Contact Info, 200 Overview & Short Texts

Table of Contents

Contact Information & Resources for New TAs 2

Key Activities Repeated Over the Semester 3

Some Class Activities for the First 2 Weeks 7

The Big Picture: Overview of RWS 200 Course Work 8

Michael Crichton, Excerpt from Intelligence Squared Debate 9

Brian Lehrer, Reply to Crichton 11

Kristof, War & Wisdom 13

Bleich, California’s Higher Education Debacle 14

Brooks, Poetry for Everyday Life 16

Fischer, “Compared to What? 17

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Contact Information & Resources for New TAs

Lower Division Writing CommitteeChris Werry SH114C cwerry@mail.sdsu.edu (619) 594 3882(cell : 858 837 2923)Jamie Madden SHW142 jmadden@mail.sdsu.edu (619) 594 1161Matt Breece SH116 (tutor’s office) mattbreece@hotmail.com (619) 594 2015Sarah Curiels SH116 (tutor’s office) curiels@rohan.sdsu.edu (619) 594 2015

ITC MEETINGS: Wednesdays, 1.00 – 1.50 in SH126

RWS OfficeJo Serrano jserrano@mail.sdsu.edu 594 0925(General info & classrooms)Jamie Madden jmadden@mail.sdsu.edu 594 1161(Scheduling)Karen Keene kkeene@mail.sdsu.edu 594 5477(Payroll)

BookstoreLaura White Laura.White@darth.sdsu.edu 594-7512Course Materials Mgr.

BlackboardJon Rizzo AH-1111E jonrizzo@mail.sdsu.edu 594-0270Turnitin Carol Tohsaku AH-1144C 594-2203

Computers/Network CAL Help Desk PSFA 163 calhelp@mail.sdsu.edu 594-5845

RWS100 TEACHING RESOURCESRWS100 Wiki: http://sdsuwriting.pbworks.com/ Blackboard https://blackboard.sdsu.edu/

OTHER RESOURCESThe Center for Teaching & Learning at SDSU, has a lot of support for teaching assistants. See http://ctl.sdsu.edu/ and scroll down to “Support for Teaching Assistants.” You may find some of these listed resources useful:■ A Guide for Graduate Instructors, Teaching Assistants, and New Faculty (University of Missouri), http://teachandlearn.missouri.edu/guide/chapters/index.htm ■ Teaching Tips for TAs” (UC Santa Barbara), http://www.oic.id.ucsb.edu/TA/tips/ta_tips.html

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■ International Teaching Assistant Handbook: An Introduction to University and College Teaching in the United States,” http://www.oic.id.ucsb.edu/TA/ITA/title.html

Key Activities Repeated Over the Semester

The following is a list of concepts and activities that we will return to a number of times during the semester. They are in summary form - handouts explaining them in more detail, plus exercises and further activities, are available on the wiki and Blackboard. You may decide to use a different set of activities, but many teachers use these as a framework, especially in their first few semesters of teaching.

Pre-reading 1: finding clues to purpose, context, audience, etc. Pre-reading strategies are explored in order to help students find clues to purpose, context and audience. SKIM – things we do. Title, author, date, publisher, genre, works cited, etc. Students will consider how titles, subtitles, headings, visuals, structural divisions, format, genre, layout, design and other textual elements can tell us a great deal about a text before we have read it

Pre-reading 2: using questionnaires, general issue questions, and pre-discussion to prime students for discussion of a text. Posing questions that get students thinking about the general issues raised in a text. Questionnaires that identify student assumptions about issues, and can be connected later to elements of the text (“if a common assumption about the issue is X, then perhaps the authors knows this and uses strategy Y to address the assumption). Finding connections to issues raised in text and things going on in the world at present. E.g. Gladwell and the extent to which social media enables new forms of political expression, or Pinker and the question of where human morality comes from.

“Jigsaw” work – assign students/groups to research the author, key terms/references, the publication, etc. to get at key info, to get students used to asking key questions, and to help them figure out where to go to find such information.

Critical/Active Reading and Rhetorical ReadingExplore ways of annotating texts. Model how to pose questions, interrogate assumptions, read actively and critically. Adler’s “How to Mark a Text” can be useful. See “Questions to Ask Any Text” handout.

Discussion & Discussion Starters Class discussion of main texts. There are a range of strategies you can use to jump start discussion and encourage participation. These include freewriting (gives students time to formulate ideas), group work, homework posted to Blackboard, calling by name, etc.

ChartingCharting is a form of close reading in which students attend to what the text “does” (rather than merely what it “says.”) Charting involves annotating a text in order to show the “work” each paragraph is doing, or the “moves” being made. This is a core concept for the semester. Each annotation must begin with a verb: introduce, claim, support, present evidence, qualify, rebut, contrast, satirize, etc. Charting helps keep students focused on issues of agency, purpose, choice and strategy - reminding them that behind every sentence there is an author with intent who makes rhetorical choices to achieve her aim. It is also designed to move students toward identifying relationships between ideas and locating claims, evidence, and the main argument. Charting exercises are also used with student texts - in revision and peer review.

Charting can be confusing at first. One way of thinking about it is just as a form of close reading that

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prompts students to consider the choices authors make and the strategies they draw on. It's also helpful to get students to consider how parts of the text connect to each other. Charting is an open ended process, and the main thing is to get students to slow down, bracket content, and consider what a text does, how it does it, and why. It isn't a particular methodology with rules. I've sometimes used the analogy of the slow motion "frame advance" feature on a DVD player. You can use this to slow a visual text right down and focus on how a scene is composed, what is foregrounded and backgrounded, what point of view is established, the connections between segments of a text, etc..

Pre-writing ExercisesStudents will be given a series of pre-writing exercises designed to help them master elements of each assignment. These pre-writing exercises break the writing, reading and reasoning skills of major assignments into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks that students often complete in class or as homework. Many of these exercises will involve the concepts described below – charting; identifying the argument/claim/evidence/project; template phrases, the rhetorical précis, etc.

Identifying the argument, claims, evidence and project and strategies (PACES)With every text students will spend time identifying the project, argument, major claims, evidence and strategies. The argument, major claims, and evidence are described in other handouts. The project articulates the kind of work that a writer is setting out to do and the overall activity that the writer is engaged in--researching, investigating, experimenting, interviewing, documenting, etc. The “project” describes what the author sets out to do, how she does it, and by what means (such as research connections between X and Y, or applying a definition of X to Z phenomenon in such and such a way, etc.) To articulate a project—to write an account— you need a verb, such as “researches,” “investigates,” “studies,” “presents,” “connects A with B,” etc.

Template PhrasesTemplate phrases are used to model parts of the central rhetorical moves academic writers make. We will often give students templates that provide some of the linguistic “scaffolding” for introducing a text, capturing key elements of an argument, signaling the topic of a paper, and in particular working with sources and describing connections between texts. Fill-in-the-blank sentences may seem overly formulaic, but they are important tools for practice, and can become a useful tool for invention. A number of templates can be found in Gerald Graff and Kathy Birkenstein’s book They Say/I Say, and on the wiki.

The Rhetorical PrécisA rhetorical précis is a four-sentence paragraph that records the essential rhetorical elements of an author’s argument. The précis includes the name of the speaker/writer(s), the context or situation in which the text is delivered, the major assertion, the mode of development for or support of the main idea, the stated and/or apparent purpose of the text, and the relationship between the speaker/writer(s) and the audience. It is designed to move students away from summary and towards writing that shows a more sophisticated understanding of a text’s rhetorical situation. The précis is designed to highlight key elements of the rhetorical situation, help students with reading comprehension, and improve treatment of source materials in their writing. We will use it often over the course of the semester.

Exploring Rhetorical Strategies Rhetorical strategies are particular ways writers craft language so as to have an effect on readers. Strategies are means of persuasion, ways of using language to get readers’ attention and agreement. Some common rhetorical strategies are metadiscourse, definitions, framing devices, ethos, pathos, logos, rebuttals, qualifications, etc. Students are asked to 1) identify rhetorical strategies, 2) describe how they work, and 3) describe why they are used – what purpose do they accomplish?

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Developing a Rhetorical AnalysisThis involves taking the work done with charting and identifying strategies using this to write an analysis that focuses on what the author is doing – how the author frames an issue, summarizes previous research, presents evidence, deals with objections or signposts the organization of text, etc.

Developing a Context-Sensitive Reading of a TextWe will help students recognize elements of context embedded in an argument—the clues that suggest what the argument is responding to, both in the sense of what has been written before it and in the sense that it is written for an audience in a particular time and place – and to evaluate how effectively the argument persuades this audience within this specific context.

Evaluating Strengths and WeaknessesWe will help students assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of arguments, including discussion of supporting evidence, audience, text structure, reasoning and strategies. Bearing the audience of each text in mind, students will identify which most effectively (and ethically) achieves its desired end. Evaluation of strengths and weaknesses should not merely reflect a personal position on the subject matter, but instead result from rhetorical analysis and evaluation.

Using one text as a “lens” on another This entails locating some of the central categories, concepts, and arguments in one text and using them as a framework for interpreting another text. This is done in order to map connections between texts, and generate interpretations and analyses of texts.

Explaining how texts can be read in relation to each other – how one “illustrates,” “clarifies,” “extends,” or “complicates” anotherThese terms are used to help students model relationships between texts.

Illustrate: to provide examples, additional evidence, cases or arguments that help explain a position; to present material that illuminates or supports what an author argues Clarify: to bring into focus, to help explain, illuminate, or elucidate. Providing evidence, examples, support etc. that make something easier to understand or that sharpen the point made. Extend: to advance, develop, expand or take further some element of an existing argument. Extending an argument involves presenting additional evidence or reasons that are in line with the original argument but go beyond it.Complicate: to present evidence, arguments or information that is at odds with an author’s position, or which suggests the position needs to be revised or qualified. Suggesting that an author has not dealt with the full complexity of an issue, has failed to consider relevant evidence, or that there is a gap, shortcoming or limitation in an author’s account.

