lists, after filters/links, or in paragraph form, in February The BisonBlog totaled 277 back-up statements out of a total of 423 statements.

October’s study saw 477 statements out of 623 as back-up statements. Once again, large percentages in both studies (65% in February and 76.5% in October) show that there is evidence of well-developed writing in these community-based online weblog postings.

A prime example from the February study showing a developed paragraph in a posting is shown in Figure 13. In this posting, Dave has 14 back-up statements in this posting, and the identified topic sentence is: “Regarding Sybils conversation starter for an intimate relationship I don't know, but for a friendship I really don't think there ever is a time to throw it out the window.” Even though this sentence could be considered a run-on, it does lead into 14 sentences that clarify what the blogger meant in writing this statement. Also, these very same 14 statements were also determined to be responses to the prompt — a question I had asked earlier in order to attract high-quality content.

An example of a posting containing back-up statements after a topic sentence has been introduced in the October study is shown in Figure 14. Danielle’s posting would be considered, to some, a bit less serious in content than Dave’s, but this particular posting contains 9 backup statements to the topic sentence of “I like to eat breakfast.” Instead of leaving her posting with just the comment that she likes breakfast or that she’s conducting a study on what people eat for breakfast, she has gone further to explain what she eats and why she’ll eat that in the morning.

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All the pretty girls shout "Daves got the Internet, Daves got the Internet!"

Ah it is so incredibly nice to have the entire net at my finger tips again, if it wasn't for the IACC I don't think I would've made it. I probably would've gone crazy and attempted to create the entire internet on my computer with just notepad and html. Thank you Lord for Cable One, whoo hooo!

To celebrate I think I'll introduce you guys to my favorite online comic some of you may already know it and if you don't well then what's stopping you go check it. Oh yeah the link, hehe, here it is Penny-Arcade.

Regarding Sybils conversation starter for an intimate relationship I don't know, but for a friendship I really don't think there ever is a time to throw it out the window. If your friend is trying to get you to do things you don't want to do or is pestering you, then you just have to tell them. This might seem a tad bit extreme yet I still feel that even if a friend were actively trying to kill me and if trying to work it out had failed that the right thing to do for that friend would be to tell the police. I know that sounds ridiculous but to intentionally dissolve a relationship requires you to judge the other person as lower than you. As a Christian the many quotations from the New Testament which tell us not to judge others continually ring in my head. For an intimate relationship you have to come to the conclusion that the other person is not right for you and that it would not be pleasant for you to spend the rest of your life with them. But with a friendship you only need acknowledge that the other person is a friend. For me friends are merely people that I hang out with and talk to on a regular basis. I can't imagine any reason why I would say to someone I don't want to be friends anymore. It just seems like such a horrible thing to say to someone "I don't want to be your friend". Heck, I'd probably be friends with Hitler although I would have totally disagreed with his entire idea of genocide and taking over Europe. It would be far more usefull for me to continue to be his friend because I would be able to talk to him. I might have even been able to convice him that the Nazi thing was a bad idea. I'm sure he would've had me killed for trying but I wouldn't be surprised if Deitrich Bonhoeffer didn't hate Hitler only his regime. On the other hand if somebody didn't want to be friends with me anymore I would just accept the fact and if they ever want to be friends with me again I would have no problem with it.

Mathew 6:44 "But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," Oh yeah the bone head who said "Do unto other as you would have done unto you" is Jesus Christ.

I was thinking about getting a site counter once but then I realized that if I got one all it would do is burst the wonderful bubble in my head that hundreds of people visit my site everyday.

God Bless ~Discrete Dave<>< 163

this entry posted by David : 5:51 PM Figure 13. A BisonBlog posting demonstrating the use of back-up statements (Feb).

