Month: November 2017

Daniel Richardson
Professor Jesse Miller
ENG 110, H4
13 November 2017

“Planting a Naysayer in Your Text”, Gerald Graff and Kathy Birkenstein

Main Ideas:
Anticipate Objections
We can use criticisms of our work to our advantage. This “enhance[s] credibility, not undermine[s] it. Identifies problems before they happen, preemptively troubleshooting your paper. Also helps show respect for your reader as an individual thinker and prevents you from coming across as closed-minded.
Represent Objections Fairly
Writers bolster credibility when they do not quickly move past “naysayers. Presenting unbiased work is more factual. Most write with an “outsider’s eye”. Should dedicate several focused sentences or paragraphs to “naysayers”. If you mock a view that you oppose, you will alienate the readers who disagree with you.
Answer Objections:
To avoid having a reverse intended effect on readers, one must “make sure that the counterarguments you address are no more convincing than your own. Cannot merely dismiss counterarguments, do not be a “bully”. “Treating the counterview as an opportunity to revise and refine your position, serves to improve and refine your argument. Persuade the reader to support your claim in a respectful way.

Daniel Richardson

Professor Jesse Miller

ENG 110, H4

13 November 2017

            In his “Animals Like Us”, Hal Herzog presents a moral dilemma many people face: Should we eat animals, and if we do, how do we justify it?  Judith Black personally feels afflicted, as for years she classified herself as a vegetarian, yet would eat fish, as she did not believe them to have the same animalistic qualities of a cat, dog, or cow. But what divides the fish from other animals, or even humans? Humans and animals both have hearts, brains, and blood flowing through their bodies, they both have families, and both feel pain. It is but a word that separates them. In creating a separate nomenclature for similar groups, one inherently reclassifies the part of the population as primitive, in a direct or indirect means. To some, this separate classification facilitates the justification eating animals. Others, such as Black mediate these two groups, finding animals as humanistic and lovable. However, by convincing herself that, fish is not an animal, Black again reclassifies the population to fit her narrative, to justify her desires. To Black, realizing that fish are animals would probably be an unraveling experience. If animals are such as humans, and fish are classified as animals, where does it stop?  David Foster Wallace ponders this quandary in his “Consider the Lobster”, wondering “Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping inflict it by paying for the food it results in?” In other words, why is the suffering of animals less important than that of humans. It is true that Wallace is in fact referring to the processes relating to the deaths of these animals, while Black is most likely uncomfortable with the thought of eating animals. However, both thinkers in question, not always outright, examine suffering relating to “primitive” beings that we eat, both thinkers acknowledge directly or indirectly that people stand to gain from the death of animals. Be it nutrition or capitalistic gain. The dilemma in question, the unraveling chain is especially difficult to solve because, well you “eat or die”. In addition, rethinking eating habits would require the undermining of a whole separate industry.

Daniel Richardson

Professor Jesse Miller

ENG 110, H-4

8 November 2017

Reconsidering the Lobster

Things Clearer:

·         Industry influence is partially to blame for people celebrating lobster

·         Why did shift occur of Lobster being dreaded meal for prison inmates and poor à Delicacy enjoyed by the rich

o   Cultural?

o   Economical?

o   Regional Reliance

·         What is our impact on lobsters/ their ecosystem? How are we changing their “culture”?

·         Wallace’s comparison of humans, specifically tourists, to lobsters. “Economically significant but existentially loathsome”

Bigger Idea:

o   What happens when somebody starts to unravel a chain? Such as Wallace researching the lobster industry, and learning about the meat packing industry, which he says he knew nothing about before writing this article.

o   Why do we ignore suffering? “Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping inflict it by paying for the food it results in?

o   Do we try to rationalize suffering? Such as believing that puncturing a hole in the lobster’s head will prevent it from suffering? Or ignore it all together

o   Why do we industrialize death? Meatpacking companies, giant boiling lobster pots and festivals. Connection à Industrialized crematoriums and funeral service industry

o   Germany and France pretended that the Holocaust didn’t happen until 1980’s and 1990’s respectively. Yet there were reports coming out from Europe as early as 1942 and we possess plenty of photographs to prove that this abomination happened.