Metacommentary (aka metalanguage/metadiscourse)Metacommentary is self-reflective linguistic material referring to the evolving text and to the imagined reader of that text. It consists of moments in a text when the author stands back and talks about her text/argument itself. Metacommentary reveals the ways that writers signal their attitude towards both the propositional content and the audience of the text. Often, metadiscourse announces what a paper will be about, what it will do, what its project, purpose and argument will be. Metadiscourse also provides signposts to the author’s argument, guiding the reader to what will come next and showing how that is connected to what has come before. Students will spend time examining and producing various forms of metacommentary.

Reflective Writing

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Reflective writing involves students thinking carefully about their writing, how it is developing, considering their own rhetoric, etc. Before final papers are due you can have students apply course concepts to their own writing – e.g. chart their own writing, examine the strategies they use, how their argument is structured, etc. That is, they can use tools of analysis to reflect on and evaluate their writing. After papers are due, reflective writing can be used to deepen understanding of their writing.

Metacommentary (aka metalanguage/metadiscourse)Metacommentary is self-reflective linguistic material referring to the evolving text and to the imagined reader of that text. It consists of moments in a text when the author stands back and talks about her text/argument itself. Metacommentary reveals the ways that writers signal their attitude towards both the propositional content and the audience of the text. Often, metadiscourse announces what a paper will be about, what it will do, the what its project, purpose and argument will be. Metadiscourse also provides signposts to the author’s argument, guiding the reader to what will come next and showing how that is connected to what has come before. Students will spend time examining and producing various forms of metacommentary.

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Some Class Activities for the First 2 Weeks

Week 1W1 Class 1 – introduction to class, rhetoric, course goals

a) Take the roll, deal with crashersb) Introduce yourself and the class; hand out materials - syllabus, assignments, etc.c) Give brief overview of RWS 200 (focus on argument, non-fiction texts, critical reading,

rhetorical analysis/strategies, evaluation, and contextual analysis, NOT summary, etc.)d) Go over the syllabus and set expectationse) Do introductions (pair up and play an introduction game – see “ice-breakers” file)f) Use powerpoint slides to introduce rhetoric, argument, rhetorical strategies, etc. g) If there’s time, do short exercises examining newspaper headlines and how they frame an issue,

or look at advertisements, images, etc., to illustrate the rhetorical reading/analysis/concepts (see powerpoint file.) Examine pictures in the powerpoint slides – ask questions about strategies, purpose, audience, etc.

HOMEWORK: ask students to give writing sample, do questionnaire, and/or describe previous experience with writing/reading.

W1 Class 2 – introduction to some key concepts + practice applying them a) Introduce key concepts and terms for first part of semester (argument, claims, evidence, strategies,

charting, etc.)b) If there is time, examine short texts in order to illustrate rhetorical concepts. c) Work on sample short texts – for example, Michael Crichton on climate change (see short texts

on wiki). Do some basic analysis – argument, claims, evidence, strategies, etc. Ask students to evaluate strengths and weaknesses. Consider context (a debate).

HOMEWORK: Give students a short text to analyze (e.g. Kristof’s “War & Wisdom,” Bleich’s “California’s Higher Education Debacle,” Rifkin’s “Change of Heart,” Wallace Foster’s “This is Water,” etc.) and ask them to identify argument, support, claims, strategies, ethos, pathos, logos. OR – ask to collect ads.

Week 2W2 Class 1 - introduction to key concepts + practice applying them (continued)

a) Go over homework. Have students volunteer to share work. Praise, clarify, discuss responses.b) Introduce the saying/doing materials, and model how to use this with some examples, or revisit

previous ads/texts and use the verbs from the list.c) Introduce the practice of “charting” of texts. Explain the value of these practices.d) Introduce pre-reading strategies, active/critical reading, and rhetorical reading (see handouts on

“critical reading” and “rhetorical reading.”) e) Explain strategies and ethos, pathos and logos. Model how to identify these elements by looking

at short texts – more ads, a video text, etc. f) If time permits, give students Rifkin’s “A Change of Heart about Animals.” Begin discussion of

the text. See file “Rifkin - discussion starters and how to read the text.doc” Begin charting, identifying argument, claims, reasons, moves, strategies.

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HOMEWORK: Give students Haydar, “Veiled Intentions.” You may want to jigsaw the work – i.e. make students responsible for charting sections of the text, or researching the author, publication, references in the text, etc.

W2 Class 2 – Assignment 1 & First Major Texta) In groups, students present results of jigsaw work.b) Chart the text. Work through project, argument, evidence and strategies.c) Explain the first major assignment. Emphasize that rhetorical analysis will be at the center of the

first paper, and that this is not the same as summarizing. d) Begin discussion of evaluation, and criteria for analyzing strengths and weaknesses.

The Big Picture: Overview of RWS 200 Course Work

First 1-2 Weeks: Introduce the course, key concepts, & apply to short texts1) Introduce RWS100, rhetoric, course goals2) Have students read 1-page text by Fischer, “Compared to What?” to introduce contextual thinking.3) Introduce key concepts for first part of semester (argument, claims, evidence, context, rhetorical

moves, charting, etc.)4) Practice applying these concepts to short texts – advertisements, excerpts from a speech, tv clips,

visual texts, etc (you can choose these texts, or use ones we’ve selected.) 5) Apply these concepts to short texts - Kristof (“War & Wisdom”), Bleich (“California's Higher-

Education Debacle”) Rifkin (“A Change of Heart About Animals”), Parry (“The Art of Branding a Condition”), etc. There is also a collection of teaching resources for these short texts on the wiki and Blackboard you can use.

Unit 1: Haydar/Nussbaum & first major writing assignment

1) Introduce assignment 1, the texts, and work to be done2) Introduce pre-reading and critical reading strategies – finding clues to purpose, audience, genre,

context; looking at layout, headings etc.; annotating the text, posing questions, etc.3) Assign questionnaire/activities to get students thinking about general issues raised in texts, how

their experiences/ideas may connect to the text, and to identify some assumptions often held by readers (use later on to explore moves the author makes to deal with assumptions)

4) Begin discussion of Haydar and Nussbaum – focus on key passages, introduce main issues, present examples from other sources to illustrate claims. Give vocabulary quizzes to make sure students read closely and/or model close reading of texts.

5) Jigsaw research activities (assign students background research to do on text – for example, could ask them to research Haydar and Nussbaum, their other work, recently published texts, some of the terms used, the texts/figures referred to, etc.)

6) Work on identifying major elements of the argument - claims, evidence, project, appeals, etc. Explain ways of talking about these elements (e.g., phrases for talking about argument). Introduce criteria for evaluating these elements.

7) “Charting,” Moves & Strategies. Chart authors– identify what the text does (structure + the moves made). Work on identifying and analyzing rhetorical strategies - what the strategy is, how it works, why it is used

8) Draft sections of paper – how to organize the introduction; writing about author’s argument and project; using rhetorical précis, and “template phrases” from They Say/I Say to produce a

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sophisticated account of the argument; managing quotations (see They Say/I Say); writing about strategies (what, how, why)

9) Using metadiscourse to guide the reader (see handouts)10) How to write the conclusion11) Models and sample papers: work with sample intros and body paragraphs, and with sample

student papers. Have students chart and grade sample student papers. Have students chart their own papers, explaining the moves they are making (can have them hand this in with draft). Students chart their peer’s paper also in peer review.

12) Editing, revising, peer review, conferencing (can do “minimal marking” strategies)13) After drafts are received, you may want to address grammar/sentence level issues by focusing on

problems that are shared across clusters of papers. Can have students look up the mechanical issues in Penguin handbook and write short diagnosis or report on this, to be handed in with final paper (could be extra credit).

Michael Crichton, Excerpt from Intelligence Squared Debatehttp://intelligencesquaredus.org/wp-content/uploads/GlobalWarming-edited-version-031407.pdf …It is, in fact, perfectly possible for the consensus of scientists to be wrong and it is, in fact, perfectly possible for small numbers of people to be in opposition and they will be ultimately be proven true. [APPLAUSE]

I want to address the issue of crisis in a somewhat different way. Does it really matter if we have a crisis at all? I mean, haven’t we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes.

[LAUGHTER] And I would like, with their permission, to take the question just a little bit more seriously. I myself, uh, just a few years ago, held the kinds of views that I, uh, expect most of youin this room hold. That’s to say, I had a very conventional view about the environment. I thought it was going to hell. I thought human beings were responsible and I thought we had to dosomething about it. I hadn’t actually looked at any environmental issues in detail but I have that general view. … However, because I look for trouble, um, I went at a certain point and started looking at the temperature records. And I was very surprised at what I foun…The [second] thing I discovered was that everything is a concern about the future and the future is defined by models. The models tell us that human beings are the cause of the warming, that human beings, uh, producing all this CO2, are what’s actually driving the climate warming that we’re seeing now. But I was interested to see that the models, as far as I could tell, were not really reliable. That is to say, that past estimates have proven incorrect…

But let me first be clear about exactly what I’m saying. Is the globe warming? Yes. Is the greenhouse effect real? Yes. Is carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, being increased by men? Yes. Would we expect this warming to have an effect? Yes. Do human beings in general effect the climate? Yes. But none of that answers the core question of whether or not carbon dioxide is the contemporary driver for the warming we’re seeing. And as far as I could tell scientists had, had postulated that but they hadn’tdemonstrated it. So I’m kinda stranded here. I’ve got half a degree of warming, models that I don’t think are reliable. And what, how am I going to think about the future? I reasoned in this way: if we’re going to have one degree increase, maybe if, if, climate doesn’t change and if, uh, and if there’s

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no change in technology – but of course, if you don’t imagine there will be a change in technology in the next hundred years you’re a very unusual person.