Again, while the posting does not have as much seriousness to it as Dave’s does, it does contain statements which back-up the topic sentence—something many composition teachers would be delighted to see no matter what the subject. To give an example of a BisonBlog posting which did not demonstrate back-up statements to a particular topic, see Figure 15. food is good Submitted by danielle on Sun, 10/10/2004 - 11:26. i like to eat breakfast. and not just quick grabbing a poptart or whatever on my way out the door. i like to take some time and cook something and sit down and eat it. pancakes & bacon or hashbrowns with cheese are my favorites. cereal, yogurt, or fruit is good if i happen to sleep in a little. anyways on to the point. do y'all eat breakfast? i'm conducting a study (just because i want to) of what people eat for breakfast. just leave a comment of what you most often eat (like if you never eat breakfast during the week but always have pancakes saturday morning). it would be much appreciated :) happy breakfasting! » danielle's blog | 2 comments Figure 14. A BisonBlog posting demonstrating the use of back-up statements (Oct).

2.24.2004 I am ticked off because...

I cannot sleep.

My computer doesn’t have Microsoft Access, even though I have Office.

It’s only Tuesday.

People who say they’re gonna call end up not calling, and not even letting me know they cant do anything even though I planned my day around THEM. this entry posted by Charles : 12:07 PM Figure 15. A BisonBlog posting demonstrating the lack of back-up statements.

As one can see, a posting of this sort did occur on The BisonBlog, yet these types of postings were usually found on Tuesdays with the “Ticked Off Tuesday” theme. The use of lists, as described in Section 4.1.5, will elaborate on the use of lists and paragraphs and how those writing styles lead to differences in complexity and form.

Use of Paragraphs, Lists, and Filters While Rebecca Blood claimed that linking helped make bloggers better observers of the world around them, Herring’s team, my teammates (Dr. Kevin Brooks and Cindy Nichols), and I, in our essay found in the Into The Blogosphere collection titled “Remediation, Genre, and 164

Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogs,” have found that while bloggers don’t use filters and links as much as previously thought, the content in their postings is still complex.

The use of paragraphs on The BisonBlog was frequent. Out of 423 total statements in February, 208 were found in paragraph form as back-up statements. Using that same total for February’s study, 62 of the back-up statements were found in list form. Only 7 back-up statements were found following filters/links. As for October’s study, out of the 623 total statements, 453 were found in paragraph form, 5 in list form, and 19 were found following a filter or link.

When it came to the use of the prompts, lists were used more when the prompt was “Ticked Off Tuesday” or “Make a Wish Wednesday” – a topic which usually results in shorter answers.

The prompts that were more open-ended (“What do you do with someone who is racist?”) led to responses with paragraphs. October’s study saw more links to other sites probably because one of the prompts we decided on (as a community) was “Web Site Wednesday.” Other than that day, rarely were links to other web sites found. Lists and paragraphs seemed to be much more popular with the BisonBloggers during both one month studies.

The BisonBlog reflects once again what Herring’s team concluded as well as what Kevin Brooks, Cindy Nichols and I concluded in our Into the Blogosphere essay. The BisonBlog had only a total of 6 filters/links during the February study and only a total of 11 filters/links in the October study “in contrast to the popular characterization of blogs as heavily interlinked and oriented towards external events” (Herring 8). Our team’s research (in the fall of 2002) found that only 12% of students preferred to use the filter type of weblog (compared to 63% who preferred the journal type). So, not only does The BisonBlog confirm what Herring’s group and my team found, but even when links were used, they rarely lead to much elaboration on the part of the BisonBlogger. Either students have not been shown by others how to link and use a bibliographical note with that link, or the idea of linking is just not as important to student bloggers as communication with others is. For example, perhaps when students link, it’s just to point out a good site, and that’s it. They would rather discuss with others on a community blog than spend their online writing time searching for what others have to say. The complexity in that may simply be that they would rather figure out what they have to say or think on a topic rather than search out other opinions right away.

Online Writing Errors If one ever happens to observe writing in a chat room or observe students typing to each other through Instant Messenger, he/she would notice that when students go online in synchronous ways, their spelling, capitalization, and punctuation seem to get tossed by the wayside like an old graded paper. As Naomi Baron’s most recent study shows, that is not always the case, but this investigation dealt with a slightly different type of computer-mediated discourse — weblogs. So, to connect back to the graded paper and the errors found in students’ offline work, one must look to the research conducted by Robert J. Connors and Andrea A. Lunsford.

