Blog #11: Writing & Revising

Over the past semester in English 101, my experiences with revision have definitely changed the way I view my writing and how I write all together. Knowing that your peers and teachers are going to be looking and critiquing your work, and that you will have to write at least one more draft based off the feedback, makes me work a lot harder while I’m writing. I put a lot more thought, effort and time into the research, brainstorming, drafting and revising into everything that I write, now that many people will be reading it. I appreciate that I get the chance to hear what was good and what needs work on my papers and then am able to incorporate that into my second draft. I have started to view my writing as something that can always improve, no matter how good I feel that I did on a first draft, there are always techniques that can make my paper THAT much better. Overall, I can definitely see that my writing is improving when it comes to structure and ideas I am choosing to include, and the increasing length of many of the essays I write. I am grateful for the amount of revising we’ve done in this class because it allows me to reflect on what I’ve written and work on making my skills even stronger.

Blog #10: Paper 4 Sources

Topic: Assisted Suicide
The first article that I read was titled “Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Legitimate Medical Practice?” from the Journal of the American Medical Association. The beginning of the article states that as of 2006, Oregon is the only state in which physician-assisted suicide is legal and allowed to be practiced. In 2001 a US Attorney General challenged Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act by saying that physicians being allowed to prescribe these lethal drugs is unlawful under the Controlled Substance Act. In the Supreme Court trial, it was decided that the Attorney General does not have the right to prohibit doctors from prescribing specific drugs. The article goes into great detail the effects that this landmark case has had and will continue to have on doctors and patients all over the country. “The free exercise of clinical judgment is important to the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship. Clinical judgments should be based on scientific evidence, peer assessments, and concern for the public's health. In the care of patients with terminal illness, arguably the singular purpose should be safe, effective treatment and relief of pain and suffering”. I found this quote quite interesting because it brings up the good argument of what a doctor’s true job should be. Some argue that physicians should not be allowed to administer such drugs because they are not fulfilling their job in doing all that they possibly can to help their patients. However, patients trust their doctors to keep their pain at a minimum and use their professional opinion when making decisions. If a doctor feels that nothing more can be done, and the patient is requesting the drugs, there should not be a law forbidding that.

"Gostin, Lawrence O. "Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Legitimate Medical Practice." The Journal of the American Medical Association 295.16 (2006): 295. JAMA & ARCHIVES. American Medical Association, 26 Apr. 2006. Web. 12 Apr. 2010. ."


The second article was very unique because it was an actual printout of a court hearing that was presented to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, of the United States Senate. It was very interesting to read statements made from the people involved in the case such as senators and witnesses, and to read so in-depth about an actual court case. The court case at hand involved an amendment that was trying to be passed that would make physician-assisted suicide nationally illegal in all 50 states. This same chairman argued that abortion and the death penalty should also be outlawed in the United States, arguing that socially and culturally, these actions are causing negative effects. “The fundamental duty of American Government, and indeed of any government, is to protect and defend the lives of their citizens, the sanctity of the lives of their citizens. It thus becomes the duty of every lawmaker to examine closely any policy that undermines either directly or indirectly the importance and value of each individual’s life”. Throughout the case numerous arguments are made that the government’s and Constiution’s main goal is to protect and preserve human life. This will be an extremely useful source in writing the paper, because it gives several examples of court cases, rulings and other legal actions that have involved the issue of assisted suicide.

"United States of America. Committee on the Judiciary. U.S Government Printing Office. THE CONSEQUENCES OF LEGALIZED ASSISTED SUICIDE & EUTHANASIA. Washington D.C., 2008. Print."

Blog #9: Tim Wise Group Essay

In America today, many people still believe that racism goes both ways, meaning both whites and people of color are subjected to discrimination. Author Tim Wise begs to differ. He believes that only people of color are discriminated against and whites are granted with far more privileges. Even though America had made extreme progress towards becoming a more equal nation, there is still proof that racism exists. Although racism is less open than in the past, it still affects the lives of many people today.

Racism is still seen around the world today. It affects all types of people regardless of their color. Although toned down, racism is now against the law and not looked upon as the common belief of non colored people. Wise believes , “Racism is an ideology that says certain people, by virtue of their race, are either inferior or superior to others of a different, with race usually being defined by skin color…It’s a way or organizing society” (5). What Wise means is society stereotypes certain types of people by the color of their skin. It’s convenient to judge a person because of how they look. Americans find it easier to stay within their race and make assumptions, rather than to venture out and actually get to know people of a different color. Even Wise makes assumptions, “Once I got on an airplane with two black pilots, and my immediate reaction was, “Can they fly the plane?” I caught myself and realized that of course they could. But the thought was there, and I had to acknowledge it” (12). Racism might just be ingrained in us. We are raised today to know different stereotypes and how certain races are supposed to act or supposed to be better at certain things. Regardless of age, color, or social class, racism is apparent in society and affects anybody anywhere.

