ENG101: Final Essay Topics

Due: before midnight on Tuesday, 11/23, by email

Please write a 3-4 page persuasive essay on one of the following topics; be sure to refer to the Style Sheet attached to the syllabus for instructions on how to format your work. The essay should take a position on your topic in a thesis statement, develop that thesis through detailed explanations of several major claims, and provide support for each major claim. You are encouraged to use personal experience to support your argument, but you must use textual support from Fast Food Nation and one source from independent research or the annotated bibliography packets. You must provide MLA in-text citations and a “Works Cited” entry for all references, including Schlosser.

1. In “Cogs in the Great Machine,” Eric Schlosser reports on the shift in the meatpacking industry toward a reliance on “the new industrial migrants,” noting that as meatpacking corporations reorganized they transformed what had been a “middle-class” profession into one that pays “poverty wages” or less (160). Discuss the impact of this system on the migrants themselves by focusing on one specific aspect of the problem, then present your own solution.

2. In “What’s in the Meat,” Eric Schlosser discusses the role of the industrial food system in the spread of food-borne illnesses such as Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 in the United States. Using specific examples, explain the problem and its cause(s), then present your own solution.

3. In “Global Realization,” Eric Schlosser describes fast food corporations’ use of libel laws to silence protestors and other detractors. Is this a legitimate use of national legal systems? An ethical use? Explain your position in detail using specific examples and focusing especially on the role of money, then present your own solution.

Online Peer Review

Please locate your classmate's essay draft on their blog and evaluate it by following the instructions below. Type your evaluation in a word processor, then cut and paste it into a comment on your classmate's blog post. Your work on today's peer review will be graded equal to an annotated bibliography.

Due: On classmate's blog on Monday, 11/22 by 1pm

Instructions

1. Does the introductory paragraph include a thesis statement? Show the writer which sentence or sentences you think make up the thesis by writing "I think the thesis statement is:" and copying them out. Evaluate the thesis by explaining whether it is simple or complex, according to our previous discussion in ENG101.

2. Choose one body paragraph to focus on. Is the body paragraph structured by a major claim? (Usually the first sentence.) Show the writer which sentence you think is the major claim by writing "I think the major claim of this paragraph is:" and copying it out. Evaluate the organization of the paragraph by explaining whether everything in the paragraph relates to the major claim.

3. Evaluate the organization of the essay by explaining whether the major claims of the essay relate directly to the thesis. Are there any major claims that do not seem to relate to the thesis? List them. Is there anything in the thesis that is not developed in a major claim? Explain.

Using Transitions to Improve Your Writing (and Your Grades!)

Transitions are words and phrases that create logical connections within an essay. They ease the introduction of new ideas by preparing the reader to hear those ideas and by connecting them to what the reader has already learned from the essay. They help to create a sense of "logical flow," keeping the reader oriented and moving steadily forward through the work.

For these reasons, good use of transitions can often be the difference between a "very good" essay and an "excellent" one -- in other words, between a B and and A.

I recommend the following web pages to help you with transitions:

The UNC Writing Center: Transitions
This page provides a good general introduction to using transitions, including examples and a list of transitional words and phrases.

Capital Community College's Guide to Grammar & Writing: Coherence - Transitions Between Ideas
In addition to providing a brief introduction to transitions, this page is useful for its emphasis on "Repetition of Words and Phrases" and "Parallelism" as tools for creating logical connections.

Online "Silent Discussion" of Schlosser ii.9

Today, we're going to experiment with using our blogs to conduct a silent discussion of the reading -- in other words, a discussion that takes place entirely in writing.

Before you begin:

Before you begin, please move your seat so that there is an empty chair between you and the people next to you. If this is not possible, then change seats with someone in the class so that you are sitting next to people that you don't usually sit with.

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Step One: Work up some ideas before you blog

1. Think of a topic to write about: something you learned or that caught your interest as you read this chapter
   
2. Choose a quotation to represent your topic
   
3. Do a 5-minute free write on the topic using a word processor (or, if it works better for you, pen and paper)
   

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Step Two: Post to your blog

Using your best organizational skills, write a 1-2 paragraph post on the topic for your blog. Briefly revise your post for development and style. Your post should:

1. Define your topic in your own words
   
2. Elaborate on your topic by stating why it interested you and why it should matter to your readers
   
3. Introduce your quotation, give the quotation, and cite the quotation using MLA format
   
4. Discuss the quotation in detail, "unpacking" its nuances -- the language of the quotation, its reasoning or logic -- and explaining what new insights or further ideas it provides regarding your topic
   
5. Further elaborate on the topic as necessary
   

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Step Three: Read and Comment on your classmates' blog posts

Remember, this is a discussion: you need to write substantive comments that bring new ideas and perspective into the mix or encourage your classmates (both the person blogging and other commentors) to elaborate on their ideas.

Your comments should:

1. Respond to your classmates' statements and ideas by treating their post or comment just like any other source and trying to "unpack" it
   
2. Raise questions about your classmates' statements and ideas
   
3. Expand on the topic by introducing personal experience or knowledge from outside this class, explaining in each case what new insight or further ideas it provides
   

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Step Four: Read and respond to the comments left on your blog

(See previous step for guidance on comments)

Jump back and forth between Steps Three and Four, conducting several discussions at once

Special Guest for ENG103, 11/15

Quick change of plans for Monday's ENG103: The opportunity has come up for us to join another class in a discussion with Tracie McMillan, a food politics writer who has published in The New York Times, Slate.com, Mother Jones and The Atlantic Online.

For this event, we will meet in room C431-D ("C" building) at 1pm. Please be on time!

This is a terrific opportunity to talk with a professional writer who works in the field we've been discussing -- so bring your questions about writing, the writing profession, and the ethics of food! Since Ms. McMillan writes on local food production and urban farming, anyone working on these topics for the ENG103 research paper should take advantage of the discussion to get her insight.

You can read Ms. McMillan's work at her web site.

U.S.D.A.: To Market and Protect

Today's New York Times online features an excellent article on Dairy Management Inc., a marketing division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and its efforts to promote increased cheese consumption among American consumers. You may remember Dairy Management's successful "Got Milk?" campaign, which began in the early nineties and rapidly became a contender for the "most parodied advertisement of all time." Although the "Got Milk?" campaign has since faded into obscurity, the position of Dairy Management Inc. may be stranger and more ironic than ever before. Today the irony is this: at the same time that its dairy marketing division is attempting to increase the amount of milk and cheese eaten by Americans, the U.S.D.A. is one of the key participants in the Obama administration's anti-obesity campaign, which actively discourages excess consumption of foods high in saturated fat -- including milk and cheese.

Rarely does one find a single institution so neatly divided against itself, attempting to undo with one hand what it does with the other. From the Times: "Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese."

One question that springs to mind is this: Why does the federal government play a role in the marketing of dairy products to begin with? It may be that the root irony is not about health per se, but about the existence of a branch of the federal government tasked with both protecting consumers and selling to them.

For more info an Dairy Management Inc., see their official web page, some of their other marketing efforts here and here, and this scanty Wikipedia entry.

And enjoy this blast of cheesy goodness: http://www.ilovecheese.com.

Notes from Immigration Discussion #1

Immigration and Nationality Act -- USDA.gov

obtaining work visas/green cards:
*"new measures to make it easier for professionals to obtain work visas and green cards"
*"the government is very selective based on your country of origin" > "leads to illegal immigration"
*"how much money you have makes a difference" > "can just buy your way out"

effects on immigrants:
*"inability to travel back home and return once visa is expired"
*"must work 'off the books'"
*"breakup of families when immigrants get deported"

enforcement:
*"US Dept of Labor enforces these laws and regulations"
*"bribery and corruption figures heavily"
*"is there an effort to educate immigrants about their rights?"
*"corporations bring people over the border, but the immigrants are penalized when the law is enforced"
*Schlosser Chapter 8: legal penalty against corporation drastically reduced; fine so small it is meaningless
"how is an illegal immigrant going to hire a lawyer? they just get picked up and tossed"
*Food Inc.: "these companies hire them outside the country and bring them over, then the immigrants get arrested leaving work or at home and get tossed out of the country without getting paid"
*October 12, 2008 raids of Agroprocessors: about half of the work force arrested after reports from workers of child labor and poor working conditions; Guatemalan workers sentenced 5 months.

"corporations don't care"
"it's not about corporations caring, but the government caring: these people are in your country, even if they are here illegally"

"illegal immigrants do jobs citizens don't want"
"some immigrants keep the same jobs after they obtain citizenship"

Group Work for Presentations

At the end of Tuesday's meeting, I asked you to write down, in your own words, one thing that startled or intrigued you from chapter eight of Schlosser's Fast Food Nation; then I asked you to choose a quotation from the chapter to represent what you'd written and to do five minutes of freewriting on your chosen topic and quotation. Finally, we broke into groups, and each member explained their thoughts to the group.

For today's class, in preparation for our presentations, we'll be working in the same groups. I am asking these groups to choose from among what the individual members produced last time and work together to frame a problem-posing exercise. Groups will spend the first 10 minutes of class getting organized and quickly sketching out their presentations. After this, we'll take 15 minutes for the groups to firm up their presentations, and each group will present their work in a "dry run" and get feedback from the class. Finally, we will have open lab time for groups to polish and develop their presentations (using freewriting, discussion, PowerPoint etc.) and for individual class members to come up with questions for the presentations.

You will remember the problem-posing method from our work earlier this month. As a reminder, here are the steps:

1. Define the problem. What interests or troubles you in this chapter? What form does the problem take? What are its causes? What are its consequences? Who does it affect, and how? Does it relate to any larger social, cultural, or political issues? How so?

2. Give a quotation to support your definition and explain how the quotation relates to your definition. Be sure to choose the best quotation, not the first one you come to. As we discussed in class, a good quotation relates directly to your point (in this case, your definition of the problem) but includes new information or a new point of view that enriches your point. When you explain your quotation, you should discuss how it relates to your point and explain anything in the quotation that the reader may not understand (such as who is speaking, who the speaker represents, or the speaker's role in the problem). You may need to "unpack" the quotation by discussing key words or phrases, but you should do so in your own words by relating them to the point that you are making or to the speaker's point; please do not provide dictionary definitions.

3. Personalize the problem. Relate the problem to your personal experience or knowledge from outside the class. What have you learned or experienced in your own life that allows you to see this problem clearly as you read the chapter? Describe your experience and explain how it relates to and clarifies the problem.

4. Describe solutions to the problem that have been tried and failed. What solutions to the problem are offered in the chapter or in other reading you have done for this class? What solutions do you know of through personal experience or outside reading? Describe the solutions and explain why they failed.

5. Invent your own solution. If you were given unlimited resources and connections, how would you solve this problem? Who would you work with, and why? Exactly what steps would you take? How would those steps lead to a solution? What specific outcome would you expect?

Evaluation Questions for Presentations

Please answer the following questions as each group presents their problem-posing exercise.

1. Define the problem.
A. Do you understand the problem this group is presenting?
B. Where could this group benefit from development or clarification in their presentation of the problem? Be specific: list words, phrases, or ideas that need work.
C. Is there any aspect of the problem that this group has not considered or explained?

2. Give a quotation to support your definition and explain how the quotation relates to your definition.
A. Did the group choose an effective quotation to represent their problem?
B. Does the group provide enough context for you to understand the quotation or give it the proper weight? Be specific: What else would you need to hear in order to understand the quotation? Did the group provide any context that you didn't need?
C. Does the group adequately explain the quotation and how it relates to the problem they are presenting? What could this group do to develop and clarify their explanation?

3. Personalize the problem.
A. Does this anecdote or personal experience help you to understand or identify the problem?
B. Would you say that this "personalization" relates directly to the problem, or is the group using a comparison to make their point?

4. Describe solutions to the problem that have been tried and failed.
A. Did the group present solutions to the problem or previous conditions where the problem didn't exist?
B. What solutions or previous conditions might the group have presented?

5. Invent your own solution.
A. Does the group's solution address the problem directly, through its real causes?
B. Do you think the group's solution would work?

Persuasive Paragraphs Example

Here is a link to the model paragraph we looked at during today's class; although this paragraph is about a short story, it would be a suitable model for the body paragraphs of any college-level persuasive essay.

In class, we outlined the paragraph, noting how the main claim is broken down into smaller, more specific ideas with textual support and new perspectives or ideas at each turn. The following outline is based on our collaborative work in class:

I. Major Claim: Miss Brill's Sunday visits to the park help her to cope with loneliness

A. She enjoys these outings

B. Her time at the park gets her out of her apartment

C. Her time at the park provides her with company

1. Listening to other people makes her feel included in their lives

2. She notices other people, and feels that they might notice her

E. These visits to the park give her a sense of imagined community, even family

F. For these reasons, her trips to the park allow her to escape the isolation of her life

For the sake of brevity and focus, I have left off the transitional sentence at the end of the paragraph--however, the transition is an important part of the paragraph and not to be neglected.

This model paragraph comes from the web site of Randy Rambo, an instructor at another college. You can find Mr. Rambo's remarks on paragraph organization here; the main page of his site also lists a number of other composition-related topics that you may find useful.

How to Write a Prospectus

Due: on blog, Monday 11/1

A prospectus is a proposal for a research paper, written in advance in order to demonstrate your grasp of the topic and your vision of the research paper. In terms of the writing process, a prospectus gives you the opportunity to focus your thoughts in a finished piece of writing before you get started. Writing a prospectus can help you to develop a sense of what questions will guide your research, what the major points your argument will be, and the order of those points; in a persuasive essay (such as the one you will be writing for this class) the prospectus can also help you to clarify your position before you get started; and finally, it can help you to arrive at the tone of your work and some language for your position early in the process. In terms of class work, the prospectus allows your professor and classmates to give you feedback and suggestions before you begin the research paper itself.

The prospectus is a brief assignment (300 words) intended to provide an overview of your essay. For our purposes, the prospectus will have three parts:

1. Introduce your topic and discuss its importance. A topic is a general area of research such as "genetically-modified seeds," "mercury levels in seafood," or "the locavore movement." Topics tend to be broad, and they can be thought of as the general "field" in which you will ask specific questions. This section of the prospectus should introduce your research topic to your readers in a way that will allow them understand it even if they've never heard of it before; it should be like a summary or overview of your topic, providing specific information without overdoing it. In addition, this section of the prospectus should try to catch your readers' interest by convincing them of its importance -- why it matters to you, why it matters to them.

2. Introduce your questions and a working thesis. Here you provide specific questions that you will be asking about your topic: the questions that will guide you in your research and argumentation. For example, "What are the health effects of high mercury levels in freshwater fish? Why the mercury levels so high? What, if anything, is being done about this problem?" Think of these questions as possible topics/major points for your essay. Introduce them in an order that makes logical sense so that there is a sense of organization and "logical flow" to this section of the prospectus; say a bit about each question, why it matters, how it grows out of the previous question or leads to the next one. Conclude this section with a 1-2 sentence statement or your working thesis for the research essay -- the thesis that you think you will use in your final paper, given what you know right now.

3. Discuss specific tools and sources that you will be using to conduct your research. Don't just say "the web": tell your readers what sites or kinds of sites will you be looking at, who they are written by or written for, and why you've chosen them. Similarly, tell your reader what specific databases you will be looking at and why; what specific subject areas, fields of study, or authors you will consult in your book research. Doing this portion of the assignment well will help you to strategize about your research, making it easier to do that research.

Union Vote at Minnesota Fast Food Restaurant

This afternoon's New York Times has an article on the ongoing unionization efforts at a Minneapolis, Minnesota franchise of Jimmy John's, a Subway-like fast food chain with 1,000 locations nationwide.

Homework for Thursday, 10/21

In preparation for peer review on Thursday, you must bring a working outline and one completed body paragraph for essay #1. If you missed class today, please consult with one of your classmates regarding our discussion of the writing process, paragraph structure, and using quotations.

This assignment will be worth a quiz grade.

Essay #1 Topics

I gave these out this afternoon in ENG101. If you missed class, please consult with me regarding any questions you have about the instructions or the essay questions.

Essay #1 Topics

Due: before midnight on Tuesday, 10/26, by email

Please write an 5-7 page persuasive essay on one of the following topics; please refer to the Style Sheet attached to the syllabus for instructions on how to format the essay. The essay should take a position on your topic in a thesis statement, develop that thesis through detailed explanations of several major claims, and provide support for each major claim. You are encouraged to use personal experience to support your argument, but you must use textual support from Schlosser and at least one piece of independent research gathered through the library’s subscription databases or book research; in addition, you may use support from the annotated bibliography packets. You must provide MLA in-text citations and a “Works Cited” entry for all references.

1. In “Your Trusted Friends,” Eric Schlosser discusses “the explosion in children’s advertising” that has taken place in the past three decades (42), noting that besides conventional advertising fast food restaurants use a number of specialized tools and “marketing alliances” to entice children and gather information about them and their food preferences (48). More recently, according to Schlosser, this advertising has been extended to the hallways and even the classrooms of public schools. Should these industry practices (or one particular such practice) be regulated? Banned? Allowed to continue without interference?

2. In “Behind the Counter,” Eric Schlosser describes efforts to unionize McDonald’s restaurants over the past 50 years and the company’s organized resistance to such efforts in the form of “flying squads” and restaurant closures (76). But Schlosser also describes other, more “passive” forms of resistance to unionization in the fast food industry, such as “de-skilled” systems of production and the franchise structure of fast food corporations (70). Which of these two forms of resistance, active or passive, does more to thwart employees’ efforts to organize for better working conditions and higher pay?

3. A persuasive topic of your choice, based on the first four chapters of Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. If you choose this option, you must present your topic to me by emailing a paragraph-length proposal before noon on Wednesday, 10/20. (Please use the phrase “Ethics of Food paper proposal” as the subject line of your email.)

Two from WNYC: Coca-Cola + How Soda Works

Two radio segments from the WNYC. The first comes from the Leonard Lopate Show, where journalist and author Michael Blanding discusses the history of Coke, the marketing of Coke from its invention just before the turn of the century (1880s) to the present, and the corporate structure and questionable business practices of The Coca-Cola Company. Where is Coca-Cola made and who makes it? What is the environmental impact of world Coca-Cola production? What exactly are we funding and participating in when we pick up a frosty bottle of Coke? Hear Blandings discuss these questions and more in this brief radio interview (28 minutes), which draws on his new book The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink.

Then hear Dr. Kelly Brownell, co-founder and director of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and author Darcy O'Neil discuss the history of soda from the 1800s to the present in this brief radio interview (30 minutes) from the Please Explain series. Along the way, the pair note the historical relationships between soda, patent medicines, and addictive drugs; the technologies that led to the widespread consumption of soda at the turn of the last century; the relationship between obesity and soda today; and more.

Response #3: Description of a Blog Project + Your First Post

I love obsessive behavior. There's something about a singular commitment to one object or idea that, at its best, raises human idiosyncrasy to the level of art. Motomachi's vending blog is one example: four years old last month, the blog uses daily photographs and comparisons to track the changes in one beverage vending machine somewhere in Japan. Without offering much in the way of commentary, the project manages to inspire observations about the cyclical nature and the major tropes/themes of beverage advertising, the mysterious systems that function around us and provide the everyday context of our lives (in four years, for example, Motomachi has only once seen the machine being refilled), and the role of vending machines in Japanese culture.

There's a similar kind of obsessiveness at work in Chris Harne's Condiment Packet Gallery, a collection of 724 (and counting) scans of condiment packets. The project began in November of 2003 and has expanded dramatically since that time thanks to reader submissions. Harne's goal is to build an exhaustive collection of the packets that fit his criteria (which mostly amount to excluding sugar and salt packets). In building this collection, Harne has managed to evoke a powerful sense of variety in sameness: all of the packets "look alike," yet together they reflect strong differences in national and period style, brand identity, and the colors, themes, and other design elements associated with different kinds of condiment. Harne's collection also inspires me to reflect on the "single serving" lifestyle that has become characteristic of American culture--the intense focus on the individual as the unit of American life (as opposed to the family and other forms of collective) and our tendency to focus on the present moment in isolation rather than situating the present in terms of the past that led up to it and the future to which it leads. In many ways, the fast food industry is the ultimate expression of these national tendencies and--as the international sections of Harne's collection remind us--their most exportable form.

Assignment: Response #3

At the beginning of the semester, I suggested that you find some kind of independent project that would drive your blog. This could be a weekly writing project or it could be something else that helps draw you into the themes of the course and makes your classmates want to check in with your work. Whatever you choose to do, the project should be something that you work on regularly, and it should involve some writing even if it relies primarily on other media. Motomachi's vending blog and The Condiment Packet Gallery provide good models for such a project--although, again, yours should involve some writing. Without copying Motomachi or Harne exactly, you could learn a lot from the ways they've constructed their projects so that they are (1) creative enough to provoke a reader's interest and (2) easy to maintain.

Both of these projects could easily be incorporated into a staple form of the blogosphere, the "regular feature"--a recurring theme that bloggers revisit each week on a particular day. In fact, although these sites are devoted entirely to the projects I've described above, they could still be considered regular features: Motomachi updates every day, and Chris Harne posts his new-found packets every Monday. Having a regular feature can give your blog a sense of continuity and create a shared sense of event among your readers. It can also help you to keep your blog active because it allows you to build it into your routine.

For ENG101 Response #3 (due on your blog before class T 10/12) I want you to write a 300-word description of a weekly blog project that you will do for the rest of the semester. The response should:

1. Describe your project in detail
   
2. Explain how you came up with the project and how it relates to your everyday life
   
3. Explain the themes of your project, what you hope to learn from it, and what kind of thoughts you hope it will inspire in your readers
   

Be sure to use good organization in your response, dividing it into appropriate paragraphs with strong topic sentences. Please label this post with the following words: response, project. All of your blog project posts should be labeled: project.

If you need more inspiration, you might take a look at these other blogs, all of which are devoted to specific projects:

• Miss Q's Fed Up with Lunch: Miss Q is a teacher who decided to eat lunch at the school cafeteria every day in 2010 and blog about her experiences;
  
• Andrea Joseph's SketchBlog: not related to the course themes, but a good model for how to use art and writing together in a blog; and
  
• Slice: this is now a semi-professional blog, but it started out as a personal project to review all of the major pizza restaurants in New York City.
  

On Thursday 10/14, I will give you 1/2 hour of class time in the computer lab to work on the first post for your blog project. Make sure that you bring whatever you need--images you've made or found, text that you've written--to class that day on a USB drive or as an email attachment. After that, I will give you some time to look at each other's projects and offer comments.

Soda and Food Stamps

The New York Times reports this morning that New York State and the City of New York are petitioning to bar food stamp recipients from using their benefits to buy sodas and other sugary drinks. The request, filed with the US Department of Agriculture on Wednesday, would prevent people enrolled in the food stamp program from using their benefits to purchase the beverages for two years, with the possibility of a permanent ban to follow. You can read the full article here, and a Times editorial in support of the measure here.

The move comes on the heels of New York City's failed attempt to impose a tax on all sodas and sugary beverages earlier this year. You can read a Times article about the soda tax by the prominent food writer Mark Bittman here, and a New York Observer editorial in favor of the tax here. During the debates over the proposed soda tax, critics argued that the state and city governments were disingenuous in their claim that the tax was about the health of the citizenry, and that that tax was simply a way to replenish government coffers that had been depleted by the financial crisis. The current petition seems to lay that criticism to rest--or at least to suggest that if the money raised from taxation was a factor, the health of citizens was also a primary concern.

For a different and more complex take on these issues, see Christopher Bonanos' New York Magazine editorial "Taxa-Cola: Why Tax Soda that We Already Subsidize?" here. Bonanos takes issue with the proposed soda tax on the basis that the root of the problem is not consumer's desire for soda but the federal subsidies and other measures that make high-fructose corn syrup so cheap to begin with: "We pay federal taxes to make that can of Mountain Dew cheaper than it should be, encouraging us to buy it. Then we are scolded by public-health authorities for doing so. Then New York proposes another tax, to discourage us from buying it." In other words, according to Bonano, the tax is a small-scale, local attempt to fix a large-scale, national problem--and an attempt to fix that problem by focusing on individual consumers rather than the system that produces it in the first place. Although Bonanos is writing about the soda tax, it would be easy to extend his argument to the current effort to ban the purchase of soda with food stamps.

ENG103: Annotated Bibliography Packet #2!

Annotated Bibliography Packet #2 is now available. You can pick it up in a box outside the door of my office, M109-E. The outer office (M109) is open during the day Monday-Friday.

Cola for Babies? Check Your Sources

In class last week, a number of small discussion groups were talking about the ethics of "cradle to grave" advertising, which Schlosser discusses in section I.2 of Fast Food Nation, and I was reminded of this advertisement, which caused a flurry of discussion when it appeared (yet again) on the web last spring:


As you can imagine, this ad provoked sharp responses wherever it was posted, ranging from diatribes against corporate cynicism to reflections on the strange naïveté of mid-twentieth century America. Writers wrote, bloggers blogged, comment threads spun out their webs of irritable disagreement and knowing consensus.

The problem is, this is not a real advertisement. A little online research reveals its actual source and the fact that it's a Photoshop mock-up. But there is internal evidence too, which active, critical readers of the ad should have caught.

Imagine the embarrassment you would feel if you were the author of this editorial--or one of the many people (for example, this neuroscience blogger and this forum contributor) who have reposted it and passed it on.

Response #2: Problem-Posing Assignment

Please use the following steps to address this week's reading assignment. Think carefully; be detailed and thorough in your responses. Usually I will ask you to turn the exercise into a response paper by translating each step into a well-developed paragraph; but for this week, you may choose to post your work either in prose paragraphs or numbered steps.

Here are the steps:

1. Define the problem. What interests or troubles you in this chapter? What form does the problem take? What are its causes? What are its consequences? Who does it affect, and how? Does it relate to any larger social, cultural, or political issues? How so?

2. Give a quotation to support your definition and explain how the quotation relates to your definition. Be sure to choose the best quotation, not the first one you come to. As we discussed in class, a good quotation relates directly to your point (in this case, your definition of the problem) but includes new information or a new point of view that enriches your point. When you explain your quotation, you should discuss how it relates to your point and explain anything in the quotation that the reader may not understand (such as who is speaking, who the speaker represents, or the speaker's role in the problem). You may need to "unpack" the quotation by discussing key words or phrases, but you should do so in your own words by relating them to the point that you are making or to the speaker's point; please do not provide dictionary definitions.

3. Personalize the problem. Relate the problem to your personal experience or knowledge from outside the class. What have you learned or experienced in your own life that allows you to see this problem clearly as you read the chapter? Describe your experience and explain how it relates to and clarifies the problem.

4. Describe solutions to the problem that have been tried and failed. What solutions to the problem are offered in the chapter or in other reading you have done for this class? What solutions do you know of through personal experience or outside reading? Describe the solutions and explain why they failed.

5. Invent your own solution. If you were given unlimited resources and connections, how would you solve this problem? Who would you work with, and why? Exactly what steps would you take? How would those steps lead to a solution? What specific outcome would you expect?

MLA Citation and Annotated Bibliography Resources

LaGuardia's Library Media Resources Center page offers a very comprehensive guide to MLA Citation, including in-text citation and the Works Cited page: go to the LMRC page and follow the "Cite your sources (MLA & APA)" link, choose the "MLA Style Guide," and click on the "Printable version of entire guide (17 page PDF)" link. Or go to the guide directly from here.

For assembling an MLA Works Cited page, I recommend Easybib.com. Easybib generates correct citations on the basis of your input and it also uses database technology to look up citations others have already provided -- often, especially with book sources, you don't even have to type out the information on your source. If you register, you can create and edit an ongoing Works Cited page.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab offers useful guidance on producing an annotated bibliography: check out their definition and overview of the annotated bibliography, their how-to page (which for some reason they call an "example"), and two sample entries. For this class, your entries should be roughly the same level of detail and the same length as their samples.

Each entry in an annotated bibliography begins with a citation in MLA format. The annotation for that entry follows the citation, with a blank line in between. Notice that the annotations in the Purdue guide follow a three-stage format, Summarize-Assess-Reflect, as detailed in the overview. At this stage in the course, most of your annotated bibliography entries will include the first two stages, each in one paragraph.

Paragraph 1: Summarize This paragraph provides a condensed description of the entire source (book, article, etc.) in your own words. (Briefly quoting from the source once in awhile is acceptable.) It should tell your reader what the source is about, without any added commentary or opinion. It should be about 5-7 sentences.

Paragraph 2: Assess In this paragraph, you give your opinion about the quality of the source. What is useful about this source? What does it provide that other sources may not? For example, a source might be useful because it provides a lot of quotations from experts, or because it uses quotation to give a clear sense of what "most people" think about an issue; a source might be useful because it contains good analysis of an issue, or because it makes reference to other sources that could help to further your research.

As you start to focus on a particular topic, some of your entries might include a third paragraph:

Paragraph 3: Reflect Use this paragraph to think about how the source impacts your thinking about your research topic. Has it caused you the change or refine your stance on the topic? Has it suggested a new approach, in terms of research, organization, or language?

Genetically-Modified Salmon

WNYC reported this morning on the brewing controversy around the FDA's pending approval of genetically-modified salmon for the US consumer market. The salmon, produced by AquaBounty Technologies of Massachusetts, "contains an extra growth gene that makes it grow twice as fast as conventional farm-raised salmon." You can listen to the piece here.

This story has been quietly developing since the summer -- a quick search of the New York Times web site provides useful background information, and no doubt more is to be found through the library's subscription databases.

Bisphenol A and the Food Safety Bill

Marion Nestle (author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health) has a terrific post today on partisan politics in food safety regulations, particularly with reference to Bisphenol A. (For those who may be unfamiliar, Bisphenol A is a component of polycarbonate plastics such as those used for water bottles and similar beverage containers; it is alleged to "leech" into food-stuff and disrupt hormonal systems in animals, leading to cancer.) Nestle's piece summarizes a powerful piece by New York Times science writer Denise Grady. You can read Grady's original piece here.

Ethics of Food: Spring I 2009

Lubomir C., Lubo's Ethics of Food Blog
Patricio D., Papito's
Marcos D., Marcos' Ethics of Food Blog
Carolina D., Ethics of Food by Carolina
Ryan F., Ryan's Ethics of Food Blog
Melaines G., We Are What We Eat
Kharielly G., Kharielly's Ethics of Food Blog
>>Shafayat H., Ethics of Food
Aywaa K., Food Ethics Class
Joanna L., Joanna's Ethics of Food Blog
Chasity M., Ethics of Food Blog
Diana P., Diana's Ethics of Food Blog
Cortney P., The Truth About Fast Food
Carlos R., Be in the Loop with Ethics of Food
>>Claude S., A 6 Foot 6 Inch View on Food
Michael V., Ethics of Food
Xiaodan W., Wang's Ethics of Food Blog
Mediha Z., Mediha's Food Blog

What's in a Twinkie?

Dwight Eschliman photographically documents what goes into the chemical goodness of Twinkies in his new book, 37 Or So Ingredients. You can see a preview at his web site. On a related note: the official site for Steve Ettlinger's book Twinkie, Deconstructed.

HFCS Drinks + Their Equivalents in Junk Food

This series of photos graphically illustrates the health impact of beverages containing high fructose corn syrup. Enjoy! (via BoingBoing)

Identifying Perspectives

During this afternoon's class we will be discussing a packet of newspaper and magazine articles related to labor issues in meatpacking. We'll work in groups, with each group discussing one article and presenting the article and their conclusions to the class.

Instructions:

1. Read the article and make informal notes before you discuss it with your group. As you read, answer the following questions in your notes:

What basic problem or controversy does the article discuss?

How many "sides" or perspectives are represented in the article?

For each perspective, identify the following:
a. the speaker who presents each perspective
b. the organization or social group that speaker represents
c. the speaker's basic argument or position (summarize briefly).

Evaluate each argument or position: What are its strengths? Its weaknesses?

2. Discuss the article with your group, relating it to Eric Schlosser's "The Most Dangerous Job."

3. Groups: briefly describe your article and present your findings to the class.

President Obama's Food Safety Working Group

This opinion piece from the Huffington Post raises some interesting questions about the depth of President Obama's Food Safety Working Group, and particularly whether the group will handle core issues such as the overuse of antibiotics in industrial agriculture and the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections. The article contains numerous links to sources on these issues.

Ecological Footprint Quiz

This is the link for The Global Footprint Network, which Dr. Rizzieri showed us in LIB110 this morning. The site features an online quiz to calculate your ecological footprint. Just choose "Personal Footprint" from the "Footprint Basics" menu and click on "Take the Quiz."

Lettuce Recall: E Coli

As you may have heard, there is a major recall of lettuce underway in 23 states including New York. The lettuce in question was grown in Yuma, Arizona. We've talked in class about how far fruits and vegetables grown on industrial farms travel before they reaches our local grocery stores, but this is a good illustration of that point. Here it is on the map:


View Lettuce Recall in a larger map

And here are a few sources about the lettuce recall:

Associated Press, "Lettuce recalled in 23 states; E. coli suspected"

Huffington Post, ""-Romaine Lettuce RECALL In 23 States Over E. Coli"

Food Poison Journal, "Lettuce E. coli Outbreak: the Yuma, Arizona link"

San Francisco Chronicle, "Report Urges More Oversight of Food Facilities"

President's Cancer Panel Reports on US Food + Drinking Water

The President's Cancer Panel, a working group at the National Cancer Institute of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has released its annual report for 2008-2009, "Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now." Yesterday's New York Times carries an op-ed on the report, which you can read online here. (Caution: don't try to print the report as it's 240 pages total.)

As the title implies, this year's report focuses on "the impact of environmental factors on cancer risk" (n.p.). And it includes some findings that it are frankly surprising -- and quite alarming -- to hear from an American federal agency:

The use of antibiotics and growth hormones in industrial livestock farming creates "toxic run-off" that is contaminating our supply of drinking water. These chemicals "may contribute to endocrine disruption in humans," leading to cancer (49).

The use of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers in large-scale agriculture is causing higher levels of nitrate, cadmium, and arsenic in our drinking water. While in most drinking water, these chemicals remain at levels the FDA says are safe, levels are on the rise. Each of these chemicals is a known carcinogen (cancer-causing agent) at moderately high levels of exposure (47-48).

Most of the "80,000 chemicals on the market" in the US "are un- or understudied and largely unregulated" leading to a high risk of carcinogens in all product markets (n.p.). The report lays particular emphasis on bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that "is used to harden plastics (e.g., baby and water bottles) and line the inside of food and beverage cans." Bisphenol A (BPA) is known to "leach into food" and may result in cancer and early puberty (18).

Most fish that are higher in the food chain (tuna, swordfish, king mackerel, shark) now contain high levels of methylmercury, a pollutant associated with coal power and the plastics industry. "Consumers, particularly pregnant and nursing women, women who may become pregnant, and young children, are cautioned to avoid" eating these fish (37).

The panel's overall finding: "The American people—even before they are born—are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures" to cancer-causing agents (n.p.).

The report includes numerous policy recommendations for the US President, the FDA, OSHA, and other federal agencies. But what can we do as individuals? The panel makes the following recommendations with regard to our food and drinking water:

Eat organic and free-range whole foods, avoid processed food: "Exposure to pesticides can be decreased by choosing, to the extent possible, food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers and washing conventionally grown produce to remove residues. Similarly, exposure to antibiotics, growth hormones, and toxic run-off from livestock feed lots can be minimized by eating free-range meat raised without these medications if it is available. Avoiding or minimizing consumption of processed, charred, and well-done meats will reduce exposure to carcinogenic heterocyclic amines and polyaromatic hydrocarbons" (111).

Filter your water: "Filtering home tap or well water can decrease exposure to numerous known or suspected carcinogens and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Unless the home water source is known to be contaminated, it is preferable to use filtered tap water instead of commercially bottled water" (111).

Avoid plastic containers for foods and water: "Storing and carrying water in stainless steel, glass, or BPA- and phthalate-free containers will reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting and other chemicals that may leach into water from plastics. This action also will decrease the need for plastic bottles, the manufacture of which produces toxic by-products, and reduce the need to dispose of and recycle plastic bottles. Similarly, microwaving food and beverages in ceramic or glass instead of plastic containers will reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals that may leach into food when containers are heated" (112).

And keep your fingers crossed!

Sample Persuasive Essays

Here are a series of sample persuasive essays that may provide useful models for your work in ENG101. Both of these samples are taken from Randy Rambo's excellent ENG1001 web site.

1. John J. Hinklemeyer, "The Failure of Abstinence-Only Programs." Hinklemeyer's essay is a persuasive argument that uses independent research to argue that abstinence-only sex education classes have left American students poorly informed about sex and vulnerable to teen pregnancy and disease. As the instructor notes, this is not a perfect essay, but it does provide an excellent model. Note the strong thesis, complex organization, and the expert handling of quotations.

2. Jamie Fast, "The End of an Illusion." Fast's essay argues for a specific interpretation of Jane Mansfield's short story "Miss Brill." Note the strong thesis and complex organization of the essay; note too that Fast's paragraphs take large claims and break them down into smaller units, which makes this a good model for paragraph development as well. You can click on the bracketed numbers in the piece to read her professor's comments on why this is a strong essay.

Composition Resources

This is a link to the "Thesis, Organization, Development" section of Randy Rambo's composition web pages. This section includes the two pages we looked at yesterday in class: Organizing and Developing Persuasive Paragraphs, which gives an 'x-ray' of a persuasive paragraph, and Example of a Persuasive Paragraph, which takes a complex paragraph from a student paper and breaks it down into its component parts. Along these lines, I also recommend Bad Paragraph/Good Paragraph, which provides contrasting examples of a "bad" (under-developed and poorly organized) paragraph and a good (well-developed and tightly organized) paragraph, and discusses each one in detail.

The "Thesis, Organization, Development" page includes many other topics that apply directly to your work for this class, including The Thesis Statement and Creating an Outline for an Essay.

On the left hand side of the "Thesis, Organization, Development" page, you'll find links to other sections on the writing process, grammar, and style.

Jim Gaffigan on Processed Foods

Jim Gaffigan - Beyond the Pale - Hot Pockets @ Yahoo! Video

Here's a hilarious Jim Gaffigan routine on Hot Pockets, a microwaveable processed food.

Three Annotated Bibliographies

In ENG103, we'll be working on annotated bibliographies over the next few weeks. Each Monday, a five-entry annotated bibliography is due on your blog. Although we discussed the assignment and how to write an annotated bibliography earlier this week (4/12), I though it would be useful to post a follow-up here because several of you have emailed me with questions.

The annotated bibliographies should relate directly to the Research Essay that is due at the end of the semester. Remember that I'm asking you to define your own topic for that essay (related to the theme of the cluster, of course) and to conduct independent research that will allow you to formulate a persuasive argument about that topic. The annotated bibliographies are supposed to help you arrive at a topic for that essay and get some research done along the way.

First Annotated Bibliography
due on blog 4/19

For the first bibliography, you should choose a general area of research for your final essay. You can use any sources -- web, books, databases. You must cite those sources in MLA format, and the assignment should be titled "MLA Annotated Bibliography on [your general area of research]."

What is a general area of research? The example I gave in class was "the food system and disease." Notice what this example tells us and what it doesn't tell us. We know that it focuses on the dominant system of food production, but we don't yet know what specific part or parts of the food system will be considered. (Farming? Government policy? Meatpacking? Food processing? Fast food chains? Grocery stores?) Similarly, we know that the example focuses on the relationship between the food system and disease, but we don't yet know what disease or diseases. (Type II Diabetes? E. Coli infections? Heart disease?)

This relatively loose definition of terms is what defines a general area of research. At this level, the task of the researcher is to get an overview of this general area, looking into several diseases and how they are connected to different parts of the food system. That way, when it comes time to the focus on a specific topic within that general area, the researcher can make an informed choice.

Our title in this case would be "MLA Annotated Bibliography on the Food System and Disease."

Second Annotated Bibliography
due on blog 4/26

For the second bibliography, you'll need to focus on a specific topic for your final essay within that general area of research. You need to use subscription databases or books -- no web sources. You must cite those sources in MLA format, and the assignment should be titled "MLA Annotated Bibliography on [your specific topic]."

What is a specific topic? The example I gave in class was "meatpacking and the spread of e. coli." Notice that this example falls under the general area of research I gave above: e. coli infection is one specific disease, meatpacking is one specific part of the food system. However, although it is related to our general area of research, the new example excludes a number of things that were part of our general area of research. For instance, an annotated bibliography on "meatpacking and the spread of e. coli" would not include any sources related to Type II Diabetes.

Our title in this case would be "MLA Annotated Bibliography on Meatpacking and E. Coli."

Third Annotated Bibliography
due on blog 5/3

For the third bibliography, you'll need to have a specific persuasive thesis in mind -- that will be the thesis of your final essay. You need to use subscription databases or books -- no web sources. You must cite those sources in MLA format, and the assignment should be titled "MLA Annotated Bibliography on [brief summary of your thesis]."

What is a persuasive thesis? The example I gave in class was, "The centralization of U.S. meatpacking operations over the past 40 years has created a system that produces meat cheaply and efficiently. However, it has also created a massive network for the distribution of the e. coli throughout the American public, leading to increasingly frequent and widespread outbreaks of e. coli infection." Notice that instead of just announcing a topic, this example takes a position on that topic. A reasonable person could disagree with that position ("The centralization of meatpacking is not the most important cause of these outbreaks") or agree but see the issue differently ("True, but the advantages of the system in feeding the population cheaply still outweight the risks").

Notice too that each part of our specific topic has been refined and given more detail: "meatpacking" has become "the centralization of U.S. meatpacking operations over the past 40 years" -- presenting a specific transformation in the meatpacking industry over a specific period of time. "E. coli" has become "increasingly frequent and widespread outbreaks of e. coli infection" -- presenting a specific problem with e. coli and the development of that problem over a specific period of time. The thesis also clearly states a relationship between these two terms, which gives it a persuasive element.

Our title in this case would be "MLA Annotated Bibliography on the Centralization of U.S. Meatpacking and Its Role in Outbreaks of E. Coli Infection."

**

As I mentioned in class, the annotated bibliography is a cornerstone of the large research project. It solves several problems that arise when you try to write a long, complex research essay:

1. It helps you to arrive at a complex thesis for your essay, because each stage of your research prepares you to do more specific research in the next stage. By the time you reach the third bibliography

2. It helps you to gather all of your sources in one place and to remember those sources in detail -- always an issue when you are writing a paper that requires a lot of research or any semester-long research project.

3. It gives you a broad context for your thesis, which makes you better informed and can be useful in framing your argument.

If you have questions about how to write the annotated bibliography, you can find a sample (in APA, not MLA format) here. You may also find Cornell University's How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography page useful.

The Best Damn Pizza in the World

This is a link to Slice, a serious blog dedicated to New York City pizza. Slice reviews pizza places in all boroughs, covers restaurant openings and closings, and even does some international news. Their "NYC Pizza Maps" will help you find the best pizza anywhere in the city. Highly recommended and delicious.

MLA Citation

The college library provides a useful online guide to MLA Citation: look closely and you'll find links on in-text citation and sample papers at the top of the page. For the "Works Cited" page, I recommend that you use Easybib.com, which automatically generates bibliographic entries in MLA format (and other formats too) based on the information you provide.

New York City "Food Drought"

The Gotham Gazette has an excellent article on unequal access to whole foods in New York City and the so-called "food drought" in the outer boroughs. The article demonstrates a direct link between access to fruits and vegetables and income: Chelsea, with a median income of $100,000 per year, is filled with fruit stands and whole food groceries, whereas you can hardly buy lettuce in West Harlem, which has a median income of about $30,000. Great use of testimony from New York City residents and a useful map that shows the distribution of groceries stores in each neighborhood in New York City.

You can find links to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's plan to fix the food drought here.

Essay #1 Topics

ENG101-2610: Ethics of Food
Prof. Alexander

Essay #1 Topics

Due: Thursday, 4/22

Please write an 3-4 page persuasive essay (typed, double-spaced) on one of the following topics. The essay should take a position on your topic in a thesis statement, develop that thesis through detailed explanations of several major claims, and provide support for each major claim. You are encouraged to use personal experience to support your argument, but you must use textual support from the course pack and at least two pieces of independent research gathered through the library’s subscription databases or book research. You must provide MLA in-text citations and a “Works Cited” entry for all references.

1. In “Your Trusted Friends,” Eric Schlosser discusses “the explosion in children’s advertising” that has taken place in the past three decades (42), noting that alongside conventional advertising fast food restaurants use a number of specialized tools and “marketing alliances” to entice children and to gather information about them and their food preferences (48). More recently, according to Schlosser, this advertising has been extended to the hallways and even the classrooms of public schools. Should fast food advertising be allowed in schools?

2. In “Behind the Counter,” Eric Schlosser describes efforts to unionize McDonald’s restaurants over the past 50 years and the company’s organized resistance to such efforts, both passively through the use of Fordist systems of production and the franchise structure of the corporation and actively in the form of “flying squads” and restaurant closures (76). Should fast food restaurant employees be allowed to unionize?

3. A persuasive topic of your choice, based on your reading of Schlosser’s “Behind the Counter” and “Your Trusted Friends.” If you choose this option, you must present your topic to me in a brief paragraph by Tuesday, 4/13.

Schedule Change for Thursday (4/8)

Due to a scheduling conflict, our ENG101 class will meet this Thursday from 2-3:15pm. Don't forget!

Assignment: Response #3

Due: Thursday 4/8 by 10am
Requirements: 400-500 words, 2 quotations

Write a response for your blog in which you take a position on the soda tax we discussed in class today. Explain the reasons for your position (at least two) and support your reasons with quotations from the articles in the soda tax handout or from sources you find through independent research. Cite your sources at the bottom of the post using the following format

Last Name, First Name. "Title of Article." Title of Publication. Date of Publication.

You must cite your sources even if they are taken from the soda tax handout. We'll be discussing MLA format next week: you may use MLA here, if you are already familiar with it.

Backwards Hamburger

"Backwards Hamburger" is a promotional cartoon that was made for the release of the film "Fast Food Nation." It's short and fun, with good quality Flash animation, but it also introduces a number of the issues around fast food labor, ranching, and the meatpacking industry that are covered in Schlosser's book.

Defense of Fast Food Labor Conditions

I stumbled on this short position paper published in something called Opus1: The Journal of Undergraduate Research. In it, the author (whose name is not given) makes an argument in defense of the fast food industry's focus on hiring teens and praises the "extreme division of labor into simple repetitive tasks" (in other words, the Fordist model of food production we've been discussing in class) as a way "to tap inexpensive footloose labor." Since this is precisely the opposite of the position most people in the class took in response to the "Behind the Counter" chapter of Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, I thought it would be useful to post it here.

By the way, Opus1 is a strange publication -- I'm not sure what to make of it. Apparently it publishes papers by college undergraduates, though strangely none of the papers are attributed to individual authors. There is an editorial board that apparently selects the work published in the journal, and the board includes mostly people who work at universities -- but none of their credentials are given, and the site doesn't give any details about the editorial process. The site seems to focus primarily on economics, with a bias toward neoliberal or free market economics.

Fast Food Map of NYC

This is a Google Maps mashup that shows the fast food restaurants in New York City, broken down by chain. I'm not sure if they're all represented or not. Still, this could be useful if you were doing research on the density of fast food restaurants or their placement.

Freddy Krueger Eats a Hamburger

For those of you who remember the old "Nightmare on Elm St." movies, and for those of you who will be going to see the "Nightmare on Elm St." remake later this year, I present Freddy Krueger Eats a Hamburger.

Sample Blogs

Here are links to some blogs that I think are good. They're not related to the cluster topic (which your blog should be) but each of them has a theme and actively engages with that theme through regular posts. Some of them might be run by more than one person, so don't be intimidated if the volume or frequency of the posts seems very high.

Gaping Void
Yellow Menace: Asian Pop Culture Upside Your Head
Strange Maps
Arbogast on Film
I Love Typography
Motomachi's Vending Blog

The last one (a favorite) requires some explanation: this person in Japan photographs a particular vending machine every day, tracking changes in the products sold in the machine and their placement, the advertising campaigns that are featured on the machine, and the price of the goods. It's a great, crazy, obsessive project.

Grading Student Blogs

Note to my Ethics of Food students:

During Monday's ENG103, I talked a little bit about how your overall performance on your blogs will figure in the "low stakes writing" part of the course grade (30%). The grade for "low stakes writing" includes all of the grades for weekly responses and informal presentations, but it also includes an evaluation of the quality and interest of your blogging activity as a whole. Having an active, creative blog will positively impact this portion of your grade; having an inactive blog will negatively impact the grade. One of you has emailed to ask me for some clarifiction on what counts as an active, creative blog, and I thought the answer should be posted here.

What I mean is that you should work to make your blog active by posting informally about topics related to the class on your own, instead of just posting assignments. For example, look at my Ethics of Food blog: I post at least three times per week, and there are posts on a variety of subjects related to what we're talking about in the cluster. Some of my posts (about 40%) are course materials: assignments, feedback, etc. Most of the posts (about 60%) are related to our cluster topic, but are not course materials: links to news items, videos, images, small pieces of informal writing on the fast food industry or industrial agriculture. Some of my blog entries are short and very informal: for example, the posts on "The Invincible Happy Meal" or today's post on George Lopez. Others are longer and more developed, but they're still just me "thinking out loud."

Keeping an active blog should be about the same for you. Post a few times every week. For each formal assignment you write (40%), do a few informal posts (60%). Your blog doesn't have to look like mine or read like mine, but it should demonstrate some engagement with the cluster topics. Use the blog as a tool to bring your course-work into your everyday life.

For example, you might post informally about a food-related experience: a meal you ate, something you noticed on a trip to the grocery store, a job you had, a crazy adventure you had trying to fulfill a food craving late at night, etc. Or you might draw a picture of your lunch once a week for the rest of the semester and post the drawings. Or you might post a Youtube video that you think relates to the class and say a little about it. ("Here's a great George Lopez routine on immigrant labor in the fast food industry...") Or you might investigate the food options you find in your neighborhood or at school.

This should be an easy way to raise your grade, and it should be fun. Note that not everything has to be writing, because I'm not grading these posts individually. If you're an "okay" writer but a good artist, you can use your art to make an exciting blog. The point is, you should try to make your blog more than a place where you deposit homework. Instead, it should be something I and your classmates want to check in with.

I know someone is going to ask exactly how the blogs will be graded. You'll find a description of how the grades will be assigned here.

George Lopez on Fast Food + Immigrant Labor

Here's a great George Lopez routine on immigrant labor in the fast food industry. I think Lopez is really funny, but I also find his stand-up work insightful when it comes to thinking about issues of labor and immigration in the U.S.

Thinking about today's class discussion, I wonder if what Lopez is saying contradicts Schlosser's emphasis on teens in the fast food workplace. Is Schlosser out of date on this topic?

Research Assignment #1

Due: Thursday 3/25
Requirements: 1 quotation

There are several steps to this assignment:

1. Critical Reading: Choose an issue, problem, or topic that interests you from your reading of Eric Schlosser's "Behind the Counter." Your topic may come directly from Schlosser, or it may be taken from class discussion or chosen in response to a classmate's blog entry. It is okay to use the same issue you wrote about in Response #2.

2. Independent Research: Using LexisNexis Academic or LexisNexis Academic (New York York News Search), find a good article that relates to your issue. In other words, find an article that provides new and useful information or a new and different perspective that helps you understand the issue better. In general, longer and more comprehensive articles are better sources for this kind of research.

3. Writing with Outside Sources: Write a blog post about your issue, using the article you found to address it. Remember to use your best skills in quoting and/or paraphrasing the source.

4. Citation: Cite your source at the bottom of the post using the following format

Last Name, First Name. "Title of Article." Title of Publication. Date of Publication.

Later in the semester we'll be using MLA format, which is very similar to this. You use MLA here, if you are already familiar with it.

Assignment: Comments

Due: Tuesday 3/23 by noon

Before class on Tuesday, please read and comment on one of your classmates blog entries for Response #2. Remember our discussion about commenting on blogs today: you should be opening a dialogue with your classmate about what he or she has to say, not responding to the form of the writing alone. Consider the observations made in the post and the conclusions that are drawn from them; consider the ideas, analyses, and responses presented in the post.

Your role as an active reader is to test what the writer has said against your own ideas, observations, analyses, and conclusions. Your role in providing written comments is to respond to the writer using what you've discovered in reading his or her work.

Grades + Feedback

By now, everyone should have received feedback on Response #1. It may be worth making a few comments about that feedback here.

This round of feedback includes a series of written comments that address each stage of the assignment (response to reading + field work) from a compositional perspective, considering topics such as organization, development, and the use of outside sources or experiential evidence. I've provided fairly extensive written feedback this time because this is the first graded assignment.

Following my comments, I've given a list of the compositional and the sentence-level issues I noted in the work. One example is listed for each sentence-level issue (usually the first one) but you should keep in mind that the same issue may occur several times in the piece. My advice for working through sentence-level issues (and therefore avoiding them on the next assignment) is to take printed copies of your assignment and my feedback to the Writing Center in E-111.

A few of you will discover that I've given you specific instructions for using the Writing Center, such as "I want you to visit the Writing Center *once per week* this semester." As I said in class, it's been my experience that students who follow these instructions show dramatic improvement in their work (and therefore in their grades!) over the course of the semester.

The grade for this assignment is shown at the bottom of the page. As it states on the syllabus, responses cannot be rewritten; however, all of your response papers for the semester will be averaged together (along with the overall grade for your blog) to account for 30% of your course grade. If you're concerned about your grade on this assignment, the best thing to do is to work out the issues I've noted in my feedback so that you can get a higher grade next time.

Logical Fallacies

The web site that Dr. Rizzieri presented during this weeks LIB110 can be found here. It defines and provides examples for a great number of logical fallacies (errors in reasoning) that frequently occur in advertising and in writing. They even show up in student papers! so it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with some of the most common ones, such as "Appeal to Authority," "Post Hoc," and "Appeal to Tradition."

The Invincible Happy Meal 2

Ryan Vera, who is blogging for Dr. McCormick's "Eat, Read, Write" class this semester, passed on a link to this Morgan Spurlock video in a comment on my earlier post. In the video, Spurlock tests the decomposition time of various McDonald's foods against that of a hamburger and fries purchased from a mom-and-pop restaurant. The results are startling, particularly in the case of the french fries, and may give us some insight into the use of preservatives in the fast food industry. These foods are designed to appeal to our senses of taste and smell, so it's easy to forget that they're also designed to fit the needs of industrial production, to sit in warehouses for long periods of time, and to be transported over long distances before they reach the walk-in freezers of local franchises.

You can catch a glimpse of that production process in this post about a McDonald's factory in Russia. Don't miss the McDonald's Bun Guide and Bun Troubleshooting Tool!

McDonald's Training with the Nintendo DS

The Japanese branch of McDonald's is reportedly preparing to extend its collaboration with the Nintendo Company, expanding the use of the Nintendo DS portable game system to employee training.

McDonald's already has a "synergistic" relationship with the Japanese video game company as one of only two providers for its wireless "Nintendo Zone" service (available only in Japan). "DS owners who visit McDonalds shops with their system... have access to such free services as character distribution, digital stamp rallies, coupons for McDonalds food items, comic distribution, and exclusive game demos" (Nintendo Partners With McDonalds for New DS Service). The other provider is the "third sector" Tsukuba Express rail system.

Now, the fast food corporation is developing game software for the Nintendo DS that will be used to train its new employees. "Using the new DS software, McDonalds believes it can cut training time by half over conventional methods, in part due of the familiarity of the DS system" (McDonalds Uses DS To Train Part Time Workers). The US military has been using video games for combat training for decades (in recent news, see here). The corporate sector has made also been using games technology for training. But, to my knowledge, both military and corporate efforts have focused primarily on games developed in-house: this seems to be the first time that an existing game system will be used to train employees in partnership with the corporation that developed the game system. As such, the McDonald's-Nintendo partnership represents a significant new development for the gaming industry. One thing will remain the same, however: as legacy games, the end products of this collaboration will undoubtedly become the horrid "training videos" of the future.

I'm curious to see how far McDonald's will take this effort if it turns out to be successful, for example whether they will retool their own equipment along the lines of the Nintendo DS gaming system or its controller in order to create a more fluid transition for new employees. Again, such efforts have long been under discussion within the military-industrial complex (for example).

Finally, I can't end this post without making some kind of reference to the popular 1984 film "The Last Starfighter," in which a teen boy discovers that his favorite arcade game is actually a training tool that an alien civilization is using recruit pilots for a battle in space. (No kidding.) Imagine how he would have felt if he'd been training for a job at McDonald's all along.