Daniel Richardson

Professor Jesse Miller

ENG 110, H-4

8 November 2017

            To many, having a direct involvement in the death process of a loved one may seem a disturbing thought. However, it is a philosophy nowhere near as inane as it seems. Throughout most of our lives we have possessed fond pets, developing a sense of love and caring for them that they become part of the family. Yet, as cordial these additional members of the family may be, they are a sad reminder of mortality. For years you have taken care of them, played with them, and loved them. Suddenly everything comes to a heart-shattering halt and you find yourself building a pine box for them. You sit there in remembrance, pet them one last time, and maybe give them a hug and kiss. Then you close the box, lower them down, and send them off into the next. You prepare them, spend their last moments on earth with them, and carry out a service for them, just as Caitlin Doughty urges potential cliental to do for their relatives. That brave flush of the toilet for the dead fish, is very much the same as pushing the button that sends human relatives “off to their final disposition.”

            Caitlin Doughty feels that it is important to humanize the industrial crematorium so that the last moments that this person is flesh, they will have a more symbolic sendoff, rather than just be another part of industry. She urges families to be more involved in the death process to take responsibility for their loved one, rather than leave the burden to someone who never knew them. She would rather the process seem more ceremonial than industrial and bland. Above all, she wishes to instill families with a sense of mortality gained from sending their loved one off for the final time.

            I was aware that the process of cremation was an industrial process, not the ritualistic way that it is depicted. However, I was unaware of the alkaline hydrolysis method of disintegrating a body, that Doughty describes. I’m sure that the mob was worlds ahead of society in putting it to practice. On top of this, I did know a decent bit about the process of embalming that Mitford describes, from my studies in high school, but I had no idea that it was not practiced in other countries. I just took this as a fact of common practice. I certainly did not know that there are toxic chemicals put into chicken mcnuggets, such as TBHQ, a form of lighter fluid, yet I did expect there to certainly be more ingredients than just chicken. Pollan has really turned me off from even wanting a taste of these “white meat” creations.

Daniel Richardson

Professor Jesse Miller

ENG 110, H-4

6 October 2017

In her “The American Way of Death Revisited”, Jessica Mitford presents an overlying argument that death has become an industrialized within North America. She claims that funeral directors are deceptive in their work. To support this, Mitford borrows a passage from Edward A. Martin’s Psychology of Funeral Service, which reads: “He may not always do as much as the family thinks that he is doing… the important thing is that his services may be used to make the family believe that they are giving unlimited expression to their own sentiment” (pg. 50). Having attended many funerals myself, I agree with Mitford. The funeral director merely makes arrangements and checks in, like a waiter. Mitford compares the funeral director to a salesman. To make this point, she brings up the practice of embalmment, as well as the cost caskets. She reports “The purpose of embalming is to make the corpse suitable for viewing in a suitably costly container; and here too the funeral director, routinely, without first consulting the family, prepares the body for public display” (pg. 43). Once again, firsthand knowledge comes into play, as I have seen catalogs for caskets, and experienced the push of funeral directors to spend more money. Mitford blames this expectation for extravagance on the greedy will of the industry, forcing their wishes upon rattled, grieving families. She points out on page 43 that “No law requires embalming, no religious doctrine commends in, nor is it dictated by considerations of health, sanitation, or even of personal daintiness. In no part of the world, but North American is it widely used.” Never being to a foreign funeral, I have little though about this before. But the more I think about it, the more the practice of embalmment seems just as another sickly way of marketing a deceased. Mitford believes a possible cause of the funeral industry’s control on how death is perceived in North America, is their elusiveness, hiding their process from the public. Mitford asserts that “A close look at what takes place in the [preparation room] may explain in large measure the undertaker’s intractable reticence concerning a procedure that has become his major raison d’etre (pg. 45). I must once again agree with Mitford. Why do we not know more about what the funeral directors do. We trust them. But just how much do they push us around?