Along with racism, privilege is also apparent in society. White people are privileged in that they are given rights or benefits beyond the advantages of most other people. Wise describes a few of the privileges of being white, “we whites are able to be as incompetent or mediocre as we want and never have our mediocrity ascribed to our race” (5). What Wise means is that white people don’t have to live their lives under the microscope. White people are able to make as many mistakes as they want, and their race is not held accountable.

Even though we might not see ourselves as being racist or discriminatory, we still categorize and stereotype people without even realizing were doing it. “We don’t consciously believe in racial superiority or inferiority, but we’ve become so used to the existing policies, practices, and procedures that we don’t question them. To the extent that we don’t challenge this system of racism, we are collaborating with it,” (5) says Wise. By growing up in a privileged white society, we have been shielded from and made unaware of the way minorities live. It is impossible to truly understand how people of color are forced to live in society. By being white, our opinion or definition of privilege and racism are biased. This can also lead to the issue of privileged access, which is a main component of paper three.

When arguing a food community is better than another like in paper three, one must remember that there is always the issue of access. Because of racism and white privilege, minorities have less access to certain food groups. The majority of minorities live in the inner city or ghettos, where their access to fresh fruit, vegetables, and organic food is very limited. They can’t simply drive down the street to a farmers market or walk to a fresh produce stand to get those healthy foods, because they don’t have them.

In conclusion, racism is very prominent in all areas of the world even today. The way it affects people’s lives varies depending on the degree of the racism taken. The white race as a whole is much more privileged than other colored races, and does not have to deal with all the bad treatment that others do. Without even acknowledging it, whites have more opportunities and a better chance at life and success from the day they are born. The environment and surroundings definitely influences how prevalent racism and privileges are. Hopefully one day people will begin to look past the color of one’s skin and realize that everyone is not so different.

Cook, David. "By the Color of Their Skin: Tim Wise on the Myth of a Postracial America." The Sun July 2009: 4-12. Print.

Blog #8: Finding Sources for English

We’ve all been taught how to research information and find sources since we were in middle school. Most of the time all it takes is a couple searches on Google, and you have all the necessary information to finish your paper. However, since I’ve entered college, I’ve had to put a lot of extra effort into finding sources, articles and information that will meet my teacher’s standards. For my English 101 class, I no longer use Google, but instead I use the WSU Library website, which includes Griffin and WorldCat. I must admit that it is much more difficult to find relevant articles on these sites than Google, but the information you do end up finding is definitely more scholarly and reliable.
Once I am delivered a list of articles that contain the keywords I am looking for, I start scanning through the various summaries, looking for ones that will contain the most unbiased info. When looking through articles, before I decide which ones I want to use, I also make sure I can find the author or organization and figure out where the information is coming from. If the author is someone who I believe would be reliable and educated on the topic at hand (for example, a doctor talking about health problems or a scientist talking about experiments), then print or order the article.
The hardest part in using sources comes when it’s time to successfully put them into an appropriate place of your paper. When I am making a really strong argument, or trying to argue why my opinion is better, is usually where I place a direct quote. I do this because it gives my commentary a little more of a backbone, because it is real, factual evidence. I can’t just argue something for a long time, and then move onto a new point without putting concrete details and quotes along with it, to make it strong and believable.
I think that the way I accumulate sources is efficient and definitely works for me when it comes to writing my papers for English 101. It isn’t very time consuming and the articles I end up finding usually fit right into my paper, and are really big helps. However I do think that there are a couple small things I could use to help me make my method for finding articles a little bit easier and faster. If I knew of other places on the web to look for scholarly, peer reviewed articles besides the library website, I could find more of them, or just a bigger selection. It would also be really helpful to know how to refine my searches a little better when it comes to keywords so I can cut down the time it takes me to find ones I can actually use.