Their research, conducted in 1988, analyzed the errors found in 300 student papers, ranging in 165

length from one to twenty pages. On average, they discovered that for every 100 words a student wrote, there were 2.26 errors (406). Their findings within each error will be discussed below, and their findings echo what was found in The BisonBlog’s investigation.

The BisonBlog not only shows possibility in the fact that students are possibly writing and thinking complexly, but The BisonBlog also shows that these complex postings may have errors which do not reflect what a composition teacher would like to see in an academic paper.

While some of the errors may be due to laziness or the fact that people, in general, don’t edit what they’ve written online (in email, with IM, chat rooms), some of the so-called errors could be due to students trying to stand out with their creativity or visual design.

The percentages for lack of capitalization, misspellings, slang words, and netspeak were low.

In fact, by totaling up the percentages of each error, the February study comes to under 2%, the October study comes to 3.65%, and, as a side note, some of these words were duplicated (i.e. spelled incorrectly and not capitalized, for example).

Misspellings Misspellings accounted for .6% of the total amount of words in the February study and only 1.1% in the October study. Examples of misspelled words in the February study include “transfered,” “defintly, “respitory,” “beauiful,” “earings,” and “intrumentals.” Examples from the October study include “soo,” (to emphasize ‘so’) “anyways,” “thouroghly,” “aparently,” and “priveledged.” As shown, these words are missing only a few letters which may account for speedy typing or using a spelling that could be meant for fun (“soo,” or “anyways”). One such female BisonBlogger who was more prominent in the February study is of French origin. A few mistakes came from her, and she even admitted, on The BisonBlog, that her English writing skills were shaky but getting better.

As far as what was found concerning spelling errors in the study done by Connors and Lunsford, out of the 300 papers they looked at, only 450 errors were found. It is unknown how many total words they were dealing with, but one can assume taking into account the large amount of pages they were dealing with that the percentage ends up as low as what was found in the BisonBlog.

Capitalization The percentage of errors made by not capitalizing was under 1% for February and only 1.85% for October (February: 42 words out of 6903, October: 178 out of 9616). Connors and Lunsford reportedly found 24 capitalization mistakes out of their 300 student papers. Again, the percentages of capitalization errors found on The BisonBlog are lower than I think teachers would assume them to be, especially after receiving emails from students all semester.

As I mentioned in the introduction, weblogs can be serious in content but not in form. I found that even the few BisonBloggers who did not capitalize their “I’s” in their postings still posted interesting and/or complex content (Figures 16 and 17).

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Missed capitalization like this was usually used by the same people, and they would use it consistently throughout each posting. Rarely did a BisonBlogger, for instance, have one “I” not capitalized while the rest were capitalized. It’s an all or nothing practice that could be attributed to the fact that both of these female BisonBloggers intentionally wrote this way. Then, it wouldn’t be considered an error, perhaps.

2.18.2004 Crap! i missed ticked off tuesday! that pisses me off! i had a relatively interesting week so far (i should say year...)... the girl that is "with" my ex-boyfriend of a week works with me and she is avoiding me at every cost.....AS THOUGH I would start anything.......(heavy sarcasm)....i am the better person because i don't care and wish to remain neutral, he IS afterall, my ex (my exa**hole)....excuse my language/typing.....anyhoo, a saying holds true to me lately, something to the effect of: "Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned." Ahhhh...so true.

So, for a topic for today, Hump day, i propose it be wicked wednesday. what do you do to relax, have fun, and have a wicked day?

I go to the bison turf for $2.50 32oz beers, and that's where I'll be tonight!

Later. this entry posted by Alisa : 1:00 PM Figure 16. A posting from February’s study showing missed capitalization. ticked off tuesday? or not-so-ticked-off tuesday?