…Decreasing our carbon, increasing our hydrogen makes perfect sense, makes environmental sense, makes political sense, makes geopolitical sense. And we’ll continue to do it without any legislation, without any, anything forcing us to do it, as nothing forced us to get off horses. Well, ifthis is the situation, I suddenly think about my friends, you know, getting on their private jets. And I think, well, you know, maybe they have the right idea. Maybe all that we have to do is mouth a few platitudes, show a good, you know, expression of concern on our faces, buy a Prius, drive it around for a while and give it to the maid, attend a few fundraisers and you’re done. Because, actually, all anybody really wants to do is talk about it. They don’t actually do anything. [SOMEONE CHUCKLES IN BACKGROUND] And the evidence for that is the number of major leaders in climate who clearly have no intention of changing their lifestyle, reducing their own consumption or getting off private jets themselves. If they’re not willing to do it why should anybody else? [APPLAUSE] Is talking enough? I mean, is, is -- the talking cure of the environment, it didn’t work in psychology. It won’t work in the environment either.

[LAUGHTER] Is that enough to do? I don’t think so. I think it’s totally inadequate. Everyday 30,000 people on this planet die of the diseases of poverty. There are, a third of the planet doesn’t have electricity. We have a billion people with no clean water, we have half a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Do we care about this? It seems that we don’t. It seems that we would rather look a hundred years into the future than pay attention to what’s going on now. I think that's unacceptable. I think that’s really a disgrace.

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Brian Lehrer, Reply to Crichton (Excerpt from Intelligence Squared Debate) http://intelligencesquaredus.org/wp-content/uploads/GlobalWarming-edited-version-031407.pdf

The issue of global warming and whether it’s a crisis or not, is in fact a scientific decision, it’s a scientific issue. It’s not a political one. On the other hand, deciding what to do about it is obviously political. Science can inform those decisions, but it can’t determine what decisions society makes. But we’re here to debate the existence of the problem and whether it is a crisis. That's something that the scientists on this side are eminently suited to do. You’ve all seen or heard about the CSI police drama, where high tech forensic scientists try and work out who done it when they come across the scene of a crime. Well think of climate scientists as CSI planet Earth, we’re try-, we see a climate change and we try and work out what’s done it. Just like on CSI we have a range of high tech instruments to give us clues, satellites, ocean probes, radar, a worldwide network of weather stations and sophisticated computer programs to help us make sense of it all. The aim is to come to the most likely explanation of all the facts fully anticipating that in the real world there are always going to be anomalies, there are always going to be uncertainties. Conclusions will be preliminary and always open to revision in the light of new evidence. If this all sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly the same approach that doctors take when examining a patient. They don’t know everything about the human body, but they can still make a pretty accurate diagnosis of your illness. We end up then with a hierarchy of knowledge. Some things that are extremely likely, some things we’re pretty sure of, and some things that we think might be true, but really could go either way. There isn’t a division into things that are completely proven and things which are completely unknown. Instead, you have a sliding scale of increasing confidence. Let me give you a few examples. We’re highly confident that the sun is gonna rise tomorrow, it might not, it might go nova. But it’s likely that it will happen. It’s quite likely that you’ll be able to get a cab home from this event, unless it’s raining of course. [LAUGHTER] But, but those two things have different levels of certainty. You’re used to the idea that different kinds of knowledge come with different levels of certainty, and that’s exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about the impacts of climate change.

Going back to being climate detectives, we’re certain that carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gases and they’ve increased because of human activity. We’re very confident that the planet has been warming up, and we’re pretty sure that the other things that are going on, changes to the sun, changes to particles in the air, changes to ozone have made some difference but aren’t dominant. The physics tells us that this is a very consistent picture. Our suspects, the greenhouse gases, had both the opportunity and the means to cause this climate change and they’re very likely guilty. And they are increasing faster than ever. Now, the lawyers get involved. Lawyers are paid to present a certain case regardless of its merits and they do that by challenging everything in the case, and if one argument doesn’t work, well, they’ll just move on to the next. This procedure works very well when the proposition being debated is very binary, a yes, no. Is the subspe-, is the suspect guilty, uh should he go free, should he go to jail? It is designed specifically to prevent significant action in the face of uncertainty. If there is still reasonable doubt, the suspect gets acquitted even if you still think that they did it. But contrast that with the scientists. They want to know the most likely explanation. The lawyers, they want to win the case. In their own domains both ways of finding out things are very useful, it’s only when they come together in situations like this that things get tricky. Particularly when scientific results are perceived to have economic or moral implications, it’s common for political debates to get shifted into the scientific arena. It makes the political argument seem much more scientific and therefore logical. But since the basic

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disagreement is still political, this is a disaster for any kind of action. So tonight, you’re not gonna hear us arguing about obscure details in climate science, if you have any questions, Ihave a web site realclimate.org, you can go and check that out and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have. But here we’re gonna talk about the bigger picture. Let me give you a few examples of how that works. Creationists have argued that the eye is too complex to have evolved. Not because they care about the evolution of eyes, but because they see the implications of evolution as somehow damaging to their world view. If you demonstrate the evolution of eyes, their world view won’t change, they’ll just move onto something else. Another example, when CFCs from aerosol cans and air conditioners were found to be depleting the ozone layer, the CEO of DuPont, the main manufacturer argued that because CFCs were heavier than air, they couldn’t possibly get up to the ozone layer. So there was no need to regulate them, that was pure fantasy, but it sounded scientific. Again, tobacco companies spent millions trying to show that nicotine delayed the onset of Alzheimer’s because that was a distraction from the far more solid case that, that linked tobacco to lung cancer. That was a distraction and a red herring. These arguments are examples of pseudo debates, scientific sounding points that are designed not to fool the experts, but to sow confusion and doubt in the minds of the lay public. This is a deliberate strategy and you’re hearing it here tonight. So during this debate, let’s play a little game. I’ll call it spot the fallacy. Every time that you hear the other side claim that we are predicting an imminent catastrophe, give yourself one point. Every time you hear an anecdote used to refute a general trend, that’s cherry picking and we heard that already, uh give yourself another. And every time you hear there’s a lag between carbon dioxide and temperature in the ice cores, give yourself two points because that’s a real doosy.

So far this evening we’re running at about two red herrings, two complete errors, three straw men and one cherry pick. [LAUGHTER] So see how you do and we’ll compare notes at the end. Scientists have to be professional skeptics, right, they are trained not to take new information at face value, they have to ask where measurements come from and what they could possibly mean. They have to be dispassionate about the data, and just see where it leads. Once you start making logically fallacious arguments in order to support a predetermined position, you are no longer acting as a scientist, you are acting as a lawyer, however scientific sounding you might seem. Despite that natural skepticism, the national academies of all eight, G8 countries, all the major scientific societies, even the White House have agreed with a scientific consensus on this matter, which pointedly did not happen in the 1970s by the way….

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Kristof, War & WisdomNew York Times Editorial, February 7, 2003. By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[1] President Bush and Colin Powell have adroitly shown that Iraq is hiding weapons, that Saddam Hussein is a lying scoundrel and that Iraqi officials should be less chatty on the telephone. But they did not demonstrate that the solution is to invade Iraq.

[2] If you've seen kids torn apart by machine-gun fire, you know that war should be only a last resort. And we're not there yet. We still have a better option: containment. That's why in the Pentagon, civilian leaders are gung-ho but many in uniform are leery. Former generals like Norman Schwarzkopf, Anthony Zinni and Wesley Clark have all expressed concern about the rush to war.

[3] "Candidly, I have gotten somewhat nervous at some of the pronouncements Rumsfeld has made," General Schwarzkopf told The Washington Post, adding: "I think it is very important for us to wait and see what the inspectors come up with." (The White House has apparently launched a post-emptive strike on General Schwarzkopf, for he now refuses interviews.)

[4] As for General Zinni, he said of the hawks: "I'm not sure which planet they live on, because it isn't the one that I travel." In an October speech to the Middle East Institute in Washington, he added: "[If] we intend to solve this through violent action, we're on the wrong course. First of all, I don't see that that's necessary. Second of all, I think that war and violence are a very last resort."

[5] Hawks often compare Saddam to Hitler, suggesting that if we don't stand up to him today in Baghdad we'll face him tomorrow in the Mediterranean. The same was said of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom the West saw as the Hitler of the 1950's and 1960's. But as with Nasser the analogy is faulty: Saddam may be as nasty as Hitler, but he is unable to invade his neighbors. His army has degraded even since the days when Iran fought him to a standstill, and he won't be a threat to us tomorrow; more likely, he'll be dead.

[6] A better analogy is Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, who used to be denounced as the Hitler of the 1980's. Saddam and Colonel Qaddafi are little changed since those days, but back then we reviled Mr. Qaddafi — while Don Rumsfeld was charming our man in Baghdad. In the 1980's Libya was aggressively intervening abroad, trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, losing air battles with American warplanes and dabbling in terrorism. Its terrorists bombed a Berlin nightclub patronized by American soldiers and blew up a Pan Am airliner over Scotland. Libya was never a military power on the scale of Iraq but was more involved in terror; indeed, one could have made as good a case for invading Libya in the 1980's as for invading Iraq today.

[7] But President Ronald Reagan wisely chose to contain Libya, not invade it — and this worked. Does anybody think we would be better off today if we had invaded Libya and occupied it, spending the last two decades with our troops being shot at by Bedouins in the desert?

[8] It's true, as President Bush suggested last night, that Saddam is trying to play games with us. But the inspectors proved in the 1990's that they are no dummies; they made headway and destroyed much more weaponry than the U.S. had hit during the gulf war.

[9] Even if Saddam manages to hide existing weapons from inspectors, he won't be able to refine them. And he won't be able to develop nuclear weapons.

[10 Nuclear programs are relatively easily detected, partly because they require large plants with

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vast electrical hookups. Inspections have real shortcomings, but they can keep Saddam from acquiring nuclear weapons.

[11] Then there's the question of resources. Aside from lives, the war and reconstruction will cost $100 billion to $200 billion. That bill comes to $750 to $1,500 per American taxpayer, and there are real trade-offs in spending that money.

[12] We could do more for our national security by spending the money on education, or by financing a major campaign to promote hybrid cars and hydrogen-powered vehicles, and taking other steps toward energy independence.

[13] So while President Bush has eloquently made the case that we are justified in invading Iraq, are we wise to do so? Is this really the best way to spend thousands of lives and at least $100 billion?

Bleich, California’s Higher Education DebacleJeff Bleich, “California's higher-education debacle.” Los Angeles Times, November 04, 2009. Watching the decline of the California State University system from within its boardroom mirrors the erosion of the California dream.

[1] For nearly six years, I have served on the Board of Trustees of the California State University system - the last two as its chairman. This experience has been more than just professional; it has been a deeply personal one. With my term ending soon, I need to share my concern -- and personal pain -- that California is on the verge of destroying the very system that once made this state great.

[2] I came to California because of the education system. I grew up in Connecticut and attended college back East on partial scholarships and financial aid. I also worked part time, but by my first year of grad school, I'd maxed out my financial aid and was relying on loans that charged 14% interest. Being a lawyer had been my dream, but my wife and I could not afford for me to go to any law schools back East.

[3] I applied to UC Berkeley Law School because it was the only top law school in the U.S. that we could afford. It turned out to be the greatest education I have ever received. And I got it because the people of California -- its leaders and its taxpayers -- were willing to invest in me.

[4] For the last 20 years, since I graduated, I have felt a duty to pay back the people of this state. When I had to figure out where to build a practice, buy a home, raise my family and volunteer my time and energy, I chose California. I joined a small California firm -- Munger, Tolles & Olson -- and eventually became a partner. This year, American Lawyer magazine named us the No. 1 firm in the nation.

[5] That success is also California's success. It has meant millions of dollars in taxes paid to California, hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer time donated to California, houses built and investments made in California, and hundreds of talented people attracted to work in and help California.

[6] My story is not unique. It is the story of California's rise from the 1960s to the 1990s. Millions of people stayed here and succeeded because of their California education. We benefited from the foresight of an earlier generation that recognized it had a duty to pay it forward.

[7] That was the bargain California made with us when it established the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960. By making California the state where every qualified and committed person

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can receive a low-cost and high-quality education, all of us benefit. Attracting and retaining the leaders of the future helps the state grow bigger and stronger. Economists found that for every dollar the state invests in a CSU student, it receives $4.41 in return.

[8] So as someone who has lived the California dream, there is nothing more painful to me than to see this dream dying. It is being starved to death by a public that thinks any government service -- even public education -- is not worth paying for. And by political leaders who do not lead but instead give in to our worst, shortsighted instincts.

[9] The ineffective response to the current financial crisis reflects trends that have been hurting California public education for years. To win votes, political leaders mandated long prison sentences that forced us to stop building schools and start building prisons. This has made us dumber but no safer. Leaders pandered by promising tax cuts no matter what and did not worry about how to provide basic services without that money. Those tax cuts did not make us richer; they've made us poorer. To remain in office, they carved out legislative districts that ensured we would have few competitive races and leaders with no ability or incentive to compromise. Rather than strengthening the parties, it pushed both parties to the fringes and weakened them.

[10] When the economy was good, our leaders failed to make hard choices and then faced disasters like the energy crisis. When the economy turned bad, they made no choices until the economy was worse.

[11] In response to failures of leadership, voters came up with one cure after another that was worse than the disease -- whether it has been over-reliance on initiatives driven by special interests, or term limits that remove qualified people from office, or any of the other ways we have come up with to avoid representative democracy.

[12] As a result, for the last two decades we have been starving higher education. California's public universities and community colleges have half as much to spend today as they did in 1990 in real dollars. In the 1980s, 17% of the state budget went to higher education and 3% went to prisons. Today, only 9% goes to universities and 10% goes to prisons.

[13] The promise of low-cost education that brought so many here, and kept so many here, has been abandoned. Our K-12 system has fallen from the top ranks 30 years ago to 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending. And higher education is now taking on water.

[14] At every trustees meeting over the last six years, I have seen the signs of decline. I have listened to the painful stories of faculty who could not afford to raise a family on their salaries; of students who are on the financial edge because they are working two jobs, taking care of a child and barely making it with our current tuitions. I have seen the outdated buildings and the many people on our campuses who feel that they have been forgotten by the public and Sacramento.

[15] What made California great was the belief that we could solve any problem as long as we did two things: acknowledged the problem and worked together. Today that belief is missing. California has not acknowledged that it has fundamentally abandoned the promise of the Master Plan for Higher Education. And Californians have lost the commitment to invest in one another. That is why we have lost our way in decision after decision.

[16] Today, everyone in our system is making terrible sacrifices. Employee furloughs, student fee increases and campus-based cuts in service and programs are repulsive to all of us. Most important, it is unfair. The cost of education should be shared by all of us because the education of our students benefits every Californian.

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[17] We've gone from investing in the future to borrowing from it. Every time programs and services are cut for short-term gain, it is a long-term loss.

[18] The solution is simple, but hard. It is what I'm doing now. Tell what is happening to every person who can hear it. Beat this drum until it can't be ignored. Shame your neighbors who think the government needs to be starved and who are happy to see Sacramento paralyzed. We have to wake up this state and get it to rediscover its greatness. Because if we don't, we will be the generation that let the promise for a great California die.

Brooks, Poetry for Everyday LifeDavid Brooks, New York Times, April 11, 2011

Here’s a clunky but unremarkable sentence that appeared in the British press before the last national election: “Britain’s recovery from the worst recession in decades is gaining traction, but confused economic data and the high risk of hung Parliament could yet snuff out its momentum.” The sentence is only worth quoting because in 28 words it contains four metaphors. Economies don’t really gain traction, like a tractor. Momentum doesn’t literally get snuffed out, like a cigarette. We just use those metaphors, without even thinking about it, as a way to capture what is going on.

In his fine new book, “I Is an Other,” James Geary reports on linguistic research suggesting that people use a metaphor every 10 to 25 words. Metaphors are not rhetorical frills at the edge of how we think, Geary writes. They are at the very heart of it.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, two of the leading researchers in this field, have pointed out that we often use food metaphors to describe the world of ideas. We devour a book, try to digest raw facts and attempt to regurgitate other people’s ideas, even though they might be half-baked. When talking about relationships, we often use health metaphors. A friend might be involved in a sick relationship. Another might have a healthy marriage.

When talking about argument, we use war metaphors. When talking about time, we often use money metaphors. But when talking about money, we rely on liquid metaphors. We dip into savings, sponge off friends or skim funds off the top. Even the job title stockbroker derives from the French word brocheur, the tavern worker who tapped the kegs of beer to get the liquidity flowing.

The psychologist Michael Morris points out that when the stock market is going up, we tend to use agent metaphors, implying the market is a living thing with clear intentions. We say the market climbs or soars or fights its way upward. When the market goes down, on the other hand, we use object metaphors, implying it is inanimate. The market falls, plummets or slides.

Most of us, when asked to stop and think about it, are by now aware of the pervasiveness of metaphorical thinking. But in the normal rush of events. we often see straight through metaphors, unaware of how they refract perceptions. So it’s probably important to pause once a month or so to pierce the illusion that we see the world directly. It’s good to pause to appreciate how flexible and tenuous our grip on reality actually is.

Metaphors help compensate for our natural weaknesses. Most of us are not very good at thinking about abstractions or spiritual states, so we rely on concrete or spatial metaphors to (imperfectly) do the job. A lifetime is pictured as a journey across a landscape. A person who is sad is down in the dumps, while a happy fellow is riding high.

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Most of us are not good at understanding new things, so we grasp them imperfectly by relating them metaphorically to things that already exist. That’s a “desktop” on your computer screen. Metaphors are things we pass down from generation to generation, which transmit a culture’s distinct way of seeing and being in the world. In his superb book “Judaism: A Way of Being,” David Gelernter notes that Jewish thought uses the image of a veil to describe how Jews perceive God — as a presence to be sensed but not seen, which is intimate and yet apart.

Judaism also emphasizes the metaphor of separateness as a path to sanctification. The Israelites had to separate themselves from Egypt. The Sabbath is separate from the week. Kosher food is separate from the nonkosher. The metaphor describes a life in which one moves from nature and conventional society to the sacred realm. To be aware of the central role metaphors play is to be aware of how imprecise our most important thinking is. It’s to be aware of the constant need to question metaphors with data — to separate the living from the dead ones, and the authentic metaphors that seek to illuminate the world from the tinny advertising and political metaphors that seek to manipulate it.

Most important, being aware of metaphors reminds you of the central role that poetic skills play in our thought. If much of our thinking is shaped and driven by metaphor, then the skilled thinker will be able to recognize patterns, blend patterns, apprehend the relationships and pursue unexpected likenesses.

Even the hardest of the sciences depend on a foundation of metaphors. To be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once called “pedestrian poetry.” 

Fischer, “Compared to What?

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