Post #7: Borlaug article & Individual Article

Norman Borlaug Article

The main ideas of this article were the various kinds of conventional technology and biotechnology that we must come up with in order to meet the needs of our quickly growing population. Biotechnology has already made a huge impact on medicine and public health. Now, scientists believe that it could also change the face of our agricultural system, for the better. Not only will biotechnology help raise production levels to feed millions of more people, but it will be helping clean and preserve the environment at the same time. Scientists can inject plants with various substances and chemicals to make the plant do almost anything that they want. Making the plants more sustainable, more productive, more durable, more nutritional and making them stronger against diseases are all aspects of the biotechnology work of plants. However, should farmers be permitted to use all of this technology to inject stuff into the food we eat everyday of our lives? How well do we trust the scientists when they tell us that none of these chemicals are harmful for our bodies? Yes, it is very important we find productive ways to meet the challenges of starvation and famine all across the world, but is it worth harming our own bodies in order to ensure that everyone is fed? This is a choice that society needs to make.


Individual Article: The Omnivors Dilemma, Chapter 17: The Ethics of Eating Animals

I decided that chapter 17 in “The Omnivores Dilemma” would be a very helpful source in writing paper number three. The title of the chapter is “The Ethics of Eating Animals” which primarily is a big part of what I will be discussing in this upcoming essay. Throughout the chapter Pollan discusses various points of views about whether it is or isn’t okay to be killing and eating animals. One of the main sources he uses is a book written by Peter Singer titled “Animal Liberation” which takes the side that even though we are omnivores, we shouldn’t be eating meat. Pollan gives many justifications for both sides of the argument, making it hard to even decide where you stand on the debate. I believe that one of the most helpful and controversial sections of the chapter will be the part in which he relates eating animal to owning slaves, or the oppression of women. Could it be that we are moving towards a society where we will be ashamed of the things we did to animals, just like we found ourselves ashamed after many years of slavery and discrimination? Could society ever reach that point of enlightenment? These are all good questions that are going to help me write a very in depth and meaningful paper.

Post #6: Chapter 15

Chapter 15 was a very interesting section that I really enjoyed reading. By this point in the book, Pollan has had a chance to take a deep look into the industrial and pastoral aspect of where our food comes from. He decides that his last endeavor should be to prepare and eat his own food, by hunting and gathering it. I think that this is important for him to do to get the full experience of how easy or hard it would be to catch and prepare one's own food, and decide if it is realistically something that Americans could do on a day to day basis. The three basic components he wanted to include in his meal were plants, animals and fungi.
To be able to forage for his own food, many roadblocks needed to be knocked down in order for him to succeed. These same problems would stand in way of most Americans if they attempted to eat a diet that only consisted of food they picked, killed, or grew themselves. Being able to distinguish between a poisonous and non-poisonous mushroom, being able to shoot and kill an animal, or being able to grow and harvest your own plants, are all difficult aspects of this way of life. Though this might be doable and acceptable to some people throughout the world, it is not physically possible for all of Americans to live this way. There are not nearly enough animals or plants left in the wild for all of us to live on. So even though agriculture has some very negative impacts on humans, animals and the environment, it is what we need to survive at this point in time.

Post #5: Chapter 16

Out of all of the readings we have done in this book, I found chapter 16 one to be one of the most boring and hard to understand sections. I appreciated the part that discussed the various kinds of eaters, and the specialized ways that omnivores have learned how to eat over many years. As mentioned in the beginning of the chapter, rats use their digestive tracts as a laboratory, by nibbling on a tiny piece of new food, and depending on how their body reacts to it, they save it in their memory as either edible or not. Humans do this in a certain way, trying new foods to decide if they like them or not, but as far as tasting something to see if it's edible, humans usually just buy stuff from the store that they know is okay.
The part that talks about the various sensory and mental tools omnivores use to sort foods that we can eat and are healthy, from the foods that are not edible to us, or that we shouldn't be eating. We can obviously use our taste buds the majority of the time to tell us if the milk we are drinking is expired or the apple we just took a bite of is rotten. Our taste buds are so important because if we suddenly taste something bitter, we almost automatically know that we should be taking caution of what might be in that bite of food. Without taste we could go on eating things that on the outside looked fine, but inside were lethal doses of toxins that could hurt our bodies and immune systems. The practice of cooking and heating food has also helped give humans more ways of knowing what is okay to eat and what is not. However, it has made the decision of what to eat for dinner a lot harder.