Submitted by danielle on Tue, 10/12/2004 - 12:31. i missed music monday!!!! so i'll tell ya i bought a new cd at work yesterday and i love it. the band is called "kids in the way." they are a christian punk band and they are really good. :) so for today. the only thing i'm ticked about is i work from 4-9 today. a 5 hour shift? its too weird for me. i guess its because on mondays i only work 3 hours, so i get the extra hour to 'balance it out.' but it still sucks. i can do 8 hour shifts cuz then i get two breaks. but 5 hours is a little too much without a break. other than that i'm pretty happy today. ps) i work at the rainbow shop, but i think i've mentioned that before. » danielle's blog Figure 17. A posting from October’s study showing missed capitalization.

Grammarians (and composition teachers alike) would not be impressed with either of the postings shown above; however, I would like to clarify that, as I mentioned in the Introduction, blogging is serious in content, not in form. Many webloggers acknowledge this, and they do not view it as academic writing which is why it is surprising to me that there is evidence of complexity in their thought and in their words. In Alisa’s posting, she has critical thought laid 167

out in the fact that she is analyzing her relationship with people as well as evidence of complex writing when she uses a subordinate clause in the statement: “i am the better person because i don't care and wish to remain neutral.”

Slang Words and “Netspeak” The number of words or symbols that could have been considered slang (informal English) or netspeak was extremely low—under .5% for each month. In my analysis, I found a few words, used regularly and spelled rather consistently, that fell into this category. Examples of slang words found in the February study were words such as “gotta,” “gonna,” “kinda,” and “dunno.”

Examples of slang words found in the study which took place in October of 2004 were words such as “gotta,” “friggin,” “frickin,” “cuz,” and “Omigosh.”

I found it surprising to not see as much “netspeak” (“lol” or “ttys”) or emoticons (smileys) simply because those types of words seem to be a staple of online writing (words created after online communication was in widespread usage) whether it is email, a chat room entry, or a note on a discussion board. February’s study saw five smileys and a shortened version of “By The Way” = “btw.” In October, I discovered four smileys in my analysis, ranging from the winking smiley to the sad smiley. Another type of netspeak that showed up twice was the shorten version of “What the Fuck?” = “wtf?”

Contractions As mentioned, according to Baron, postings with high amounts of subordinate clauses and disjunctions are more closely related to writing than to speech. The complete opposite occurs when analyzing contractions. The fewer the amount of contractions compared to the total number of words links the blog postings closer to the modality of writing, not the modality of speech.

In both of The BisonBlog’s one-month studies, the amount of contractions was extremely low.

February’s study brought in 110 contractions (out of 6903 total words) and October’s study was even lower with 137 contractions out of 9616 total words. The percentages of both of these statistics are under 2.

Fragments, Comma Splices, and Run-Ons Herring’s team alludes to the possibility that blog entries contain a “higher incidence of sentence fragments” when using quoted material or headings (9). Also, the notion that fragments may be plentiful could also come from the assumption that weblog entries are full of filters to other sites. Most compositionists would acknowledge the legitimate rule of fragments in informal writing, but they recommend to student writers to eliminate fragments from their academic writing. Baron would say that they are connected more with speech. The BisonBlog has evidence that its postings are much closer to writing as well as show the opposite of what was assumed by Herring’s team regarding individual weblogs. All three elements — fragments, comma splices, and run-ons — were a small part of the total amount of statements found.

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Out of 423 statements in February and 623 statements in October, fragments totaled 18 in February and 27 in October. A large majority of the number of fragments was found when a BisonBlogger would have a list in their posting, which is pretty understandable considering lists rarely contain complete sentences. The study by Connors and Lunsford echo this low amount with 82 fragments in their 300 student papers.

As far as comma splices are concerned, out of the totals mentioned in the previous paragraph, the February study contained 24 comma splices and October’s study contained 25. When it comes to writing for the composition classroom, Connors and Lunsford found 124 comma splices in their collection of 300 student papers. Again, both low numbers when taking into consideration the number of total words involved.

Sometimes the statements containing comma splices were also run-ons. There were thirteen statements like this in the February study and four in the October study. These very statements, though, are also accounted for in the totals of comma splices and were not counted separately. As discussed in Section 4.2.6, statements which contained the use of ellipses also were separated as if the ellipses were pauses in thought like a period.

Understanding this may aid readers in understanding why many postings seem to statements with multiple errors. A statement that is a run-on with a punctuation error, for instance, will fall into both categories.

During the February study, The BisonBlog only saw thirty run-ons compared to the total amount of statements, 423. October’s study only saw 5 run-ons out of a total of 623.

The percentages of all of these common writing errors is similar to what Connors and Lunsford found and allude to just how misrepresented the writing online by students has been regarding online communities and their postings. The point of these sections is to show that the percentage of errors is low when students write online in comparison to previous assumptions.

Statements with Errors in Punctuation Through the analysis process, I came upon statements that simply had errors in them, mainly regarding punctuation. Just as some BisonBloggers consistently used a small “I,” some would trail off their postings without punctuation. In viewing each individual statement, I first employed my own rule of looking at statements in between the periods the BisonBloggers used. If no period was used after a statement and the BisonBlogger continued their posting in a paragraph (for example, after pressing Return or Enter), I then identified that statement as in error. If the BisonBlogger was a user of ellipses, I treated those as periods as well. I justified that if they are pausing in their thoughts for whatever reason, and using ellipses to show that pause, then that pause equals what a period does for a sentence — it ends that statement or thought.

Another habit was the overuse of commas where they were not needed or possibility of a missed comma, for example, in a compound sentence. The amount of statements with errors 169

like these were far and few between. In February, 36 statements with errors were evident, and in October, that number increased to 49.

What this section sums up for composition teachers, composition researchers, and grammarians is that when students go online to write to and with others, their writing abilities do not suffer. In fact, they rarely have errors in their postings. And when student bloggers have a comma in the wrong spot or forget to capitalize here or there, that does not mean their postings do not contain complexity in structure. However, these types of declarations can only be made about a site where the community was involved and responded to one another frequently. In the next section, one will observe how important the community-building aspect is to producing quality postings.

Responding to Others in the Community Probably the most important part of a successful online community needed in order to gain high quality content (which leads to complex postings), according to Powazek and other online community builders, is the element of connection and building relationships. Powazek’s own definition of community wraps it up nicely: “Web communities happen when users are given tools to use their voice in a public and immediate way, forming intimate relationships over time” (xxii). Without the relationships built on The BisonBlog or the continuing response from one BisonBlogger to another, The BisonBlog wouldn’t have been as successful meaning the postings would have trailed off into nothing, and the postings, then, wouldn’t have contained the great content that they did and still do. Successful online or offline communities need to connect people and good writing or good communication is key in keeping that conversation ongoing.

Now, with The BisonBlog’s two months, there were some exceptions as to how community building was demonstrated. As mentioned previously, the Comments feature on The BisonBlog in October was where one could find many more responses from one BisonBlogger to another.

The February study, then, showed more response in each BisonBlogger’s posting since the Comments feature was not utilized. Therefore, out of the total 423 statements made in the February study, 234 of them were statements that responded to the prompts (ranging from open-ended questions posed by BisonBloggers to “Ticked Off Tuesday”). This is a percentage of 55%. An example of the community conversations from February is shown in Figure 18.

2.5.2004 Okay Charles I just finally now got on to the blog and read what you wrote in response to what I wrote. And I would have to say I totally agree. So now I am lost on my opinion of the “second chance” deal. So I tested out the theory I looked up and old friend, and called them up to give them their “second chance” and I have come to conclude that I must have been on drugs when I decided to test this theory, because all I have now is nothing. It was the most idiotic thing I have done in a long time, so I say screw second chances, to some. So I guess ‘everyone’ was a term I used all too loosely, and so is ‘no matter what’ I guess I was just trying to once again create a picture of a perfect world inside of my head, but I had a crude awakening to reality. I am not so sure as what to think now.

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Sybil about your trouble with your friend I have to agree with chelsea once a cheater always a cheater. You know the saying ‘do onto others as you would do onto yourself’.?? Yeah so I am not sure what bonehead ever wrote that up, but I felt it fit into this situation. You tried to make ends meet by being nice to this friend of yours and she came back to kick ya. So conclusion, people don’t change, and once they are gone run like hell so you don’t meet up with them again. Good day to you all.

I have written a blog on my personal site, and if you all wouldn’t mind I think I need a little advice or some feedback. So if you don’t mind could you all check it out and help out a fellow bison blogger. Thanks ~Jen~ my screen name is tooconfzd it is a xanga site. this entry posted by Jennifer : 12:21 PM If once a cheater always a cheater is true, then is once a liar, always a liar true too? I can take back friends for most anything, except lying.

Sybil, I experienced something similar with one of my highschool friends, Dorene. We went through differences over and over again, but something held us together. Then one day she did something truly awful and I let her go. It tore a group of about ten of us girls in half and two groups emerged and went their separate ways. (This must sound so pathetic to all the male readers on this site) But what I wanted to tell you is that I think now that I look back on it, Dorene really needed someone to stick by her. I did it as long as I could. For me the issue is not how many chances, but how much will my decision effect the other person. Usually if the conclusion is 'he or she doesn't care', I go my own way. Sometimes you have to take something for yourself.

On a related note, I'm completely neurotic. Good day. this entry posted by Chelsea : 11:39 AM 2.4.2004 Wow I disappear for a day or two and things get interesting.

To Charles and Chelsea: I don't believe for one second that ANYONE has the RIGHT to a second chance. If that was the case then concepts such as mercy and grace would not be as powerful as they are. I come from the philosophical view point that every single choice we make has good and bad consequences - and we are forced to live and die by those choices. I personally give a lot of "second" chances. I have been granted far mercy more than I have ever deserved, for me not to react in kind would not be just.

As for the past and its impact on the present: The past can be one of several things, for some people it is a monkey on their back that will not leave them alone, for others it is a collection of very hard lessons. Personally I know that my past effects everything I say and do, those experiences bleed through at all times. I don't see this as a bad thing. In fact it allows for a wide perspective.

One final thought: I do not equate forgiveness and "second chances" to be the same thing. I will forgive anyone 171

for most anything (might take a little bit but it always happens). But just because I forgive someone doesn't mean they get a "Second Chance" card. Trust is fragile and must be earned.

That is about it from here.

P.S. I am very Sorry Jennifer if I ruined your research with your questions, it was not my intention. this entry posted by Jeremiah : 2:27 PM Figure 18. Three different BisonBloggers demonstrate a community conversation (Feb).

The BisonBlog, once moved to a North Dakota State University server with more potential and better features, only brought in 111 statements (found in postings) relating to the prompts out of a total of 623. This is a drop to 18%; however, this doesn’t mean that the relationships or connecting between student bloggers stopped, it was just more evident in the Comments feature as shown in Figure 19.

I would agree with Derek Powazek when looking through the discussions had on The BisonBlog. He has claimed that in order to get participants to come back to the community and post their thoughts, a host and other participants have to comment to that person or at least make them feel welcome. Each time a new student would sign up to The BisonBlog, I made sure to welcome them in the Comments section, and other students did as well. When a student feels that he or she is a part of something, just like in the classroom, they are more likely to come back to it or to come to class to join in the discussion. If composition teachers can take that idea of community into their classrooms and even onto their class blogs, students will be more likely to post and more likely to post quality entries.

Hmmm Submitted by Megan on Tue, 10/12/2004 – 13:04.

I guess i don’t have much to say today. I’m pretty much a pist off girl right now. My best friend is an idiot. I’m serious, she has a possevive boyfriend and she seems to see it, but refuses to acknowledge it...drive me nuts. Whatever. » Megan’s blog | login or register to post comments Comment: yeah...

Submitted by tompkins on Tue, 10/12/2004 - 13:16.

I also have a friend like that, cept she's finally doing something about it. Problem is I'm his friend too and was actually friends with him for about 4 or 5 years longer than her. So do I side with the guy who has seniority but I don't agree with at all, or the girl? I don't know, just be happy you aren't getting pulled into the middle of it. =\ » login or register to post comments Figure 19. Two BisonBloggers converse with one another through the Comments feature (Oct).

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Back cover created by Sybil Priebe on Piktochart.com.

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