Post #4: Chapter 8

"All Flesh Is Grass" is a chapter with an interesting view on the importance of grass on our food chain and the agricultural system. It is also looks at the complex cycle of polyface farming where animals work together to, almost in a sense, run the farm on their owns. It is grass, and these animal's abilities to keep it fertile and fresh, that keeps these farms so effective and productive. The cows spend their day grazing on the grass, while the chickens come in to do the main job of picking out parasites, applying nitrogen to the soil, and providing a few thousand fresh eggs. Without this natural occuring cycle, farmlands would become infertile and dried up because of agriculture and farming. We are provided with much of our fresh vegetables, fruits, breads, meat, and dairy because of the hard-working animals.
Towards the end of the chapter another very intriguing issue is brought up and discussed. Industrial farm or polyface farm? What is better for the environment and our health? What is "industrial organic" and should it be considered an industrial farm or a polyface farm? All these questions spring up in your mind as you finish up this chapter. A very good quote from Salatin stated "There are a whole lot more variables in making the right decision than does the chicken feed have chemicals or not. Like what sort of habitat is going to allow that chicken to exress its physiological distinctiveness? A ten-thousand bird shed that stinks to high heaven or a new paddock of fresh green grass everyday? Now which chicken shall we call "organic"? I'm afraid you'll have to ask the government, because now they own the word". Just because something says that it's organic, does not mean that the conditions were better, cleaner, or more sustainable. The government has specific guidelines it follows to ensure something is "organic" but some of the most important things that should be checked, like the animal's habitat, it's cleanliness, or the amount of pesticide runoff into streams, are not being taken into consideration. Which to me, is a big deal when it comes to the food I'm eating on a daily basis.

Post 3: Chpts.12 & 13

Personally, my favorite part of this week's reading was the paragraph in chapter 12 about the USDA's regulations and rules. I found it kind of funny, but rather ridiculous that there are certain things that are strictly required, and others that are actually of importance, are simply looked over. One of their requirements is that every processing facility have a bathroom exclusively for a USDA inspector to use. However there are no set rules or levels for pathogens or bacteria in meat. If there were strict levels, then that would require the USDA to actually have to keep track of every single farm and the cleanliness of it, and start recalling meat from all over the country.
This shows me that our government and corporations are lazy and selfish. They don't care about the quality of food that society is eating or our health and well-being. I guarantee that there are numerous diseases and bacteria in much of the food that we consume on a regular basis, and it wouldn't take much effort to control it. Yet, the only things that these people care about are making profit and money off of whatever and whoever they can. They don't want to take the extra time and money to regulate what kinds of horrible things are going into what we eat. Obviously it shows how much they care, that they can require a special bathroom for themselves at each facility, but not make a strict limit on what goes into our food. I don't know about you, but it makes me really mad, and really grossed out.

Post #2: Chapter 9

Personally, I found the reading in chapter 9 quite challenging because there were many concepts and ideas that were hard to grasp, and a lot of information to take in. The one main part that really grabbed my attention right off the bat was "Supermarket Pastoral" or mainly what I thought of it as, understanding supermarket literacy. What Pollan was doing, was looking past the basic foods and advertisements on the shelves of the grocery and seeing it as a more complex system, with many hidden attributes. It is already very hard to understand what is in your food, and where your ingredients are coming from, but like Pollan mentions, with lines like "certified organic", "humanely raised" or "free range", it's only getter tougher.
"Wordy labels" as he calls them in the chapter, are commonly found on almost any product you shop for in a store like Whole Foods, or Safeway these days. However, just because the chicken says "humanely raised" or the lettuce says "all organic" is really that much healthier for you? No, it is the government and big corporations working together to trick society into thinking they are eating healthier, "real" food. In actuality all it's doing is putting a huge dent into your bank account and may even be worse for you then the food in the "non-organic" package. When Pollan dug deaper into his research, what did he find? He found that the "free range" chicken was in a shed with 20 thousand others, and only allowed outside for two weeks before they were slaughtered. In addition, the organic milk comes from cows that never eat a blade of pastoral grass a day in their life and are "tethered to milk machines three times a day". Does this sound "organic" and "humanely raised" to you??

Post #1 Chapter 6 Omnivors Dilemma

There were numerous points and ideas that were brought up in chapter six that I found very interesting and worth discussing in further detail. I really enjoyed the first part that talked about the similarities of producing excess amounts of corn between the early 19th century and now a days. Years ago when there was an excess of corn, we used it to process into very large amounts of alcohol which led to problems of alcoholism and violence in society. Similarly with the excess of corn we have now we are producing it into high fructose corn syrup and adding it to almost every single thing we eat or drink. This also leads to negative and unhealthy outcomes such as diabetes and obesity. This is the clever thing to do because farmers can cheaply produce all of this and then sell it for huge profit because like the book said "when food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat".